Before you hear from the experts and other professionals who will be sharing their insights with you, let me share a little about myself.
How did I get to where I am now? Well, it’s been an interesting journey. I hail from a small town in western Nebraska. I really appreciate where I grew up. The Midwest has a lot of cliches, but in general, the people there are kind, considerate and interesting. Self-reliance, perseverance, and hard work are stressed and commonplace. Those traits have largely served me well in life and career.
I attended the state university with an interest in psychology and human behavior. After that, I had no idea what I wanted to do for a living. At the time, I was very much into scuba diving. You can’t do much of that in Nebraska, so I moved to Florida.
I worked in the scuba industry and tended bar while trying to figure out life. There was a woman who often came into the restaurant where I worked, and we chatted often. One night, she told me, “You would probably be good at what I do.” She was a recruiter for a regional financial services firm. I interviewed and she hired me. This was 1999. I didn't have any natural market, no prospects for clients or anything, but started building a business one client at a time. I met my partners, and we formed our own independent practice in 2004.
I think a lot of what I learned in psychology applies to what I do as a financial advisor. Much of my job involves counseling people, or sometimes just listening to them, and it goes far beyond the financial side of things. People realize there’s no promise of tomorrow, and they want to focus on the stuff that's important; the people they care about and their family legacy. That realization has been reinforced during the recent pandemic.
Specializing in retirement income planning allows me to help people with all of that. But we didn’t originally plan to do this. When we started our business, we picked certain niches, such as a specific company or industry, and immersed ourselves in their benefits and all the things their employees faced when they transitioned into retirement. As we built that expertise, we began doing workshops and educating people. Ultimately, we realized this was a way to help many people in a way that would truly make a difference.
It all starts with listening and learning (There’s that psychology background coming out). Our process begins by learning everything we can about the person. What are their goals and desires? What are their challenges and potential obstacles? This is an overused word, but we take a holistic approach. We look at someone’s whole life. Then we come up with a plan to meet their needs. That plan will drive the solutions, and eventually the products or investments we use. There are advisors who follow the reverse order. They start with the products they sell and apply them to everyone. That doesn’t work. While people have similar needs, everyone’s situation is unique.
Clients often come to us with a specific need, such as plans to retire next year, or they inherited money from a parent, and they need to invest it. But our responsibility goes beyond coming up with an investment strategy. A very important part of what we do is identifying the blind spots or gaps in someone’s financial situation that could derail their well-laid plans. That comes back to looking holistically at their situation, including the estate plan, the taxes, insurances, and whether protections are in place, all of which determine the legacy they want to leave.
We look at ourselves as the quarterback of the client situation. If there's something standing in the way of them achieving what they want to do, even if they're not aware of it or they don't see it, we want to address those things. Because life is full of uncertainty, and bad things will certainly come. We want to be in a position where we've done everything that we can to protect the client and make sure they have the highest chance that they can succeed with whatever their financial goals are.
To use another overused word, it seems these days everybody in our industry is calling themselves a fiduciary. That has become commoditized, and I don’t believe it’s a differentiator anymore because everybody’s using the term and everyone’s definition varies. But the fact that we are independent, and not tied to one company’s products, means the solutions we come up with for our clients are not limited to certain things we’re being told to do or products we’re being told to use. We made the decision early on that we wanted to eliminate (where we can) or mitigate any conflicts of interest when it came to what we could do for clients.
Speaking of our clients, they tend to fall into two groups. One is the mass affluent, people who have saved enough to be able to afford to retire but still may need to worry about potentially running out. We help them navigate that, make sure their money doesn’t run out, and help them leave a legacy if that’s their goal as well. The other group is higher net worth, whose concern is not running out of money, but the importance of leaving a legacy. We have some unique things we do with them that are outside the normal investment management and retirement income solutions.
But if I were to describe my ideal client, I would say it has more to do with personality than portfolio. I like to work with someone I describe as a delegator, which means they want to delegate the responsibility of overseeing their financial well-being to someone they implicitly trust. Now that doesn’t mean they’re not involved or that it’s an authoritative relationship. It just means they have a lot of other things on their plate. They’d rather deal with those than sit around and worry about their money all the time, checking their accounts every day.
Second, I want someone who wants to be in a collaborative relationship. I'm going to make suggestions I believe are in my clients’ best interest. They’re going to ask me questions, we’ll discuss it, and then we’ll be ready to make decisions and implement what we're going to talk about.
The third thing is I want to like the person. I want to enjoy when they come in. I want to know what’s going on in their life, both the ups and downs. If I see a client at a store or restaurant, it’s more like bumping into a friend. I want to have a deeper relationship with people. I want them to always feel I have their best interest in mind, and they can trust the recommendations I'm giving. Fortunately, those types of people make up most of our clients.
The people that are not a good fit for us are the do-it-yourselfers, the ones who want to do everything on their own. Those people are certainly capable of accomplishing their financial goals, and many are smart enough to do it. When I meet with a prospective client who is clearly just looking to bounce things off us and use us as another information source, I know they aren’t right for us. I can usually talk to anyone for 10 minutes and know if we would be a good fit.
