Farnsworth's First Law of Life, Leadership, and Vacuums

 

Unless you fill your time with passion and purpose, worthless clutter will get sucked into your life.

24/7.

No matter how you do the math, it always adds up to 168 hours per week. Whether you’re male or female; old or young; beautiful or plain; married, single, or somewhere in between, everyone gets the same number: 168.

The issue is never the number of hours; it is always what we choose to do with those hours.

Nature abhors a vacuum. If we don’t fill our time with worthwhile activity, all kinds of clutter will rush in to fill the void. Before long, all that stuff smothers the life out of us.

During my 60 years on this planet, I have witnessed a quantum leap in the number of ways we can spend our time. While the amount of currency we have in our pockets has stayed the same — 168 per week — the size of the bazaar has mushroomed and the glimmer of the merchandise has gotten much shinier.

Sometimes shinier is not better. Lately it seems that much of what is for sale in the marketplace of life serves only to distract and amuse us, rather than nourish, inspire, strengthen, and connect us.

If we’re not careful, we can end up spending a large chunk of those 168 hours surfing, tweeting, watching sports, working puzzles, playing video games, and mastering virtual worlds. While such distractions may not be harmfulper se, they can cut into our capacity to make a difference in the real world and can prevent us from experiencing a more abundant life.

The hours and the energy we spend killing angry birds (or whatever is your addiction of choice) are lost forever to doing things of more lasting value, like reading to our children, learning to paint, teaching a grandchild to fish, planting green beans, taking a walk with our spouse, strengthening our faith, or sharing stories with a shut-in.

Unfortunately, an inclination to do good is no longer sufficient to withstand the allure of mindless amusement. The siren call of distractions is so powerful today that only those who have found a deeper, more passionate purpose in their being and who use their time to bring that purpose to life are able to resist it.

Discovering why we are here, our purpose for being, is the only sure way to protect ourselves from the curse of shallow amusement. Knowing our purpose fills our life with direction and meaning, and crowds out clutter and drivel.

It also helps us find our passion and learn what makes us come alive. When we are doing what we truly love, we have no need for vacuous distractions.

It is not crucial whether following our purpose and passion is our vocation or an avocation. What is important is that it engages us, inspires us, and drives us to excellence.

When we fill that space at our core with purpose and passion, we eliminate the vacuum that sucks in less meaningful ways of using our time. We are energized and empowered to transform the real world, and we find lasting joy in doing so. The result is a life of greater abundance.

Farnsworth's First Law of Life, Leadership, and Peanut Butter & Jelly

 

Be careful what you spread around, because some of it will end up on you...

When our six children were small, we made a lot of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. And as both peanut butter and jelly are wont to do, a lot of it wound up on us and them instead of on the bread. Our dry cleaning bills were astronomical in those days. I guess that's an occupational hazard of raising six children.

I have found that it's not just peanut butter and jelly that end up back on us when we spread them around. The same thing happens with our outlook on life.

Two good friends of mine illustrate this principle.

One - I'll call him "Edward" - has had troubles, but also more than his share of blessings. He has a beautiful and loving family, an engaging career, and plenty of expensive toys. Yet he always seems to see the grey cloud behind every silver lining.

When something goes well, he claims the credit and takes his success for granted. When things don't go so well - which seems to be quite often - he's quick to find fault and play the blame game.

He's also the first to invite you to his own private pity party. There, his tales of woe and his lamentations of life's unfairness are multiplied.

Many of his former friends have learned to avoid him. They don't need the weight of his pessimism to drag them down. As Edward senses their withdrawal, he gets defensive and moody and pulls away from them. His circle of friends shrinks and the downward cycle continues.

He wonders why there is so much negativity around him.

The other - I'll call him "John" - has had more than his lifetime share of deep water, but he always seems to bob to the surface, smiling and grateful. He goes out of his way to connect people in his wide circle of friends, and he's constantly looking for ways to help others get ahead.

The concept that it is impossible to keep a non-moving bicycle upright is not very complicated. he is quick to express. People seek out opportunities to be with him. Not surprisingly, success seems to find him wherever he goes.

He's the first to attribute that success to others and to share the benefits with his team. He seems to have little ego or need to be in the limelight.

For him, life is good.

As I think about Edward and John, I'm reminded of an 1850s trading post in a small settlement in a pleasant valley along the Oregon Trail.

