Client Values and Goals #5 – Transcript

Episode details

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

goals, clients, tracking, achieve, advisors, conversation, important, values, milestones, people, big, year, change, helping, progress, portfolio, plan, bit, modifying, review

SPEAKERS

Fraser Jack, Cate Americano, Michael Topper, Craig Buntain, Tim Henry, Naomi Rosenthal

 

Fraser Jack 

Welcome back to the x y advisor podcast. I’m Fraser Jack. And today we are up to episode five of our six part series on talking all things around goals, goals, planning, values, based advice, all these great topics, which I love very much. And we up to the process we were talking about once a client have set the goals and this time to achieve them. That you know there’s there is a process involved around keeping people on track on progressing towards their goals, and of course, modifying and changing goals as they change along the way. Welcome back, Naomi.

 

Naomi Rosenthal 

Thanks, Fraser,

 

Fraser Jack 

thank you for coming on and taking part in this series. And as I mentioned, we’re up to that part of the time where people come in and progress and review and chat to you about their goals. And yeah, so let’s let’s dive into that part. How do you how do you go about that?

 

Naomi Rosenthal 

Thanks. So we have a very structured annual review process, where we compile an annual review document that provides the client with the I guess, underlying investment, advice that we want to give them for the for the coming year. And once we go through that document and the clients comfortable with the changes that we’re recommending, we then move to kind of part two of the conversation, which is really around what’s changed in their financial world. And what’s changed in their lives. And what are the goals are the goals that they had last year, and the same as the goals that they think they have now. And that’s for two reasons. One, is that the goals have shifted or two, it’s that they’ve refocused or they’ve hit the goal. And they’ve actually achieved a goal and kind of some of those conversations are my favorite.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yeah. Isn’t that fantastic? Yes, you achieve that goal. Fantastic. Now, let’s move on to the next one. And that’s probably where that original discovery meeting comes in. Very handy, because you might have had some that were unachievable in the past, and we can start to relook at them.

 

Naomi Rosenthal 

Yeah, absolutely. But I think you also tend to find that some of those original goals that one is higher priority or in conflict with others have resolved themselves. And so you never necessarily need to go back to those particular original goals, you’re now forming newer goals and different goals because they’ve moved to a different phase of their, their journey.

 

Fraser Jack 

Isn’t it funny? Yeah. So I think the other day, that meme the other day that it was a caterpillar and the butterfly, and the caterpillar said, You’ve changed and the butterfly says, Hey, we’re meant to, which is quite ironic for this part of the conversation. And so tell us about that, like modifying and tracking like that, when you are tracking goals, you’re tracking towards them, but it’s constantly being modified. And

 

Naomi Rosenthal 

Absolutely, I mean, change is the only certainty and that’s more relevant today than I think it’s ever been. You know, we living in very uncertain times, we’ve got uncertainty in investment markets, uncertainty and in how we’re living our lives. And people are needing to make kind of firm clear decisions in the face of uncertainty. And so, you know, the journey is really all about change. And, you know, I just, that’s okay. So, yeah, how do we help clients kind of accept that and track that it does come back to those? Well, what were the original goals? Where are you today? what needs to change? And how will that look going forward? How is that going to impact on, you know, the end picture for,

 

Fraser Jack 

you know, how important is it that this tracking process and setting milestones and tracking, tracking along those milestones and working out, you know, that are looking at first looking at that progress, but also looking at, you know, where they’re up to, and having that reality check from time to time?

 

Naomi Rosenthal 

Yeah, look, for some people, it’s much more important than others. So, you know, for some people, it’s not that big a deal. It’s not that much of a focus on the conversation for others. You know, they’re like, Oh, yeah, how are we going? And are we going to get There, are we going to be alright? And that’s where you know, you you want to, I guess give them comfort that you know you were here last year, you’re now at this point this year, is that still going to get you to where you need to be? Or do we need to up the ante. And sometimes those conversations can actually be quite challenging and hard. Because suddenly you’ve gone from a position of saying to them, you know, in the first year, hey, you know, we were building out this model, we’re building out this plan. This is how you put these steps in place. And this is how you’re going to get to where you need to be and tick off all those boxes. But perhaps they haven’t done all those things. Or perhaps they’ve changed their mind about those goals. And then suddenly, it’s like, oh, okay, what are we going to now? be achieving x, y, and Zed? And yeah, you need, I guess, in some respects, need to be very honest with the client around how that’s progressing for them. Yeah.

