One Thing I See a Lot: Worrying About Stuff That Doesn’t Matter

One thing I see a lot out there is people worrying about stuff that doesn’t matter.

It’s very common to see advisers (and plenty of others) getting worked up about what some minor functionary in a distant land is doing, or what some celebrity is saying about this or that. It’s all noise designed to keep us distracted and mostly angry. The media knows angry and scared people are more likely to keep listening. Social media works exactly the same way — the algorithm feeds you more of what keeps you hooked, and negativity does that better than positivity.

So how do we cut through all the crap and focus on what we should actually be doing — like building our businesses?

This is just one part of a series of key things I’ll be covering in coming articles.

Firstly, get off or seriously reduce your exposure to the media. I don’t read or watch the news, and yet somehow the important stuff still gets through to me anyway. Some people I know ask Grok or another AI to give them a neutral daily summary, but I don’t even bother with that. Do the same with social media — cull the accounts that just pump out negative stuff and focus on what’s useful or good.

That’s the easier part. Now for the harder bit: changing how we think.

We need to shrink the areas we spend mental energy on.

Stephen R. Covey explains this brilliantly in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People with his three circles:

• Circle of Concern: All the things you care about or worry about (global events, other people’s behaviour, the economy, the weather, politics, etc.).

• Circle of Influence: The smaller slice where you can actually make a difference through your actions, choices, or indirect impact.

• Circle of Control: The smallest circle — the things you have direct personal control over, like your own attitudes, responses, habits, and daily decisions.

Circles of Concern, Influence and Control - Credit to Learning Loop.

Too many people today have a massive Circle of Concern, blown up by 24-hour news and social media. The result? Constant stress and anxiety, because you can’t do anything about most of it.

The key is to deliberately shrink your Circle of Concern so it’s barely bigger than your Circle of Influence. You do this by ignoring — and simply not engaging with — the things you cannot influence.

This doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy things outside your control. For example, I’m a keen UFC fan, so the result of a title fight sits in my Circle of Concern. But I have zero influence or control over it. I watch the fight, then I move on. There’s nothing sadder than a grown adult staying angry for days over a sports result.

Stoicism helps a lot here. In my family, I’m teaching the kids to simply say “oh well” when something outside our control or influence goes against us.

By reducing your Circle of Concern, you free up way more energy to focus on what you can influence and control. That’s where real productivity and progress come from.

Have a look at your own life right now. How big is your Circle of Concern? And what are you actively doing to shrink it?

What changes I made (and why), while keeping your exact v

Abundance vs Scarcity

It’s very tempting to keep what you know to yourself so others can’t “steal” it or copy it. I’m even seeing some advisers running ads claiming others are stealing their ideas—only to realise it’s something I first saw and used twenty years ago. Good marketing, but not exactly groundbreaking.

Photo credit Rob Commodari--Seeing the world from a place of abundance

I can tell some potential coaching clients get a bit nervous about working with an existing adviser (a competitor) because coaching means the coach has to know their business inside out. They worry I might take their ideas and use them in my own business. And honestly? They’re right—I do get inspired by my clients and I do apply what I learn to my own stuff.

But here’s the flip side: I’m also giving away a lot of my own ideas in the process.

With an abundance mentality, my theory is simple—we both walk away better off. We’ll each do things slightly differently, so there’s no real competition anyway.

With a scarcity mentality, you keep everything close to your chest so no one knows your ideas. The problem? You don’t grow unless you figure it all out on your own.

This mindset shows up everywhere in business. Do you spend a bit of money and accept you might not get every dollar back, or do you penny-pinch every little thing, save a few bucks, but waste hours (or weeks) of your time?

I’ve seen good advisers doing their own accounting coding and monthly wash-ups just to save on the accountant’s fee—only to spend hours they could have used seeing clients.

I’ve seen advisers spend a whole year’s worth of effort trying to cut a $100-a-month bill.

It’s not that efficiencies are bad or that you should never look for savings. But when you come at everything purely to spend less, your focus stays tiny.

Scarcity mentality wants a detailed contract covering every possible facet. Abundance works on trust and clarity. Sure, you can get burned more often with abundance, but if you’re focused on building everyone up instead of covering every conceivable risk, you end up way better off.

I see both types in the adviser world all the time. The abundance people get let down and disappointed more often, no question. But they also end up multiples better off than the ones who never took a chance because they were too busy focusing on the “what ifs” and purely the costs.

With an abundance mentality you’ll give away free advice that may never get reciprocated. But you’ll also pick up clients you never expected—because they heard from a guy who heard from a girl who loved one of your giveaways.

If you want to build a long-term, deeper, more fulfilling business, focus on abundance and growth—not just reducing costs and risks. Long term, I reckon you’ll be happier and do better.

Don't be a sheep, carve your own path

One of the things I see when I look around on social media or other advisers websites, blogs, Facebook ads is that they all seem to be carbon copies of each other.

Everyone is saying the nice safe thing like they are scared to have a different opinion.

They will say the same thing about the OCR that everyone else is saying or they will talk about how you can free money from the bank or just mention the same insurance products that everyone mentions.

It's all very much the same stuff. It's almost like it's been written by a marketing company. In fact, when I look at many of these posts and ads, it really has been copied and pasted from some marketing company in a lot of cases, where they've just used the same template, they offer the consumer the same free report that's mostly garbage.

It reduces every adviser to a different logo but there's nothing that tells me anything about the person or any particular reason why I should talk to them.

It doesn't take a lot to stand out.

I believe one key to standing out in the crowded financial advice industry is embracing contrarianism - not following the pack but having the courage to express unique viewpoints that challenge conventional wisdom.

For example, I've previously written articles such as "Why I don't care about interest rate changes" which goes against the common focus on short-term rate fluctuations. While the media (and most advisers without a good value proposition) obsesses over whether rates will drop by 0.25%, I would emphasise that these short-term changes make virtually no difference to a 25-year mortgage journey.

Similarly, a contrarian approach on Risk Insurance is discussing "Having a plan to get rid of your insurance" rather than only talking about getting insurance. This demonstrates to clients that you're committed to their long-term financial wellbeing rather than just making a sale and disappearing like they have heard about advisers.

Lots of advisers proudly talk about how their service is “Free” but I would rather talk about the value add you get from my fees.

You can find this approach in all the aspects of Financial advice. If you look out and see what other people are doing, you kind of want to talk about the opposite. Now it's got to be genuine to you. If you don't actually believe what you are saying, this will come across. I’d rather you go with the pack authentically than be someone you are not.

But if you're looking to set yourself as a brand and a name in your adviser business, then don't be the rest of the pack. Have an opinion of your own. Be a contrarian. You'll get noticed.