Your road map to success: How to have it all — with Stephanie Bogan

Stephanie Bogan founded her first consulting firm at the age of 24. At 36, she sold it in a seven-figure deal to a Fortune 200 company, where she joined the executive team. After four years, she joined United Capital Financial Partners as senior vice president of training and client experience, helping develop a national practice model adopted by thousands of advisors and then acquired by Goldman Sachs.

Despite this success, she felt personally unfulfilled. So, she retired to a beach in Costa Rica. That is where, she said, her real learning began.

Bogan spent years studying the science of success and happiness, searching for the elusive something that was missing in her life.

She discovered that the secret to true success is hidden in the science of our behavior. Armed with that knowledge and understanding, she started Limitless, and now teaches advisors to “work with greater success” and “live with greater freedom.”

In this interview with Publisher Paul Feldman, she describes how she developed the ways to build what she calls high-performance happiness.

Paul Feldman: Stephanie, tell us a little bit about yourself and how you developed this amazing career.

Stephanie Bogan: People always assume that there was this great deal of intention. It was radically the opposite. I left home when I was 17. My mother had a mental illness; my dad had post-traumatic stress disorder. There was some ensuing childhood trauma, so I moved out. I got a job as a receptionist in an insurance firm, which was my first foray into financial services. At one point along the way, I thought I wanted to be a lawyer. So I went down that path and ultimately worked in a large international law firm. I decided that I didn’t want to be a lawyer, and I applied for a job as a marketing and office manager for an estate planning firm that worked in the ultrahigh net worth wealth management space.

I think I was 20 or 21 at the time. It was a small firm of three people. At one point, I suggested, “How about we grow this thing?” That was when I got deeply introduced to all the different disciplines around the practice: accounting, insurance, tax, estate planning, high net worth. At 24, I was invited to speak at a conference about marketing. Six months later, they asked me to speak again. And then they asked me to consult. My boss wouldn’t allow me to do some consulting one day a week, which would have cut down my commuting time. Three weeks later — after commuting an hour each way — I thought, “I’ll take the $5,000 we have to our name, buy a desk and a computer, and I’m going to try consulting.”

Feldman: That was quite a bold decision. How did that go for you?

Bogan: It went really well. We built up a good-sized firm and a really solid brand for delivering results. Twelve years later, we were approached by Genworth, which acquired the firm. I stayed on and built our practice management for four years. We reached a point where I was running the shop but not doing anything new. So we took a year off, went to Turks and Caicos with our kids. Did a lot of diving and family time.

Then Joe Duran, the CEO and founder of United Capital Financial Partners — now at Goldman Sachs — reached out and said, “I have the perfect job for you ... I created it just for you.” I said, “OK, I’ll listen.” I became the senior vice president of what I’ll describe as practice development. If you’re familiar with “money minds” in Joe’s book The Money Code, a lot came from the work our team did. I was in charge of interviewing and signing off on every M&A deal to make sure that they would be a good fit and could integrate into the firm and that we could create opportunity for them. That was a great role. After two and a half years, I had two young children and the company had received our third round of funding, another $40 million.

I had joined with the premise that it would fit the lifestyle I wanted. Instead, the reality was that I needed to travel and meet with different firms. So, at the apex in my career, I retired and walked away from it all to the beach in Costa Rica. Which was a fabulous decision.

I had been so successful. I had built a firm, sold it for millions of dollars, and I was financially independent. I could live this great life, but I wasn’t satisfied. I was like the princess and the pea, with that little pea bothering me.

Then I did what everybody does when they retire. I googled “how to be successful and happy.” And that was the beginning of what is now my encore career.

That was a radical change that led me to a lot of articles around mindset and psychology, which led me into neuroscience, epigenetics, quantum physics — really great, deep, cool stuff. I was sitting on the beach one day, reading an article, which led me to a paper, which led to some research by the Carnegie Institute done back in 1910. Carnegie was very big on learning, growth, development. He was funding a university, and he wanted to know what was required for people to learn, change and grow.

At the end of the study, they concluded that there were three core factors to success. First, knowledge environment — where you are and what you know. Dubai is different than Dallas, for example, and what you learn in Dubai will be different than what you learn in Dallas.

Second, skills. Skills are very straightforward. You either have them or you develop them.

The third was mindset, or psychology. I thought, “OK, I’ve read some of those books — that makes sense.” It’s the next line that was truly life changing for me. It read, “Of those three factors, mindset is responsible for greater than 80% of our success.”

I thought, wow, I don’t even really know what this is, but if it’s responsible for 80% maybe that’s what I need. I spent the next few years devouring that kind of research, knowledge and information. That led me into coaching. What I realized at that point was the reason we’d done so well was that we weren’t really just consulting; we were also naturally coaching.