 

Fraser Jack 

It sounds a bit like, it’s really been the motivation and prioritization conversation that comes back again, is, you know, we said this was a goal you said it was you told me it wasn’t if you haven’t done the work, or you let it slip? Is it actually still a goal? Or, you know, what was the motivation gone?

 

Naomi Rosenthal 

Yeah, I think it looks like you know, we come into these things sort of having an idea or an ideal around what it is we’re trying to achieve. But if we haven’t put the work in, if we haven’t gone to the gym on our money, then how important is it? And so then it’s reflecting on that. Well, how important is it for you to achieve this goal? If you haven’t, if you’ve spent the last year doing nothing about it?

 

Fraser Jack 

Yeah, we’ll spend the last year spending the money on other stuff. Exactly. Yeah. And so obviously, this is a flexible process and needs to be a flexible process, how important is it to maintain that concept of you know, forever being flexible on these goals,

 

Naomi Rosenthal 

it’s highly important. Because there are also things that happen that are out of our hands, that which changes things, you know, a parent might get sick, and you’ve got to stop doing some work to take care of them, that’s going to have a huge impact, there are things external to our own ability to stay motivated and do the right thing, that very much will impact on our goals. And that’s probably more the case than people not sticking to what it is they’re supposed to do in the plan. You know, those external things. So redundancy will come come along and throw you for a six or you you won’t, you might become unemployed, and not get a redundancy, and then suddenly, you’re out of work for X number of months illness is a big one, that is gonna throw people’s plans out of whack.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yeah, it’s a really interesting part, isn’t it, because obviously, there’s, there’s obstacles that, you know, come along, and it’s a good idea to talk to clients about the idea of, you know, obstacles will come along, and just derail the plan, but that’s the idea, we sort of put some contingencies in place. And you also mean, some things that are out of your control, which is really interesting piece of this jigsaw puzzle, as well, because some of that sometimes markets drop, you know, you know, there is a global play pandemic, and markets drop, you know, a lot. And then, and so you’ve got to try and manage these expectations. And, you know, you as the advisor, there’s things that you control, as well as things out of control for client.

 

Naomi Rosenthal 

Absolutely. And, and, look, I think that’s one area where clients kind of feel the least in control of their stuff, because they’ve handed over in some respects that responsibility to us as their advisor, to give them the advice around where they should be investing and how things are going. And, of course, you know, we acknowledge and ensure they understand that we are not responsible for those markets, and we don’t have the crystal ball. And our role in our job is to really do two things. Firstly, I think sort of manage volatility in portfolios to ensure that we can keep them on track. And secondly, to have those conversations around the the fears that people have and and the emotional side of investing, to ensure that they don’t make decisions that are detrimental to portfolios. We, you know, we had a conversation this morning with the team where one of our advisors had recommended that a client not exit the markets at the bottom in March last year, when he was fearful and worried about his portfolio and thought, you know, I’m ringing you to talk this through and I feel like I should move to cash. And of course, we’ve said that is not a good thing. We’ll you know, shift the portfolio a little bit, but you really should stay invested. And of course, you know, sort of 15 months on also the clients up by 10% from where they were at the bottom of that market at least or 10% above where they started prior to that drop. And do the portfolio is doing great. And that’s where this, you know, the valuated device can come in is really around helping temper people’s emotional states when it comes to investing. Fantastic. Wonderful.

 

Fraser Jack 

Thanks, Naomi. We’ll we’ll catch you in the next episode.

 

Naomi Rosenthal 

Thanks, grazie. I’ll see you then.

 

Fraser Jack 

welcome back to this episode, Craig.

 

Craig Buntain 

Thanks, Fraser. Nice to chat again.

 

Fraser Jack 

Thank you. Now we’re talking about all things towards the tracking and progress of goals and helping clients stay on track when it comes to progress. And I love to call these sort of things progress conversations, rather than sort of reviews. But what are your thoughts?

