When Advising Clients Loses Its Spark: Burned Out, Or Bored-Out?: Kitces & Carl Ep 171

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***Editor's Note: Can't get enough of Kitces & Carl? Neither can we, which is why we've released it as a podcast as well! Check it out on all the usual podcast platforms, including Apple Podcasts (iTunes), Spotify, and YouTube Music.

Show Notes:

• Sticky Honey Bear
• Limitless Advisor
• Stephanie Bogan
• Vision Feeling Flat and Can't Figure Out Why? by Stephanie Bogan

Kitces & Carl Transcript

Michael: Well, good afternoon, Carl.

Carl: Hello, Michael. How are you?

Michael: I'm doing well. I'm doing well. We're getting later stages of summer here, probably tipping into early fall by the time this episode goes out. We do record a little ways in advance. And just really disliking the D.C. area. I'm a very big advocate. This is my hometown territory. But D.C. is amazing to visit, the monuments. We have amazing museums that are free. It is incredible. Don't come in July and August, though. Just don't come here in July and August. It's hot and mosquito-y. And they built it on a swamp, so it's horrible humidity. Spring and the fall, amazing time to come to D.C.

Carl: Spring and the fall.

Michael: Highly recommend. Don't come in July and August.

Carl: It turns out there's never a good time to come to Park City. The summers are terrible. The winters are bad. Spring and fall. I would recommend going to Colorado or Idaho or Montana.

Michael: So this is what the locals say to keep all of us, tourists, out of your trails.

Carl: Summer is off the charts. So beautiful right now. But don't tell anyone.

Michael: Big secret.

Carl: Exactly. What are we talking about?

Are You Burned Out... Or Bored Out? [01:25]

Michael: So, for today's episode, I wanted to get your perspective on a really interesting kind of conversation theme that cropped up to me. I'll give a shout-out to Steph Bogan of Limitless. She had kind of queued this up for me with a post she had put out on LinkedIn a few weeks ago. And I'm probably not going to do justice to the way that she framed it. We see a number of advisors out there who say they're feeling a little burned out. I've been doing the thing. It's a lot of hours. I make good income. It's a lot of hours. Serving clients can be emotionally draining. It's day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. It basically doesn't stop. It never stops because we're in ongoing relationships, and they've always got things going on. And we have to do a certain number of meetings to maintain the relationship. So sometimes there's even a chained to the desk... This business has become a small prison to me.

And the interesting thing actually that Steph framed up as...I think she's hearing and I've heard as well, it's not a mass crisis or anything, more advisors talking about whether they're feeling a little burned out on just same routine with same clients, wash, rinse, repeat, over and over. And you can't really do anything different because your client base is full and you got to serve them. The interesting question that Steph raised is, are you really feeling burned out in your practice, or are you getting bored out? Is it a burnout thing? Some medical folks out there probably have a much better definition than I do.

But when I think of burnout, I think of actual physiological stress, physical body reactions that the body is fatigued on the level of stress, which is very different than "I just feel like I'm stuck in this routine with the same clients, doing the same thing over and over again. And I feel like I have to do something different to mix it up or shake it up because I'm bored. And if this is all it's going to be, maybe I'm just going to sell this whole practice and get out of here and do something different, not literally because I'm burned out on the practice, because I'm bored out on the practice. This just isn't that fun and interesting and challenging anymore. I built a successful advisory firm. I got clients. They pay me well. It makes money.   I won capitalism. And people will pay me well for my firm. Now, what? What's next?"

Because there is, to me, just a fascinating phenomenon. We accrue clients. We all have a natural capacity, only so many hours in the day, week, month of the year. Eventually, you will hit capacity, and at that point, either you've got a system of hiring advisors and transferring clients and doing all that stuff, or your clients are your clients. These are the folks you're going to be hanging out with the rest of your career. Hope you enjoy them.

Carl: Right. Yeah, that's a super interesting question.

Michael: Yeah, I guess. I don't even know if I'm framing my question as well. I don't know. Do you think bored out is a thing? Does this resonate for you? Is burned out versus bored out a meaningful distinction to make as we think about this challenge?