We would ask questions like “What about this creates change?” “What are you afraid of?” “How do we work through that?”

I wondered what would happen if I applied this. We have our conscious mind, and we have our subconscious mind. Our subconscious is responsible for heart rate, breathing, etc. It turns out that our subconscious mind is responsible for 95% of what we do. By the age of 35, we are 95% a bundle of hardwired habits, thoughts and behaviors, all originating from our belief systems or thoughts. Are we confident and empowered or unconfident and disempowered in our general state?

We have, on average, 60,000 thoughts a day, and what neuroscience research has uncovered in the past five to 10 years is fascinating. Of those 60,000 thoughts that you have a day, on average, 80% of them will be negative. And on average, 95% of those will run behind the curtain of your conscious mind in a constant loop. “I can’t.” “I shouldn’t.” “I don’t know how.” So we’re in this constant state of fight or flight. Studies show that the average worker spends 70% of their day in a stress state. Stress kicks us into fight or flight, even at a low level.

Feldman: How do you apply this in your practice? What is the impact of understanding that we all have this built-in negative outlook?

Bogan: For example, if your largest client just called and left a message and you have no idea why, what’s your first instinct? To think something’s wrong.

I’ve asked this question to many advisors. And every time it’s “Holy cow, I’m going to get fired! Something’s wrong. I have to go to their file and see what’s going on.” This is that mindset.

When a client calls and leaves a message and you don’t know why, your brain is hardwired to scan the landscape for threats. Our brains haven’t evolved much from our caveman days.

Modern threats are clients leaving, or that clients will never make another referral. Those are the modern-day threats, and our brain still kicks into that survival state. From that survival state, we make compromised decisions. We have crises of confidence.

When your largest client calls and leaves a message, we should actually sit in the space of trusted advisor and feel great. Or at least confident about picking up the phone because we know who we are, what we’re worth.

The issue is most of us never get out of that survival phase. We are conditioned to believe that all clients are good clients, all revenue is good revenue, all assets are good assets. And it’s just not true.

So when a prospect sits down across from you and asks, “Hey, can I have a discount?,” we tend to say yes. But as a coach, I love to reframe this conversation. What the prospect is essentially saying to you is the following:

“You’ve shared with me all the value you can add, and we think it’s great. We would love to receive that value. There’s just one small problem. We think it’s worth a teeny bit less than you do. So how about you give us all that awesome sauce — 100% of your love, attention, expertise, credibility. Could you be 100% on board with supporting us? But could you do it for 75% of what you’re charging?”

Without a conscious plan for how to address those situations, your brain will kick you into survival mode every single time. And that is the place from which we’ll respond.

Our goal in coaching is to get clear, get focused and get to work. When the vision is clear, the decisions are easy.

Advisors who don’t have a clear vision revert to survival mode.

We have clients literally write out a script to have their response ready when a prospect asks, “Hey, could I have a discount?” Having that script stops an advisor from saying yes to a discount — or from saying “I don’t know” and stumbling over themselves.

We want to look that prospect in the eye confidently and say, “Look, our fees aren’t the least expensive, they’re not the most expensive, but our clients continuously tell us that they’re fair for the value they add with our ongoing relationships. We would love to be of service and value to you, and we understand that you might be on a different budget. If that’s an issue for you, we completely understand. We won’t take it personally. We have some resources or people that we’d be happy to refer you to. Have a great day.”

Feldman: If someone is ready to really grow their business, what should they focus on?

Bogan: The biggest practical mistake that advisors make — 100% unequivocally — is they don’t use their time well. If time is your greatest revenue-producing asset and you’re wasting 50% to 70% of it, your practice won’t be as successful as it could be. What if we harnessed and used all that energy in the direction of our dreams?

How many times a day do we check email? On average, 17 to 36 times, for roughly 2.5 hours a day, according to the research. Instead, spend 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes at the end of the day, which is what we have our clients do. Now you can focus your time and energy on things that truly would move the needle. Ask yourself: What clients do I work with? What marketing do I need to do? What systems do I need to build? The problem is we don’t consciously think about how much time we have, what we’re trying to build and what our road map is.

Take a piece of paper, draw a line, and put a plus on the top and a minus on the bottom. Above the line, list the things that you love to do. They are energy creating. They are revenue producing. You could do them over and over for hours. You should spend your time doing that.
Below the line are energy-draining tasks that are revenue-supporting or revenue-dilutive activities. Now there’s a certain amount of revenue sustaining that must be done in client service if you don’t have another advisor or team member. If you do have supporting staff, that type of work is above the line for them.

