Some movie recommendations, for the Olympian in you.

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Happy back-to-work day!

Hope you had a great weekend!

We watched two documentaries over the weekend (both of which were excellent - storyline, filming, aerial shots, close-ups of a ladybug hatching…) and I wanted to write about them to learn how they were similar, what things stuck with me, general life lessons, and then how they might apply to advisortech, ai, and community.

Here goes:

The documentaries were:

You might have seen it too seeing as it was #1 on Amazon for a day or two.

and

Ok, I’ll throw in one more we’re been watching regularly because there are some similarities here too:

All-Round Champion is a 10 week competition with 10 young athletes in ten different sports. Each week, they have a few days to train on a sport and then compete… for 10 weeks… with a weekly leaderboard.

They each go all-in on a sport - whether its golf, or diving, or kart racing, or bmx, etc. That’s their thing. They spend all their free time practicing, competing, training… up to 6 hrs a day (more than free time). Some mentioned even not having time for friends.

Similar theme with the Blue Angels, if you want to be the best in the world at something, you have to do it over and over and over and over and over and over and over… and over and over and over and over and over and over… and over and over. I think you get the point. For days, for weeks, months, years,

The peak of human achievement lies beyond boredom.

But also in the vast majority of cases, I’d say its internally driven. Mind, body, soul, desires, goals, self-esteem… driven toward this one thing

a.k.a. alignment I’ve heard this word a lot recently. Not like aligning your tires so they don’t wear crooked.

Alignment like “adjusting something so it’s in the right place”

In the Biggest Little Farm, John and Molly Chester are totally aligned with their goal of “all-round” organic farming. They face obstacle after obstacle after obstacle that try to push them out of alignment but they stay the course and eventually find a sort of equilibrium between birds, coyotes, snails, owls, rain, wind, and even life and death.

What makes the ground fertile enough for new things to grow is death, decay, remainder (nicest word I could think of) of other living things.

The Blue Angels sacrifice time with family, sleep, their bodies to g-forces, even sacrifice to the way of life or tradition (Glad to be here!) in order to perform aerobatic maneuvers no one else can. It’s awe-some!

We humans eat this stuff up! On our couches, with snacks in hand for 1.5 hours… while the work it took to put together these documentaries took years, even decades. One pilot had been with the Navy for 20 years before becoming a Blue Angel pilot.

The planes, the precision, the people, the dedication, the time spent, the boredom I’m sure, the the thoughts of giving up, the mental stress, bodily stress (all kinds of injuries for the athletes), the beauty, the perfectly shot aerial shots of fruit trees or planes going 400 mph.

Ok, so how does all this apply to advisortech?

• Next time you’re on a tech demo, think about how many times that particular founder or salesperson has presented that demo…

• Or the years studying programming, sales, copywriting, graphic design, ux…

• The alignment, dedication, boredom, long days, sacrifice of family time that goes into starting a business… all for the hope of a better future.

As one of the pilots was leaving the Blue Angels, he said:

“The flying is great, but its the relationships I’ll miss the most”

I think this is a lesson I’m learning actively right now. All of it… the AUM, MRR, tech stacks, workflows, follower counts, business operating systems…

comes 2nd to the relationships.

And I also noticed that some parts of life are generally not about the money. Like I don’t think Navy pilots go through the extensive application process for a higher paycheck.

As far as Ai…

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It’s just the beginning, but I think AI will change a lot of things for the business of investment management & financial planning. A lot of position titles, ways of doing things, tech companies… will die to make (I was going to say make room, but actually “make the way” is better) the way for newer, better ways of doing things.

Last, I wanted to pontificate on community.

What is community?

1. a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common

2. a feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals

Toward the end of the Biggest Little Farm, they gave a tribute to all the people that had supported, volunteered, invested, visited their farm and provided “community” around the mission they were on.

Toward the end of Blue Angels, they showed the whole support team in formation welcoming the new members and saying goodbye to the departing ones.

In the All-Round Champion, whenever an athlete was having a tough time, they would call their parents, siblings, etc to get encouragement (the first natural community).

I’ve been exploring, starting, reporting on communities in our space for a while now and continue to be intrigued by what makes a community successful, grow, thrive, provide value both to the members and to the organizers.

And if… at some future date, financial planning can be done in community, or 1-to-many as they say.

Time will tell. In the meantime, here’s my latest report on the state of advisor communities:

If you’re still here, thank you! I’d love to know, how has community impacted you recently?

Until next time,

Joe