 

Craig Buntain 

Yeah, I mean, we we have a specific review process. And we have we actually have different review processes for our different client segments. But But yeah, we use quite a few tools and quite a lot of conversation to track. One, how they’re going with sticking to the original plan to how circumstances in their life might have changed, which might necessitate the need to be flexible and change a few things up with their plan. And three, how economics and rule changes and things might lead to exactly the same thing changing plans.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yep. So So some of the things, of course, in that scenario are outside of your control. And I think that’s probably a good place to start with a conversation around, you know, keeping the clients on track with what they can control to start with.

 

Craig Buntain 

Yes, yeah, that and that is the main thing is making sure, after the kind of first implementation for for a new client that, you know, if they said that we’re going to put in some money a month into something, they’re doing it if they said that we’re going to implement their insurance policy, they’re actually doing it. You know, if they said that we’re going to stick to a particular budget, they’re doing it. So yeah, having regular touch points, is is probably the way that we manage that the best and it’s kind of different for the different service levels, but also different for the different life stages, I think for clients. Yeah, interesting life stages.

 

Fraser Jack 

And regular touch points is just on that one. How many touch points are you having with clients?

 

Craig Buntain 

Oh, yeah, once again, that’s dependent on the service in the life stage. So generally, it’s about for a year, including, you know, a proper annual review, not including just sort of your newsletter that everyone everyone gets. There’s generally about Yeah, generally about four touch points to check up on how things are going if anything’s changed, that sort of stuff.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yep. Fantastic. And that’s certainly a great opportunity to look at that progress. And where people are up to. Now, you mentioned the idea around original plan, and flexibility, how often, you know, like, we set goals in place with clients, but how often do they sort of change along the way, especially if they’re longer term?

 

Craig Buntain 

Yeah, well, probably more often than not actually could given legislative changes over the last 1015 years, I think, nearly every one, we’ve had to alter their plan in some way. But explaining that at the start, and explaining that, you know, your lifestyles going to change, your circumstances will change from now, you know, we a lot of assumptions are made when we do a lot of our financial planning stuff. And the main one is that everything stays pretty consistent. And we know that life just doesn’t work like that. So we’ve got to make sure that there’s a little bit of fat built in when it comes to cash flow stuff. And we’ve got to make sure that they’re flexible on even their priorities, in terms of the order of them, and we know which ones are going to take priority in particular circumstances and which ones might change and that’s something that we probably need to revisit more often than a lot of people are a lot of advisors have in the past, and I’m sure the way that we were all trained back 20 years ago when I started Yeah, this

 

Fraser Jack 

exactly right. There’s there’s, you know, with regular, those regular progress meetings towards goals, I think they were super important, but they’re also a great conversation. Like I mean, the you don’t really want to keep going and reviewing you know, the the product you set up six months ago, keep reviewing them on such a regular basis, you really want to make the focus to be around the clients and the goals and tracking towards them in the in the small things that behavior things that can take place.

 

Craig Buntain 

Yeah, just reviewing our product did doesn’t offer much value, they can get that in a statement from their, you know, their product provider effectively. So really working out whether, you know, other than whether that products still going to meet their needs. That’s probably the main part of the product conversation. The question is, how much is your life changed since last time, we, we we caught up Is it any other any spanners that have been thrown into the works You know, there hasn’t been In anything any windfalls you know, you know, the good changes and the bad changes, have you have you just been promoted or got a bigger bonus than you thought? And you blow on that on a boat or a jetski? Or are we going to do something with it?

 

Fraser Jack 

Yeah, exactly. Right. I love the I love the concept around bringing that forward and making it a part of the part of what you do. I mean, obviously, it’s very difficult for people to say, you know, five years ago, could you have explained exactly what you’re doing right now?

 

Craig Buntain 

That’s, that’s right. Yeah. And I suppose one of the things with that is not only are we regularly communicating with our clients, but in our service agreement, we’ve got in big, bold letters, that they are expected to communicate with us as well, because it’s a two way thing, we’re in this together. And if we don’t know that something’s changed in their circumstances, we can’t help them, you know, all their plan might be now wrong all of a sudden, so that they really need to communicate with us and keep us up to date.