Wagon trains passing through would spend the night and stock up on supplies before heading further west. On occasion, some travelers weary of the long journey would pause to consider whether they should stop and homestead in the valley.

One such traveler approached the shopkeeper and asked, "What kind of people live here?"

The merchant replied, "Well, before I answer that, tell me what kind of people live in the place you just left."

"Oh, they weren't very neighborly. They seemed to only care for themselves, and there was a lot of fussing. We couldn't wait to leave," answered the traveler.

"I think you'll find the people here are a lot like that," said the shopkeeper.

The traveler decided to keep on moving.

The next day, another traveler, also weary of the long trail, asked the merchant about the people living in the valley.

Once again, the merchant gave the same reply: "Well, before I answer that, tell me what kind of people live in the place you came from."

"Oh," said the traveler, "they were kind and generous. They worked hard and took care of each other. We loved our little community and really hated to leave, but there was just no more land available."

"I think you'll find the people here are a lot like that," said the shopkeeper.

The traveler and his family decided to stay and homestead in the pleasant valley. They soon discovered the people there to be kind, generous, hard-working, caring, and loving, just as the merchant had described them.

So often, what we encounter in life is but an extended reflection of ourselves. Are we happy with what we're spreading around?

Farnsworth's First Law of Life, Leadership and Roughnecks

 

Everyone you meet on the road of life has something to teach you; slow down and listen.

The most useful lesson those roughnecks taught me — a once-in-a-lifetime nugget from the most unlikely of sources — came on a blistering August day when I first experienced “pulling a wet string.”

* * *

I’m still not sure how I survived the summer of ‘74 on an oil rig in western Colorado. The work was back-breaking and conditions were dirty and dangerous. But it paid well and I needed the money for college, so I stuck it out.

I was the odd man out in our four-man crew. I was an honors student headed to law school who went to church every week and didn’t smoke, drink, or chew. The others in that crew, let’s just say, were none of the above.

On the rig, no one had a name, only a nickname, a nom de guerre. At 22, I was the “Kid.” If I had stuck around a little longer I might have earned a more substantial moniker, but everyone knew I was just summer help.

“The Driller” or “Drill” was in charge of the crew. He wasn’t much older than I but had been working on rigs since he was 14, and he was a crackerjack rig operator. He worked hard and drank hard. On Monday mornings he liked to sing a ragged rendition of James Brown’s “I Feel Good, Like I Knew That I Would.” It was his way of convincing himself that his blood-shot eyes and hangover weren’t all that bad. His goal was to become a “tool pusher,” the guy who got to drive a company truck from rig to rig and bark orders to rig crews like ours.

“Grody” (named for his thick, dirty mustache that seemed to catch a piece of everything he ate or drank) was the other deck hand besides me. He was the old man of the crew, having been around the “oil patch” for nearly 20 years. He was quietly comfortable on the deck operating the tongs and the slips, but had no ambition to be in charge of the crew. He spent most of his weekly paychecks on weekend binges with his girlfriend Teresa.

“Red” (named for his bright orange hair and ruddy complexion) was the one-eyed derrick hand who danced along a narrow perch 50 feet in the air, catching the tongs and the 50-foot stands of tubing as they came up from the well and leaning them back in the derrick. He was a practical joker. He loved spitting Red Man chewing tobacco on Grody and me from above. Grody would swear at him and threaten all forms of obscene bodily harm, but Red would just laugh because he knew Grody was afraid of heights and couldn’t come after him.

I learned some interesting lessons from that colorful crew that summer. One of the most lasting was on the day we “pulled a wet string.”

Normally when you pull the string of pipe from a well (in this case about 12,000 feet of 2 5/8 inch tubing), the pump at the bottom has been unseated and all the oil inside the tubing has run back into the bottom of the well. Sometimes, however, the pump gets stuck and the oil can’t run out, so the tubing is completely full of oil.

That’s what they call “a wet string.”

Pulling a wet string is one of the worst things that can happen on a production rig like ours. As the tubing full of oil is pulled from the well and the first 50-foot section is unscrewed at the derrick floor, several gallons of oil from that part of the pipe spray out on the deck hands and the driller. Then another 50-foot section is pulled up and unscrewed and you’re showered again.

By the third or fourth time, your clothes are saturated and oil is dripping from your hair and off your hardhat and into your eyes. Your eyes are stinging and you’d like to wipe them but your gloves are full of oil too. It’s inside your steel-toed boots and your underwear. Everything you have on is ruined and will need to be burned at the end of the day.

