Whether you are a fan of Rachel Ray or Julia Child or Emeril Lagasse, consider this for a moment: why have they chosen to openly share their hard-won trade secrets with millions of people? Rather than simply open a restaurant and make their famed dishes night after night for their fans to consume and delight in, they open up their cookbooks for others to actually do what they do. Think about that.

I don’t claim to be Emeril, but I take very seriously the responsibility to educate clients about the choices available to them in the world of financial services and products. In fact, my biggest fear is that a client of mine is asked why they own a particular financial product and they respond by saying “because my guy sold it to me.” Unacceptable.

As I share often, particular financial products are neither good nor bad. They just sit there on a shelf until someone puts them to use. Instead, it is how they are put to use that determines their effectiveness…their “goodness” or “badness.” Translate: if you own a “bad” product, it usually means it was sold to you for the wrong purpose.

The great chefs understand the role of education in their process. They understand that their willingness to educate their “clients” turns them into raving fans instead of remaining customers. It’s a big difference.

Caveat: raving fans are those who actually use the cookbooks and make the dishes described in the recipes. The same works for recipients of solid financial education and advice. If you don’t really want to know how things work, that’s your decision. The best relationships and outcomes involve both the educator and educatee to share the same goal. That’s when the magic happens.

The clearer your intentions, the better the outcome you can expect to achieve. This sounds simple enough, but the very concept of becoming clear on one’s intentions involves doing something really, incredibly difficult. Saying no.

You may argue that saying no is easy, but that’s really a misnomer. For example, what if I offer you two choices: 1. a fully-paid trip to Hawaii, or 2. a fully-paid trip to Des Moines, Iowa. Which do you choose? That’s easy, Des Moines. Wait, what? Why would anyone choose Iowa and say “No” to Hawaii? Oh, the child you and your spouse have been hoping to adopt for six years is being born tonight in Des Moines. Pack your bags.

Choosing investments, insurance, and financial products offers the same reason to take pause. After all, Mutual Funds and Exchange Traded Funds both offer an opportunity to diversify among asset classes. So which is better? Wrong question. Instead, the question should be “Which is better suited for a 62 year-old with $1.7 Million of investable assets, considerable investing experience, immediate income needs, high tax bracket, and concerns over inflation?”

You see, advisors have a tough job, but it’s one with incredible opportunity baked-in. We ask thoughtful, probing questions until we arrive at the client’s clearest intentions. We help the client anticipate the consequences of their decisions as they relate to future tax consequences, income and liquidity needs, risk exposure, and asset transition to heirs. Without a definable and consistent process to inspire and capture the client’s intentions, choices are simply too vast and too difficult to align with the client’s desired outcomes. In other words, we help people say “No” to options that don’t fit their needs and “Yes” to those that do.

Clarity is the true currency of a financial plan.

Without clarity, you might as well just buy any old financial product. After all, maybe it will grow in value or maybe it won’t, but who can control these things? With clear intentions, you can.

Ask us about our proprietary Four Dimension Review Process and discover how you can take back control and find money falling through the cracks in your life. Check us out at www.FourthDimensionFinancial.com

One of Malcolm Gladwell’s bestselling books, Blink, attempted to change how we trust the way we process information. He asserted that people with many years and countless hours spent studying and working in a discipline could take in massive amounts of data and make surprisingly accurate assessments of the situation in the blink of an eye. He called this ability “rapid cognition” and it has myriad implications.

We all use rapid cognition in any number of ways. Everything from dating (love at first sight) to hitting a curve ball in baseball allow us to use this hard-wired or hard-won superpower to become expert.

In the context of financial planning, I ask you this: can the tools required for rapid cognition be shared with others? More specifically, can the benefits of an advisor’s rapid cognition be put to use for your benefit? After all, thousands of hours invested in studying, analyzing, synthesizing, and applying financial principles and strategies give us advisors more blink-ability than someone who doesn’t have the same experience. But can I translate that into value for you, my client?