 

Fraser Jack 

And by focusing on the goals, you think that means that they’re able to easily easy Li communicate with you what their changes might be, rather than actually making it about the change about bacon about the goal?

 

Craig Buntain 

Yeah, that’s exactly right. So, you know, generally, any of those pieces of information that change things will alter a goal. And it’s a matter of working out. Okay, well, is it just the priority that’s been altered? Or is it the actual goal itself? Or is that the timeframe? You know, things like, illness or injury, or we’ve decided to buy a bigger house? Does that mean all of a sudden, they need to work an extra three years so that they can still retire comfortably?

 

Fraser Jack 

Yep. And and humans being humans? You mentioned life stages before? Do you think there’s different for different life stages when it comes to this tracking and progress?

 

Craig Buntain 

Yeah, I think it is. And one of the things that we’ve got the we send out regularly is kind of a, how can we help you. And we send that out pretty regularly to all of our existing clients. And it’s basically just got a big list of life events. And then why any one of these events that has happened to you since last time we met might mean that we need to review things earlier than your scheduled review.

 

Fraser Jack 

Fantastic. All right. Well, thank you for that Craig will, will catch in the next episode, where we sort of wrap up the six part series, and we’re going to be talking about all things to do with the review process and how we then go forth. And, you know, I know you’ve got a lot of processes in place, but then talk to existing clients or new clients about a concept that we may not have introduced to them in the past. short break.

 

Fraser Jack 

Welcome back to the series, Cate.

 

Cate Americano 

Thanks Fraser

 

Fraser Jack 

Fantastic to have you now we were talking in this particular episode around the idea of tracking goals, you know, modifying goals along the way as they as they do, and keeping clients focused and motivated to achieve goals. Tell us about what you’re seeing in that space.

 

Cate Americano 

Yeah, I mean, the tracking systems always a fabulous fun, I love that the traffic like it always from a financial planning perspective, you need to have all the underlying numbers that our software spits out. But the things that I find that really resonate, is to have that fabulous visual on my head or behind, it’s a you know, where am I with my goals in relation to that? And have I have I achieved what I set out to achieve? Or have I it’s kind of overspend, you know, I’m looking at from the cash flow and your dad and your actual, obviously, then all of your investments and yeah, the businesses that do and financial planning practices that do that well have great visuals around. And clients naturally refer because they want to be able to chat to, you know, financial planners that can go down and can can give them that great insight.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yeah, I think a lot of planners come into their own here, because they’re, you know, we’re trained or advisors are trained in this concept of benchmarking and tracking and in the graph and understanding it, you know, the hidden behind compensation is a fantastic one. And I think it’s very simple for clients to understand. But I think this is where advisors really come into their own with the with our, you know, the numbers getting the numbers involved in the practical aspects involved.

 

Cate Americano 

Yes, absolutely. They so used to the, the numbers and the practical side of it. And so now, it’s just really putting a nice visual over the top of that, that is meaningful to the clients that they can resonate, and it makes them show up like I know, the financial planning practice that introduced that and clients were naturally more engaged in their annual progress meeting, and they naturally just referred.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yeah, I think I think a lot of this program is progress meeting is either realigning people back to get back on track, you know, working with their motivations. I mean, obviously, that’s really easy to do if you understand their values and what their goals are. So you know, that whole motivation technique of realigning people back to their values, but other than that, They can’t get their office, I mean, change because learning stuff happens all the time having that mental flexibility then modify the goals.

