What do you want from your future work life and how much of that are you enjoying today?

This is the last article in our four-part special, which aims to help you explore your motivations for selling your business and offer ideas for planning your future work life.

Let’s take a quick recap of what we’ve covered in this series so far:

• Article one – Examined the factors driving advice firm owners to consider selling, including the various regulatory demands.
• Article two – Explored vital but little-known research that shows we are generally poor forecasters of what will make us happy in the future.
• Article three – Outlined 12 ideas for considering your future work life and showed the value of focusing on the obstacles to your goals (an evidence-based idea that turns positive thinking upside down).

In this article, we aim to help you find more clarity (if you need it) on what you want from your future work life.

It’s easy to fall in love with one aspect of a future life, while ignoring its potential downsides. So, we’ll outline a simple approach to help you obtain a more balanced assessment of your options.

Of course, if you already know what work you’ll do (or you don’t plan to work again) after selling your business – you could skip this series of insights. That said, this approach might raise new ideas for you to consider.

Let’s get into this now.

The importance of identifying your “happiness gaps”

Intuitively, we all know a good gap analysis can be motivating. This is certainly true in financial planning.

We ask potential clients what money they’d like to have in retirement or to leave to a dependent partner with young children – in the event of an untimely death, injury or illness.

Then, we create some modest discomfort by showing the client how much money they’re (currently) on track to have in retirement or to leave to their loved ones.

This exercise tends to focus the client’s attention on the gap between what they have and what they want. We suggest you take a similar approach when planning your future work life.

Of course, this may be less about money and more about other factors – which we’ll explore in a moment.

First, to understand why this works, you need to understand the drivers of happiness and the value of moderate unhappiness in your motivation.

Thankfully, we have some awesome research and resources to help you with this.

The 10 keys to happier living

Action for Happiness has created this great dream mnemonic for remembering 10 of the most important factors that tend to make life happier and more fulfilling.

Action for Happiness (founded by Professor Richard Layard with the Dalai Lama as patron) is a movement of more than 700,000 people from 200 countries who want to take action to create a happier and kinder world by offering practical, evidence-based skills for happier living.

Their 10 keys to happier living are:

• Giving – Doing kind things for others
• Relating – Connecting with people
• Exercising – And generally taking care of your body
• Attention – Being aware of how you respond to various situations
• Trying things out – To feed your desire for learning and adventure
• Direction – Having goals to look forward to
• Resilience – Finding ways to bounce back
• Emotions – Enjoying the positives and reframing/learning from, more challenging emotions
• Acceptance – Being comfortable with yourself and others
• Meaning – Having roles that align with your values – and what you value.

Of course, each of us finds happiness in a different combination of these drivers, and that mix varies over time and in different contexts.

Awe-inspiring experiences pack a mighty happiness punch

We’d also add the experience of “Awe” to this list.

Awe is a relatively new area of research for psychologists, which is surprising given that we’ve known about “awe-inspiring” experiences for thousands of years.

We’re in awe when we connect to something wonderful and in some way greater than ourselves – be it a place, person or thing.

Awe – which can come from both grand and small sources – ignites our curiosity and can be hugely inspiring.

Think how you’d feel standing at the top of a snow-capped alpine landscape or walking in the Scottish Highlands, Welsh Snowdonia, Yorkshire Dales or even the more modest hills of the Cotswolds.

You might also experience awe when you look closely at a bumble bee harvesting nectar from flowers. Or when you watch a skilled craftsperson, musician, or professional speaker at work.

In fact, there are many sources of awe – but it’s only one source of our happiness.

You may feel happier if reality exceeds your expectations

At a high level, however, there’s a deceptively simple way to understand happiness – based on years of research by Manel Baucells and Rakesh Sarin – as outlined in their book, Engineering Happiness.

Happiness = reality minus expectations.

All else equal, we’re generally happier (about an experience) when there’s a positive gap between our (perceived) reality and our expectations.

Engineering Happiness offers many more nuanced insights, but we’ll focus on two that are relevant to our work-life planning exercise.

• First, we’re unlikely to be happy if we constantly elevate our expectations above our reality. So, one way to be happier is to lower our expectations.
• Second, we can achieve more when we see the value in (rather than avoiding) the discomfort of falling short of our expectations.

