Master the balancing act

Ray Griffin

A few of weekends back, a couple of mates and I spent three days zigzagging up, over and down the Great Dividing Range on our motorcycles. For Rob, Andrew and I, there’s not a lot that beats five or six hundred kilometres in a day followed by a nice pub meal, one or two glasses of red and some reflective conversation.

The destinations are unimportant: the only rules are that the route must contain an overly generous sprinkling of corners; the overnight stays must be in towns of less than 10,000 people; and we don’t book a night’s accommodation until that afternoon.

We all work in the financial services sector so the opportunity is clearly there to talk about work. But while working with people and their money is a common denominator, it’s a common love of motorcycling that is the reason for this annual three-day sojourn. Work rarely rates a mention.

We’re all in our mid-40s and while we’re, hopefully, several decades from being beyond riding a motorcycle, we know that every ride is really important for us, personally and collectively. It’s an escape from everyday business life and it’s incredibly therapeutic.

The thing is, for some it’s surfing, or golf, or tennis, or stamp collecting, but no matter what it is, everyone needs an escape from their business life.

There can be no mistake: financial services businesses are at times extremely stressful.

In my own case and perhaps for most of those reading this column, the headline events of the past 18 years have included record interest rates, a recession, a Gulf War, a world bond crisis, the South East Asian currency crisis, the tech crash and of course, sadly, the Iraq War continues unabated.

Add to that, raft upon raft of superannuation legislation changes and then there is the Financial Services Reform Act.

And that’s all before mentioning the need to steadily build a client base while trying to survive in business. Any self-employed planner, be they a licensee or a representative, will find much to relate in those events and issues.

In any business, it’s extremely easy to get blinded on the journey by a myopic focus on the end game: the big cheque from an all-out sale; the big pay-off for years of hard work.

Similarly, in very many respects, much of what planners are trying to achieve for clients is based on the destination of their retirement and not so much on balancing the journey.

I’m reminded of a client who waited until retirement at age 65 before buying a motorcycle. In a previous life Ken had ridden a motorcycle for a living, but with a work promotion, marriage, children and a mortgage, his deep-seated love of motorcycles was kept in suspense for more than 35 years.

I vividly recall the sheer delight and excitement in his eyes when he told me about the beautiful blue BMW touring bike he was about to order.

Nine months after his retirement Ken suffered a stroke that, despite a largely successful rehabilitation program, impaired his balance, dictating that riding a two-wheeled motorcycle was out of the question.

As a consequence of his balance impairment and his innate love of feeling the wind on his face and the simple need to have a ‘bike’, he bought a trike.

Ten years and 40,000kms down the track the trike is gone, but Ken is eagerly waiting arrival of his three-wheeled scooter from Italy. While for him it’s much better than no bike at all, I know deep down he believes three wheels are a distant second to two.

I suspect that any financial planner who has been in the job for more than a few years could quote similar stories of unfulfilled client dreams. Long-held dreams that for various reasons never come to fruition.

While for many it will be lack of money, and that’s clearly where a financial planner can play an important role, sadly for others it will be sickness or accidents that intervene.

That wicked hand of fate that rises up in a person’s life and robs them of the chance to do something for which they hold a great passion.

Much of the culture of the financial planning industry is based around more of everything.

For commission-based product sellers it’s about more sales to more transactors for more initial and trail commissions. In their case, it’s also about the never-ending search for new transactors. Such sales people are pressured by their sales managers to reach targets and, in turn, the sales managers are themselves pressured from above and on and on it goes.

For planners building businesses based on fees and ongoing service to clients, in the early years there is still the need to find clients just to break even before setting out to profit from their efforts. Such planners also face the ever-present pressure of how to reap full value from their life’s work: an outright sale or succession planning?

Be they product sellers or fee-for-service planners, work stresses and pressures are a constant companion.

A constant focus on an end-game goal — whatever that might be — could as easily deprive a planner of realising a dream as it could their clients. Fate is not known for discrimination.

One of the founders of the Corners for Kids Motorcycle Rally, Brian Thomas, was recently quoted as saying of motorcycling: “It’s a Zen thing … leaning into a corner, the challenge of getting things right, weight transfer, gears, cornering, all at once.”

For non-motorcyclists his words will likely not resonate in much the same way as hitting a little white ball around acres of manicured grass makes no sense to me — to each their own. The point about motorcycling is that it has nothing to do with the destination.

After our first day’s ride, by a warm pub open-fire on a very chilly sub-zero New England evening, Andrew, Rob and I momentarily reflected on how we could have more of lots of things if we were prepared to disturb the balance in our lives by chasing bigger financial goals.

While we could theoretically have more of everything, we would be bereft of the time to enjoy any of it.

We quickly concluded that in 20 or so years we’ll be much less agile on the wonderful mountain roads on our bikes, so we should enjoy the moments now and commit to have many more such days in the mountains.

In 1997, Ken’s bike became my first road bike as, in an ironic yet tragic twist of fate for him, his stroke led to an opportunity for me to re-indulge in a teenage passion for motorcycling. Ken’s stroke became a ‘marker’ in my life to stop and pause to enjoy the journey; after all, the ultimate destination comes soon enough for us all.

How long is it since you experienced the ‘wind in your face’? Are you taking the time to enjoy the ‘corners’ in your life or are you just straight-lining it to the end goal destination?

Ray Griffin CFP is the managing director and a representative of Griffin Financial Services.