 

Cate Americano 

Yeah, absolutely. That is the flexibility around that or knowing what’s important. And that’s, you know, where the money is coming in as well, because you’re able to be able to go, you know, where was I last year? Where am I this year? So what’s the past? What’s if you’d like a current situation, how old I am I in alignment with that value, have I achieved what I wanted to set out achieve on it on that, then somebody is fixed, and they never change, and others actually actually get in alignment with them, there’s other values that tend to move up the list. And if there’s been a trigger point, or a change in situation might have gone from employed to self employed, you know, success and ambition and things like that might be more important as you move through those different phases of your life and transitions in life. So yeah, I see clients values actually changing over a period of time, even when I’ve done on my own, you know, as you age and go through different stages, but at all. So that that’s just like how to be God’s face conversation, you just incorporate that, you know, so you you’re either you’re either redoing their values, I would just be redoing their values each year to see what they are, and then getting them to read it and then having to see whether that’s what it was on last year, and on what’s changed, you know, asking what’s different with this year? Why and why is this value gone up? You know, you get to have another conversation around that. And it allows you to anchor your all your financial planning based goals around the new the new values, if it has been changed, as well.

 

Fraser Jack 

What are some of the values that you see that don’t change us? And some of the ones that do is a generally the highest priority value doesn’t change? Or is it? Is it more around the idea of an upbringing, your

 

Cate Americano 

Yeah, I think a lot of people will always have relation will I term it relationship, but only because I’m trying to house so many of my families kind of the one you can only have by so obviously family family is key family, that community says it’s that sense of belonging is so important to people and taking care of each other, it relates back to that whole meaning and matter and you know, purpose. So family will always stay in there in some shape or form, it just depends whether you to housing it in the values, kind of relationships. So I like me personally, I’ll put relationships as one of my number one values, and, but my divine relationship has the relationship with myself. And I put that as the highest priority. And this is probably something I learned on the way I used to put family and go, that’s the highest priority. And I realized that in order to be the best version of myself for my, for my family, for my clients, for my friends, for my you know, everyone else, I actually have to make sure that I’m okay, first and foremost, and then I can offer the best of myself to everyone else. So yeah, so I do relationship with yourself, your family, your partner, your kids, your friends, your colleagues and your clients, you know. So that family is definitely a big one. And health is also very equally important. You know, like a lot of people always have health as part of it, they want to be healthy, are they not important? And it kind of gets neglected? A bit along the way?

 

Fraser Jack 

Yeah, that’s a really interesting concept, we can go deep into their winter with regard to the mentioned self, that this is a really interesting part. Because I think a lot of values, you need to check it down to the self motivation. And you can call it selfishness. But at the end of the day, it’s really the idea of what do you what do you internally get out of that. And you mentioned something like before, the sense of belonging in a community could be a big part. But the sense of belonging is the sense that you feel not necessarily like if you’re doing something great for a community, and then you’re feeling appreciated that excellent. You’re helping but you’re also it’s that internal. It’s an internal drive of something that you personally are getting out of it, that often tends to be the driver.

 

Cate Americano 

Yeah, 100%, I heard a saying, our seminar, Aaron sensoneo said, and it was around, he calls that kind of calls at the three P’s. So it’s your passion, your purpose, and then your profit like that I do and then it’s called pure magic. But when you align all of that for a client, and when you’re able to actually have that complete alignment with it brings that meaning and matter and so we obviously do things for ourselves, but we are really striving to be able to align our passion and our purpose for a higher goal. whether we realize it or not, that’s kind of heading up that hierarchy, you know Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and trying to be to reach our true potential in order to be the best that we can be. Everyone, as we meet those needs, they go higher up in terms of that. So sometimes we get stuck in the ego needs or the materialistic needs and things like that. But as you actually Yeah, really bear down that, that those key motivators and you that sense of self and sense of purpose and what you can contribute to others. Yeah, and I’m sure have much deeper understanding relationships.

 

Fraser Jack 

Brilliant. Thank you, Kate, for sharing your wisdom with us. In this episode, we went a little bit deep there, talk about what happened to the next episode shortly. So if you’re, if you’re listening to this, the next episode will be around the idea of the review process. And we look forward to catching you in the next episode. Thanks, Fraser.

 

Fraser Jack 

Welcome back to this episode, Tim. Hello, Fraser. Great to be here. Fantastic. And of course, we’re talking about modifying and tracking and progressing towards goals and, and a little bit of that client motivations. Obviously, you know, things change and part of an advisors job is to keep clients on track and motivated as, as you know, progressing towards their goals. Yeah. Tell us about what you do in this space?

