by Lewis J. Walker, CFP®, CRC®
Lewis J. Walker, CFP®, CRC®, is president of Walker Capital Management Corporation and Life Transitions Advisors LLC. He is a founding shareholder of The Strategic Financial Alliance Inc., an independent broker-dealer in Atlanta, Georgia. Walker can be contacted at lewis@lifetransitionsadvisors.com.
In 1995, Dick Wagner and George Kinder, founders of the Nazrudin Project, affirmed that “money is more than numbers.” The word “holistic” crept into the planning lexicon as we recognized that issues of money and finance should be related to the whole person, to issues surrounding life—now and going forward.
Life planning ... financial life planning ... life transitions planning ... are all terms frequently used. What do we really mean? How does a left-brained adviser move into conversations that frequently are right-brained and emotional? Isn’t this touchy-feely stuff a bit too much? How do I get comfortable with topics for which I have received little training? What are my boundaries? I’d like to share my approach in this inaugural article for the Journal’s new Life Planning column.
The World English Dictionary defines holistic as “of or relating to the medical consideration of the complete person, physically and psychologically, in the treatment of a disease.” In financial planning parlance, holistic means a plan that goes beyond money, a comprehensive life planning approach that integrates finances into a bigger picture. What is important to the client, and how do we build a financial and life transitions plan around that? Like a holistic physician, we wish to combine meaning with money in framing strategies that consider the whole person and family.
Get Me to the Next Stage of My Life
Pamela Yip is the financial columnist for the Dallas Morning News. Her readers cover a broad spectrum, but she finds their desires similar to those of high-net-worth investors. Yip noted that those who contact her want an adviser they can trust, someone who is approachable, and someone with whom they can share intimate details of their financial life. They want an adviser “who is not selling me something just to generate a commission,” but rather “an adviser who can help me to get to the next stages of my life.”1
Mitch Anthony, in his book Your Clients for Life,2 identified 61 life transitions that confront individuals and families. Think about life’s journey as a series of challenges—marriage, birth of a child, education, career decisions, buying or selling a home, building a business or profession, divorce or separation, death of a spouse or other loved one, widowhood, major illness or accident, disability, caregiving, financial hardships, etc. Life transitions may be happy and fulfilling events, or sad and draining. They may be planned for or dealt with on a crisis footing. As we mature as individuals and as practitioners, we will deal with more and more major events in our own lives, within our families and circles of friends, and within our client base. As we do so, we advance in knowledge and wisdom.
Money conversations should be replaced with life transitions conversations. Joseph Pine and James Gilmore popularized the concept of “the experience economy.” A business must orchestrate memorable events for its customers, and that memory itself becomes the product. The product is the experience!3
Baby boomers live in the experience economy. As you deal with aging boomers and their parents, the conversation you have with them about their life—about meaning, purpose, concerns, challenges, alternatives, solutions, resources, capabilities, and expectations—becomes the experience.
You have solid technology and good products and services. So does your competition. Everyone is a “financial adviser” or a “wealth manager.” Not everyone is a life transitions conversationalist. It is the deep, holistic conversation they will remember, and refer.
How do you start the conversation? Ask questions. Dan Sullivan of The Strategic Coach remarked, “I’ve always believed that it’s more important to have really great questions than really great answers. Really great answers tend to close things down, while really great questions open things up.”4
Study the precepts of “appreciative inquiry.” Appreciative inquiry generally deals with asking questions, getting the back story, going deeper in exploring the client’s purposes, goals, challenges, fears, alternatives, resources, and expectations. Appreciative inquiry focuses on four processes: discovery, dream, design, and delivery.5
We wish to discover the client’s purpose, values, strengths, successes, and aspirations in life areas, including family, work, spirituality, community, finances, health, and other key facets. In the dream phase, visualization is key—articulating a life vision that matches hopes, expectations, and values. The design phase encompasses the development of strategies focused on key goals, a plan to align goals with resources, and prompts to move clients to action. Delivery is prioritization and implementation of what will work well, periodic reviews, course corrections, or new planning points, all the while maintaining the client’s sense of enthusiasm and engagement in the planning and advisory process.
