Originally posted at fa-mag.com by Mitch Anthony, March 19, 2026. If your clients were allowed to fill out a questionnaire and grade your listening skills, how well do you think you’d do? Let’s imagine a scorecard (see the table). In the real world, your clients and prospects don’t often offer this kind of feedback—instead they [...]
Originally posted at fa-mag.com by Mitch Anthony, November 1, 2025. “The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.” —Flannery O’Connor I remember having an interesting conversation with an astute financial planner named Bryan who was lamenting the shortcomings of focusing on goals first in financial planning. He said, “When we deal [...]
Originally posted at fa-mag.com by Mitch Anthony, September 1, 2025. I have spent a great deal of time asking clients why they choose to work with their advisors. I’m talking about the clients who are thrilled with their advisors, not the ones sitting on the fence, or the ones with tepid responses. I hear these sorts [...]
Originally posted at fa-mag.com by Mitch Anthony, June 1, 2025. Sometimes, the greatest value isn’t measured. It’s felt. When I see all the tchotchkes being given away at financial conferences by fund and insurance companies, I’ve often wished some company would give away a crystal ball with their name on it. Then, the next time a [...]
Originally posted at fa-mag.com by Mitch Anthony, February 1, 2025. In his book Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, author Neil Postman writes that human conversation “has deteriorated to the point that there are no conclusions.” I think about that when I ponder the question: Why do we so [...]
Originally posted at fa-mag.com by Mitch Anthony, April 1, 2025. Just as Aretha Franklin once demanded R.E.S.P.E.C.T, your clients want to be valued as unique individuals. What they don’t want is to be defined by how old they are or lumped into a category just because they are 60, 70 or 80 years old. Unfortunately, [...]
Originally posted at fa-mag.com by Mitch Anthony, June 1, 2025. Sometimes, the greatest value isn’t measured. It’s felt. When I see all the tchotchkes being given away at financial conferences by fund and insurance companies, I’ve often wished some company would give away a crystal ball with their name on it. Then, the next time [...]
Originally posted at fa-mag.com by Mitch Anthony, November 1, 2024. Imagine your life as a movie that is just being ‘shot,’ but that you will not be permitted to ‘cut’ anything out of the original film. Once the film is taken it cannot be retroactively changed.” These are the words of the late Dr. Viktor [...]
Originally posted at fa-mag.com by Mitch Anthony, September 1, 2024. It’s a frigid winter day. You go outside to start your vehicle and hear nothing—not a crank, not a turn, not even a whine. You try to flag someone down who might have jumper cables. Fortune smiles at you and someone stops, eager to help. [...]
Originally posted at fa-mag.com by Mitch Anthony, June 1, 2024. Let’s say you’re my client, and that I know your name, your address, your Social Security number and other account numbers. I know the whereabouts of those accounts and the balances within them. I know where you work and your adjusted gross income. I know [...]
Originally posted at fa-mag.com by Mitch Anthony, April 4, 2024. I once received a phone call from a local advisor I’ll call Mick, who had spoken to a friend of mine and heard I might be interested in a loan against my mortgage. Using this friend as a reference, Mick made a cold call to [...]
Originally posted at fa-mag.com by Mitch Anthony, February 6, 2024. Several years ago my 12-year-old niece had a phone conversation with her grandmother. After she hung up, she turned to her mother and said, “That was weird. I said something to Grandma, and she listened. Then she said something, and I listened. And we just [...]
Originally posted at fa-mag.com by Mitch Anthony, September 1, 2023. Brett was just a green attorney, fresh out of law school when his father, a respected financial advisor, brought a client in to see him about an estate planning issue. His father, who was a master of understanding the emotional side of the business, brought [...]
Originally posted at fa-mag.com by Mitch Anthony, October 1, 2022. “Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect.” —Steven Wright Have you ever watched the political talk shows where there are four or five columnists, all brimming over with opinions to the point that none of them can let any of [...]
Originally posted at fa-mag.com by Mitch Anthony, December 1, 2022. The financial advisory profession has done a great job getting quantitative information from clients, processing that information, and then analyzing it for reports or plans. But when it comes to finding qualitative information—knowledge about our clients’ experiences, principles and deepest hopes and fears—the industry often [...]
Originally posted at fa-mag.com by Mitch Anthony, June 1, 2023. In my previous article in April, I introduced a number of questions that advisors could ask their clients to get a sense of their personal principles when it comes to investing. Among the questions I asked in Part 1 of this story were: • If [...]
Originally posted at fa-mag.com by Mitch Anthony, April 1, 2023. During the several years I’ve tracked the concerns of financial advisory clients, I was surprised to learn that one of their more important interests was re-examining their investment philosophy, something up there with worry about their aging parents and their children’s college. I guess I [...]
Originally posted at fa-mag.com by Mitch Anthony, February 1, 2023. Advisors are usually encouraged to talk to their clients about their goals, to ask questions like, “Where would you like to be in five years?” But how much richer would the conversation be if we asked them instead, “Where have you been in the last [...]
Originally posted at fa-mag.com by Mitch Anthony, May 1, 2022. I was recently going through my archives and came across some recordings I had done with Dick Wagner almost 15 years ago for a recording we were calling “Money Dialogue.” Dick, who passed away five years ago, wrote for Financial Advisor and was a recognized [...]
Originally posted at fa-mag.com by Mitch Anthony, March 1, 2022. During the past year and a half (and counting), I don’t know anyone whose life hasn’t been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. Many of us have experienced epiphanies and made positive changes to our lives as a result. While not dismissing the toll the pandemic [...]