Here’s how we do it: we have learned that most people make financial decisions using myths, misconceptions, and misinformation and don’t see the consequences of those decisions until years later. To help people anticipate this unfortunate experience, we choose to teach clients the questions to ask themselves and their other advisors before making financial decisions. Questions like “How will this plan affect my future tax liability?” can allow the client the benefit of seeing into the future to avoid missteps.

The best we can do for our clients is to help you see the choices available to you through our eyes – the very eyes that have amassed years of experience studying the outcomes of others’ financial decisions. In other words, our ability to “Blink” can be transferred to your decision-making if we choose to engage you in the process. If you feel like you’re being sold a questionable outcome, ask yourself if you’re being taught the right questions to ask before risking your hard-earned wealth.

If you are nearing or at-retirement, contact us today at (419) 931-0704 to go through our no-obligation Four Dimension Review Process.  Learn the right questions to ask before making financial decisions.

When known problems become “news” and we finally respond to it once it’s “official,” what does that say about our collective wisdom? The S&P downgrade of the US debt cannot possibly be a surprise to anyone who has paid attention. Since late 2007, the alarm has been sounding and each successive legislative move has only exacerbated the problems of our fiscal policy. Yet…this news is somehow news.

As I write this, the Dow is down over 600 points and gold is at $1,720.

A rating of AAA should mean something. For years, it hasn’t meant what it should have. When a country comes within hours of defaulting on its debt payments, it’s hard to argue that it should maintain it’s pristine rating. Do I wish the downgrade hadn’t happened? Yep. Do I think it’s unjustified? Look at the numbers.

Even the best teams have to lose from time-to-time to find their identity. Too much swagger generally precedes the fall. Winners get up and fight like an underdog. Let’s hope we still have it in us.

“I love writing, but I wish I had time to write more.” My words, written about two months ago.

The last year-and-a-half have been an amazing time for me personally and professionally. I ended an endeavor that allowed me to begin a process that has been truly amazing. The search for the next big idea led me to experiment with various angles on the business I have been a part of for over ten years. I’ve done coaching, writing, consulting, video production, and more.

Each new pursuit offered an incredible opportunity to learn new skills, ask new questions, and gain new perspectives. Through it all, I kept writing. If you look back at my writing (here and here) you will discover what I did. The writing and blogging process is a form of intellectual and vocational stretching for me.

When an athlete stretches, they aim to increase blood flow and oxygen to their muscles, freeing them up to perform their endeavor at a much higher level. Beyond that, they learn to read various parts of their body for those little messages that will tune them into possible injury warnings as well as signals that allow them to reach further and faster.

It turns out that, for me, writing is much the same as stretching. Now that I have gathered the information I need to perform the work that I’m passionate about, now that I can respond to my intellectual signals in a new way, I write less and DO more. Where once, I needed to process the ideas by writing about them, now I find myself acting on those ideas instead.

Up until this realization, I wasn’t okay with my lack of attention to my writing here and elsewhere. I have discovered that writing here is as much about my own discovery process as it is trying to help you with yours. The benefits are two-way, but I can’t pretend to focus on discovery when it’s time to get intensely focused on doing the work that is so valuable to my clients.

I’ll be back, but only when the need to discover the next step requires it. Until then, keep discovering, and get to doing.

When your dream gets stuck, how do you go about getting it unstuck?

Yesterday, I was struggling to see why one of my goals was still important. Have you ever had that feeling? It’s like you’ve reached a point where that elusive goal no longer seems worthwhile in the whole scheme of things. This is very dangerous ground. I suspect that this is where we get stuck and dreams get laid to rest.

I began to reply to an email from a good friend. During the course of writing the email, something happened that changed my motivation regarding the goal in question. By writing about my struggle with the goal, I asked myself “What will reaching this goal allow me to do for others?”

It began a series of connected goals that are way bigger than me. If I do this, then I get to do that. On and on it went until the original dream not only seemed doable, but it seemed too small.

