The Power of Research through Action

Why do we spend years in school memorizing facts we’ll never use, but struggle to learn skills we desperately need?

I discovered the answer while watching my six-year-old son learn to ride a bike. After thirty minutes of listening to a coach share about “balance principles” and “momentum theory,” the coach finally said, “Let’s just try it.” Within an hour, he was flying down the sidewalk, laughing. The lecture hadn’t taught him to ride—the wobbling, falling, and getting back up had.

This moment crystallized something I’d been wrestling with about how we approach learning in our professional lives.

We’ve been conditioned to believe that knowledge comes first, then application. But what if we have it backwards?

Here’s what I’ve learned after fifteen years of watching financial advisors develop expertise: the ones who excel don’t just study markets—they experiment with strategies. They don’t just read about client psychology—they test different communication approaches and learn from the responses.

A few years ago, when I was running my technology business, I was working with two advisory teams facing identical challenges with client retention. Team A spent three months researching best practices, attending webinars, and creating detailed implementation plans, but they were hesitant to implement a solution. Team B immediately started with our solution, making small changes to their client meetings—trying new conversation starters, testing different follow-up methods, and iterating based on what worked.

Three months later, Team A was still planning. Team B had already improved their retention rate by 23% and discovered insights no research study could have provided. They learned that their wealthy clients valued text message check-ins over formal emails, and that starting meetings with personal questions about grandchildren increased engagement more than market updates. These weren’t insights they could have read about—they had to be discovered through action.

The traditional education system taught us that getting an “F” means failure. But in real learning, there is no “F”—there are only outcomes that teach us something new. When we learn through doing, we’re not aiming for perfect execution; we’re collecting data that transforms our understanding.

Research consistently shows that hands-on practice yields 75% retention compared to less than 10% from lectures or reading. But here’s the deeper truth: active learning doesn’t just help us remember information—it rewires our ability to adapt and innovate in unpredictable situations.

The barrier for most advisors isn’t capability—it’s the internal narrative that everything must be perfect because we’re managing people’s most precious asset: their money. This reverence creates a paradox. Our fear of imperfection prevents us from developing the very skills that would make us more effective stewards of that trust.

But experimentation doesn’t require risking client assets. We can test new communication methods, try different meeting formats, experiment with technology tools, refine our prospecting approaches—all while maintaining the highest fiduciary standards.

Learning through action requires comfort with ambiguity.

When you’re navigating by starlight in unfamiliar territory, you know your general direction but must accept that each step forward reveals terrain no map could have predicted. Your unique path emerges only as you walk it.

The process moves through stages: first, you observe someone else (“I do”), then participate with guidance (“we do”), then practice with support (“you do together”), and finally execute independently (“you do”). Like learning to swim, confidence comes through gradual immersion, not theoretical understanding.

Consider AI adoption—the defining challenge of our industry today. The advisors who will thrive aren’t those spending months reading about AI’s potential impact. They’re the ones already experimenting with AI tools, learning from the results, and iterating their approach based on real experience.

The future belongs not to those who can predict change, but to those who can learn through change. And the only way to develop that capacity is to start paddling before you’ve mapped every current.