Life at the Center
 Mitch Anthony
For the financial life planner, the life of the client must be the axis around which financial discussions revolve. Although most individuals understand that money is not the end all, they do perceive money as a means to building the life they want–and avoiding a life they will regret. They quickly connect with the individual who possesses the skill to connect their money to their lives. Intuitively, your clients will see the wisdom in developing a plan to use their money to make a life rather than using their lives to make money.
Most individuals are quite receptive to the professional who possesses the skill to draw out their vision for their lives and help facilitate the materialization of that vision. Your client’s money has powerful meaning to them as individuals. Their money promises the fulfillment of their sense of purpose.
Let’s review the eight tenets that constitute the basic assumptions that undergird the philosophy of financial life planning:
- Life is about change. The purpose of financial life planning is to facilitate successful transitions.
- Each person’s life is a continuum of unique experiences. Life experience greatly influences how an individual perceives and responds to change. Financial life planning recognizes that skills, values, attitudes, resources, and relationships that are developed and honed during one stage of life all contribute to meeting the challenges and recognizing the opportunities of the next stage of life.
- Each person’s life course is unique. In the past, most transitions have been age-graded and have occurred during predictable times in one’s life span. However, because of increasing longevity, new perspectives on aging, high incidence of divorce and remarriage, delayed child bearing, multiple career changes, and emphasis on lifelong learning and returning to school for retraining or fulfillment, transitions are less frequently age-graded and predictable. Financial life planners recognize that a majority of individuals are following an unconventional life course either by chance or by choice.
- An adult’s orientation to learning is life-centered. The key to developing a relationship with your clients is to connect with their lives. To engage adults in understanding a product, service, or process, they must see the relevancy or direct application to their own lives. Call it the WIIFM factor–everyone wants to know “What’s in it for me?” A financial life planner gives financial advice that is life-centered and customized to the tangible and intangible aspects of the individual.
- Your clients have a strong need to be self-directing. Most individuals want to feel in control of their lives. Financial life planners will seek to empower their clients to make wise financial decisions and to develop a sense of mastery in this area of life.
- Your clients desire balance and meaning in their lives. Financial life planners help their clients clarify goals in all areas of life and design a financial strategy to support those goals.
- Each person’s internal compass (values and priorities) guides big and little life decisions. When a course of action is in conflict with one’s internal compass (values and priorities), a sense of inner conflict exists. Life satisfaction results when a course of action is in harmony with one’s inner compass. Financial life planners help clients identify their values and priorities in all areas of life, and then guide them in making financial decisions that are in sync with those values and priorities.
- A successful financial life planning practice is built on asking the right questions. Good communication is more about listening than it is about talking. Your goal as a financial life planner is to really get to know your clients in order to tailor your advice to each client’s circumstances, goals, and values.
No professional is better positioned for life planning than the financial advisor. Participating in this conversation does not change your traditional role, it simply shifts the context for the discussion into the arena where the client is most invested–his or her own life.
Adapted from Your Clients for Life: The Definitive Guide to Becoming a Successful Financial Life Planner, Second Edition by Mitch Anthony. (©2006 by Mitch Anthony)
Mitch Anthony is the founder and president of
Advisor Insights
Inc. and The Financial Life
Planning Institute, training companies serving advisors and the financial
services industry. He is a contributing editor for Research magazine
and his column “Financial
Life Planning” appears in Financial Advisor magazine.
Anthony has been named one of the financial service industry’s
top “2006 Movers & Shakers” by Financial Planning magazine.
His radio feature, The Daily Dose , is heard every day on
200 radio stations nationwide. Anthony is the author of several
books for advisors, including StorySelling for Financial Advisors , The
New Retirementality, Your Clients for Life , Selling
with Emotional Intelligence , Making the Client Connection , The
Financial Professional’s StoryBook, and Your Client’s
Story. Contact him at mitch@mitchanthony.com
© 2007 Mitch Anthony
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