1. What do you do?
The real crux of what I do is helping people make smart choices about their money so they can accomplish their goals for the reasons that are important to them. I started my financial services practice to help individuals, small business owners and their families totally and completely get their “financial house in order” and keep it there. So that they can create the greatest probability, they accomplish their goals and make smart choices about their money along the way.
2. How do you deliver on that?
My job along with my team is to orchestrate a written plan. We help every client create & hold everyone involved accountable, including you, to ensure the greatest probability the plan unfolds well.
It all starts at our first meeting with a simple conversation about what is important about money to you. Having this experience in our first meeting, which takes an hour, is a very good way to determine if we might be a good fit in working together. This my primary objective with anyone interested in working with my team and me. Will this be a good fit or not?
3. What kind of clients do you serve best?
I have a small community of individuals, business owners, and families who feel they have a higher purpose in life and are very busy with that purpose so they want to delegate their financial management to me. This allows them more time in life for the things that are important to them.
4. What keeps you in this business?
Ever since I was a little girl, I never understood money and when I would ask the adults around me about it. The answer I would get was some version of, “money is a private and personal matter”, “it is not polite to talk about money”, and my personal favorite “Never asks anyone how much money they make or have”. Oh and never ask anyone under any circumstances how much something cost.” How is a person supposed to learn about money then? This only made me more curious.
Well ever since then I could not stop thinking about it. I never told anyone of course and I did not know at the time that this was going to be my life long pursuit and passion. I proceeded to spent most of my adult life trying to figure out what this money thing is and how am I supposed to learn about it if I can’t ask anyone? I started with the books. Sometimes I would hide them so others would not know what I was reading. I have read many books about money, how to earn it, how to invest it, how to keep from losing it, how not to let it break up your marriage, how to leave it to your family or not leave it, how to live without it, how to live with it.
However, my best learning’s about money have been from my clients and there journey with money. The best part is I get to ask all those questions I was never allowed to ask! This is what keeps me in business. I love what I do and love helping other people.
5. Exactly how do you charge?
I charge a percentage for the assets under our management according to a schedule outlined in our investment advisory agreement. You can also pay a fee for the plan up front.
6. What exactly do your clients get for what they pay you?
We provide services, which involves an annual checklist we cycle through for each client. In essence…
- For every client our job is to ensure there is a fully updated written and compressive lifetime financial plan at all times.
- We hire and then oversee the money management, and make sure that the fees are as low as they can be for the most suitable investment strategy our team recommends.
- This kind of peer-review oversight is designed to protect you and your assets.
- We work to set up a plan for what happens with your assets when you are gone, and that there is a clear plan in place to manage your assets if you are unable or unwilling to manage things yourself.
- We review your insurance, look for gaps and make recommendations about how much you need, or if you need it at all.
- We use a comprehensive checklist driven annual process to make certain nothing falls through the cracks and that the plan is on-track. In short, to make sure your financial house is in order.
7. Why should I work with you?
At this stage, it is not about whether we do business together or not. Our process focuses on establishing whether there will be a good fit in working together. If we both agree, then we work together. If not, you will walk away with some clarity about your situation.
8. What is the process if I become a client?
The first step is to schedule an appointment with me, at no charge, to get a financial road map done. If it is a good fit & we move forward, we then spend two weeks getting the first draft of your financial plan completed. We schedule a meeting to immediately begin implementing the elements of the plan and what we feel needs the most attention.
We ask every client to schedule three meetings over the next 12 months (meeting once every four months is the minimum number of meetings needed to get the information we need from you). The first of these meetings called a safety review; we review all the action items identified to create the greatest safety to your plan.
9. What makes you think I would make a good client?
I do not know and that is what we discover together in the initial meeting.
10. How can I be certain I can trust you?
Another purpose of our initial meeting is to determine if it will be a good fit for us to work together or not. If after an hour, it seems as though things should move forward, it will be obvious to both of us. If things are not going well, it will be obvious to both of us as well. The initial meeting will determine if we can establish a relationship where we trust each other, and to decide if it is a good idea to begin moving forward together.