Yes, now the work of doing the work continues, but the nature of the work has changed from drudgery to excitement. In fact, I can clearly see a visual map of the outcome of all of this stuck-ness turned into output. The result is a lot of positive impact for a lot of people. This results from an idea, the courage to pursue it, and the failure to understand that it’s impossible.

You know those goals that you have that keep getting updated and changed and diluted and ultimately erased from memory? (New Years Resolutions anyone?)

What happens to those goals? Where do they go? I am convinced that they live on in the abyss of our collective psyches in the form of regret, defeat, and sadness. We fail to reach our goals so we stop trying and then secretly get mad at others who do try and ultimately succeed.

Here’s my example: I have been pathetic at getting my posts written for this blog lately. Sure, there are myriad excuses, many of which are really valid and actually quite cool and exciting. But those don’t get the work done. Do you know what happened? Quick story:

We recently moved offices. As a result, my desk setup changed and now my laptop power cord is less-than-portable. That means that I don’t take my laptop home nearly as often as I once did. Guess when I typically do my writing? At night with my laptop. When my laptop sits in my office tethered to my desk, blog posts die in my head and never see the light of day.

The same has to be true for all of us. The simple routines and the environments we work in have a profound effect on out productivity and our ultimate level of internal success. Please consider your goals and ask yourself what environmental factors are having a direct influence on your goals being reached.

Sometimes, it’s the little things that keep us from the big things that we really desire.

The regalia of the Super Bowl is awfully tough to beat. As I’m watching and taking it all in, I’m thinking to myself “How can we create similar WOW experiences for our clients?” Naturally, the outfits adorned by The Black Eyed Peas at halftime are one option for creating a WOW experience, but the new light of morning convinced me that I may want to consider a different route.

I wonder if you feel this too: when the game ends and the TV finally gets turned off, I feel lousy. I feel a strange sense of empty that makes me wonder what happened. After all, just moments before, I was caught-up in the moment where we all witness a new Champion born. Now I feel empty.

Sports is a unique experience, where a huge and very visible group of people all compete for the very same prize. They know the rules, they know the cost, and they are free to give each other concussions and broken collar bones in an effort to win that coveted prize. We all watch. Everyone loses except just one team.

Ask yourself this: “What is the Super Bowl for you?”

What prize are you competing for? What cost is calculable and warranted for reaching that prize? What will you tell your team on Monday morning when it’s time to get back on your practice field?

The “post Super Bowl let-down” is that moment when you realize that you just witnessed someone else’s dream fulfilled and you have yet to truly define your own dream. How can you rally your team, how can you determine what price is worth paying? How will you know when you’ve won?

If you are feeling kind, feel free to “like” this page above. I would appreciate it.

Another one down. Reflect. Rest. Reach for new heights.

Thanks so much for reading. I hope you have been inspired at least once to grow into the business you are capable of building. I learn more writing that you probably get in return, but that’s probably how you feel when you help a client. Givers gain, right.

Thanks again. See you next year.

Recently, I’ve been showing up in my local media. The biggest news station in our area has been asking me questions about financial and economic topics. Things like budgeting, debt reduction, preparing for financial crises. Foundational stuff, really.

There was a moment when I thought I should be talking about higher-level things like sophisticated risk management, asset allocation, tax reduction strategies, and the like. Then I realized something:

We all have the same basic challenges concerning money. You don’t? I don’t believe you.

Why not talk about mass challenges, if you’re using mass media? Once this hit me, I started having a lot more fun with it. You can see in this recent interview that had a little fun with it.

Click here because I’m not smart enough to figure out how to embed the the video on this blog.

I think most agents and advisors should aspire to do some media appearances. It’s fun and it can be leveraged into a broader publicity and marketing effort. It may even help some people in the process.

Worst case: it compels you to replace those old ties with a couple of new ones.

Please comment and “Like” this blog above. Thanks.