Setting Your Own Schedule Gone Too Far?

Carl Richards put up a couple of Tweets that at first intrigued me and then puzzled the hell out of me. Richards has (had?) a gig writing for the NY Times. His Twitter bio says "Helping Real Financial Advisors build lifestyle businesses." 

His idea is for advisors to have balance in their lives as opposed to working 80 or 100 hours per week. On its face, based on the description, any advisor would to hear more about this. They may not want to pull back on their time spent depending on the priority they assign to growing their business. 

The first Tweet I saw from Richards said "I'm running an experiment to see of I can get all my work done in 8 blocks of 90 minutes per week." Reading that, I don't take it literally, I take it as being about how to add efficiencies to become more productive. Maybe he does mean it literally trying to get everything done in 12 hours/wk. The second Tweet said "Have you built a lifestyle business that allows you to ski on Thursday, or mountain bike on Wednesday, or surf everyday?"

I can accept there are potentially multiple layers here. When your advisor isn't tracking the market as implied in Richards' Tweets, the message to clients is don't obsess over your portfolio, it is constructed to weather the markets' ups and downs. He is letting ergodicity work for his clients' portfolios. Although I am little more tactical than that, this point resonates. 

His approach raises several questions though. Here I am assuming he is living that second quote with his practice. If you've hired an advisor, how comfortable are you with the idea that they work three, partial days per week? Do you want someone who appears to be doing this part time? 

I spend a lot of time reading and staying current on markets. Where I feel I get freedom, which is a huge life priority, is that I enjoy the research process immensely and I spend no time trying to drum up new clients. Michael Batnick had a blog post ages ago that included an estimate that the typical advisors spends 70% of their time prospecting. Removing that provides tremendous freedom to spend more time on what I like doing, the research, the learning as well as outside endeavors that give my life balance. 

Two more practical issues with working so part time as an advisor; maybe this is my hangup but I want to minimize the number of times I have to say "I don't know" when a client asks about something directly related to markets or something that could influence markets. I may not always have an answer and there's plenty I am not an expert on but I don't see how I could be reasonably informed working just 12 hours per week.

The other more practical issue is customer service matters. I can't imagine any client wants to wait two days before their issue starts to get worked on. Clients need money or some sort of documentation or have a non-portfolio question about their account or anything else, if he is really making them wait as implied from his Tweets, that seems like terrible customer service. 

Being in touch with markets and being able to address client issues right away works for me. There was a recent challenge on NotePD about productivity hacks and avoiding distractions. I made a related list with the qualifier that I'm doing it all wrong. I answer client emails right away, fire department emails too for that matter. 

There is a balance to be struck between quality of life, doing a good job, having time to do the things you enjoy and time to take care of yourself. These are all priorities for me. If Richards is actually running his practice as implied, I am quite certain he makes it work, that would be the groove that works for him. More important than whatever observations I might make about how he runs his practice or any observations he might make about me and my practice, is that we all figure out what sort of groove works best for ourselves. Part of my groove is that I love the time spent researching and learning. While 18 year old me would be shocked at how much I love to study and learn that is how I've developed and am lucky enough to have created a lifestyle where I can spend a lot of time doing that. Figure yourself out in the same way and try to create a lifestyle around that to find the balance you want.