Appreciative inquiry starts with a conversation and should be aligned with the precepts of fiduciary practice. From the first conversation with a client, the seven principles from the Code of Ethics and Professional Responsibility published by Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards should be kept in mind. The standards provide a useful guideline for CFP® practitioners and other credentialed advisers. It may be a bold statement, but in this writer’s opinion, you cannot meet a fiduciary standard relative to the complexities of a person’s life, or a family’s raisons d’être, without mastering, delivering, and maintaining a life transitions planning process.
A holistic conversation should be friendly, a true dialogue based on honesty, candor, objectivity, impartiality, intellectual honesty, empathy, sensitivity, and courtesy—while respecting confidentiality.
Can I Really Go There?
A fiduciary knows what he or she does not know. A concierge in a fine hotel may not know how to cook a gourmet French meal, but he or she knows where to find one. We need to acknowledge our boundaries. When it comes to the finer points of a significant life transition, outside experts should be called in as part of a professional resource team. Divorce, health care, aging, grieving, business continuity or succession, living and testamentary estate planning, challenges involving minor or adult children, special needs planning, philanthropy, and other major issues call for expert counsel. Your goal is to develop a platform of resources and team-based capability.
Get involved in FPA. Attend local, regional, and national meetings. Pay attention to the speakers, and those who write for this publication and others. You will meet and discover future-focused thought leaders in life planning and ancillary topics. Writers, speakers, and pioneers in life planning and appreciative inquiry such as George Kinder, Ed Jacobson, Susan Bradley, Mitch Anthony, Dick Wagner, Carol Anderson, Roy Diliberto, Amy Florian, Ben Coombs, Bill Bachrach, Todd Fithian, and others have produced a wealth of intellectual capital and coaching resources that can be tapped. Google those names; expand your digital Rolodex. Hire a coach; the investment of time and money will be worth it.
The overall goal in mastering holistic conversations and the precepts of life transitions is to further develop a well-defined, interdependent, and sequential framework, and apply it to a series of client challenges that include, but transcend, traditional approaches to money, retirement, estate planning, and business planning issues. Additional education, and potentially coaching, is central to your growth and development as a fiduciary, and as a valued adviser, set apart from the ordinary and product-centric approaches.
The concept of life planning is not new. Humankind has been transitioning ever since the first little band wandered out of the cave. What is new is the number of people experiencing major life change based on the demographic wave, and the realization by advisers that we have to have a greater depth of understanding of what happens to clients during these times.
Since the first class graduated from the College for Financial Planning in 1973, as advisers we have grown in knowledge, wisdom, capability, and public acceptance. Combining life planning and fiduciary responsibility, we have an opportunity to deepen our value proposition. As Pamela Yip’s readers articulated, clients want you to go beyond money, help them with the intimate details of their lives, and provide a road map and ongoing counsel as they journey to the next phase of life.
It all starts with a conversation.
Endnotes
- FPA Business Solutions Conference in Dallas, Texas, March 3, 2010.
- Anthony, Mitch. 2006. Your Clients for Life: The Definitive Guide to Becoming a Successful Financial Life Planner. Chicago: Dearborn Trade Publishing.
- Pine II, B. Joseph, and James H. Gilmore. 1999. The Experience Economy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
- Buford, Bob. 2004. Finishing Well: What People Who REALLY Live Do Differently! Brentwood, TN: Integrity Publishers.
- Jacobson, Edward A. 2009. “Appreciative Financial Planning™: Harnessing the Power of Appreciative Inquiry for Your Advisory Practice.” Investments & Wealth Monitor (November/December).
Don’t miss Lewis Walker’s presentation at FPA Retreat 2012 this May on holistic planning for aging clients. Find out more at www.FPARetreat.org.
Want to discuss these issues with colleagues or pose questions to the author? Visit the life planning community at FPA Connect to take part in the conversation.
