Profit and promises

Recently, I had the pleasure of speaking at the ‘Investing in YOU’ conference for female advisors held in Vancouver. I do love to talk. My mother used to say if I could figure out how to get paid for talking, I’d be rich. I’m still waiting on the rich part but on my way to financial independence one choice at a time for sure.

The best part of the event wasn’t presenting, though I did thoroughly enjoy that too. It was interacting with the women who attended the event and the other speakers. One person in particular stands out: Melanie Clarance, President of Contessa Capital and a Swiss banker. The reason I remember her so distinctly is she and I have a similar former working lives with our four-legged family members versus the two-legged ones who think they are so much more rational.

Melanie was a veterinarian until allergy asthma gave her two choices: live or be a veterinarian. Back in the day, I worked on farms with larger animals and was given a similar choice: live or work on the farm. I found it fascinating Melanie and I ended up on a similar path, although her story is a bit more impressive. I do imagine it was even harder to give up her former passion especially understanding how much work she put into her chosen career.

What I loved so much about Melanie’s message is her comparison of gaining rapid trust in the same ways with her clients that she used to with a patient and their owner in a crisis situation in her former career. I’m pretty sure that spending time with animals helps you develop a sixth sense that helps you understand when to move forward, when to back off and when to be firm. Melanie certainly demonstrated her sixth sense on stage as she very accurately compared dealing with animals and their people to dealing with people and their money.

It was fascinating to see someone relate what I understood from all of those years of figuring out when the horse trusted me enough not to kick me as I moved around a stall past his hind quarters, to the same sense you get from a client when they know they can totally open up. Melanie totally got that the same subtle signs those who can’t speak show us are present in those of us who can and just how valuable the ability to instinctually read those signs is.

You see when our clients don’t trust us, when they aren’t sure they are safe, they don’t open up. When they don’t open up, they could leave valuable and important information off the table, important information that could completely alter the results of your best-made plans. Client’s debt and spending comes to mind.

My talk entitled “Profit & Promises” was about how we can be profitable and keep our promises. How many advisor websites talk about holistic planning or speak on radio or TV about areas of finance they don’t necessary provide detailed advice on? My experience is many are inconsistent with what they show and what they do. We can do the right thing and make a great living, adding debt and spending to a financial plan. Valuable advice should be anything but charity work but we need to learn how.

One of the reasons that works so well for me is the same reason I understood Melanie so easily: rapid trust is key when working with clients assets but it is an absolute necessity when working with clients debt and spending.

The topic is simply more volatile and for the most part these days we handle it in one of two ways: math or shame. What do I mean by this? Recently a well-known financial journalist tweeted his surprise at the fact that when his publication runs stories about debt they are the most popular, yet the debt issue doesn’t seem to be getting better. My snappy reply was there was fundamental problem with trying to inspire financial change through the use of math or shame. Math, as in showing people a budget and what they could cut out or where they are spending too much or shame as in “How can you be such an idiot to be carrying so much debt?” Can you see the problem? Would you permanently change an ingrained behavior because someone shows you logic, or called you stupid? Not likely.

Trust is special and clients can’t trust anyone who is busy judging them. Think closely about what your tone, your body language, or your language around money, particularly debt and spending, is telling your clients. Are they anticipating judgment if they were to discuss their debts with you? Do they feel you see debt as something that only foolish people struggle with? Do you feel badly about your debt levels and try to cover it with distain for the debt levels in this country?

If you want to get the whole story from your client you need to build rapid trust, even a hit of judgment could cause them not to open up. Think closely about what you say and how you say it.