A few weeks ago my friend Justin had me on his podcast to talk about Enough (also below)- and he asked a really great question during it: is there anything that scares me about establishing and living out Enough?
It was something I had briefly thought about before, but in the weeks after Justin asked me, I have been thinking a lot more about it. And I think there are definitely some things that cause fear – or at least some level of measurable concern – after having defined Enough. And they could even be strong enough – if left unchecked – to prevent us from actually living Enough.
In no particular order, I’ve identified at least five:
- Revenue disruption
- Loss of compounding
- Complacency
- Envy
- Not paying it forward
Below is a bit more on each of these, and a thought or two on how I might try and hedge against it.
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Revenue disruption.
In my original post I acknowledged that my profession – and more singularly the fact that I own my own business in this profession – is somewhat unique in that I can choose whether to continue growing or not. However, this same principle applies regardless of how or where we’re defining Enough.
A legitimate concern that emerges when I decided to not seek more revenue is the risk of a disruption of existing revenue. In my context, this could look like a chunk of clients leaving my firm, or even a significant market decline. In other contexts, it could look like a myriad of other not-so-great events that hit our top line and uniformly impact the bottom line.
In lieu of new lines of revenue, the existing ones become all the more important.
I don’t think there is any magical hedge of protection against this, as certain things are simply beyond our control – but one thing I did realize, as simple as this sounds, is to make extra sure each client individually feels cared for and acknowledged. Or said more universally – that we take good care of the existing revenue we do have [somewhat] control over.
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Loss of compounding.
Again, I acknowledged this as well as a tradeoff with defining Enough: we unplug, or at least stop feeding, compounding machines. Specifically, in my case, the compounding growth of my firm. My investments will still compound for hopefully decades, but my firm’s compounding growth will slow. And while this will be noticeable on a year-over-year basis, I do admit a bit of an internal cringe when I think what that tapering-off-line looks like on a chart showing the growth of my firm from inception-to-now, vs inception-to-20 years from now.
This is more a pride issue than it is a financial issue, but it’s still something that bothers me more than it should. Again, as a family we should be more than ok as our savings rate should remain intact.
The hedge? Realizing this for what it is – pride, and to a degree, envy. “Comparison is the thief to joy” needs to be a continual reminder. More on that in a bit.
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Complacency.
Someday when I’m grown up, I’ll have figured out the nuanced difference between “Contentment” and “Complacency” and maybe have written a book on it. For now, I only have a loose distinction that being content is more related to quantity, and being complacent is more related to quality.
There’s certainly a chance that after defining Enough we enter into cruise control and become complacent since we’re not driving as hard as we used to. It could show up in a lot of different ways. A lot of my goals so far in Fident’s journey have been quantity related: revenue, assets, clients. In a word: growth. So now that those are off the table, I’ll need to replace them with different drivers.
This one is pretty clear to me on how to protect myself. I changed how I measure the firm’s success, shifting from growth and quantity metrics to value and quality metrics, and have done the same in my personal goals. Still, setting goals (and corresponding habits) is one thing – living them out is another.
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Envy.
This one is getting its own post at some point, as I think envy robs more people of satisfaction (including myself) than any other characteristic trait. It masquerades itself as so many other traits in life, and it’s the only one of the list of deadly sins that doesn’t even pretend to offer a false promise of instant gratification.
I’ll call myself out on this. Shortly after publishing the post script on Enough, two different married couples in my extended family replaced their vehicles (oddly, this happened within days of each other; more oddly, both couples replaced both of their vehicles; most oddly, they ended up with very similar vehicles).
I was legitimately happy for them at first – but you know what I ended up doing? Getting home and hopping on Carvana. My wife caught me. “What are you doing? We don’t need to replace a car right now!”
Busted.
I made a lame attempt of explaining how I wanted to start planning for years down the road – but the reality was I was a bit envious, and started thinking how maybe it is time to upgrade our rides. That action wasn’t driven from a place of having Enough, it was driven by envy.
The hedge against this probably lies within something I identified earlier in Lifestyle Creep. But perhaps a more focused attention on the Lifestyle Creep that happens to thrive when comparing ourselves to others.
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Not Paying it Forward.
This is a big one, and is probably the most personal of this list. When I was a junior in college, having no idea what I wanted to do as a job and even less what a financial advisor actually did, I interned with a financial advising firm that eventually ended up hiring me upon graduation. I was their first advisor hire, and the owner of that firm invested a TON into me – time, resources, energy, and money. He didn’t throw me on the wall along with 10 other newbie recruits to see who stuck. He didn’t make me sell. He didn’t make me smile and dial. He took his time, created a multi-year apprenticeship of sorts, and he didn’t see a return on his investment in me for years. He had me sit in on client meetings, help craft the financial plans, discuss investment strategies, all the while getting my proper licenses and credentials.
I will forever be grateful for that opportunity.
And one thing I really hoped to do at some point was to pay that forward with a younger advisor. I won’t pretend to know the cultures of every advising firm in the country, but the ones I’ve heard stories of with new advisors aren’t pretty. And a sad number of these well-meaning advisors get churned out, burned out, and leave the profession.
I’d LOVE to even give one person the opportunity I had. And maybe I will at some point, but not right now. A tradeoff of establishing Enough is the acknowledgment that my revenue won’t grow to the point anytime soon where I can do that in the way I’d like to.
This one’s hard to hedge against in full – but one thing I have been doing the last year or so is saying Yes to any younger advisor who reaches out and asks for a Zoom call or a quick get together to talk about their own career journey. I tell each one an awkward disclosure how I don’t have everything figured out, and won’t even pretend to be an expert, and there’s a ton of other people more qualified than me to give advice – but it’s a small way I can partially pay it forward what was given to me.
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While I think these 5 fears are largely personal to me, I think they also can be more broadly applied to others. And there are a ton more I’m sure I haven’t identified specifically.
I’m still as committed as ever to living out this idea of Enough, but these fears gave me some pause – and perhaps even more important, they helped me think of ways to hedge against them. There are definitely tradeoffs with establishing and living Enough, but so far – they don’t seem insurmountable.