I don’t know about you, but I just hate the rampant stupidity that seems so pervasive everywhere you turn.

I don’t know about you, but I just hate the rampant stupidity that seems so pervasive everywhere you turn.  It seems to be everywhere you turn.  Whether it’s the neighbors or, the idiot talking heads o the news with their copy written by interns.

My home is around 8,000 foot elevation in Evergreen, Colorado in the foothills just west of Denver on I-70.  You may have heard we had a bit on snow on Sunday.

As usual there was the MASSIVE run on the grocery stores Thursday and Friday.  Businesses closed on Saturday.   Well, Friday…. Nothing.  Saturday…. Nothing.   Late Saturday through Sunday – A LOT of Snow.   Then Monday – nothing.   Public schools closed, malls closed, restaurants closed and more.    Then schools that were BARELY open due to the Covid stupidity closed again TODAY – Tuesday even though roads are clear, electricity’s good, it’s sunny and not even a bit of rain much less on going snow.

Well, anyone who’s ever been in Colorado knows that it’s blizzard on Sunday – all gone, melted, sun’s out, roads clear 24 hours later (Monday.)

There are so many examples.   Of idiots in charge.   The general population like lemmings into the sea anytime they’re told to panic.

Now, I’m typically pretty calm about all of this stuff.

Frankly, I just expect stupidity and incompetence (reminder IQ of 100 is the AVERAGE of the population – folks under 85 can barely care for themselves.)

We know in our profession – it’s most often the contrarian’s that nail it.   Irrational exuberance on one end, panic on the other – do the opposite.

In your professional role…. Frankly it’s the same.   

A great quote (I think from Earl Nightingale) is “if you don’t have a good model of how to run your business, look around at what everyone else is doing and DO THE OPPOSITE.”

What’s certainly true is that whether advisors are captive, part of one of the big organizations or independent they tend to be focused on the “technical aspects” of their business and mostly ignore mastering important areas like direct response marketing, referral systems, follow-up systems, and effective sales methods.  

They certainly rarely accomplish what I refer to as building a “Parthenon” of marketing approaches.   Lots of pillars to feed new clients.   If one dries up (think luncheon, dinner meetings last year,) other’s fill the void.   5 or 6 different referral systems.   Social media marketing.  Search marketing.  Targeted direct mail and more to eliminate dead months and to effective grow not only your client base but the quality of your clients.

I had a series of conversations with different advisors – sadly mostly struggling this week – the ones struggling all had some version of “nobody does that,” or “nobody does that anymore.” 

Reminded me of another quote (again attribution shaky but, I heard in from my friend Dan Kennedy – pretty sure he was quoting someone else:   “Most people would rather have a good excuse than good results.”    A good excuse gives the failure and excuse on an ongoing basis.  Makes them feel better.   Totally destroys performance but, keeps you from feeling bad about your failures – obviously not your fault.

Anyway, enough of my rant.