Originally posted in Financial Advisor (fa-mag.com) on July 1, 2020. On a recent trip to Alaska to see my son, a park ranger, I asked him about how officers like him are trained to respond in the most stressful and chaotic situations. In triage training, for example, when a gunshot victim is bleeding out, officers [...]
Originally posted in Financial Advisor (fa-mag.com) on September 1, 2020. With everything going on around the world—a global pandemic, economic uncertainty and social unrest—being able to have meaningful and impactful conversations is more important than ever. Let’s face it: We lack dialogue as a society. We’ve replaced it with a perpetual and driving need to [...]
Originally posted in Financial Advisor (fa-mag.com) on May 1, 2020 Over the last two years I’ve had the privilege of speaking at a gathering for employees of the American Transmission Company (ATC) based in the Milwaukee area. The first time I spoke to one of the groups, the employees that had gathered ranged from age [...]
Originally posted in Financial Advisor (fa-mag.com) on March 1, 2020 I recently was invited to a think tank hosted by Eventide Asset Management, a company in the values investing space. CIO Finny Kuruvilla gave a talk and I was confronted with the question, “Do you want to own companies that you are proud of?” Well, [...]
Originally posted in Financial Advisor (fa-mag.com) on January 2, 2020 This past fall, I had the privilege of speaking once again at my favorite conference in the world—Back2Y—hosted by Paul Armson in Birmingham, England. This conference draws life-focused advisors from around the world seeking to deliver the highest order of value and the highest level [...]
Originally posted in Financial Advisor (fa-mag.com) on November 1, 2019 The self-centered self-delusion. Your clients live in their own world. You live in yours. Is it possible to tune into clients well enough in conversation to break out of the gravitational pull of your planet and make a permanent landing on theirs? Only if you [...]
Originally posted in Financial Advisor (fa-mag.com) on Sepember 1, 2019 As we approached the tee for the eighth hole, a buddy of mine said to me, “Last year I stood on this tee box with Advisor Joe Schmo, and you were up in the fairway ahead of us. He turned to me and asked, ‘You’re [...]
Originally posted in Financial Advisor (fa-mag.com) on July 1, 2019 In my last column, I described how messy a financial advisor’s value proposition is when it’s based on a return on investment and how unsustainable that value offering really is. Trying to guess the future and constantly outperform the market is an activity done out [...]
Originally posted in Financial Advisor (fa-mag.com) on May 1, 2019 I’d like to begin this article with a few new terms I’ve coined that will be helpful for reading along: Practicide: When you build a practice designed to kill you. Entremanure: What people often find themselves wading in when selling the wrong value proposition. Messyages: [...]
In his heyday, Larry Bird was recognized as the ultimate three-point shooter. In 1986, a championship year, he made 82 threes. His team, the Boston Celtics, made 138 total. The league average was 77. In the 2015-2016 season, all-star guard Stephen Curry made 402 three-point shots. His team, the Golden State Warriors, made over a [...]
Originally posted in FA magazine. When financial advisors have conversations about investments with their clients, there’s usually something missing—a dialogue in which the advisor can discover a client’s particular perspectives on important money issues. I’m talking about those issues that will inevitably lead to the flourishing or floundering of any well-intentioned plan. It’s awfully difficult [...]
Originally posted at Financial Advisor, by Mitch Anthony. Given the choice of addressing either an effect or a cause, a strategic thinker would always prefer the latter. A person constantly putting out fires without understanding the cause has a limited ability to control situations. Yet I’ve observed that the majority of financial advisors seem to be [...]
Originally posted at Financial Advisor, by Mitch Anthony. “Let us have faith that right makes might; and in that faith, to that end, dare to do our duty, as we understand it.” —Abraham Lincoln I certainly could not have predicted the outpouring of sentiment I received after writing my last article, “Harsh Lessons in Modern [...]
Originally posted at Financial Advisor, by Mitch Anthony. Imagine the feelings that horse traders had 110 years ago upon hearing about the “horseless” carriage. Their sentiments had to range from incredulity (“How can you pull a carriage without a horse?”) to cynicism (“Who’s going to take a chance on this unproven contraption?”) to utter disdain, [...]
Originally posted at fa-mag.com, by Mitch Anthony. As I sit down to write this article, I know it will likely be the most difficult composition of my writing career—difficult because it dredges up a miasma of regret, embarrassment, sadness and anger like nothing else I’ve experienced in life. I was conned out of almost a [...]
"Financial Life Planning" column by Mitch Anthony at Financial Advisor magazine. WHO: Mitch Anthony WHAT: Author, speaker, and founder and president of Advisor Insights and the Financial Life Planning Institute WHAT'S ON HIS MIND: “For the vast majority, traditional retirement is a really bad idea. So we have an entire industry built around helping people [...]
"Financial Life Planning" column by Mitch Anthony at Financial Advisor magazine. Recently, The Economist published an intriguing editorial asking what we are going to call the older people lingering between “work and decrepitude,” an expanding demographic that right now lacks a proper name, though some flippant ones include “geriactives” and “sunsetters.” According to the Census Bureau, [...]
"Financial Life Planning" column by Mitch Anthony at Financial Advisor magazine. To find my home in one sentence Concise, as if hammered in metal Not to enchant anybody Not to earn a lasting name in posterity, An unnamed need for order, for rhythm, for form, Which three words Are opposed to chaos and nothingness. —Czeslaw [...]
Financial Life Planning column by Mitch Anthony and Steve Sanduski, CFP®, published in Journal of Financial Planning. In our introductory article on Return on Life, or ROL-centric planning in the May issue, we asserted: “If you want to change the dynamics of the financial relationship to a value that is most meaningful, start by [...]
"Financial Life Planning" column by Mitch Anthony at Financial Advisor magazine. “You are not competing with anyone else. You are only competing with yourself to do the best with whatever you have received.” —L. Tom Perry In my last column, we discussed the cash-flow conundrum faced by so many advisors whose clients want to turn [...]