Carl: Yeah. Look, I think so. I was trying to figure out how I would draw a sketch of this. I was just trying to get a handle on what...and it feels to me like there's a pie chart, and some part of the pie chart is interesting and fun. There's a slice that's... You've got some allocation of your work-life. You've got some allocation of your work-life that's meant to be allocated to interesting and fun. That's important to you. For some people, this is not important. We know plenty of people. I always talk about my favorite friend, Kevin, who's been sitting in the same desk, has four ties that are all maroon, makes a ton of money, is a great financial planner. And he only does two things. He has a consistent process and rapid response to problems. He's been doing that for 28 years. He loves it. And I kind of want to be one of those people, but I'm not. And many of us are not.

So there's this allocation of interesting and fun and creative. And I actually had this conversation recently. One of the people that came on the retreats we do here in Park City, he was very creative and got in this business a little bit kind of by accident, like some of us do.

Michael: Like a lot of us.

Carl: Yeah. Then he got his master's in tax, and he's kind of felt...

Michael: I'm liking him more and more as the story goes.

Carl: He's felt increasingly a little bit more and more trapped.

Michael: Yeah. Okay.

Carl: More and more trapped in this, "It doesn't feel very creative to me. It's just this thing. I'm just going to..." And I remember saying, "If I have to explain asset allocation one more time," you know what I mean, that feeling. And so we spent a bunch of time talking about, "Okay, if you've got this allocation of interesting and fun, there's a bunch of ways to deal with it." We know advisors, we talk about them on the show, that get their interesting and fun stuff outside of their jobs. That's fine. I'm thinking of people who ride their bikes a ton or people who do interesting things outside their job.

Michael: Yeah. Well, I feel like our profession, in particular, just we are very goal-oriented, achievement-oriented people. I think we have a highly disproportionate number of marathon runners and black belts and mountain climbers of the seven great peaks. There's a disproportionately high percentage of that in the advisor world, I find. Have goal, set goal, pursue goal, feels good, dopamine, hit new goal.

Carl: Yeah. So you said that, at some point, maybe all of that extra time, energy, all of that extra capital, energy, time, money, attention was totally devoted to the business. The business got there, and you're, "Now, what?" Well, you either grow the business or maybe you say that's too boring. And you could devote that. We can almost think of it, too, as prey drive, I'm thinking of, because we just got this hunting dog. What do you do to keep that prey drive going? Okay, you could go climb mountains. You could ride your bike.

But what was interesting with this advisor, this friend that I was talking to, who's an advisor in Colorado, we were, "Well, could you make it more fun?" And we talked about the idea of, "Is there a way to make this more creative, more interesting, more fun for you?" Because it turns out, we have permission to do all sorts of crazy things. Do you know mean? I heard...

Michael: I guess it's not everyone, because some of us are employee models, like you. There's a lot of career autonomy about how you want to do this.

Carl: Yeah, yeah. We've heard stories about people who only take meetings while hiking. I've got a friend who lives in a fly fishing community all summer and has his clients come up and meet with him up there. But this particular advisor, we were talking about the idea of, if you go to a photographer or an artist website, and it almost always says Work or Portfolio, and you click on it, you see pictures of the art.

And I started thinking this way, probably, man, probably 20 years ago. I was, "If you clicked on Portfolio on my site, what would be there?" And it would be the stories of these humans, right? That's the portfolio. So I was, "What if every client became an art project in your mind? What if...?" And this advisor was, "Man, I love the idea. What if I spent a day, I set aside a day, for each client a year? And that day started with breakfast and ended with dinner, if they want to. And we can go do whatever you want."

So anyway, I'm just saying, "What if you...?" Maybe you need to get out of the business. Maybe it's just too non-creative for you. But at least now, what if you made it more creative? What if there were ways to make it more creative? So either, A, take the prey drive, take the gold drive and use it somewhere else, B, are there ways to make it more interesting, because it's a darn good business. And jumping out of it because you're bored, you just want to be clear about, have you jumped out of the pan and into the fire? Because then you got a new problem. I'll let you respond to that whole pile of stuff I just threw at you.