The deck and all the tools are slick and oily. Your brain is screaming to hurry up and get this over with, but you have to take it easy so no one gets hurt. It’s like a slow motion dream — the kind in which you’re trying to flee but you’re running through Jell-O.

And then you realize there are still 11,800 feet of wet string to go. That means 236 more oil showers, and it’s not even 9 o’clock yet. Without a doubt today will be one of the nastiest, most wretched days of your life.

* * *

Around noon we stopped for lunch and were squatting in the shade eating our sandwiches with oily fingers. No one felt much like talking. Finally Driller broke the miserable silence.

“Pretty tough day, huh Kid?” he asked.

“The worst,” I snorted. “If I had known this was going to happen, I would have quit yesterday.”

Red chimed in sarcastically. “Hey, don’t forget the extra fifty bucks wet string pay.”

“We get an extra fifty bucks?” I queried.

“Yeah," Red explained. “They say it’s to buy new clothes, but it’s really just to keep the whole crew from twisting off.” (That’s oil patch lingo for walking off the job en masse.)

“Aw, this ain’t nothin’,” added Grody. “You should try doin’ this in the middle of the winter. Happened to me about three Januarys ago over near Steamboat.”

“This is so disgusting. How do you stand doing this year after year? Why don’t you get another job, do something different?” I asked.

Driller scrunched up his face and almost rolled his eyes. “That’s what you ain’t learned yet, Kid. It don’t matter what you do, every job’s gonna have its share of wet string days.

“Every now and again, even if you’re some hot-shot attorney in a three-piece suite at a fancy law firm in downtown Denver, even then, _____ happens. It don’t do no good to try and run from it. You just gotta learn to make the best of it.”

“He’s right,” Grody nodded. “Every job’s gonna have its share of wet string days. Take the good with the bad and deal with it.”

* * *

“Wet String Days.”

Their words still ring in my ears. I can’t say that I appreciated their wisdom that day, but it did stick with me.

Over the years I’ve found it to be true. Even the best of jobs, even the best of lives, have their share of wet string days, days when the wheels come off and everything falls apart.

“Wet String Days.”

I’ve discovered that it helps to have a name for those kinds of situations. When something’s labeled, it’s easier to recognize it, talk about it, and find a place for it.

I’ve learned that life is not about avoiding wet string days, because you can’t. Life is about learning to handle them when they happen and not letting them sour you for the majority of days when the pump doesn’t get stuck in the tubing and the pipes aren’t full of oil and you don’t have to burn all your clothes at the end of the shift.

It’s about finding joy in the journey. It’s about learning life’s amazing lessons from the interesting people you meet along the way.

Bless those roughnecks and the lessons they taught me. I wonder where they are today?

Farnsworth's First Law of Life, Leadership and Fishermen

 

Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day.

Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.

Find a man who loves to fish and he will feed the whole village for a lifetime.

I learned this principle from watching my good friend Gary Norton back in Brookhaven, Mississippi. Among his numerous talents, Gary loves to fish. It really doesn’t matter when, where, or what kind of fish or fishing – Gary is there with passion.

Gary taught me how to fish for bream in small ponds, so I could take my young children fishing and not disappoint them. Gary showed me and a bunch of Boy Scouts how to catch sea trout and red fish off an oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico. He took me bass fishing where I observed how the competitive “big boy” fishermen do it with fast boats and fancy rigs.

Gary shared with me the finer points of trotline fishing in the Mississippi River for the monster catfish that live in its deep and muddy waters. You haven’t lived until you’ve wrestled a 50-pound catfish into a very small boat on a very large river. Talk about adrenaline rush!

I took him to the mountain streams of Colorado, away from his native fishing habitats, thinking an entirely new kind of fishing might slow him down a bit. Not so. After half a day he was out-fishing those who grew up in the area. He just has a nose for fish.

Long before the days of Facebook, Gary had a large circle of friends. If you were in that fortunate number, you could count on a steady supply of Ziplocs filled with fresh fillets. Like a gardener with a green thumb, he produced far more than he could eat and needed to share his abundance. He kept our freezer stocked for years.

This principle of finding a man who loves to fish applies to you if you’re trying to build a world-class business, a championship team, or an exceptional volunteer organization. Be on the lookout for people with passion in your field and when you find them, hire them. You can teach skills and processes but you can not teach passion. Without passion, world class is out of the question.