In the study, Motivating Personal Growth by Seeking Discomfort (2022), psychologists showed that we boost our motivation when we see the discomfort of falling short as a signal of growth.

And that’s more fun than getting upset or “catastrophising” about the awkward feelings that come with setbacks.

The magic happens somewhere between comfort and overwhelm

There is, of course, a line between productive discomfort and stress.

You might do well to avoid setting goals too far above your current reality. The “A” in SMART goals stands for “attainable”. So, take small steps – you can’t build Rome in a day!

Now, let’s build that simple tool for assessing your future work-life options.

The visual outputs from this exercise may nudge you to make more of the magic happen. And you might find three valuable uses for this tool:

• First – It should help you assess which of your possible future work lives might provide enough of what you really want. Remember that almost no work role scores 5 out of 5 on every count.
• Second – It will help you assess what you’re getting from work now. Any gaps you find might spur you to automate and delegate tasks that drain your days of fun.
• Third – You could invite some or all of your team members to build their version of this tool and discuss their discoveries with you. This may help you spot any “irritations” before they become a crisis.

There are just two steps for building this tool:

1. List everything you might want from your future work life.
2. Score each of your “wants” according to how much they matter to you.

Step 1:  List what you want from your future work life

Stephen Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, says we need to start planning our future with the end in mind.

However, when exiting your business, there are many ends to consider and at this stage, you may not be in a position to commit to – or even think about – any particular role.

If that’s the case, don’t worry. All you need to do is list what you want from your future work life and set limits on what that work can demand of you.

To be clear, you must draft your personal list of “wants” from work – which may be longer or shorter than our 12-factor list below.

The weight you give to each factor will also be unique to you. It will depend on your priorities, circumstances, skills, and attitudes, as well as the importance you attach to other factors.

So, many of these factors are interdependent – making this a truly wicked problem to solve.

Here’s our starter list of 12 things you might want from your future work life. Feel free to add, delete, or change the definitions of these factors as you wish.

Factor 1: Purpose and meaning

“Purpose” is one of our three intrinsic motivators – the other two are autonomy and mastery.

Purpose is about helping others, or, as psychologist Scott Geller says, it’s about community.

Most of us want to contribute to the wellbeing of others, whether that’s our clients or the wider world.

If you’re exploring new types of purposeful work, the United Nation’s sustainable goals may prompt project ideas, but let’s remember:

• There’s a difference between the causes we’re passionate about and the types of work we might want to do.
• Various types of financial wellbeing support (coaching, education, planning, or advice) can help people with their health, wellbeing, and confidence.
• Most financial businesses serve a useful purpose. We’re just not good at communicating this to the public!

“Meaningful” and “purposeful” are terms often used interchangeably, but you may wish to have a separate factor for each in your list.

What’s the difference?

Work that’s personally meaningful aligns with what you value and provides a sense of satisfaction.

Purposeful work, by contrast, contributes positively to society and has specific goals – driven by a vision and mission.

You may want both in your work life and so must decide how much each factor matters to you.

Factor 2: Autonomy

Autonomy (or freedom) is another intrinsic motivator and one that’s key to your long-term well-being.

You may enjoy a high degree of freedom in how you approach your work now and you might want to retain that level of freedom in any future work you do.

Of course, you might need to trade some of that freedom (initially) if you want to train in a new area of work – financial advice is regulated, but so are many professions.

Factor 3: Team quality

A big factor for some in considering a new work life is a desire to work with a high-quality team of experienced and qualified professionals who share our values.

Such teams are great for continued learning and growth.

So, whether your future work life is employment or starting a new business, you must decide how important it is for you to surround yourself with a high-quality team.

And it helps to be specific about what that means.

Factor 4: Sociability and support

Research shows that close human relationships are the biggest driver of our happiness.

Check out what psychiatrist Robert Waldinger has to say about this. He is the current director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development – the world’s longest-running study of human happiness, which started more than 80 years ago.

According to Waldinger’s research, “The people who turn out to be the happiest and the healthiest are those who have good, warm connections to others.”

This is not to say you must rely on your work environment for supportive human connections, but many people value the sociability and camaraderie of shared office work.

What’s more, in-person contact is generally more valuable than an occasional online meeting.

