Four years ago this past summer, I experienced the toughest, most challenging week of my life — and also the most fulfilling and memorable.

Over eight days, I trekked up Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. Popular misconceptions aside, there are no ropes or special technical climbing skills entailed in scaling Africa’s most famous peak. All that’s involved is a steady uphill walk.

I recently reread the journal I wrote during this trek. In doing so, I was reminded of 10 important lessons from my experience — for me and also for financial advisors committed to advancing their businesses. This month, I outline the first four takeaways from my trek up Kilimanjaro.

> Set “Stretch” Goals.

Growing up, I was your typical geeky nerd. At four feet, six inches and 85 pounds entering high school, athletic pursuits of any form weren’t on my radar. (I hold the distinction of being the only person I know who failed high-school gym class.)

I’ve progressed since then but, still, no one would describe me as a jock. Compounding matters, until Kilimanjaro, I had never camped or hiked; it was my first experience sleeping in a tent. Until being inspired by a conversation with Steve Meehan, CEO of Mississauga, Ont.-based Investment Planning Counsel’s IPC Financial Network Inc. — who led a group of advisors up Kilimanjaro and lived to tell the tale — the notion of challenging myself to embark on a truly rigorous athletic pursuit had never crossed my mind.

Trekking up Kilimanjaro was a “stretch” goal for me. I could certainly have embarked on something less ambitious, but I would have missed the satisfaction and reward of a substantial challenge.

Lesson: Advisors need to set similar stretch goals for their businesses.

Here’s a simple exercise. Consider three visions of what your business might look like three years from now.

First, project forward from where you are now. If current momentum continues, what will your business look like? That’s the baseline, status-quo scenario.

Second, think about what you’d like your business to look like: the number and kinds of clients served, assets under management, prospects in the pipeline, your profile in the community and the team you’ve built. Then ask yourself: “How does the business I’d like to have differ from where I am now?”

Finally, consider what you’d love your business to look like — something not beyond the realm of possibility but a significant leap from where you are now. That’s a stretch goal. And if you aren’t at least a little bit uncomfortable contemplating how you’ll get there, you’re not really stretching yourself.

> Invest The Time To Pick The Right Strategy.

Before committing to the trip, I read several accounts of past treks and talked to a number of people who had made the climb up Kilimanjaro. From this, I emerged with lessons from other climbs and a list of to-dos that would increase my chances of success.

Even the best strategy for climbing this legendary mountain requires an element of luck to succeed; bad weather or a negative reaction to oxygen levels at high altitude can sabotage even well-prepared climbers. But there are things you can do to put the odds in your favour.

The most important decision I made was deciding on which route to take up the mountain and which tour company to go with. Most climbers take five days to make the ascent, which requires setting out at midnight to hit the peak at dawn. In that scenario, only one in four climbers achieve the summit. They are defeated by the difficulty of acclimatizing to the oxygen level at 19,000 feet in the five days and by the intense cold and conditions of the final leg of the ascent. The route I chose took eight days instead of five and entailed camping just below the peak on the final night, with a 90-minute hike up the final stretch on the last morning. The result: while costing a bit more and taking three more days, the longer route triples the chances of success to 75%.

Lesson: You need to go through a similar process in charting your route to professional success.

Once you’ve selected your stretch goal, picking the right strategy is critically important. Lay out a plan to do your fact-finding and due diligence. Give yourself a reasonable length of time — say, three months — to focus on doing your research and dig deep to find out what successful advi-sors have done to succeed. Look for conferences at which you’ll hear top advisors discuss their approaches. Also look for external resources that can assist you; beyond Canadian sources of information, you might consider such U.S. Web sites as www.horsesmouth.com, www.advisormax.com and Don Connelly’s www.campconnelly.com.

@page_break@Having pinpointed what you need to learn, outline the strategy that will be at the foundation of your approach. Set a plan of action in that three-month period aimed at developing a new or refined strategy.

For financial advisors, even the best strategy won’t guarantee that you’ll reach your goal. There will always be things beyond our control. That said, there are well-established methods that will increase your chances — for example, marshalling the discipline and investing the time to focus on building a presence as a go-to resource within a targeted client community.

The discipline to invest the time and money to implement a high-probability success strategy greatly increases your odds of success, whether it is getting to the top of a mountain or taking your business to the next level.

> Put A Plan In Place To Tilt The Odds In Your Favour.

Once you’ve honed in on your proposed strategy, you need to figure out what it will take to make it happen. Having committed to the trek, I established a training schedule for the six months leading up to the climb.

One of the keys to ascending Kilimanjaro is having the right hiking boots. I spent two hours picking out the right boots. And to ensure they were the right choice, my training regimen included 20 minutes at the start of each workout on a moving staircase while wearing my new boots, so that they would be broken in for the climb.

It turns out that the 15-plus hours a week I spent training was overkill. Given that my system coped well with the altitude (something impossible to predict beforehand), I could have spent much less time in the gym. But, at the time, my attitude was to take a “no regrets” approach. That way, I knew that if I didn’t make it to the top, I’d know I’d done everything reasonably possible to prepare for the trek.

And having a margin of safety wasn’t just limited to training. The tour company I chose sent oxygen tanks and medical equipment all the way to the top in case of emergencies. Other less costly outfitters skimped on this, bringing a less complete medical kit and neglecting to carry oxygen up to the very top. Our guides ended up helping climbers from other treks who were suffering on their way down from the peak.

Lesson: Putting a plan in place that puts the odds on your side applies equally to financial advisors aiming to advance their businesses.

Once you’ve set your strategy, you need to figure out what it will take to make it happen, laying it out in as much detail as possible. For example, what exactly do you have to do each quarter, each month and each day? Being willing to invest more than the minimum needed, in terms of time, effort and money, greatly increases the chance of success.

> Pick Your Partners Carefully.

There were four climbers in the party put together by the tour operator I chose: a dentist from New Brunswick and an investment banker and his wife from Greenwich, Conn. Throughout the eight days, we encouraged and supported each other, making the climb both enjoyable and our success possible. In conversations with other climbers less fortunate in their climbing parties, having the right colleagues makes a huge difference. This is less important in good times, when the sun is shining and everyone is feeling strong. It’s when the weather turns bad and people are cold, tired and fighting headaches that having supportive, positive teammates can make the difference between hitting the peak and having to turn back short of your goal.

Lesson: Picking the right partners is as important to financial advisors as it is to mountaineers.

At a certain point, even the most successful advisors working on their own hit a ceiling. To maximize the potential of a practice, it’s almost always necessary to hook up with other advisors or to bring an associate or junior advisor into your business. And don’t do what I did on the climb and leave the selection of your partners to chance. Yes, you can get lucky, as I did; but you’re far better off picking the partners with whom you want to work. IE



NEXT MONTH, SIX MORE LESSONS
FROM KILIMANJARO



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.