This principle applies to your existing team. You likely already have passionate people working for you. Make sure they are in the right slot, and search constantly for ways to allow their passion to energize their work and your organization. Eliminate barriers to creativity and honor exceptional contributions.

This principle also applies to you personally if you’re trying to create a world-class life for yourself or a world-class world for all of us. Do what you love and love what you do. Find your passion and nurture it, and the rest will follow. “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is more people who have come alive.” Howard Thurman

Whether it’s fishing or photography or fighting cancer, find your passion and purpose and let that bring you alive. Breathe in all the possibilities and then find a way to make it happen. You need it, your village needs it, and the world needs it.

 

Gary Norton

Scott fishing with his friend Gary and his brother Lane.

Farnsworth's First Law of Life, Leadership and Viking Ships

 

"It's harder to keep the crew rowing if only the captain can see where he's going."

The workers in many organizations are like crewmen on a Viking ship.

They sit with their backs toward their intended destination and have no view of where they're headed. Only quick peeks over their shoulders or orders barked from a superior tell them if they're headed in the right direction. And yet they are expected to keep rowing, hour after hour, day after day.

Not surprisingly, many workers in a Viking-ship business don't really deliver their best. They have to be prodded and cajoled. They come in late, stretch their breaks, surf the web on company time, and slip out as early as they can. They're there for the money and not much else.

Proverbs says "where there is no vision, the people perish." Without a vision of the company's big picture, many workers are dying a slow death of ignorance and apathy. They don't know where the organization is going and they don't care. They can't change jobs due to the recession, so they end up chained to their oars like galley slaves.

They row, but they're gritting their teeth the whole time.

This is a serious matter. Viking-ship conditions can be dangerous not only to crew members but also to the business itself.

The first casualty in a Viking-ship business is customer service. It's hard to smile when your teeth are gritted. It's hard to go the extra mile when your heart is full of apathy. It's hard to appreciate the lifetime value of a customer relationship when you can see only as far as next payday.

The second casualty in a Viking-ship business is creativity. Why imagine a better way when all you can see is where you've been? Why invent when you have no purpose but to survive? Why innovate when it produces no reward for you?

The third casualty in a Viking-ship business is high-performance employees. Those with quality skills, self-drive, and strong resumes don't have to put up with such an environment, even in a down economy, and they find ways to jump ship. As they exit, the morale and productivity of those left behind nosedives.

With the loss of customer service, creativity, and high-performance employees, the Viking-ship business goes into a death spiral. Like a ghost ship, it may continue to lurch forward for a time, but its long-term fate is sealed.

So if you're a business owner or group leader, how can you avoid this Viking-ship phenomenon? I have three simple suggestions.

Get clear about where you want your organization to go. If you don't know, there's no way the group can know. If you don't know, then finding out should be JOB ONE for you. Nothing else is more important. You need to take a retreat. Hire a coach. Have a heart-to-heart with your spouse. Cloister yourself with trusted lieutenants. Do whatever it takes to get clear on where you're going.

Share your ideas with your team. Tell them your "we've arrived story," the story you want others to be telling about your organization when you get to where you want to go. Tell it from your heart and your gut, rather than your head. Let them feel your passion and sense of purpose. Trust them with your vision.

Involve them in refining and implementing the vision. Most people on a team want it to be successful and they've thought about how to make that happen. In my experience, when I empower my team to co-author the "we've arrived story," they make it their own and assume ongoing responsibility for figuring out the best way to make it come true. If you allow your team to join you in defining success and identifying the pathway to it, they will respond by finding a better way than you had in mind. Then they will man the oars with surprising zeal and commitment.

When I trust my team with my vision, they honor that trust by charting the course, weighing anchor, and hoisting the sails. After that, it's full speed ahead. Our collective "we've arrived story" becomes a true narrative, almost as if by magic.

Aye, aye, captain.

The Question of Enough

 

Most of us can relate to Mildred Austin’s frustrating experience on Christmas morning: :

“Is that all?”

It was the innocent query of a five-year-old caught up in the excitement of Christmas, after the large assortment of gifts stacked under our tree had disintegrated into a heap of ribbons, paper, and empty boxes.     

Was that all?    