In simple terms, the power of sociability and support is down to:

• Feeling accepted as part of a team
• Having opportunities to listen to and support others
• Receiving some support in return.

However, not everyone puts equal value on the social support of their workplace. Your need for it, if any, depends on your personality and other factors.

So, you need to decide how important this is for your future work life.

Factor 5: Mastery

We don’t know if elephants genuinely never forget, but we know their work is less complex and regulated than ours!

Financial planners must stay abreast of constantly changing tax and investment landscapes, and your knowledge of these often-complicated topics can fade if you don’t deal with them regularly.

Perhaps this won’t matter to you in the future.

However, more broadly, research shows that mastery is another intrinsic motivator. So, whether in financial planning or other domains, you might benefit from gaining or maintaining knowledge and skills.

The question is whether mastery is on your shopping list.

Do you want the chance to use and develop your existing skills or new skills in the rapidly changing world of work?

Either way, it may fascinate you to review your skill set – because it probably includes a good mix of:

• Motivated skills – Those you love and look forward to using but, perhaps, don’t get the chance to use as often as you’d like.
• Power skills – Relating to teamwork, communications, innovation and collaboration. These skills take a long time to build and are not about to be replaced by AI.
• Wallpaper skills – You probably use these every day without thinking about it.
• Uncelebrated skills – Which you regularly use when outside of your work – but few people know about.
• Unexplored skills – You may have always wanted to develop certain skills, such as writing, but lacked the opportunity.
• Imagined skills – Those you admire in others and would like time to explore.

Revealing these skills is a great team-building exercise for your current team, too.

So, you might want to include mastery (in some form) in your list of future work goals.

Just be sure to define it in your own words – and think about which of those underused, undervalued, and unexplored skills you might want to master.

You never know what work-life ideas might occur to you when you do.

Factor 6: Solitude

According to Cal Newport, long spells of quiet time alone are essential for doing “deep work” that requires intense focus without distractions.

To be clear, solitude, in a work sense, is not about being lonely. It means enjoying proper, distraction-free time (social media absent) so we can focus on solving problems and creating innovative works.

Having time alone with your thoughts could help you to refine complex ideas.

And, as we all know, we often have our best ideas during these quiet times – which may be at our desk, on a walk or while dozing in bed.

The need is for undistracted time where we’re not pretending to multitask, which can seriously limit productivity.

Of course, desk-based deep work (where creative outputs are required) can be exhausting if it’s not your cup of tea. And it’s hard to mix with a full-time client-facing role if that’s your preference.

The question is whether YOU want lots of solo time (to do deep work) built into your new work life.

Factor 7: Creative opportunities

There’s much to like about creative and problem-solving work… if you have enough quiet time.

This type of work helps us develop and maintain our cognitive flexibility and gives us a sense of achievement.

It triggers our brain’s reward system to release dopamine (a feel-good chemical), which reminds us to repeat those actions.

So, creative work can lead to an upward spiral of positive feelings. And, ideally, you’ll have some opportunities for it in your future work life.

Perhaps you’ll get to:

• Create (or have input to) client communications – or educational content
• Develop new products or service propositions
• Design the detailed processes that enable those services and make everyone’s life easier.

Alternatively, you may prefer to direct these projects and have others attend to the details.

Or maybe you’ll get all the creative activity you want outside of work – be that through music, dance, art or cooking…

Or by writing a blog to share your valuable ideas – which might lead to you writing a book.

Either way, we urge you to think about whether creative opportunities at work are important to you.

Factor 8: Writing that book!

We love this advice – about the type of work to pursue – given to Indira Gandhi by her grandfather.

And yes, there are many unsung heroes in the world of work. Those who give a lifetime of effort and brilliant insights but receive little or no public (or business) recognition.

It might seem that many people are OK with that – they seem to accept that this is how it goes.

However, some want to share their ideas with the wider world – and if that’s you, factor this into your ideas about future roles or business ventures.

Establishing a personal brand for your business offers enormous potential benefits, but there are risks (to you and any future fellow shareholders) if you get this wrong.

You may find it frustrating, for example, if your future work situation restricts your ability to express all your ideas in a book.

