by Tony Vidler 
Not everyone wants to have an elite advisory practice, and that is ok. Having a good lifestyle business is fine if that’s what you want. Having a great practice is great too. But if you want to have an elite practice then you have to be prepared to pay the price, invest in yourself and others continually, but most importantly you need to understand the journey that is required to get there.
Most aren’t willing to pay the price, so they are happy to settle for “good”.
Good is ok…but that’s all it is. It is ok. Great comes about when people are continually pushing themselves…constantly aiming to be better.
IF you DO want to push beyond individual greatness however and create a legacy in the business then you need to master one of 3 things:
1. Be systems & processed focussed and ensure that everything you know and can do can be replicated with minimal skill and training by others; OR;
2. Be a fabulous leader who inspires and guides others to greatness; OR;
3. Both of these things.
The journey to individual professional greatness and then the step beyond looks something like this:
We all start out having to acquire the basic skills that are required to earn a living, and survive….so all of us start at the point where our only focus is on “getting going”.
Most professionals go through a reasonably prolonged period of personal development and learning, and get to the point where they are “good”. And that is where many pause, and just continue to practice their trade for the duration.
Few invest in the complex learning and time to position for being “great”, and even less then think about how to leverage the position and knowledge they have developed, and become one of the elite. Becoming great consists fundamentally of being a superb individual practitioner, and it is incredibly rewarding in multiple ways. More often than not though the greatness dies with the individual, simply because the greatness IS the individual.
Building an elite advisory firm really requires that one moves beyond individual greatness to leveraging the skills, knowledge and position to enable greatness for others.
Getting good is ok, and getting great is fantastic, in terms of earning a living. Becoming elite though is about creating a legacy, and to do that one really does have to be prepared to pay the price.
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