 

Tim Henry 

Well, I mean, it’s just only natural, isn’t it, that things are going to change for people and things are gonna need modifying. So, again, I think we’ve been we’re really wrapped with the processes and systems that we’ve been using the last couple of years, that make it really easy for people to give us changes to their goals through the system. Maybe there’s been a change to their situation, maybe there’s been a change their financial. So let’s get all that out on the table before we have another meeting with them. And when we go to have that meeting, we have already got that data on the table, and we can have that conversation. And then they could sort of say a few things have changed. So it’s okay, well, let’s, let’s modify a few things, and send you back out there in the world to have a crack at that.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yeah, fantastic. Now, do you find that sometimes those things may be, you know, the tangible things are, you know, we’re work reduced or expenses increased, or whatever they might be, but then some of them might be just a lack of motivation. And therefore, we need to sort of re explore if that’s a true goal. Well, I’m

 

Tim Henry 

going to start with the positive side of that first, because I, in the best case, the clients are smashing it so well, that it’s like, you know, we can, we can go even higher we can, we want to pay off our mortgage even faster, or we want to save for this holiday even faster, we want to save that deposit even faster, because they’re building momentum and momentum creates more momentum. So in a perfect world, we’re modifying like that. In a different world year, of course, you’re gonna have someone lost their job, or someone is going back to part time work or exciting, we’re having a baby, but not so exciting on the financial side of that, because we’re gonna go back to one income or whatever it is. So yeah, it can be that I would say mostly, it’s not a lack of motivation. I’d say probably 10% of cases, it might be that we need to modify something because they didn’t really give us the right data at the start, or they’ve been a bit unrealistic with a few things. Mainly, it’s just life has has forced some changes on them.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yeah, fantastic. And I love this positive side of it, too. When momentum kicks in, and all of a sudden, they dial things up and realize that sustainable and then want to dial it up a bit more.

 

Tim Henry 

Yeah. And well, let’s be honest, I think this is what we’re all looking for. If we were to design, if if you fried on you, and maybe you are doing this, you’re designing the prototype of the perfect advice business. Or the perfect device business would have perfect clients and perfect clients would come in. And they would keep modifying their goals in an upward direction, wouldn’t they? And that’s what we want. We want what we’re doing tech inspire them to aim for more.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yep. Interesting. That’s, that’s, and that’s the good news story. If we go back to that original, original thing, yet, there is really beside that those good news stories that we want them to be telling their friends as well.

 

Tim Henry 

Yeah. And I think well, let’s be honest, it’s those clients as well who are going to share the message. They’re going to say, you know, what, we just never believed. And this is why we get into what we’re going to touch on here is the power of tracking. Because we’re with forward looking in our mindset most of us and I think we will all have experienced a time when we are might say to you, hey, you’re going towards that goal and you’ll go a year just been so so if we actually got out the data and a sub phrase a year back, only a year ago, you you’re in this position. Now you’re in this position, you saying it’s not that important, that impressive, but that’s actually good. We could often need reminding of where we’ve come from. And this is the power of tracking those goals, because you can actually say, guys, you have have really done well, last year over the last two years, you’ve met these goals. And you’ve put these goals on the table now, and we’re shooting at higher. So it’s not just to remind them of motivate your reading. Oh, that is a great bonus into the mix. But it’s to give them that feeling of momentum like, yeah, we are we, we, we forgot that. I did that. Maybe people do this from time to time, but I had some clients that are worked out or been coming for 10 years. And so I went and found their original factfinder. And it was it was a funny moment, because they weren’t in a great situation 10 years before, and they’re like, wow, look how far we’ve come. And I think it’s just that reminder of Look how far we’ve come. Yeah, that’s the benefit of this long term relationship, conversations around and long term tracking.