Of course, there are risks to publishing your ideas – which we can’t cover in detail here, except to say:

• Writing and publishing a book requires a huge commitment in time and effort – unless you engage a ghostwriter.
• Going public by publishing your work creates pressure for high standards, which can be stressful.
• The market is crowded with books – so it’s hard to stand out and get traction.

Also, be aware that few non-fiction books sell in large numbers – although that’s no problem if your book is your ideas shop window (a calling card for your business), which it is for many.

On the upside, there are many benefits to building a personal brand.

Aside from the boost to self-esteem, a good book can:

• Establish you as an authority in your field
• Serve as the ultimate marketing tool for attracting new clients and professional connections
• Provide you with all the valuable content you’ll ever need for your marketing
• Help you to secure public speaking engagements – if those interest you. Books sold in bulk for those events offer a good source of income, too.

For now, note whether publishing your ideas is an important dimension of your future work life.

If it is, start talking to some (proven) suppliers who help entrepreneurs and experts to write and launch books.

You’ll need guidance and support around idea development, book structuring, writing, editing, formatting, illustrating, print and digital publishing options, and marketing.

And it’s essential to plan all of that.

Factor 9: Control or influence

Will you want control or influence over the core aspects of how your future workplace is run?

Do you want to be the person responsible for (or be consulted on) the services you offer and your pricing and communications?

Some business owners like to retain control over these things in subsequent work roles, while others are keen to escape from those responsibilities and the stress that comes with them.

So, how important will it be to have control/influence over the core business in your future workplace?

Factor 10: Commuting time

Will the location of your future place of work be an important factor for you?

When you’re not out seeing clients, for example, will you want to work from home – or be based at your new firm’s office?

Also, what commuting time would you be happy with? And, if that’s a problem, would you move home to be nearer your new workplace?

These may sound like trivial points, but we know that lengthy and regular commutes are an irritation (or “no-go”) issue for many professionals today.

So, it’s worth defining your ideal commuting time – between zero and an upper limit.

Factor 11: Working time

The hours you’ll work each week (and the years of work you want to commit to) may also be a big factor in deciding which type of role or ventures you engage with after selling your business.

Perhaps you’re happy to work long hours for many years to come.

But you know that excessive hours are unproductive and stressful – and they may pose risks to your health and family relationships.

So, when considering your new work life, note your preference and limits for weekly working hours, including time for commuting and other travel.

Also, think hard about how many years (health permitting) you’ll be happy to commit to a new role or business venture.

Factor 12: Income and capital potential

Will it be important to earn income as soon as you start a new work life? And what income potential would be acceptable in the long term?

The answers to these questions may depend on how much capital you realise from the sale of your business – and your answers to the other factors in this exercise.

Remember, you may need to trade a high immediate income for a lean period if you want a new work life (which requires training) or plan to start a new business.

Shares in the business?

If you’re not retaining a shareholding in the company you’re selling (or in your acquirer), you may want to start a new business or invest in one. This could be a good way to leverage your knowledge and enjoy another (hopefully profitable) entrepreneurial journey, and it can be highly tax-efficient.

Conversely, when you have a life-changing sum of money, you may prefer a more diversified (sleep easy) portfolio that delivers more predictable returns.

You may also be less than enthusiastic about the significant time and effort required to start (or grow) another business.

As we’ve said, you might find it difficult to predict how you’ll feel about major life events long before they occur. We’re happy to discuss our experiences of the serial entrepreneur’s journey. This might spark ideas and insights about your own next steps.

In short, retaining or buying shares in a business is ideal for some people, but it won’t be right for everyone. Also, ideas that don’t feel right when you’re selling may feel perfect when you’ve had time to reflect.

Of course, you’ll know that by waiting too long to reinvest after your sale, you might risk losing certain tax breaks – it’s vital to take sound financial advice on this.

Ready to complete step one?

We hope those 12 sections helped you consider what you might want from any future work life.

Just remember, your list may be quite different from our starter suggestions here. So, please add, delete, or change those factors as you build a table with your personal definitions.

Like this one, we’ve prepared for Sam, an imaginary business owner.

Step 2: Weight what matters to you

The next step is to apply weights to your wants in the table above. To keep this simple, we suggest you use a scale of 1 – 5.