Is There A Problem With Boredom? [11:02]

Michael: I really like the conversation. Let me take the other side of this for a moment. The other version I see of the same effect are advisors who try to avoid the risk of being bored out in the business, because they change it every 12 to 24.

Carl: Stop. I'm only laughing because I don't know anything about that. I don't know anything about changing things and doing new projects.

Michael: Right? And I mean to say, it's the other side of the same thing. This is going to sound more passive than I intended. If you let the business control you, then you're stuck in a cycle, and it feels boring. Because it's calling the shots, and now it's forming a prison around you. Or, no, I'm going to bust out of the prison and keep it fresh, which is why, every year, I come up with a new and different thing to do to take the business in an utterly, completely different direction. Because if I don't, heaven forbid, we might just get good at the thing that we've been doing all along and then do it in a repeatable manner. You know what happens next? People make system and process, and that stuff's boring.

And so it fascinated me because once Steph sort of put it out there, burned out or bored out, I feel like I see two versions of sort of the threat of boredom. The business is steering, and then it becomes the boring prison that I just want to bust out of and sell, or I take control of it, and I'm reinventing the business every 12 to 24 months, because it totally keeps it fresh and fun and creative for me. And that may or may not always be ideal for the clients, that may or may not always be ideal for the team, unless you've got a team that really likes to reinvent the wheel. But a lot of us hire a team to delegate the task. If you're wired that way, you tend to hire a team to delegate the task-y stuff, too, and people who are really good at the task-y things like to be assigned the tasks and do the workflow and run the process, which is great for consistency in the firm and not great when you blow up their process every 12 to 24 months by reinventing the wheel, which means you get staff turnover and potential client turnover and other difficulties that crop up.

Carl: Yeah, completely. I want to take your side, too, just for a second. What's wrong with being a little bored? That's the other thing to just realize. Man, a great cash flow business that allows you a bunch of freedom. Weird. And again, I'm saying this with deep empathy because I couldn't stomach that – meaning, I was always changing things. I just wanted to live a life of a series of projects that had a beginning and an end date. But the business is...maybe the fact that it's boring allows you the freedom to go do some other things on top of it or around it. And maybe these businesses aren't supposed to be systemic and boring and steady like Kevin's business. And maybe that should be viewed as this amazing thing that allows you to, "What an incredible place to be." That's the other thing that I have to keep reminding myself. What an incredible place to be, to have a job that you like 51% of the time, at least. You enjoy working with these humans. It's a little boring, but my gosh, you can design your lifestyle how you want. That's an incredible place to be. So there's that side, and then there's the other side of, "Yeah, it feels like a prison." I get both of those.

Options To Decrease Or Change Work (Without Selling Your Firm) [15:31]

Michael: Yeah. I'm trying to think and sort of be tactical and practical. Really, for those of us who are wired this way, I can raise my hand and own it. I've co-founded five businesses in ten years. I definitely have a version of this. But not to say my way is the right way and others are wrong. At least I've been very intentional that if I'm feeling that urge to create and the business is in a good place, I need to go create something else. I need to not blow up the good thing that I already created, for better or worse. I think that's why I've ended up with multiple businesses. And if you kind of look at my history, a new one pops out about every two to three years, because that's about how long it takes for me to feel like I'm in a good place with the thing that I was doing, "Ah, I'm feeling good about this. I think it's time to make something new and do something different and 'shake it up.'"

That's not the script that runs in my head. "Hey, this is working. Let's go break it." But it's just an antsiness of, "Okay, I've done the thing, and it feels like it's in a good place. I'm now picking up my head. I can breathe again. So, what's next? Got to scan the horizon. Got to find something else to go tackle next, new goal to tackle." So I guess I don't know if my version is the right one, but I think at least one thing I would reflect is it's one thing if you need to feed your drive around fun, creativity, activity, new goals, something new. Be mindful of how it shows up for your business and the rest of your team, whether that's how much energy is good to direct it back into the business, because it can usually use some, what's too much to direct back in the business.

