favor, or eminence. I will also agree that success in life means different things to different people. For the purpose of this essay, I will focus on what it means to be successful in the workplace.
I am a financial advisor. My responsibilities include advising clients and potential clients as to the importance of wealth accumulation, preservation, distribution, and transfer. While that sounds very good to a client, or potential client, my real job is to bring in money, and charge people a fee for managing it. At this stage in my career, I am a salesman first, and an advisor second. In short, the amount of money I can make is potentially unlimited, and is a direct result of my ability to communicate my value to potential clients. I am very good at discerning client concerns and communicating my value as a solution. As I look around the office, I see individuals who are making $150,000 to $1,000,000 a year, doing what I do. Some of them have been in the business longer, but many haven’t. These people are no smarter, no more hardworking, and certainly no more motivated than I am. I believe that comparing one’s skills to those of others perceived as “more successful” is common in the working world. Perhaps that is why many people attend motivational seminars, find mentors, or go back to school. It seems like most people are looking for success; for a peculiar few, success finds them. As I explore my own path to a successful career, I think it is necessary to examine the variables that contribute to success. I have structured my analysis into three main categories. Things we can control, things we cannot control, and hypothesis for the inexplicable.
To paraphrase an old adage you may have heard before: “Concentrate on the things that you can control, and not on the things that you cannot.” This is a very good model for productivity, because it eliminates time spent on things that we cannot affect. Could this be the attitude we should embrace on the path to achievement? There are certain aspects of our lives that, traditionally, are associated with an increased probability of success: education, work ethic, attitude, and motivation. Education is widely accepted as a standard measurement of our readiness to become successful. However, it can be argued that, though a good education will open doors for an individual, it does not directly influence the level of success a person achieves once inside. This is where work ethic comes in. Discipline is the mechanism by which talent becomes ability (also the great Zig Ziglar). You would think that a person who gets to work at 5 a.m. and leaves at 6 p.m. has the discipline to place themselves in a position to accomplish more. However, just being there physically is not enough. If that same person is tired all day at work, it’s meaningless discipline. Motivation is a key factor in turning this ability into productivity. Arguably, a person can affect the degree to which they are motivated, by concentrating on what their end result is, listening to motivational seminars, or maybe they are just born motivated. Attitude is something that is hard to control, but it can be done. While some people believe that a positive attitude can help you accomplish anything, I think that the effects of attitude are best summarized by Zig Ziglar in his book, Over the Top, when he states, “…. Attitude cannot let you do anything you want, but it can let you do anything you want better than a negative attitude can.” Even by mastering these four areas separately and together, one can still fall short of their professional goals. Many educated, disciplined, motivated people with positive attitudes are stuck in middle management, or struggle for many years to accomplish what some have done in half the time, with half the effort, and half the education and motivation. Using this rationale, it can be reasonably concluded that, while these areas are in our control, they are not solely responsible for our level of success.
People tell us that education, hard work, and motivation are important, yet, we also know that being in the right place at the right time can effect our progression towards success. We have all heard it said before, “It is not what you know, but who you know.” Sometimes, the people we develop relationships with can ultimately put us in a position of advantage over individuals who may be more educated, motivated, or hard working. To some extent, we can control our relationships once we have them. The origins of such relationships are something we usually cannot control. In my business, advisors can quit and advisors in “the right place at the right time” can be so lucky as to inherit their clients, and therefore their fees. Or, someone can walk into a firm, and that person could be pointed in your direction. There have been a handful of times when I have seen someone obtain a sizeable account with no effort at all. So, how can we account for these variables in developing an equation for success? I contend that we cannot. No matter what our efforts, ultimately many of the opportunities that we are presented with are result of elements outside of our control. How does one operate in such an imperfect system? How do we bring ourselves to stay motivated in continuing to better ourselves, especially when much of our success is based on elements outside of our control? The answer lies in our belief systems. In trying to justify our beliefs, we are forced to lump these types of variables into the categories of fate, luck, or faith.
It is my belief in a plan bigger than myself that allows me to become comfortable with this lack of control. Faith, to me, is an important aspect of this journey. This belief makes it possible for me to let go of the things I cannot control. God ultimately knows where He needs me the most. I concentrate on the things which I can control. My faith allows me to know that God will take care of the rest. I believe that we put ourselves in the position to be most successful by being as prepared as we can in the direction that we think we should be headed. Then, we should let God open doors for us, and shut other ones. Although this is my personal belief, I understand that each person accounts for these uncontrollable elements in different ways. The important part to take away from this is that these variables must be included and addressed in writing your own equation for success.
In conclusion, it is a combination of what we can control, what we cannot control, and our faith — belief in fate, or belief in luck — that binds the journey and allows us to put ourselves in the best position for success. There are many people who work less, are less educated, and who ultimately don’t try as hard, who do achieve levels of success that are greater than those who work more, are more educated, and try harder. This will always be the case, as there is often an element to the equation that cannot be explained. I define success as: partly a result of our preparedness to take advantage of opportunities that are presented to us through luck, timing, and fate, and partially reliant on the ability to have such opportunities.
The way in which we implement this statement in our own lives is specific to each one of us. While some find that furthering their education is essential to their preparation process, others believe that faith in God is all that is needed. Still others believe that their natural ability will be sufficient. I believe that it is a combination of all of three of the points discussed in this essay: preparing ourselves by concentrating on the areas of our lives we can control, being ready to use our preparation when presented with opportunities, and faith that allows appropriate opportunities to be given to us.
What you will find in this book is an attempt to address the pieces of the puzzle that you can control. The structure revolves around the areas financial advisors are most frequently asked about. Within that framework are 12 steps to developing a process that I have found to be the quickest way to be successful at becoming a financial advisor. At the end of each section is a Comprehension Quiz that you may complete to ensure that you understand the 12 steps. Sales managers may use these quizzes in the development of advisors as a way to monitor their progress in constructing their prospecting engine. The answers to these quizzes are found in the Appendix. In addition to the quizzes are To-Do Lists that will further the understanding of each concept.
1 Zig Ziglar’s “Over the Top” 1997, Nashville, Tennessee, Thomas Nelson, Inc.
About the Social Media Update
The first version of this book was written in 2007, and, at the time, I spent the majority of my prospect efforts grinding it out over the phone. Partly because of my success, and partly because I was trying to figure myself out, I ended up as the sales manager for the office. During my first months in this position, I revisited the following pages, developing it into a training program that was implemented across our class of roughly 60 advisors. Things were great. I was managing