• Place a score of 5 next to those factors you consider as your “must haves”
• Score 3 on those items you’d “like to have”
• Score 1 on those items which, on reflection, don’t matter that much to you.

Then, score 2 or 4 for factors that sit between those weightings.

For example, here’s what Sam’s factors look like as a bar chart.

As you can see, Sam considers that most of these factors will be important in their new work life.

However, Sam feels little need for the “social side” of office life and doesn’t expect to be concerned about generating an immediate high income or holding shares in a business after selling their own.

What interests Sam is having more freedom and time to spend on creative works – and gaining recognition for their ideas.

Sam is keen to write a book and become established as a thought leader.

Step 3: Assess your future work-life ideas

You can now use your work-wants table to assess any future work-life ideas that occur to you.

Add a column for each work-life idea, then score that idea against each of your priority factors.

This should give you a clear view of which work-life options offer an acceptable balance of benefits.

No single work life will be perfect – it’s all about the trade-offs between the benefits of each.

And we know it’s hard to assess options where you’re unfamiliar with the work. So, plan to talk (in depth) to others who are already successful in those roles.

What is your table telling you now?

Is your assumed future work-life the same as before doing this exercise?

Is a return to financial planning work one of your options?

It is for many advice business owners who sell up – and this exercise may have confirmed that choice.

After all, there is much to like about financial planning if you’re qualified and love helping clients achieve more with their money.

And remember, building trusting relationships is a happiness driver, too.

Financial planning work also keeps us on our technical toes around tax, pension and investment questions – and helps us maintain our communication and negotiation skills.

Of course, expectations from regulators and consumers only ever seem to rise.

Dealing with clients’ financial anxieties can also be an emotional strain – as can the intrusion on family time if you have too many clients wanting face-to-face meetings at distant locations.

Either way, if financial planning is your preferred future work option, consider what you’d change compared to what you do now – or did before.

Perhaps you’d like to work with fewer (or more) clients of different ages and wealth profiles.

Maybe you’d like to focus on basic advice… or specialise more.

Or perhaps you’d like to move away from regulated advice – to focus on the planning.

There are many choices now.

Are you open to other types of work?

Besides financial planning, there are many roles which could leverage your expertise in financial services, including:

• Coaching or training new financial adviser recruits
• Recruiting – perhaps specialising in financial adviser roles, other specialists or executive positions
• Consultancy services in marketing and proposition development, project management, business development, compliance, organisational development, investment and advice platforms – and more.

You could also offer financial education and coaching services directly to consumers, perhaps with the support of employers.

Or you might want to consider other roles or ventures completely outside personal finance.

How is your work life today?

We don’t believe it’s ever too soon to start thinking about what you’ll do after selling your business.

However, there’s an immediate and valuable use for this table – to assess how you’re doing today – against what you really want from your work.

The bar chart shows Sam’s (somewhat depressing) assessment of their current work life – and they’re not alone.

Many of the business owners we meet regularly undertake tedious (administrative) tasks that undermine their general enjoyment of work – and leave them with little to no quiet time for creative work.

So, it’s essential to document processes for administrative tasks so that you can automate or delegate them to others.

Your business is not sellable until you do this.

The good news is that we can help you identify and automate those tasks so you can spend more time on what you enjoy.

Just ask about our Business Effectiveness Review to learn more.

Want to talk?

In this series of insights, we’ve focussed on your personal needs. We’ve acknowledged the issues that might be pushing you to sell your business and outlined ways of thinking about a more attractive future work life if you want one.

You know there are many planning (and behavioural bias) traps on this journey – and we’ve reminded you of some of those here.

If you need more help in this area, we urge you to find someone who:

• Can listen and help you explore your ideas, without rushing or judging you
• Will encourage you to step (a little) out of your comfort zone
• Offers clear, unbiased insights into your challenges
• Has travelled this road for themselves.

You know Melo is on your side.

We walk with you (as Camus suggests!) because we’re employed by you rather than a buyer, which means your interests are paramount to us.

So, if you’d like to talk about any issue raised in this guide or learn how (through our Business Effectiveness Review), we could help you find more time to do more of what you want today…

Drop us a line at mailto:hello@melo.co.uk or call us on 0113 4656 111.

We’d love to hear from you.