For weeks my husband and I had planned, schemed, and worried about how to satisfy the children as their lists grew longer each day. I had even taken a part-time job as a salesclerk so that the children wouldn’t be disappointed and we wouldn’t have to go into debt. But, in order to accomplish this, we had sacrificed evenings of carol singing, cookie making, and story reading, the real spirit of the occasion, so we could fulfill these materialistic Christmas dreams. How futile our efforts now seemed.

The question of enough is unfortunately not limited to five-year-olds on Christmas morning. It permeates our culture. 

My generation came of age with Keith Richards’ guitar riffs and Mick Jagger’s vocals ringing in our ears. Those lyrics warned us (wink, wink) that you can’t get no satisfaction from “how white your shirts can be,” smoking “the same cigarettes as me,” or getting plenty of “girlie action.”  

However, that didn’t stop lots of Baby Boomers from seeking fulfillment the Stones’ way. Ultimately, though, after “ridin’ round the world” and “doin’ this” and “signin’ that” and “tryin’ to make some girl,” they found that if you’re following the wrong scent in the pursuit of happiness, you won’t be satisfied even if you catch what you’re chasing. It just won’t be “enough.” They learned too late that there is never “enough” in the accumulation of material things.   

A few years ago, Sheryl Crow translated their belated discovery into clever rock and roll lingo.     

          I don't have digital;    
          I don't have diddly squat. 
          It's not having what you want;
          It's wanting what you've got.   

In a similar way, they found by sad experience that we don’t find “enough” by competing with and comparing ourselves to others. Comparing another’s possessions, another’s relationships, even another’s life with ours invariably gets in the way of enjoying and appreciating our own. 

As long as the focus is comparative and the answer is relative, we will never have enough. There will always be someone with more. There will always be someone with a bigger, a faster, a newer, a more expensive, a more glamorous, a more exotic whatever.   

Competing and comparing get in the way of feeling grateful. It is impossible to overstate the power of gratitude in answering the question of enough. Melody Beatty said it well: 

"Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend."

I believe the key to “enough” is to focus on things of lasting value, to stop comparing, and to genuinely appreciate “what you’ve got,” even if you “don’t have digital” or even “diddly-squat.” 

I saw a beautiful example of this last week. I conducted a “My Children” Priceless Conversation with Neil, a courageous father attending one of my Legacy Builder workshops.

Fifteen years ago, he and his young wife were blessed with twin sons. Both were born severely autistic. Can you picture the challenge of brand-new parents caring for twins? Or can you imagine the even greater challenge of brand-new parents caring for a severely autistic child? Now can you comprehend the difficulty of brand-new parents caring for severely autistic twins? Tears trickled down Neil’s cheeks as he described the love they discovered and the insights they gained during their grueling and ongoing struggle to raise those boys.  

But nowhere in our conversation did he express even a whiff of self-pity. To the contrary. He was proud to describe his children’s personalities and accomplishments. This was his family and this was his life and he was grateful for every single minute of it. He treasured the lessons they had learned together and felt no regret for all the things they had “missed out on” or “couldn’t do.” He wanted me to know of the eternal bond he and his wife and his children share. He has plenty and to spare of the things that really matter. He has “enough.”  

I felt honored and blessed to share the moment. For me, I received an exquisite Christmas gift three weeks early. 

Thank you, Neil. Thank you for focusing on things of lasting value, for not comparing, and for appreciating what you have. You reminded me that, for all I don’t have, what I do have is truly “enough.”   

A Business Opportunity for Master Planners

 

“I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.” Oliver Wendell Holmes

I lead a double life.

Half my professional life is spent working in a remarkable collaborative team with highly-successful families. This work is richly rewarding and deeply fulfilling because we get to the very core of what matters to our client families and as a team we have the skills and the means to do something about it.

The other half is spent providing training, tools, and support to financial advisors, estate planners, and philanthropic professionals who are experts in the art and science of growing, protecting, and distributing wealth. In this role, I get to rub shoulders with some of the brightest minds and biggest hearts in the business. This work too is hugely satisfying.

From these dual vantage points, I have discovered a significant omission in traditional advisor/client services and a corresponding opportunity for Master Planners and Level-Three Advisors: I think there is tremendous business potential for professional advisors who can masterfully address the growth, protection, and distribution of their clients’ wealth and then help them discover greater enjoyment of life.

Growing, protecting, and distributing wealth are means to an end, not the end itself. The real purpose of our work is to help our clients live life more abundantly.

