Kevin C. Whelan: I want to talk a little bit about the dichotomy of advice.
And what I mean by that is.
When we think about selling advice, we think that we're going to have
answers in the, we have to make.
From recommendations that we have to kind of know what to do.
And clients pay us to know what to do.
And yet.
From my experience.
And that's not always the case.
In fact, sometimes the best way to give advice is to ask good questions.
And two.
Offer options.
And to propose.
Certain visions.
And then to let your client or whomever is the receiver of that
advice, collaborate with you on.
What they want to do and what works through their lens and
then have a discussion that says, here's how I see this.
And here's what I feel about this.
And here's what maybe the data shows just us.
And.
Now, looking at that information, how are you going to proceed?
And so that's the hardest part, it's that we feel like the value that we
provide comes from having answers.
And, the more I give advice, the more I sell advisory services.
And then something I've been doing for over five, six years now.
Full-time.
The more, I realized that.
I'm going to give direction on some, some pretty functional things.
But anything major, anything strategic needs to be internalized.
And needs to pass through, at least most of the filters of the clients
that I work with, so that they're able to come to their own conclusion
about what's right for them.
Because I think the underlying assumption here that.
That I've come to trust and believe in is there has to be a degree of instinct that
goes into these major business decisions.
And so while we can point people to tactical solutions, real change
and advisory work, isn't just about the technically correct decision.
Although that's sometimes the case.
It's really about.
Helping mesh your vision of the world with your clients.
And if you feel very strongly about it on their behalf, talking about
and asking questions, Long enough.
Until the answer becomes obvious or clear.
And I think that's the trickiest part because you may go through
one, two or three or five calls.
And maybe your client, isn't quite seeing your vision.
And maybe you don't quite agree with their direction.
And then the question is, how do I mesh up?
There.
Perspectives with all the pattern matching that I've done, because
ultimately they're hiring you.
To bring that pattern matching to.
Because you've seen.
Overlapping elements that make people successful.
And how do you find a direction that you both.
Feel good about, or at least.
You know, the client feels reasonably good about making that decision.
And so that's the interesting part.
It's, we're not really paid to have all the answers and yet we feel
like we don't have the answers.
If we don't come prepared with solutions.
That we're not adding value.
And that's just the trickiest part.
That's the dichotomy of advice is that a lot of times, advice isn't advice.
It's thinking out loud together.
It's asking questions.
It's exploring the logical conclusion of certain things.
It's exploring, intellectually, what happens if you do this
versus this, and then running that through your collective patterns.
Through the client's own vision of what they've seen in their world,
and they know their, their market and whatever else, with yours.
Where it gets tricky.
And this is the tricky part that I wrestle with all the time is that sometimes
I have more experience working with.
With clients that look like a certain type.
You know, either the consultants or coworking spaces or whatever.
And I can kind of see that in order to reach this business objective.
The client's going to need to do something that's uncomfortable for them.
And so the advice might be, Hey, for example.
You know, it looks as though you're able to capture any leads that come
your way and do commodity level work.
But in order to get to this next phase, we need to start making hard decisions.
We need to start making trade-offs.
How do we, de-risk that?
What trade offs are you willing to make?
Because, unless there's complete buy-in even if there's hesitancy, that's fine.
By de-risking that we can say, Hey, I know this doesn't feel right
in this particular case, maybe if intellectually, it makes sense.
But it's scary.
And does that mean we should proceed or not?
Sometimes that's what.
Advisors think that they need to do all the time.
And sometimes you have to, sometimes you have to say, I know this is not.
For example, focusing on a narrow target market.
It feels unconventional, but time and time again.
It points your marketing strategy points, your tactics.
Points your budgets.
It makes everything, all the decisions, a little bit more streamlined and effective.
Whether that's your target market or your target problem,
whatever you're focusing on.
So that's the thing it's, um,
It's hard being an advisor because you don't always have the answers,
but what you're doing is you're exploring your pattern matching.
You're teaching.
And your job is to communicate your worldview and communicate the
experience that you have, and then to meet clients somewhere in the
middle, because ultimately it's their job to make the decisions
that are right for their business.
And so, yeah, I mean, having some degree of skin in the game with a recommendation.
Trademark, you know, like a formal.
Piece of advice.
And standing by that sometimes that's the right path.
That's a good thing to do, but just so often, that's, I don't know.
Here's what I've noticed.
Here's what I'm feeling and sensing about your situation.
Here's what I believe to be true.
And you as the advisor have to trust that vision because you've honed it.
You've, you've gone through.
If you've worked with enough people that you have good
instincts and good taste, ideally.
So you have to kind of offer that in some cases and yet still meet
clients halfway, run it through there.
Filters.
And collectively, you need to decide whose whose vision are we going
to follow and how do I, how do you get more aligned on those visions?
So that the same thing.
And that can be a long drawn out process through questions and answers.
And.
Several calls.
And, uh, and then, you know, but the end of the day, the client has to make
the decisions about their business.
You just have to help them.
If you feel strongly, help them see your vision and where your pattern matching is
coming from, find analogies and examples of the stories, maybe to back that up
and then let the client counter-argue if they're feeling resistant to it.
So at least you can get to the very root.
Of why a decision may be right or not.
And then at least you can make a good decision rather
than a background processing.
Oh, I don't feel good about this, but I haven't really taken the time to
explore why I don't feel good about this.
Ideally you want to get right down to the root and say, here's what this looks like.
And another thing is that sometimes in the case of say specializing in a
problem or a person talking market,
Sometimes they don't see how going smaller is going to open up and get bigger.
So it's really worth.
As an advisor exploring.
And conversing.
Around big decisions.
To help give paint a picture and paint a vision.
And at the end of the day, You know, advice, isn't always advice.
The dice is exploration.
And questioning and sharing stories.
And.
It's kinda like a shaman in a village, not to overdramatize what advisors do, but.
And this goes for everyone, even if you're doing implementations, the same
thing, or you're still giving advice.
So I don't want to.
I don't wanna exclude any group of people.
This is people who.
Offer guidance in the course of their work together.
The gentleman may have a vision and you may go to them
for all that life experience.
And then at the end of the day is your path.
To take and it's your decision.
And so we, we can't, overbear people with our vision and
sometimes oftentimes there's truth in counter-arguments and, and.
Going back to this element of dichotomy.
Sometimes you can do things the opposite way and still reach the objective.
Which is, which is, which goes to show you that advice has to be loosely held.
And wrestled with and.
Talked through.
So this won't matter so much with the technical little details, but it will
always matter for pushing clients, helping clients get out of their comfort zone
and out of the ruts of their thinking.
And they're hiring you because they want to see the world in a different
way and operate in a different way to get different results.
And so that's the question is how much, how do we wrestle with
this idea that we're not there to necessarily just tell the answer?
But we're there to help.
Make the answer.
Obvious and then to get out of our comfort zone collectively make bold decisions.
Cause that's the only thing.
That's the only thing that's going to help you get bold outcomes.
Innovate.
It's how do we help clients do that?
This is the dichotomy I wrestle with all the time.
And, uh, just want to kind of share it because I think it's a
very important part of what we do.
Uh, when we give advice.
That's all for now.
Talk to you soon.