 

Fraser Jack 

Now, milestones a fairly big part of this. Let’s throw that word in there. While we’re looking at being able to say, you know, we were trying to get you to here, it’s a long term goal. We’re trying to get you here and then tracking inside. Yeah, well, I

 

Tim Henry 

think even milestones. So while we might have a goal, to do something by a certain time, I think it’s important for us to try and think about how we can frame up some interim milestones on the way to that. So that when where I will receive with clients, because this is where that word modification or adapting, because if the plan, any plan is going to have flat spots or hurdles, this is where we’ve got to maybe adapt the plan. And or maybe think about, okay, we need to do something different differently here. Either we need to change, change the goal, or we’ve got to change some element of what you’re doing, if you want to keep on that path to that goal. And so this is where the real rubber hits the road on our advice, I guess, is helping give them that framework. And so three milestones are massive, I think, and in creating the infrastructure to be able to deliver that to them in a way that allows them to action at

 

Fraser Jack 

managing expectations. And as you said, just demonstrating what the momentum is, and if those expectations are out of this world or achievable. So just on this concept of achieving goals, you know, how important is it to you to have some sort of sort of short, shorter term goals in the earlier days that you can take off and then replace them with other goals?

 

Tim Henry 

Yes, well, I think, for getting in what the actual goals are, I think you’ve got to have short term. So again, it probably comes back to that momentum. Because you got to feel like you’ve achieving something. So even if let’s just pretend for one minute that someone only had one goal, and it was a long term one, I think we’d invent some short term goals slash milestones to help show progress and what and that’s part of the skills, I guess, our skills of helping someone view, big overwhelming goal and putting actionable steps in there and milestones that help you feel like the next step isn’t that big? We’ve just got to do that. That’s, that’s comes back to that human nature of I feel good when I achieve things. And when I looked down the look up, and if that’s a really big step, it feels too big. Yet, I’m not sure I can do.

 

Fraser Jack 

I feel like some of the the sometimes clients are just looking for a mission in some cases to to spend the money.

 

Tim Henry 

Yeah, yeah, there might be. Well, this is the the power I think of the systems that we’re using these days is we we can overlay multiple goals and say, can they all coexist? And if they can, let’s work out how we can do that. If they can’t, he’s the least one needs to do.

 

Fraser Jack 

prioritization.

 

Tim Henry 

And I’ll leave the room for five minutes and come back and tell me

 

Fraser Jack 

Whatever it is, Tim, thanks for catching up in this episode, I really appreciate your insights and how you in the importance of tracking progress towards goals. We’ll catch you in the next episode where we sort of round this out, look at the review process and talking to clients, new clients or existing clients that aren’t necessarily goals, clients about goals.

 

Tim Henry 

See you next week.

 

Fraser Jack 

Welcome back, Michael to this fifth podcast. In the six part series. We’re talking about goals, hopes, dreams, goals, aspirations, all things around goals based on values based financial planning. Thank you for joining us.

 

Michael Topper 

Thanks for having me.

 

Fraser Jack 

On this episode, we’re really talking about the concept of tracking in milestones and understanding what’s keeping a client motivated towards getting there or achieving their goals in line with their values. Tell me about what you are seeing in the space.

 

Michael Topper 

Yeah, it should be and it is with a lot of advisors becoming the foundation of the annual ketchups so Talk about reviews, as we said next week, but to have the clients goals where the client has got a vested interest in those goals, they chose them, because you had a tool that helped them do that. They expanded on them, because you asked them what they meant to them. They told you how important they are to them. And they’ve told you more or less when they want to achieve them, is it a short, medium or long term goal. And so it’s their goals. And you just helping them, articulate them and make them into SMART goals. And helping them put strategies around those goals to achieve them. So it’s something that’s very, very important to the client. And as we mentioned before, it’s something that they can understand, they may not understand the machinations and how to achieve those goals. But they certainly know that they’ve got a goal and when they want to achieve it by and they can tell when they have achieved that. Because you’ve turned it into SMART goals so that they can. So I don’t think you really need to keep the clients motivated. If they’re good goals, and they stretch goals. And they’re achieving some of them and they’ve got some nice big ones in the future. They should be itching to come in for a meeting for review. Not you’re trying to chase them up to go, Hey, we haven’t seen you for 15 months now you need to come in for a meeting.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yep. Now, now pallidus. May mentioned SMART goals. I love this my goal conversation. Now, obviously, the M is is around measuring or being able to measure goals and and track them along the process of you know, like, are we actually on track or not on track? You know, enter in the milestone conversation around tracking, if we’ve got milestones by the end of the month, by the end of the, you know, every month we need to be here, are we there or not? Little wins along the way, I guess, taught me how important that idea of tracking is.