Unfortunately, the process of growing, protecting, and distributing our clients’ wealth usually breeds substantial complexity in their lives. It spawns clutter, uncertainty, and dissonance, which make it harder for them to enjoy lives of greater abundance.

When professional advisors help their clients grow, protect, and distribute their wealth but don’t press forward to help them enjoy life by reducing the resultant complexity, clutter, uncertainty, and dissonance, both they and their clients are often left with an aching sense of hollowness, as in “Is that all there is?”

I see this empty space as an opportunity rather than an obligation. We planners are not responsible for our clients’ happiness — that would infantilize them and unfairly burden us. But visionary advisors may want to consider the potential of building their practices by helping clients deal with the complexity resulting their own planning and that of other advisors. I think it makes good business sense to do so.

It may be useful to consider a quick example from another field. The gifted carpenter, cabinet maker, or painter who fails to clean up the dust and debris of his work is never likely to earn the full-fledged goodwill of his customers or their enthusiastic endorsements to friends and family. “He does great work, but he leaves a mess,” they are likely to say. On the other hand, the builder who is both a master at his craft and who leaves the scene neat and tidy and livable earns higher revenue and more referral business from appreciative customers.

So just how do we help our clients enjoy “the simplicity on the other side of complexity” that Oliver Wendell Holmes said he was willing to give his life for? How do we turn this yearning he described into a business opportunity? In my own practice, I have developed a three-step formula that is based on certain real-life experiences:

About a dozen years ago, I met with a very successful surgeon at his opulent lakeside home in one of Orlando’s wealthiest neighborhoods to show him several tax-saving, asset-protection, and wealth-building strategies. Near the end of the meeting, he leaned back, put his hands behind his head, sighed audibly, and in an apologetic and resigned tone said, “What you say makes sense, but I don’t think I will follow your recommendations. My financial and legal affairs already feel so complicated that I can’t keep up with them. I’m no dummy, but I can’t understand half the stuff I have already. Doing what you propose would make it even more difficult to get my arms around it all. What I think I really need is someone who can just help me get all this crap organized. Do you know anyone who can do that?”

• Step 1: From the financial and legal clutter of their lives, I help my clients create order, organization, and simplicity. I help them feel they have a handle on their possessions. I help them find assurance that if something happens to them, their family and associates can find important documents and information (including passwords) quickly and easily. Relieved of the weight of the clutter of all their stuff, they are then free to soar.

Some time ago I conducted a Priceless Conversation with a man whose father and grandfather had both been highly successful, professionally and financially. He shared with me the swirl of growing up with virtually every possible option in the world open to him. He said his whole life felt like drinking from a fire hydrant, and he like the hyperactive cavalryman who “jumped on his horse and rode off in all directions.” He asked me to help him narrow the range of potential choices, so that things that were more important to him weren’t pushed aside by things that were less important. He wanted me to help him find his bearings in a tsunami of possibilities.

• Step 2: From the uncertainty that comes from having too many choices, I help successful clients find clarity about what matters to them most. I help them discover what’s still missing from their personal definition of success, and I help them uncover what makes them come alive. Together we turn overwhelming into manageable, we identify top priorities, and we focus first on what’s most important.

Identifying values and priorities is one thing; living true to them is quite another. I’ve learned that doing so is the only way to live more abundantly. Mahatma Gandhi said it this way: “Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” About seven year ago, I began working with a couple in South Florida who wanted to transfer their businesses to their two daughters. They had failed to pull it off a couple of times previously because the husband wouldn’t stick to their agreement, but instead kept giving in to the manipulations of the younger daughter. I intervened by guiding them in creating a step-by-step game plan in which every action item was consciously aligned with their core priorities. I followed this up by reinforcing that game plan with a consistently monitored support structure. With persistence, we were able to achieve a successful result.

• Step 3: I help successful clients develop action plans that are consistent with their values and priorities. Then I help them implement those plans through kind but steady encouragement, reinforcement, accountability, and follow-up. Over time, as they experience the satisfaction of being true to themselves and their bedrock principles, they discover for themselves one of the truths I live by: “Life is good when you live in harmony.”

This business opportunity of taking clients from successful to simple is not for everyone. But for discerning advisors, this could be a path of great potential and professional satisfaction. I know it is for me.

“Simplicity, clarity, harmony: These are the attributes that give our lives power and vividness and joy, as they are also the marks of great art. They seem to be the purpose of God for his whole creation.” Richard Holloway