2024 marks 30 years of me working in financial services, I started as a Trainee Broker Consultant at the Croydon branch of Scottish Equitable in October 1994.
What lessons have I learned? More than I can remember, but below are 30 that came to me when I gave it a little thought.
What strikes me is that I have learned more about life than business in these last 30 years. Also, many lessons have only been learned in the last 10 years. The slow compounding of the first 20 years has resulted in quite a payout, which continues to grow.
- Always be reading and from many sources, especially outside your area of expertise. Try before you buy using Kindle samples. Recommended reading: My 101 Great Books.
- Could you be neuro-diverse – ADHD, autism, dyslexia etc? Get accurately assessed and know for sure. If you are you might realise that you see the world differently to most. No wonder you don’t seem to fit in, can’t read social cues, keep getting into scrapes etc. Now you can adapt with confidence and live more at peace with yourself and the world around you. You can be free.
- I have a coach; I have worked with several coaches. All invaluable in different ways. The power of unfettered conversations, an impartial eye and candid feedback is immense. But be careful who you choose – interview several and look out for “the feeling”.
- Sitting still and letting go to create space, peace and quiet and allowing “it” to come to you is more important (and less effort) than going to get “it”. Recommended Reading: Being Aware of Being Aware, Just A Thought.
- Be nice to yourself. How can we expect others to, if we do not? Get to grips with your spirituality, understand your mental DNA – read up on philosophy, coaching, human nature. On This List there are 36 books I recommend – download Kindle samples and see which you get on best with.
- If all your utterances are truthful, helpful and kind you cannot go far wrong, however tough the subject. If any one of those is missing watch out. Natasha Swerdloff first shared this with me. She co-authored this excellent book: Coming Home.
- Do not work with or be near the untruthful, the unhelpful, the unkind, keep them away. Be careful who you let into your inner circle. They can set your mood music for years at a time.
- There is nothing you cannot try; it is mostly that you will not try it. Deal with your resistance but be aware it is the master of disguise. All those stories you tell yourself about what you can and cannot do – all made up, you trained yourself to believe them – they never existed when you were younger. Recommended reading: The War of Art, Big Magic, Creator.
- None of us are all seeing, be sure someone you trust is covering your blind spots. We never see the full picture, but act like we do.
- Do not believe everything you think or act on it. Your inner ego is the devil, step back, take a moment – is that thought really true? Does it need acting on? Why? Always ask why?
- All experiences leave a residue – good or bad – which we have power over. I have learned ten times more from my mistakes than my successes. You get to move on from your mistakes to something better. Successes just exist for a moment.
- The wild exuberance, imagination and sense of adventure of youngsters is where us old dogs can learn new tricks. Hang out with young people, get reinspired – they know everything that we have forgotten.
- Being open, honest and transparent in all you do is the best way to ensure a good night’s sleep. If all you tell is the truth, you need never remember what you have said.
- What comes around goes around. Be generous, with your time, your money, your life. You have much more to gain – emotionally and spiritually – than you could ever possibly lose.
- There is always, always, always someone having a tougher time than you are, and they could be much closer to you than you realise. Helping them is likely to be good for both of you.
- Happiness is the absence of suffering. The present can be painful, but it passes, suffering endures. Suffering comes from thought – wishing it were this, wanting that etc. – and it takes you out of the present and into the past or future, which we cannot affect. Stick with the present and the pain will soon pass – there is no need to suffer too.
- Exercise, lift weights, eat right, cut down on the toxins. What you put in is what you are going to get out.
- Do not assume, ask. What seems to be the situation almost certainly is not. If you want or need to find out, ask and ask again.
- Winning arguments in the moment is less important than building goodwill in the long term. Bite your tongue. But if you find yourself biting it often, recognise you might be in the wrong room, and do something about it.
- I should have worked for myself in my 20s before the commitments started raining down, instead I started in my late 30s when I had no other option. If it had not worked out, I could always go back and get a job, if I had not tried, I would never have known. Just do it.
- If you do become captain of your own ship, recognise that everyone starts in the Black Pig, quite a few make it to their version of HMS Victory.
- Suck it and see. You can hypothesise until the cows come home, but you will never know for sure until you try it. Just do it, see if it works and if it doesn’t go back to how it was. The key thing is action – do it, don’t think about doing it.
- I have spent more time creating business plans than they ever lasted! Mike Tyson once said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth”. Having a set of principles, a clear idea of what I was trying to achieve was absent for too long. But that is a philosophy (and I will be working on it for life), not a plan.
- Serving differently is more rewarding than trying to best your competition. Fly your freak flag, aim for elite, be exquisite – never try to be, all things to all people. Recommended Reading: Unreasonable Hospitality, with thanks to Mandy Lehto.
- Understand the difference between correlation and causation. Many confuse one for the other and act accordingly, especially in finance. Acting on “If interest rates do this, that means good/bad news for that” is often disproved. There may be a correlation but that does not imply causation.
- Once you understand how people’s pay you will understand their motivation. Those paid commission must sell to earn (that was me once) and behave differently vs by the hour vs a fixed fee for the job. Only one is usually suited to any particular job. Buying investments on commission? Think again.
- Many sell complexity. But if you cannot grasp the fundamentals in the first 15 minutes walk away – however good it sounds you are missing something, and that something is usually costly.
- Business = making decisions. In a set period is it better to make 100 decisions and get 55 right, or make 30 and get 28 right? 55 gets you down the tracks quicker that 28. My experience is that the 45 wrong decisions are reversable with little lost.
- Be careful who you do business with. Once you have fakes, flakes or fruitcakes as clients or colleagues a world of pain has been created.
- Life is lived inside out, not outside in. We feel our thoughts, nobody can make us feel anything, only our thoughts can. With thanks to John Dashfield (my first coach) who brought this to my attention. He wrote a great book I recommend to all financial planners: The Client-centred Financial Adviser.
It was interesting writing this list, I wonder what will change on it in the next 10 years, quite a bit I imagine.
You do not have to agree with any or all of it, it is just a reflection of my journey from there to here. And now it is time to get from here to the next there.
Because that is what life is – getting from here to there, as truthfully, helpfully and kindly as possible.