 

Michael Topper 

Yeah, it’s really important. And you know, this is something that’s simple that everyone understands, which is going on holiday. So overseas. So the client has said, we want to go overseas. And that’s the goal. And we as we mentioned before, it’s really important to them, because their kids are reading is reaching a certain age. So then that’s fine. and the value that the advisor adds is, well, where do you want to go overseas? Well, we’d like to go to Europe, and in particular, these countries, so you add that into the goal to make it more tangible. How much money do you need? Well, we think it’s going to cost us 25. Grand, great, let’s add that in how you’re going to pay for it? Well, we’ve saved 10 grand so far, we think we can save another five in the next year. And we’re going to put 10 grand on the credit card or on a personal loan. So they it’s much more tangible, it’s getting broken down into the components, and then they can measure that. So have you got the 10 grand that you saved, yes, tick that box, are you saving 500 bucks a month to get you towards the 10 or 12 grand that you said you’d save by the time you go and have you cleaned the credit card app so that you’ve got 10 grand spare on there. And so just breaking it into those little components. And that just becomes a great way where the client can see here. Now my goal is to go to the airport on that particular day. And this is the things I need in place. And I’m I’m inching towards that. And it’s getting pretty exciting for me.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yeah, exactly. Now, also something that some of the conversations that it has to be had or at this point are around the idea of modifying goals of something especially, you could be tracking they could be getting, they really you could be getting there, there later or or not been able to have those sorts of things, or there’s something popped up, you know, there’s been a, there’s been something or an obstacle that’s jumped in the way. And obviously, the idea of that advisors can easily modify or help or work with the clients to modify goals.

 

Michael Topper 

Yeah, so some of those, you probably need some modeling tools to help you and ideally something that’s visual and simple to use in front of a client. And that’s powerful. So you know, client’s goal if they’re in their 50s, so 52 and 50, they might want to retire at 62, and 60. And then COVID, comes along and puts a bit of a dent in that. So to have live modeling tools where you can say there’s a number of options, you could spend less money in retirement, you could work an extra X amount of years, you could set a sacrifice, you don’t buy that car that you wanted to buy, or in retirement, you said you wanted to buy a new Corolla every four years, maybe that’s a new Corolla every seven years. But if you can do those that modeling live with a client and each decision that’s made, or each What if shows a visual outcome that improves this situation. That’s fantastic. Because the client buys into that because it’s their world unfolding in front of them up on the screen. And then to open the goals tool and say, Okay, well, let’s change this up. So you wanted to retire at 62 and 60. How about 64 and 62? And they might have been thinking they’ve got to work 270 so for them, it’s like okay, well, that’s actually not as bad as I thought. And we are saving some money. So let’s salary sacrifice and let’s downsize the house and get into a cheaper property. And that puts more money into super. All of those actions and strategies just help them realize that The goal is there, and they’re going to achieve it. But the goalposts might move a bit, and the edits that are made and the compromises made, are in the best interest of having a comfortable retirement, which is what they wanted in the first place.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yeah, I think I think a little bit and that modification process is really around saying, well, we really want this thing, when you really want something, there’s a level of pressure, I guess that becomes You know, there was a motivating pressure to do what I want to achieve or, or do succeed, sometimes that gets too much, then there, just the modification process can just relieve some of that extra pressure.

 

Michael Topper 

Yeah, and some calls just might get put on hold. So you wanted to do goal x, it’s going to cost you 30 grand, you’re not going to have the cash flow to do that in two years time. This is put it on hold, and we revisit the next year and see if we can pull it in or when it can be scheduled to be a goal again, that you know, if looking at your goals, and priority, that’s not a high priority, and looking at your values, it’s not a very important thing to you. So that enables us to put it on the sideline for a couple of years to keep you on track to get your more important calls.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yep. Fantastic, Michael, thanks for catching up in this episode. Really appreciate it. In the in the final episode coming up, we’re gonna start talking about the idea of the review process and helping existing clients introduced to the goals based advice world

 

Michael Topper 

fantastic.