Here at The Prosperity People we are blessed to work with a fantastic group of clients that we consider our friends. We adore it when folks send us photos from their dream trips abroad or drop us off chocolate treats from the sweet shop down the street. While all of these things make my everyday fulfilling, they are not why people hire us.
People hire us to assist them on their path to live their most prosperous life. Somewhere in the midst of all of that includes being an investment advisor, but at its core its about having the fun conversations, the no-so-fun conversations, and navigating the things that life hands each of us. While we strongly believe this is the best way to do business, its not the easy way to do business. Part of what makes what we do a challenge is having those hard, not-so-fun conversations.
I think back a few years ago while working with a couple new to The Prosperity People. Their biggest challenge to long-term success was controlling spending. For a period of months, they would talk about cutting expenses in order to live within their means and place less stress on their investments that were trying to recover from the market debacle of 2008 – 2009. While they were managing to move expenses from category to category, they weren’t reducing the overall spending strain on the portfolio. Their issue was compounded by the fact that the retirement assets they were spending were also creating significant tax liabilities.
I began to realize that they were hearing my “kudos” when spending in a category dropped much louder than they were hearing my overall warning. I had to grab this bull by the horns and somehow change the course of action. In the gentlest way that I knew, I broke the ice to them that inaction was unfortunately not an option. They were fantastic folks that I considered our friends, and I told them that:
“We don’t want to see our friends go broke, so you have to help us avoid that path and make substantive changes to your spending, or none of us are going to like the results.”
It was a moment I would have loved to avoid, but it was also a pivotal moment in that particular client’s path to prosperity. Over the next 6 months they transformed their budget, cut spending overall, and found more available resources to spend on the things that were actually important to them. Their investment accounts began to be utilized in a sustainable way and they were “donating” a considerable sum less to the Treasury Department.
Its conversations like this and countless others that make our job here at The Prosperity People considerably more challenging than the typical investment advisor who is mainly preoccupied solely with “how much to invest here and how much to invest there”. Its also why we feel the value we provide is hands down more than most folks with a similar shingle.
We encourage everyone to join our prosperity movement and approach financial planning and investment management from a different perspective. Please come and be our friends, but remember you aren’t hiring us for that reason. Folks hire us to be educated, accountable, and empowered to live their most awesome life. Please join in!