Four years ago, i did a trek up Mount Kilimanjaro. The climb taught me 10 valuable lessons, which are relevant to advisors committed to advancing their businesses. The first four lessons, outlined in detail in October’s column, are:

1. Set “stretch” goals.

2. Invest the time to pick the right strategy.

3.Put a plan in place that tilts the odds in your favour.

4. Pick your partners carefully.

This month, I wrap up with six more lessons from my climb up Kilimanjaro.

> Ensure You Have The Right Team Behind You

Supporting the four climbers on my trek were two guides, a cook and 22 porters carrying food, water, camping gear and medical supplies. Each morning, the porters broke camp behind us. A couple of hours after we set out, they would pass us — each carrying one heavy load on his head and another on his back — and then set up tents at the next camp before we arrived.

Lesson: Our porters were the real heroes of our trek — unacknowledged but instrumental to our success.

In the same way, having the right support staff is critically important for advisors. Talk to highly successful advisors and, almost without exception, you’ll hear that having the right support staff behind them was integral to their achievements.

> Focus On The Immediate Step Ahead

Halfway through the third of eight days, the snow-capped peak of Kilimanjaro comes into view — truly an awe-inspiring sight. At the same time, the prospect of ascending that peak is intimidating; it’s hard not to experience self-doubt.

And as you encounter some of the tougher terrain during five- and six-hour climbs, fighting to put one foot in front of the other in a steady uphill ascent, it’s easy to get daunted by the prospect of the hours still ahead. One strategy is not to think about the thousands of steps in front of you, but to focus on the next step.

Lesson: Advisors with ambitious goals for their businesses can feel the same level of intimidation and self-doubt that climbers feel.

Developing an initial base of quality clients, putting together the team and skill sets you need, capturing all of your largest clients’ assets or developing referral relationships with professionals can seem like an impossibly difficult task.

To keep from being discouraged, break down your plan of action into monthly, weekly and daily activities and, instead of focusing on everything that needs to be done, concentrate on what needs to happen today.

Focus on the immediate next step — the call you need to make, the conversation you need to have with one of your staff or the meeting you need to make happen.

> Focus On The Big Picture

Given the rocky and uneven terrain during the trek up Kilimanjaro, you spend most of your time looking down, figuring out where you’re going to plant your foot next. The difficulty with this is that if all you do is look down at your next step, you miss the spectacular views of the mountain ahead of you and the motivation these views provide. To keep going, you need to intersperse your focus on the next step with an occasional pause to look at the mountain ahead.

Lesson: Just as people climbing “Kili” can lose perspective, advisors who fixate on the immediate task ahead can lose sight of the broader goal they’re working toward.

To stay on course, you need to build in regular time to pause and think more broadly about the bigger picture and where all those individual steps you’re taking are leading you. Yes, the immediate next step is key, but so is the destination to which your journey is taking you.

> Suck It Up When The Going Gets Tough

Everyone I’ve talked to who did the trek up Kilimanjaro has talked about moments when they experienced setbacks and when it was really hard — developing headaches or experiencing severe fatigue, for example. It’s at these moments that some climbers give up and pack it in. To get to the top of Kilimanjaro, you have to be prepared to work through the discomfort and, in some cases, pain along the way. Complaining isn’t productive – when the going gets tough, you have to suck it up and have the discipline to stay focused on your goal.

@page_break@Lesson: Advisors with ambitious goals for their businesses have to be prepared for some discomfort as well.

The discomfort may relate to facing rejection when talking to prospects; it may arise from getting outside your comfort zone in how you spend your day; it might entail an investment of time or money, with no prospect of immediate return.

If you’re not capable of working through setbacks and disappointments and a certain level of pain, you have no chance of maximizing your success as a financial advisor.

> Enjoy The Moment

Most people who set out on the trek up Kilimanjaro bring at least some aspects of a Type-A, goal-oriented, forward-looking personality. For the most part, that’s good. It’s this personality that enables people to make it to the top. The downside is that you can get so consumed in your immediate goals and the path ahead that you fail to take the time to reflect on what you’ve already achieved.

Everyone who makes it to the top celebrates when they get there. However, some of the most memorable moments of my trek were the times when we stopped for a few minutes and I had the chance to look back at the distance we’d already climbed – with phenomenal vistas stretching out beneath us, seeing our previous days’ camps in the distance and no other climbers in sight. If I hadn’t taken the time to look backward, I would have missed out on some remarkable memories.

Lesson: To move our business forward, it’s essential to focus on what has to happen next. On occasion, though, it’s just as important to take the time to reflect on how far we’ve come.

The satisfaction from seeing the progress we’ve made can be critical in providing the motivation to work through the inevitable bumps in the road as we go forward. Ensure that you build regular time into your routine, whether it be weekly, monthly or quarterly, to reflect on the positive things you’ve accomplished and achievements you can feel good about over the past while. By taking the time to enjoy what you’ve achieved, you will have increased energy for the path ahead.

> Begin By Beginning

When I first contemplated a trek up Kilimanjaro, I found the prospect daunting. There were so many decisions to make — when to go, which tour company to select, which equipment to purchase (not to mention embarking on a training regimen) — it would have been easy to become overwhelmed. The key for me was to compile a list of everything that needed to happen, putting those items into priority and then beginning to knock those items off, one by one.

Lesson: As you consider what it will take to advance your business, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by all the options available to you.

The key to success is taking a reasonable amount of time to reflect on your alternatives and then making a decision on which to pursue.

Once you’ve decided on your priority objective, the next step is to assemble that list of what you need to do and begin addressing those steps, one after another.

As you think about how to take your business forward in the next while, consider whether some of these lessons apply
to you. IE



Dan Richards is president of Strategic Imperatives Ltd. If you’d like to read the journal of his Kilimanjaro trek, e-mail him at
richards@getkeepclients.com. For other columns in this series and to access Dan’s blog, visit www.investmentexecutive.com.