Tuesday Post: Why we should look outside our industry

Happy Tuesday!

Every Tuesday I'd like to offer strategies for the week ahead and a thought to fuel your action.

We think expertise means having all the answers. But what if the opposite is true?

Henry Ford didn't invent the assembly line—he stole it from meatpackers. Tesla didn't revolutionize car showrooms by studying dealerships; they copied Apple stores. The most breakthrough innovations happen when someone looks where they're not supposed to look.

Yet we stay trapped in our professional bubbles, convincing ourselves that our industry is special, different, impossible to change.

I discovered this truth 35,000 feet above Lake Ontario, feeling like the worst husband and father alive.

I was flying to Toronto for a conference that had nothing to do with wealth management. While my kids played at home, I was chasing some vague curiosity about AI trends. The guilt was crushing. This felt selfish, wasteful—a mistake wrapped in a business expense.

But something shifted when I walked into that conference room. The stage sat in the center, speakers discussing futures I'd never imagined. My pen moved frantically across paper, capturing insights that seemed to vibrate with possibility.

I wasn't learning about wealth management. I was learning about everything else. And that's when it hit me: I hadn't made a mistake—I'd just found our competitive advantage.

That conference didn't teach me about portfolio optimization. It taught me about human behavior, technology adoption, and the patterns that transcend industries. I returned home with a blueprint for innovation that no wealth management conference could have provided.

Here's what I learned: The best solutions exist in the overlap between what you know and what you don't.

When you only study your industry, you're essentially asking your family for cooking advice. You'll get variations on the same flavors you've always known. But consult a chef from a different culture, and suddenly your "essential" ingredients become optional.

We suffer from what psychologists call "functional fixedness"—the inability to see new uses for familiar tools. A carpenter looks at a rolling pin and thinks "baking." But it's actually a perfect small-surface hammer for delicate work that won't leave marks.

Three industries every wealth manager should study: Hospitality (Ritz-Carlton's service systems), Sports Management (performance analytics and team optimization), and Food & Beverage (Chick-fil-A's operational excellence). Each offers solutions hiding in plain sight.

The choice is ours. We can stay comfortable, reading industry publications and attending familiar conferences. We can form study groups with the usual suspects and share incremental insights.

Or we can step outside our expertise and discover what we didn't know we didn't know.

The future belongs to those brave enough to feel stupid again.

The best is ahead!

-Matt