If that's too much, are you going to direct it elsewhere to a new thing or a new business? Which you can do. Make sure your old business can function without you before you go make the new one, or you're going to drop things. But do you want to direct it to a new business endeavor? Do you want to direct it to a personal goal? "Cool, your business is a great place. You need a challenge. I hear there are seven giant mountain peaks on seven continents. Go climb it." Half joking, half serious, "Need a really good challenge? Go for it. It'll even pull you out of the office for weeks or months at a time. Your staff will probably be thrilled."

Carl: Yeah. I love that. That was the other thing we talked about with this advisor, was, "Okay, if you were thinking about just getting out of the business, what other options are there? Could you find somebody else to run the business?" And you only do the few things you love and then go over here and write a book or start a podcast or start a foundation that does more financial literacy or coach. I remember thinking of this a lot. If there are things I could do in the business that just either, A, produce no revenue or actually cost me money, just changing for change's sake. I have a long list of things that I could do that would cost me money, that are way more fun than deciding to install a new CRM. Way more fun.

So I started thinking about that, always making this comparison of, wait, you can either mess with the CRM or you can coach your daughter's soccer team. You can mess with CRM or you go ride your bike. One of them actually costs you less. Riding your bike will actually cost you less. So I love thinking about those trade-offs, too.

Michael: Now, we're down the road. This is reminding me, your comment of, "Just sell the business, or what else can you do?" I had a conversation a couple of years ago, advisor, we'll call him Jerry, because it's just easier to have a name. So Jerry was in a version of this and was going to sell the practice, just didn't want to do it anymore, not fun anymore, not interesting anymore. Went out to build a wealth advisory business, built a million-dollar practice, it's great. Ready for new challenge. And I'd said to him, "If you want to free up time to do other things, you don't have to completely sell the business. You could hire another advisor. Spend the next year to transition your clients to them. If you want to learn how to do that well, that'll be your cool challenge thing for the next 12 to 24 months. Figure out how to transition your clients well, and then free up a whole bunch of capacity for whatever you want to do next. Grow the business to the next level or make a new business or whatever."

And so I still remember, what stuck to me about this that prompted my memory, the whole conversation with him was I feel chained to the business because I can't hand off the clients. They're all attached to me. I said, "Dude, your literal alternative is to sell the business, which means 100% of the clients are going to someone else. The only way you're selling this thing is you are going to successfully transition every single client to a buyer. So if you sell it, you're going to transition every client anyways. Maybe you should just keep it and transition it to someone who works for you and continue to profit from the business if you actually like the opportunity to build a business, if it's literally just the daily beat with clients that's getting you." I think that's what it was for Jerry. It wasn't that the wealth management business was boring. It's that, "I'm not excited to have these be the 100 people I'm going to hang out with every year for the next 20 years." That's what was dragging him down. And he couldn't imagine handing off the clients to anyone else, but he was totally ready to sell the business. That would have meant handing off all the clients anyways.

Carl: It's interesting that we get locked into those. I think that's really valuable, just to pause and go, "I'm super bored. Must get out." Just pause and say, "Okay, there's an entire range of options here. What are the third, fourth, fifth, sixth option that I haven't even thought of yet?" Because if you're in this position, you probably have maybe even sort of the resources to sort of make some of these changes. I think when you get locked into, "I can't do this anymore," and you guess what, permission granted if you can't, go do the thing. Whatever the thing is, go do it.

Michael: Whatever the next thing is.

Carl: Yeah. Yeah. But consider the options. You've got them. There's more than you thought.

Finding Sustainable Outlets For Change As An Entrepreneur [22:47]

Michael: So then, how else do you handle the reversal situation, which is, "I'm not bored. We change it up every year?"

Carl: I think that, to me, I've been referring for a long time to entrepreneurship as a spiritual practice for this exact reason. If you're creative, you often cause a lot of chaos, and you don't really know it. And it's so hard to imagine that not everybody in the world thinks like you. And if you've done your team building right, you've actually hired people specifically because they don't think like you. And then you have a hard time imagining how they don't think like you.

So when you show up and want to create...the joke I always tell at conferences is, "Hey, you know there's a meeting going on back in the office." I can tell the advisors, "There's a meeting." And what they're saying, they've all gotten together, and they're saying, "Hey, she's going to come home with a bunch of great ideas. If we all stay together, hunker down, it will all blow over in two weeks," you know what I mean? Just stay together. Nobody. Just stay together.

Michael: That hits really close to home, Carl.

Carl: Oh, yeah, I know. Believe me, I'm the same way. So, yeah, I think I've had to be really, really careful. I'm still really bad at this. If you talk to my wife and anybody on the team here, I've got to write up a proposal that has to be presented to the investment committee, which is made up of my wife and the team. It's not anything formal. But even...

Michael: Because they're literally just trying to slow you down and put it down.

Carl: Yeah. Just the process of writing it down. So, yeah. So I think that's really important to realize.

Michael: So if somebody has that fun, creative drive, is that a helpful mechanism that they have created for you, or does that just aggravate you because you just want to do your thing?

Carl: Well, it really aggravates me. But the results I'm producing aggravate me more, the results I'm producing by not doing it.

Michael: Okay.

Carl: The chaos I've caused, the pain I've caused, the delays I've caused, the money, it's cost me more. And I'm still not there yet. I did something the other day where I was, "I can't believe I did it again." So I think, just realize, what's the...? In fact, one of my business coaches said to me, "Go find some friends unrelated to your business that think like you." In fact, I said this the other day to somebody. I was, "Hey, let's get together for lunch. I have an idea I'm going to tell you. I want to tell you right now, we are not going to do anything with the idea. When we're done with lunch, no matter what we say, we are leaving, and it's as if..." And he's, "Wait, wait, why can't we do anything?" I said, "That's the rule. We can't do anything. We'll just talk about the idea, and then we'll leave."

Michael: You just need to get the energy of getting it off your chest and having someone to vibe.

Carl: Yeah. Because you wake up the next day, and you're with this massive hangover, and you're, "I can't do any of the things I just committed to because I'm too busy." And you're, "Okay, what was the goal of that meeting? Oh, it's just a fun brainstorming activity." So, anyway, I think my only point here is put some containers around it, put some guardrails around it, realize it where...because that stuff is incredibly valuable. If you think that way, it's incredibly valuable. The ability to come up with new ideas, execute zero to one, at least, incredibly valuable. And it's also an agent of chaos if not handled in the right way.

Michael: And the trigger point for you was realizing that this actually is not going well for the team around you?

Carl: Yeah. Yeah. One time, actually, my COO said, after five years of this, she said, "Do you know I actually don't like brainstorming?" And I was...she's, "That thing you do where you get all fired up about, 'We're going to do this, we're going to do this,' do you know I don't that?" Literally, this was four years ago, I was, "What are you talking? What do you mean you don't like it?"

Michael: You're my brainstorming buddy.

Carl: What do you mean? How is that possible? I never considered that there were humans that didn't like it. And now I realize those humans are the most valuable people on the planet.

Michael: Because she's your COO, and every time you say a thing, she's already operationalizing in her brain how to do it.

Carl: That's exactly right. And it just causes her stress. "How am I going to get this done?" You say the word green because you're looking out the window, "Wow, it's really green," you come back, and the entire building is painted green. Just for those of you who have this problem, do a little Google search, the bear is sticky with honey, and watch it.

Michael: The bear is sticky with honey. Okay.

Carl: And watch that video, and you will laugh. If you relate to this, the bear is sticky with honey, just watch that video. It's essentially the green room problem. Somebody says green, you come back, and the entire room is painted green. You're, "No, no, no, I was just looking out the window." It is astonishing to me how careful we need to be with that problem.

Michael: So good reminder, if you're the one that's breaking your boredom, channel your energy a little. If you're the one who's bored out, it's okay to mix it up a little.

Carl: Yeah. And just turn the attention, I guess.

Michael: Alternative short of transition, sell my practice, transition all my clients away. If you're going to transition all the way, you could transition for someone in your firm, too.

Carl: Yeah, yeah, you could... What's the third, fourth, fifth option you haven't thought of?

Michael: Awesome. Thank you, Carl.

Carl: Cheers, Michael. Yeah, super fun.