Another important question to ask yourself is “How big do I want to be?” There’s no right or wrong answer. Big for the sake of big isn’t good. For me, success was about striving for significance. Making money was going to give me meaning — and I did all those things — and it didn’t work. I wanted to be happy and empowered and fulfilled. I didn’t know my value. I didn’t love myself. I didn’t know my worth.

When you have those clients who are too small relative to your minimums, I want you to imagine that you’re writing yourself a check or me a check or your neighbor a check for the amount that’s the difference. If your minimum is $5,000 and the client’s at $3,500, imagine that you’re writing a check for $1,500 and giving it away. If you had to do that every time, you wouldn’t take those clients, because every year it’s thousands of dollars.

Feldman: So how important do you think it is for advisors to have minimums with their clients?

Bogan: I think it’s incredibly important. We talk about building a high-growth, high-profit, high-happiness practice. We call it high-performance happiness. It’s different for everyone. The goal is to understand that time is your greatest revenue-producing asset. It’s also your greatest happiness-producing asset. If we’re not clear about how we use our time, we end up with businesses and clients and situations that we’re not totally in love with.

Feldman: How should advisors deal with clients who panic in a rocky market?

Bogan: This is without question 100% a behavioral issue. It’s your mindset. Do you feel confident and empowered having those conversations? Because that’s what we call being the trusted advisor. You want to build trust equity with your clients over time so that they trust you. It’s little things operationally when you deliver that build that. It’s advice and engagement.
Our job is to sit in that seat of trusted advisor and be able to have the tough conversations. That’s what you get paid the big bucks for. You must have an honest conversation with the $80 million client who wants to pull his money out and put it in the mattress.

Step one is that you should reach out to your clients. Your job is to remind them you’re not going to do anything in that situation. You tell them, “We’ve planned for these kinds of events. We never know when they’re going to happen, but they’re built into the plan.”

When you have the conversation, validate and acknowledge their feelings. “Hey, what I hear you saying is you’re really worried that the markets are going to stay this way and you’re going to lose everything that you’ve worked hard for.” Be quiet. Let them speak. “I see you. I hear you. I understand you. Can we go back to the goals? I know it’s difficult and challenging and scary, but we’ve built this into the plan.”

And to really understand where a client is coming from, you must understand their “money story.”

Feldman: How do you get money stories from clients? I don’t think a lot of advisors take the time to do that.

Bogan: I’m not proposing that you just jump straight into life coaching. The biggest issue I see with advisors is they’re afraid to ask questions because they’re not sure that they would know the answer or how to respond.

Your job is to create space. “I hear you, Bob. When markets go down, a lot of our clients start to worry is the plan really going to work? That’s really common.” Or they’ll say, “Hey, my wife’s going to give me a hard time.” You don’t have to solve everything for them; you just have to create space. “I see you. I hear you. I understand.” You want to repeat their words back to them.
We say things like “Hey, money comes with a lot of feelings. Sometimes they’re scary. I don’t know when in our relationship that’s going to happen, but things could get scary. It often comes with big life events or market events. In those moments, how would you like us to support you?”

So that when the market shifts, you can remind them: “Hey Bob and Jane, remember that conversation we had five or six years ago about ... “We talked about it last year. That scary downturn that we talked about, it’s here.”

Feldman: What do you think is the hurdle that lies between most advisors and success? What should they do when they’ve hit a plateau in their practice?

Bogan: If you want to be more successful, you must get used to being more uncomfortable. It becomes the way of life. When I unretired, I said I was going to follow two rules. One, I was going to use every business practice I had learned — ruthlessly. I know what works, and we’re going to do it. That led to rule number two: no fear. We’re going to get really clear, and if it feels right, that’s what we’re going to do. And the results have been radical. It took me 10 years to build a seven-figure business before. By following those two rules, we built one in only 15 months. And it just keeps growing.

Success leaves clues. Our job is to follow them. We’ve done that at Limitless. We’ve built a business out of what are the best practices for small or large firms, and it’s not one size fits all. There are just so many levers that we can pull. It’s like a race car. Look at each component and how it’s contributing, under- or overperforming and tweak as needed. And your mindset is important. As the research shows, it’s 80% to 95% responsible for our success.

Focus your time and energy on things that would truly move the needle. What’s your road map?

Paul Feldman started the website InsuranceNewsNet in 1999, followed by InsuranceNewsNet Magazine in 2008. Paul was a third-generation insurance agent before venturing into the media business. Paul won the 2012 Integrated Marketing Award (IMA) for Lead Gen Initiative for his Truth about Agent Recruiting video and was the runner-up for IMA's Marketer of the Year, a competition that includes consumer and B2B publishing companies. Find out more about Paul at www.paulfeldman.com.