This month's column in Investment Executive focuses on the price you're prepared to pay to achieve financial success.

The column quotes Randy Pausch, the U.S. prof who died in July and whose "last lecture" in September of last year became an internet sensation. Pausch talked about overcoming challenges and said: "Brick walls are there for a reason. Brick walls are not there to keep us out; brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Brick walls are there to stop people who don't want something badly enough."

For advisors whose goal is to hit the peak of success in the business, obstacles fall into at least six categories.

Working harder

Sometimes, paying the price for success means working longer hours or adjusting your schedule to those of your clients.

Talk to any highly successful entrepreneur and chances are you'll see someone who was prepared to make a single minded investment of time and energy to get their business going; in many cases, they're still working long hours to move their business to the next level (although often this is now a function of choice and habit rather than necessity).

An advisor who's a multi million dollar producer at one of the bank owned IDA firms is a case in point. This year, he'll take eight weeks off to pursue high cost hobbies and exotic travel, leaving his business in the hands of a capable team. When he was starting out in the early 80s, it was a very different story. One January day, his branch manager offered free passes worth $10 to a financial show targeting consumers to anyone who wanted them. He was the only one in his office who was interested; he and his wife spent that weekend standing outside the entrance to the show, freezing their butts in the process - offering investors a free pass in exchange for their contact information and agreement that he could call them the following week. Not anyone's idea of a fun weekend - but almost thirty years later some of his biggest clients came from those two days.

Getting outside your comfort zone

While paying the price for success can sometimes mean working harder, just as often it means changing how you spend your time.

Very often, advisors struggling in their business have fallen into the trap of focusing on what they LIKE to do as opposed to what they NEED to do - having frequent meetings with clients who are easy to talk to and avoiding those with whom conversations will be more challenging, for example. Unless you have the discipline to make the things you need to do your first priority, no matter how uncomfortable they might be, you're not going to realize the full potential in your business.

Focusing on the short term at the expense of the long term

Many advisors focus on activities which provide short term reward - while neglecting those which offer longer term payoffs without the gratification of immediate reinforcement.

Achieving success can require investing the time to upgrade qualifications and skills, as painful as "going back to school" at an advanced age might be. It can mean committing the time to cultivate professionals who are potential sources of referrals down the road but unlikely to yield results in the near term. Paying the price can mean time blocking two mornings a week on activity that will position you as the go to resource against a community of clients in your market , even though you won't be seeing an immediate return from this activity. Or it can mean touching base with prospects who are ensconced in a relationship with another advisor to ensure you'll be considered if those prospects ever decide to make a change - even though the chances for short term return from those calls may be slight.

Focusing on the long term at the expense of short term imperatives

At the other extreme are advisors who spend all their time on activities which will pay off in the long term - while ignoring the need to generate revenue to pay the bills in the short term. The key to building a highly profitable business is to have a balance of activity which provides short and longer term payoffs - you won't achieve peak success without a long term focus, you may not survive to enjoy long term success without attention to short term realities.

Investing money

A key obstacle to success for some advisors is the focus on short term income and the reluctance to invest for the longer term. This can be reflected in many ways - for example waiting to hire staff until absolutely critical or refusal to pay a premium for better quality support

Building a team

Talk to highly successful advisors and chances are you'll hear them reflect on the critical importance of the team they built around them. But just having the right people supporting you isn't enough. Paying the price can require getting out of the comfort zone to delegate contact with small and mid size clients to someone on your team and freeing up your time for higher value activity.

To read the full column and go through an exercise to identify your own walls to success, go to www.investmentexecutive.com