Those do-it-yourselfers make one of the common mistakes people make when it comes to retirement planning. Of course, the biggest mistake is just not planning at all. But thinking you can go it alone, without at least consulting with a professional in some way to prepare for retirement, is a BIG misconception. If nothing else, you just want to make sure you have all those blind spots covered, so the things you can’t see or don’t know about can’t come up and bite you later in life.
I’ve also had many conversations where the person didn’t become my client initially but did later. Sometimes hiring a financial advisor just isn’t a good idea for the person at the time. In cases like that, I often was able to give them four or five things they could do or work on that put them in a better trajectory for what they wanted to do. Some of those people came back and became clients after accomplishing some goals or experiencing certain life events.
Another common mistake is overestimating how long their money is going to last, or how much they can take out without a big risk of potentially running out of money. It’s also something we do from an educational standpoint. We can tell you, “Here’s what’s reasonable, and here's a solid plan on how you can accomplish what your goals are.”
When we help people make the right decision, we know that’s going to make a difference in their life. But I think it’s more satisfying to help people avoid making a bad decision that could have derailed their ability to retire or stay retired.
Here’s an example. I had a client who was considering giving a child a substantial amount of money to start a business. She didn't really want to do it, but she felt obligated. But because I knew her family history dynamic, I knew there were things that made this a very questionable decision. I was able to guide her through to ultimately being okay with saying no and still being able to keep her relationship with her son. Separate from the financial aspect of a bad decision, there was a family impact. Sometimes it’s just important for me to be another ear for my clients as they deal with family matters or personal issues.
Education is a very important component of what we do. We believe there’s no substitute for the wisdom you can get from a knowledgeable and trusted professional. Many people do their research online. Unfortunately, the internet is a suspect place when it comes to retirement planning and financial decision making. You can find “facts” that will lead you in every possible direction.
The good news is you can also come up with a lot of good questions to ask when you do meet with someone like me. Before prospective clients meet with me, many do some research online. They’ve searched for “questions to ask a financial advisor.” Questions such as, “What are your credentials? How long have you been in business? Do you have any complaints on your record? What are the costs?”
Those are good questions to ask. I would also recommend asking specific questions about your situation. Just as I want to be sure a client is a good fit for me, you want to be sure an advisor is the right fit for your situation and your personality. I think people are going to figure out in the first five to 10 minutes whether they like you. But I advise people to determine if you think the advisor will have your best interest in mind. That's more important than how many years someone has been in business. Do you think this person is going to care about you and about your situation as much as you do? That's the person you should pick. Even if it's not me.
I honestly believe an advisor who doesn’t operate that way can’t talk their way into convincing you they truly have your best interest in mind. You can say anything you want, but as I tell my kids, the best way to prove it is not in your words, it's in your actions. That must happen over time. It must be proven by what the advisor does. Do they do what they say they’re going to do?
One question I wish people would ask me is, “What’s your plan for communication when things are going bad? When the market’s plunging or the economy is in trouble, how accessible are you?”
From an accessibility standpoint, we always have a live person answering the phone during the day. We don’t have an answering service. You’re going to get a live person. I've structured my schedule so if someone needs to talk to me, generally I’ll get back to them within 24 hours. If for some reason I can’t, one of the other advisors will contact them to handle any questions or concerns they might have. Being accessible to our clients is very important.
That can be particularly true during bad times. In fact, we look at that as a great time to deepen client relationships. We’re not going to hide under our desk and avoid people’s calls. When people are scared or worried, we need to embrace those things. We need to talk about it. Let’s talk about how you feel. Then let's talk about whether that warrants us doing anything and making any changes to their plans. We’ve had a lot of those conversations during the pandemic, just as we did in 2008-09.
We like to over-communicate. During the down times, we’re in touch more than we usually are, because we want people to know we have their back and we’re here for them. Because if they can't talk to us, who are they going to talk to? They're just going to go on the internet and look for answers or watch TV, which we all know is not a good idea. We want to be your source of information. We’re going to be your source of truth. We want to be the calm in the storm, so you don't make a bad decision at the wrong time.
My desire to educate and lead people so they can make informed decisions is what inspired this book.
When I began my podcast, I quickly realized I truly enjoy interviewing other professionals. I’m able to discuss topics that are important to my clients, and that I’m interested in. My guests are sharing their knowledge and they’re sharing their passion. I got something meaningful out of every single interview.
The ones I’ve chosen for this book fit several important criteria. One is they cover topics I was interested in learning more about, such as Medicare, late-life divorce planning, or divorce planning for super-high-net-worth individuals. They’re also topics I feel our clients would be interested in, based on their financial planning needs. So not only was I able to enrich my own knowledge by doing these interviews, but you’ll also be enriched by reading them. You’ll get insights and information from knowledgeable, caring professionals you never would have known about otherwise.
My goal in doing these interviews was to get through some often-advanced topics in a way that’s easy to understand. There are plenty of books about finances that read like textbooks. You don’t need an MBA to get through this book. You just need to have a curiosity about these topics and a desire to get information that can make a difference in your life.
So, let’s get started.