I remember talking to them on a conference call and the dad is about 57 years old,  so he has a good 20 years left of the industry if he wanted to.

 

Anyways, we were on a conference call and he was telling me how he wishes things could go back to the way they were - back to trading stocks and bonds. I told him you're going to have to change or die - change or become obsolete.

 

I really hit him in between the ears with that one.

 

 

He went into the business in the 80s and I asked him did you have a website back then? And of course, he said no. Did you have an email then? And, he said no. What I am getting at here is now he has all these things, so he had already changed and adapted, he just didn't see it in that manner.

 

You have to be willing to go into this industry knowing technology and your demographic will be shifting internally and externally.

 

Internally we're going to lose hundreds of thousands of our colleagues over the next 10 years. There will be millions of baby boomers retiring, so what I'm getting at is change is here.

 

 

People ask me how I keep clients for 23 years and I look at two things. One of them tactically. What are we doing today? What are we doing this month? What are we doing this quarter? What are we doing this year? 

 

I'm always in the trenches with them, but, I'm also 50,000 feet above them. What do we need to be doing five or ten years out?

 

Let's get ahead and take advantage - I don't want them to be the pioneers and take the arrows, but I want them to be the second echelon to take advantage of everything.

 

That's the difference. 

 

I want you to think about this and do this as an exercise - where do you think you need to be in 2025 or 2030?

 

I know some of you are saying I'm just hoping to be alive. No matter what age you are think about where does my business need to be 10 - 20 years down the road?

 

Let's just look at things from a common sense perspective. More technology or less technology? What do you think? More technology of course.

 

So, if you're not technology competent and you're saying that to yourself - I don't care.

 

It's like saying you're a surgeon and saying there are new surgical tools available, but you're not going to use those because you've been doing surgeries a certain way for the last 30 years. In that world, you wouldn't be able to practice medicine.

 

If you do not embrace technology you will NOT advise - I don't care about your age, it's here and it will become bigger, not smaller.

 

Some of my clients are paperless. If we got rid of paper a lot of you might be in trouble right? You need to really look at this and ask yourself what skill sets do you need?

 

Do not look at technology as a negative standpoint, which many of you do - look at it from a positive aspect and take advantage of it.

 

 

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