What gets us out of bed in the morning?
What gets far too many other people out of bed in the morning?
For us it’s the thanks and gratitude we get for having helped someone. As that’s really rewarding we try to keep behaving in ways that gets us more of it.
And that’s the crux of this. Our focus dictates how we behave and therefore our feeling of accomplishment.
Any business owner will tell you that recruitment is tricky. Hire a wrong ‘un and it can drag everyone down.
Knowing this it’s taken us nearly two years to find two advisers that we’d dare let near any of our clients.
We’ve looked at plenty of CVs, googled and stalked a fair few on Facebook and LinkedIn, started conversations with some.
The vast majority fell at the first hurdle. Their focus was all wrong.
They talked (or positioned themselves if we didn’t get as far as talking) only in terms of what they want, how good they are, how poorly they’ve been treated in the past etc.
Billy Big Bo****ks syndrome as I’ve be known to term it.
All ambitions and excuses that demonstrate a lack of awareness and understanding about themselves, their environment and their purpose.
We wanted to hear about how they can better help people, to give them more peace of mind, help them resolve difficult issues. In short, understand and discuss everything that has a £ sign attached to it. Which is pretty much everything.
Doing good and getting better at doing good should be our sole motivation and that of anyone joining TCFP.
If we achieve that everything else takes care of itself. That’s why we have no sales targets, performance measures or anything else that might corrupt behaviour.
We’re either doing good or we’re not.
We’re in it for the “thanks” and the “wow, I never thought we’d be able to do that” and the “we feel so relieved we can just get on with life” that we hear each and every week.
That’s how we know we’re successful (bank balances tell us very little) and the more often we hear this, the better we know we are doing and the more rewarding every day is.
Being helpful, diligent, honest and hardworking gets you so much further in life than being greedy, selfish and cunning.
It also makes life much less complicated and worth living, you have so little to concentrate on.
Regrettably too many gloss over these ideas and focus only on the money. As if that’s the be all and end all.
When your motivation is wrong you inevitably do the wrong thing and blame someone else for the outcome. And then repeat the same fundamental error over and over.
That results in poor behaviour and bad outcomes. Unhappy clients and disgruntled staff and a nasty, vicious circle.
If you consistently do the right thing you will get better and more rewarding outcomes. And that becomes a virtuous circle.
It all boils down to where you focus and how you behave.
Nothing more and nothing less.
It’s really not rocket science.
And there we have it, hopefully something resembling a pearl of wisdom.