Financial planning has a number of well-reported demographic problems: Market willing, many advisors from the first generation of the profession are getting ready to retire in the next 10 years—37% of them, according to a Cerulli Associates report released in November. Meanwhile, younger advisors coming out of financial programs are looking for not just jobs but career paths and new ways of doing business.

Those differing attitudes between the generations have naturally begun to clash, and to outsiders it almost sounds like generational warfare, perhaps the same divide that spawned nasty phrases such as “OK, Boomer.”

Patrick Rush, the CEO of Triad Financial Advisors in Greensboro, N.C., says the younger generation doesn’t have the grind mentality of their forebears and are often looking for a work/life balance foreign to older clients.

“Existing clients don’t want their financial livelihoods resting on a 20- or 30-something who is more focused on work/life balance and in many cases, hasn’t dealt with many real-life experiences themselves, i.e. marriage, children, divorce, aging parents, etc.,” he says.

Because the older generations of planners often came from different backgrounds—accounting, brokerage, insurance, banking, etc.—they may likely have had some badly needed business development skills in their past. In other words, they knew they would have to sell, either a security, a policy or themselves. And the new crop doesn’t want to do that, Rush complains.

A day of reckoning could be coming for NextGen advisors—and the older adivsors who want to retire. “They have learned the industry in a bull market environment where firms have become much more profitable and AUMs have increased simply through market appreciation,” he says. “Therefore, they don’t yet understand that business development is necessary for the company to continue to thrive.”

Younger advisors, meanwhile, bemoan the lack of career path, especially at smaller firms. They might come on board and do an apprenticeship only to find that they are beholden to one main advisor … who doesn’t like changing his or her way of doing business or relinquishing control. This advisor then wants the younger advisor to ramp up an equity stake, perhaps as the firm grows in AUM and becomes too expensive to buy out.

Ashlee deSteiger, the founder of Gunder Wealth Management, bristles at the stereotypes about millennial advisors like herself, especially that they somehow act entitled or lazy.

“I don’t believe advisors in their 30s and 40s are able to relate to their predecessors,” she says. “There’s something to be said for being grateful for an opportunity and learning from the best, but those values don’t hold the same weight in this industry, generally speaking.”

These older advisors aren’t comfortable with changing software, they’re wedded to inefficient practices of old and move at a turtle pace when it’s time to restrategize, she says. Then at the end of the day, they have their eye on the door.

“These partners nearing retirement, while thinking they are ready to go, hate to see change and certainly don’t want to see their practice morph while they’re still in the office,” she says.

Younger advisors don’t want to be “doing something as a means to an end,” she says. “They want fulfillment, challenge, and growth, and those are traits that many firms just aren’t cultivating for this extremely capable, high-achieving demographic of professionals.”

Alan Moore, the co-founder of the XY Planning Network, says younger advisors are bound to get shiftless doing all the work in a firm with no career path, something he experienced when he entered the industry. “Coming into a firm where you start doing a lot of work, you take over the operations of the firm, but you’re still not an owner,” he says. “You’re basically running the practice. The older advisor does have a foot out the door; they’re out playing golf because they can. They’re working 10 to 20 hours a week.” And he argues: Why would the owner even want to sell? The practice is likely a highly paying annuity for those founders and can keep them going into their 80s while somebody younger does the heavy lifting.

If the younger advisor helps the older one double the size of the firm with hard work, the millennial has doubled the amount he’s going to have to pay to buy out the veteran, Moore says. And what you’re likely buying for that extra amount is a lot of older clients.

Susan John, a partner at F.L. Putnam and the former chair of the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors, says that younger advisors coming out of dedicated planning programs aren’t prepared to do service work, much less selling work. That’s a problem with a client-facing business.

Have You Ever Scooped Ice Cream?

“Kids don’t work in high school anymore. They don’t work during the summer," she says. "They have other activities that they’re doing. So they don’t develop those service skills that you get even if you’re just scooping ice cream.” Her problems finding talent hurt her succession plan, she says, and she ended up selling her old firm to F.L. Putnam.

But Moore suggests there’s a flip side to the argument about what’s lacking: “I don’t think a lot of financial planning firms have learned what it means to be a good employer,” he says. “I have very rarely if ever seen content at a conference about how to be a good manager. How to be a good leader. I think honestly most financial planning firms are just terrible places to actually work.”

Matt Cooper, president at Beacon Pointe Advisors, a Newport Beach, Calif., giant with $11.5 billion in AUM, says size matters here. “Most RIAs below $5 billion are not growing net of market,” he says. “Young people particularly in our industry coming out of the CFP programs, they want a career path. They don’t want a job. They want a vision as to what their career is going to look like, five, 10, 15 years down the road. And if you’re a firm that’s not growing, particularly sub-$1 billion firms where most of the RIA firms exist, you’re not able to give young people a real understanding of what their career might look like.” You can’t invest in people or the tech they are going to use. “The majority of RIAs are not enterprise businesses, they are lifestyle shops.”

He says it’s not a generation gap. It’s a thinking gap: Both generations, he says, are treating practices as lifestyles. “Let’s not mistake activity for results,” he says. “Are you thinking about scaling a business as an enterprise as opposed to running it as lean and mean as possible so you can put as much money in your pocket and harvest it for your lifestyle? You see a lot of smaller businesses running at 50% margins. That’s too high if you’re trying to invest and scale up. Those margins should be close to 25% if you’re really investing in the business to grow it.”