Over the course of the last year I’ve gathered data from thousands of advisors, their clients and their teams. And as much as I love throwing myself, head first, into a good set of data, I learned something along the way that wasn't clear from the numbers. When I began conducting in-depth interviews with successful advisors it hit me that they all shared a common experience, a "pivot" in their careers that was based on the answers to three questions:

• What kind of work makes me light up?
• What do I want my life to look like in future?
• What do I have to do to bring those two things together?

I call it a “Whiteboard Moment” – a moment when there is nothing in front of you but a blank space to craft your ideal vision of the life you want and the business that will support it, unencumbered by the past. During a Whiteboard Moment, we think honestly about what we really want to do with our lives and our time and quell the voices that throw up obstacles - just long enough to start crafting a plan.

All truly successful advisors I’ve spoken with had a moment during which they sat back, honestly assessed what they wanted personally and began to take action. That moment was pivotal because it provided the fuel to make, sometimes difficult, changes, to work extremely hard and to stay focused. That moment, they will tell you, was one the defining moments in driving their success.

• I spoke to Katherine Liola, President of Concentric Private Wealth, who said she woke up to realize that she couldn’t work with clients in the way she wanted with the business model she had. She began the long and difficult process of going independent.
• I spoke to Jon Jones, Co-CEO of Brighton Jones, who said he had grown up being taught about the importance of charity and realized that this could become a core part of the business.
• Personally, I sat in front of my computer, having launched a new business and new programs and asked myself if the business reflected what I had envisioned when I began. The answer demanded a full re-think and rebrand and it was painful and expensive. (More to come next week.)

The question is, have you had your Whiteboard Moment? Are you on track to execute on a vision that reflects the life and business you want or are you going through the motions? Are you doing what it takes, in the words of Jim Collins, to get from good to great? Are you ready to give it a try?

"What if you could wake up every day and do exactly the kind of work you love in aid of something you considered important and with people who shared your vision?"

What Disney Can Teach Us About Whiteboard Moments

Before we talk about what you can do to get started, let’s deal with the elephant in the room. The one thing that has the best chance of derailing our efforts is our own thought process. Those of you with young children will be familiar with the Disney Pixar movie Inside Out. In that movie we see a visualization of what we all experience every day – the interplay of our emotions, including anger, sadness, disgust, fear and joy. Just like the little girl in the movie, big kids like us allow those fears and emotions to get in the way of imagining the life we want to live. The good thing about whiteboards is that they don’t talk back, don’t remind you about past failures and don’t judge. They don’t flag your skills gaps, remind you that some of your staff may not be right or that change requires an investment of time and money.

Why Is This So Important?

There are many good advisors and few great businesses. I would describe a great business as one that has not only achieved scale, but reflects the values of the leadership, the clients and the team and is something that gets the owner bouncing out of bed in the morning. The big difference is that the leaders of these great businesses had this moment and had the courage to change. Whiteboard moments create momentum, they define the path forward and they provide a vision rather than a goal. [Tweet "A goal is nice but who jumps out of bed to achieve 5 percent growth in EBITDA?"]

Whiteboard Moments Don’t Mean Changing Everything

While I’m talking about crafting a vision for your life and your business and about having the courage to change, I don’t want to suggest that the outcome of this vision requires dramatic change. Few advisors look at the whiteboard and realize they really want to become yoga instructors; rather they begin to see what they love to do.  At that point, they begin the real work of creating the process and infrastructure to allow them to spend more (or most) of their time doing the things that will drive the greatest fulfillment and growth. They refine their offer, define a target client, hire new staff or delegate more. Of course if you want to become a yoga instructor there’s nothing wrong with that, but the pivots I’ve witnessed have been more refinements that complete change.

Getting Intentional

If there is any part of you that recognizes that things could be better, know that by making the changes that fuel your own passion you’ll be creating momentum toward significant growth. The secret sauce of the most successful businesses is that the leaders are doing exactly the work they should be doing, when they should be doing it, supported by the people who share their vision. A Whiteboard Moment is possible if and when we:

• stop allowing the past to create our direction in future
• start with a clean slate
• open our minds to possibility
• recognize the need for alignment between what’s important in our lives and how we run our businesses
• accept the possibility that if we focus our time and attention on the things for which we have the most passion with significantly increase our chances of success

The First Step

Some people need no help in crafting a vision for the life and business they want. Some of us, on the other hand, need tools to help us keep those voices quiet. I’d like to offer up a first step that I found very helpful and which was suggested by my coach, Caroline Miller. She helped me see that setting another quantitative business goal (e.g. growth) wouldn't create the intention or motivation I would need to get what I really wanted. Instead she asked me to write and, importantly, she shared how this process was supported by a healthy amount of research and rigor. You can click here to go straight to the worksheet she created. On that page you’ll find something called Your Best Possible Future Selves Exercise in which she asks the following question:

‍“Think about your life in the future. Imagine that everything has gone as well as it possibly could. You have worked hard and succeeded at accomplishing all of your life goals. Think of this as the realization of all of your life dreams. Now, write about what you imagined.”

‍Caroline goes on to explain that writing about our "possible self" can enhance self-regulation because it provides an opportunity to learn about ourselves, to gain insight into and restructure our priorities, and to understand our own motives and emotional reactions. Writing about your life goals may also be beneficial because it can reduce goal conflict (Pennebaker, 1998), as well as bring greater awareness and clarity to one’s priorities, motivations, and values (Emmons, 1986, Little, 1989; Omodei & Wearing, 1990).We’ve all been taught that writing down a goal increases our chance of success. In a similar vein, this exercise is about describing how your life will look. What work will you be doing? Where will you be doing it? With whom? The more specific you are about this ideal, the more you can infuse the vision with tangible detail, the more likely you are to succeed in making it real. Going forward, in addition to my posts on client and team engagement, I’ll write more about how successful advisors are engaging personally and the impact that has on their success. It’s part of my own Whiteboard Moment but more importantly, what I believe to be critical to achieving our goals. Great advisors, I’ve discovered, don’t only engage with their clients and their teams, but with their work.

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Thanks for stopping by,

Julie