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#FASuccess Ep 091: Increasing The Value Of Advice By Focusing On Life-Centered Planning For Transitions Not Goals with Mitch Anthony

September 25, 2018 07:03 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 91st episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast!

This week's guest is Mitch Anthony. Mitch is the founder of an eponymous training and coaching firm for financial advisors on how to ask the right questions to have better conversations with clients.

What's unique about Mitch, though, is his truly unique gift for finding the right words for effective client conversations. From describing the value of financial planning itself based on the six principles of helping clients with their organization, accountability, objectivity, proactivity, education, and partnership, to simply making the point that in the end, the role of a good financial planner is to help clients find the balance between vocation and vacation and ensure that clients prepare so they don't have to repair instead.

In this episode, we talk about the importance of language in financial planning. The difference between having good rapport with clients and really building a relationship with them, why asking clients the right questions is all about engaging them by making them feel like they're answering the questions they've always wanted to talk about anyway, and why the best way to demonstrate the ongoing value of financial planning is not about helping clients to reach their goals, but instead helping them to prepare for and then navigate the never-ending stream of transitions that life throws at them anyway, which are also great opportunities for advisors to demonstrate our value and grow our businesses because money goes in motion when life goes into transition.

We also talk about how the real value of a financial advisor should be measured by their ability to impact a client's return on life and whether they're living the best life they can with the money they have, rather than the traditional focus on benchmarking and advisor's return on investments, which as Mitch puts it, Standard and Poor's is a poor standard for measuring value, how the life-centered planning approach helps to address the common client question of, "What have you done for me lately," and the platform that Mitch is building aptly called ROL Advisor, to provide coaching and tracking tools that advisors can use with their clients to demonstrate these ongoing values.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Mitch shares his key insight for how new advisors, in particular, can set themselves on a better track to long-term success by doing whatever it takes to, as he puts it, surround themselves with greatness and find opportunities to learn from best advisors they can before starting out on their own.

So whether you're interested in learning about how "life-centered" planning improves client relationships, the "major motivator" for saving (other than retirement), or the best way to demonstrate the ongoing value of financial planning, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast.

#FASuccess Ep 050: The Value Of Hiring A Financial Advisor Coach To Maintain Your Business Focus with Tracy Beckes

December 12, 2017 07:01 am 4 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome, everyone! Welcome to the 50th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Tracy Beckes. Tracy runs an eponymous financial advisor coaching firm, and in fact was one of the very first coaches to specialize in working with financial advisors nearly 20 years ago.

What's fascinating about Tracy, though, is not merely her history as a coach for financial advisors, but the way that she's been able to systematize her coaching strategies into concrete tools and templates that she uses with her coaching clients to help them navigate the common challenges of trying to run what she calls an "Effortless, Outrageous" practice.

In this episode, we talk in depth about some of Tracy's coaching tools, from the value of creating Engagement Standards with clients that set the terms of both what the advisor commits to doing for the client and what the client is expected to do to be a productive part of the advisor-client relationship, to why it's so important to create a "cadence of accountability" within an advisory firm with a regular series of daily, weekly, and quarterly scheduled meetings, to the benefits of creating a one-page strategic business plan that sets forth the business' Core Values, its Purpose, its Big Stretch Goal, and a series of 3-year, 12-month, and 90-day objectives, all built to help the firm create better focus in what it does... and how establishing a clear target market or niche can actually bring tremendous efficiency to an advisory firm and an advisor's time in the business.

We also talk about what financial advisor coaching itself actually is, how it differs from training or consulting, why successful financial advisors so often seek out coaches – even when they're already fairly successful in their businesses – and why the real secret to advisory firm growth is all about systematizing, developing people, and honoring the power of the 80/20 rule... which a financial advisor coach can help you to focus on.

And be certain to listen to the end, where we talk about how the real secret to having more productive team meetings is all about your ability to actually structure meetings to make key decisions or solve problems... and how advisors can better craft a meeting agenda process that helps to target the most important issues at every meeting.

So whether you have been considering hiring a financial advisor coach to maintain business focus, contemplating how you can better set and manage expectations for your relationships with clients, or interested in how you can have more productive team meetings, I hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast!

#FASuccess Ep 015: Why Life Planning Is Simply Financial Planning Done Right With George Kinder

April 11, 2017 07:01 am 6 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the fifteenth episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast!

This week’s guest is George Kinder, who is known to most as the “father” of the life planning – a way of holistically delivering financial planning that focuses on delving into clients’ real goals, beyond just their financial concerns, in an effort to help them use their money to deliver freedom into their lives.

What’s fascinating about George, though, is that he didn’t start out trying to create a movement towards life planning. George was actually a math major at Harvard, who then became a CPA (and earned the Bronze Medal for the third highest score in his entire state on the CPA exam!), and only began to explore the intersections between financial planning and psychology after forming a niche financial advisory practice delivering advanced tax strategies for self-employed psychologists and therapists!

In this episode, George talks about his early career and the inception of life planning itself, how he ultimately transitioned away from and sold his financial planning firm to teach life planning full time, his now-famous three questions that he asks of new clients to get to know them and begin the life planning process, and the five pursuits that most clients articulate in the life planning process… which rarely have anything to do with “traditional” financial planning goals like retirement! Though notably, George doesn’t view life planning as an alternative to financial planning, but simply as “financial planning done right”.

So whether you’ve been curious to learn more about life planning in particular, or are just looking for ideas about a whole new way to approach financial planning (and differentiate yourself in a crowded financial advisor marketplace!), I hope you enjoy this latest episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast!

#FASuccess Podcast Ep 003: Julie Littlechild On Becoming A More Referable Advisor

January 17, 2017 07:02 am 5 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back for the third episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast!

This week, we’re changing it up a little bit - rather than speaking with a financial advisor, my guest is Julie Littlechild, a speaker, writer, and researcher focused on understanding and improving financial advisors’ engagement with their teams and their clients. She is now the founder of Absolute Engagement, a firm that is conducting ongoing research into personal, client, and team engagement in advisory firms, and has also done extensive research on generating client referrals.

In this episode, Julie shares what she's learned from her real-world research about what works – and what doesn't – for financial advisors, including why asking clients for referrals is generally a terrible way to actually get referrals, and how to reposition yourself to become more referable. Julie also shares her research on how advisors can get more energized and re-engaged in their practices, and how her own experience of building and then selling her coaching business gave her perspective on the challenge of staying engaged in the business you've built.

So whether you're a financial advisor trying to generate more and better client referrals, or feel like you've hit a wall and need to get re-energized in your own business, I hope you enjoy this latest episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast!