Welcome back to the 91st episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast.
This week’s guest is Mitch Anthony. Mitch is the founder of an eponymous training and coaching firm for financial advisors on how to ask the right questions and have better conversations with clients. What’s unique about Mitch, though, is his truly unique gift for finding the right words for effective client conversations. From describing the value of financial planning itself based on the six principles of helping clients with their organization, accountability, objectivity, proactivity, education, and partnership, to simply making the point that in the end, the role of a good financial planner is to help clients find the balance between vocation and vacation and ensure clients prepare so they don’t have to repair instead.
In this episode, we talk about the importance of language in financial planning. The difference between having a good rapport with clients and really building a relationship with them; why asking clients the right questions is all about engaging them by making them feel like they’re answering the questions they’ve always wanted to talk about anyway; and why the best way to demonstrate the ongoing value of financial planning is not about helping clients to reach their goals, but instead helping them to prepare for and then navigate the never-ending stream of transitions that life throws at them anyway, which are also great opportunities for advisors to demonstrate their value and grow their businesses because money goes in motion when life goes into transition.
We also talk about how the real value of a financial advisor should be measured by their ability to impact a client’s return on life or whether they’re living the best life they can with the money they have, rather than the traditional focus on benchmarking and advisor’s return on investments, which as Mitch puts it, Standard & Poor’s is a poor standard for measuring value; how the life-centered planning approach helps to address the common client question of “What have you done for me lately;” and the platform that Mitch is building, aptly named ROL Advisor, to provide coaching and tracking tools advisors can use with their clients to demonstrate these ongoing values.
And be certain to listen to the end, where Mitch shares his key insight for how new advisors, in particular, can set themselves on a better track to long-term success by doing whatever it takes to, as he puts it, surround themselves with greatness and find opportunities to learn from the best advisors they can before starting out on their own.
So whether you’re interested in learning about how “life-centered” planning improves client relationships, the “major motivator” for saving (other than retirement), or the best way to demonstrate the ongoing value of financial planning, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast.
