Your Clients Greatest Fear (Subscriber Video)

Today clients are gripped by an overwhelming fear that is controlled by influences outside their control. Three trends of the modern age increase the impact of this fear on their future. The video link below identifies the root cause of this fear and explains the need to help clients remove it from their experience.

Link: http://www.lloydwilliamsinc.com/subscriber/YourClientsFear.mov

This video is excerpted from the recent Counter Intuitive 2.0 Workshop and is for subscribers to the SIA Market Report Only.

If you are not a subscriber, you may receive a 14 day free trial at http://www.ActionSheets.com

RetireAbility by Systemetic Investment

Nobody wants to deal with the fact that many people who are investing have no way of achieving their retirement dreams. Every investor expects to retire. When they invested $25,000 into that mutual fund and the advisor collected their commission or fee, there existed the expectation of being retireable. The reality is very different.

Without analysis of what it will require for a couple to retire, investing become a futile attempt to appease unrealistic expectations. The client assumes retireability and the advisor ignores the reality and maintains the false expectation. This relationship has to change. Advisors must require the analysis up front before any investment and honestly explain what contributions will be required yearly to achieve retireabilty. A systematic investment plan must be put in place at the start to remove any false expectations that will become a liability for both the client and the advisor in the future.

Each year the expectations need to be reviewed in light of the circumstances surrounding a couples life. Windfalls, salary increases, and new opportunities can shorten their retirement date. Market corrections, layoffs, or large purchases can increase the time required to retire.

Because of these factors, retireabilty is a dynamic factor and needs to be monitored yearly. Making a goal to retire every client early is worthy, yet requires effort and diligence. Using an annual review to access retireability and incorporating a systematic investment plan can help any client achieve the dreams they desire.

RetireAbility Factor: Discovering Your Life Dream

One important aspect of your ability to retire is the need for a clear vision of your desired future, a life dream. For most this is a faded, out of focus, black and white photography of the future. It needs to be a wide screen BlueRay movie with surround sound, clear, crisp, and with brilliant detail.

Since most couples do not have a clear vision of their future, their advisors should facilitate creating this dream by asking provocative questions. Because how can a couple hope to have the life they desire in the future if they do not know what it will look like? How can you invest for an unknown future?

The following questions may help create your dream future:

Ask your self these questions to clarify your vision of a compelling future:

- What have you always wanted to do, but have not yet done?

- When you and your spouse were dating, what did you talk about doing together that life interrupted?

- What is a dream you had when you were in school that is unfulfilled?

- Where have you always wanted to visit, but circumstances held you back?

- What did you want to do with your children, but they grew up too fast and you would like to do it with your grandchildren?

- What was your favorite day in your past and what made it so?

- If you could do or be anything in the world, what would it be?

These questions will help fuel your imagination and remembrance of things past. Remember the following quote.

“Anything the mind can conceive and believe it can achieve.” - Napoleon Hill

Do not let your current situation hold you back from pursuing your dreams. Why wait till retirement to live your dreams, start living in retirement now.

Retireability Factor: Most Important Financial Concept

No matter what business you are in, everyone wants to maintain and enhance their lifestyle throughout their lifetime. This basic desire is forgotten many times when clients visit their financial advisor. The products and services offered by the advisor are insignificant if this primary concern is overlooked. Why is the most important financial concept rarely discussed? What is retireability? Some say they have no desire to retire or do not believe they will ever be able to retire because of the difficulties in the economy. Retireability is not just a state of mind of wanting to retire, it is also a capability of having the resources to fund that desire.

"Anything the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve."

-Napoleon Hill

Though many would like to retire, most do not know what is required. This is where many people prematurely jump into a financial plan. Analysis of what you have is the last step in determining your Retireability Factor.

First, your advisor needs to know you. What is your purpose in life, what is important to you, what challenges are you facing now, what opportunities would you pursue if those challenges disappeared, what are you passionate about? These questions help your advisor know you. They need to understand your life story because without it how can they know what is important to you?

Second, your advisor needs to know where you want to go. What is your life dream, the vision of your future you and your spouse discussed when you were just dating? Too often this is a black and white, out of focus picture of the future. It needs to be a widescreen BlueRay movie with surround sound. The more we are able to visualize our future the faster it becomes a reality. Make sure your advisor helps you clearly define your dream for the future. A clear vision of your future becomes the catalyst for making it a reality.

Third, now you will need to determine why this dream is truly important. Is this dream necessary or just a nice idea? Unless your dream is vital you will not put the required motivation behind it to make it a reality. So take a moment and consider why this dream is necessary for you to achieve.

Fourth, at this point your advisor should ask when do you want to make this a reality? Too often we push our retirement into the distant future, when most of us can start to retire now. Why not start doing now what you want to do in the future? How many people do you know delayed their desires until retirement only to miss their dreams because of health concerns or an early death? This is unfortunate because everyone can start to retire now. By making your retirement urgent you can enjoy now what many will wait for and lose.

Fifth, now comes the difficult question, how do we make this a reality? If your advisor knows who you are and where you want to go and you believe this is truly important and you would rather start sooner than later, then they will be able to do the analysis necessary to create a plan of action to make this dream a reality. Too often this analysis is attempted before these questions are asked and answered. The result is clients are unprepared. These questions set the stage for the last step.

Sixth, and finally. After the important questions are answered and understood, both you and your advisor can go through the analysis necessary to build a bridge to where you want to go. Now your advisor can ask what do you have and it will have a context and can be used in the analysis to determine how to build your action plan to take you from where you are to where you want to be in the future.

Too often advisors start off talking about the money and then never get back to asking you about your life. This results is prescriptions being written before proper examination and diagnosis has occurred. In the health care industry this is called "malpractice".

This conversation creates a different result. These six questions, asked in this order will assist both you and your advisor in creating a compelling future, and building a road map to achieve your dreams.

This conversation is not a fifteen minute meet and greet. To do this properly you and your advisor should set aside a couple of hours. You can not tell your story in a few minutes and your vision needs to be more than a vague concept.

If your advisor is not doing this with you, find someone. If they will not take the lead, then require them to slow down and listen to you first, before they try to give you a solution.

We will talk more about the "retireability factor" in the coming weeks. If you find the information helpful send it to someone you value.