The Role of an Advisor and Coach in Your Life, Business, and Finances – Episode 331

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[00:01] Welcome to the Prosperity Podcast. On this episode of the Prosperity Podcast, we’re going to be talking about the role of an advisor and coach in your life, in your business, and in your finances. And we’re going to see, we’re going to plead the case to see if it makes sense for you. So, Kim, we’re going to welcome you on stage to help plead this case. Well, I love this space because I have attended a coaching program for businesses called Strategic Coach since I was about 24 years old, I believe. And I remember when I started, I thought, if I can get a handle on this now, how awesome I will be set for life. And then what I realized over time that the coaching and the learning wasn’t something to get a handle on as a one and done thing.

[00:58] It was something to get a handle on the fact that I needed it forever. And I literally have attended that coaching program every 90 days since 1994 without fail. That shows a level of commitment. I’d even say it shows a level of humility. And notice the top performers out there, they still have coaches. And so let’s uncover this. Let’s figure out why. Why is it that even top performers seek out coaches and advisors? Well, you picked up on a good thing. And that space of humility, that beginning with a beginner’s mind or attending with a beginner’s mind is so valuable. And it’s something that I sometimes do a better job with than others. You know, we really can learn anywhere. There’s a great saying from a friend of

[01:53] mine named Wade. He says, you can’t learn less. And actually, I was just at an event recently that appeared to be the type of event that I could go to and be like, yep, know this, know this, yep, yep, yep. And somebody asked me, like, why do you still come? It wasn’t this coaching program or something else. But I said, I always learn something. You can’t learn less. There’s always something to pick up. And I know Todd, my husband, who has taught truth training for over 30 years, still knows. Absolutely. He identifies it, in fact, that he learned something at every truth training. This is the teacher in the room. And somebody will say something, or they’ll ask something in a certain way. And he’ll be like, oh, that’s it. Like,

[02:39] that’s my thing. I learned this trip. And sometimes there’s one every day. So that attending with a beginner’s mind, super, super incredibly important. Okay. So the beginner’s mind. And so that looks like there’s two sides to this coin. You have the beginner’s mind, the person that’s going to be moldable. But then you also have seeking out and getting the right advice and the right guidance. So you have to navigate both of those sides, both sides of the coin. So how does a person do that? Well, that’s such a great question because the gaining of coaching knowledge, the outside perspective that’s so important is, I think, part of that two sides of the coin there. And what’s interesting to me, Emma Dogg, is letting us know that the UPS man is here,

[03:30] just in case you can hear that in the background. We’ll say hello to Emma. There we go. Yeah, I thought the door was shut. It’s not. Okay. So the importance of this space is also that outside perspective that causes us to learn because the outsider’s perspective is not emotionally tied into whatever our issues are. And so adding financial advice, a money coach, if you will, to the discussion is really critical because whether we’re being coached on our health, our business, our money, that outside detached perspective is so helpful. And then, frankly, to drill down on the money side, I’m kind of skipping ahead here maybe, but the money side, we all know that those of us in our, let’s say, 20s to our 60s did not get any financial education in school. I mean, everybody’s always

[04:32] amazed at that. And decades upon decades upon decades have gone on with no financial education in school. Oh, well, let me stop. You got maybe trained on how to buy stocks, right? Like if anybody had, quote, financial education in school, it was maybe a class where you did some paper trading so that you could learn a little bit about stock market. That’s not financial education. That’s so true. Yeah. I mean, we’ve had decades of people go through high school and college with no financial education. So we have all these adults out here in the world that literally do not know how to handle their finances very well. Not the basic stuff, you know, they can balance a checkbook. Maybe it doesn’t matter. Their online systems do that for them

[05:12] now. But there’s no knowledge of investments. There’s no knowledge of any investments outside of the stock market. There’s no knowledge about how interest rates are calculated, how to look at mortgages properly. Everybody is subject to a sales job by the financial institutions, the banks, the brokerage houses, the insurance companies, you name it, that are out there handling our money. And so a financial advisor, I like that term best. They go by many names, but a financial advisor can come in and help them. And this is the other critical part to any type of coaching, take a shortcut. They can help them take a shortcut to gain the knowledge quicker so that they can implement and do the work. Now, there’s absolutely a lot of the work that still takes time.

[06:02] But think about this in any realm, whether we’re talking about our physical bodies and the eating and the workouts that we do, whether we’re talking about our businesses and the marketing or the creation or production that we do. If you can get a shortcut, that is so valuable and it’s worth paying for, and it’s worth delving in and doing the homework for, and it’s worth being humble so that you can listen for. And these are all spaces that a coach slash advisor can help us get better results quicker because they are detached, they are unemotional, they are with experience, and they are capable of helping us see things that we wouldn’t maybe not see ourselves. Beautiful. So the shortcut, and I think that ties in

[06:58] with a thought that I had recently, I shared with others. And I was thinking, and I would love some insight on this, that there’s three ways to learn, meaning we can learn from others’ experiences and mistakes, or we can learn from the mistakes that we have, meaning the first time we make a mistake and hopefully we don’t repeat it, or we’re learning and relearning from multiple mistakes we make. And so you’re saying the shortcut is learning from others, their insights, without us having to go through a pain or through a process. Correct. And when those teachers, coaches, advisors freely share the mistakes that they’ve made, then we can learn from those super valuable. And then furthermore, that

[07:49] disconnection that just enables them to see through things that somebody too close to the picture is not going to see through. Okay. So can you help us, because of all of your years of coaching and the work that you’ve done, what are some of the things that we should be looking for in that advisor relationship? Because there’s what’s written on blogs or talked about, and then there’s the reality of what is really happening. So can you help us unpack that and understand the language and the thinking? Yeah, I think that’s a great question. And one of the first things that people need to pay attention to is just how they feel in the presence of that person. Even if it is just over the phone, human beings have a excellent

[08:39] ability to very quickly discern whether there’s a good match there. And it’s not even a right or wrong. Two people could agree to disagree on one coach slash advisor, and they could both be 100% right, because that advisor could be correct match for one person and not a correct match for another. And I’m always encouraging prospects, especially if they’ve interviewed two or three different people in this alternative investment slash whole life insurance space, I’m always encouraging them to pick the person that you want to work with. It doesn’t really matter what company doesn’t really matter about a lot of ancillary things. But that relationship and that gut reaction visceral level feeling super, super important. Okay, so you have the gut reaction.

[09:29] And then the next phase would be, is there some type of due diligence? Or are we just jumping into a honeymoon? Well, I think it’s absolutely critical to do due diligence. And thank goodness on the web these days, that’s a piece of cake to do. So yes, you want to dig in, you want to look at their LinkedIn profile, you want to read any blog posts that they have out there, listen to podcasts that they have out there, grab books, grab YouTube videos, grab any other audio thing that they might have available, you know, if they’ve maybe done a webinar or something that’s recorded anywhere. And you can do a lot of due diligence ahead of time. And some people, of course, are going to be more research oriented. And that’s great.

[10:07] Always ask prospects like how do you learn best? Do you listen? Do you watch? Or do you read? And then I try to guide them towards the main mode of learning that they facilitate so well for themselves. And then I think the Q&A interview is paramount. You want to get on the phone with somebody and you don’t want them giving you a presentation necessarily. And maybe that would be valuable for a little bit, 15, 20 minutes max. You want to ask them questions and you as a prospect are going to have some of your own good questions. And then I think, too, there are some basic questions that must get asked in this environment. Compensation, of course, is one of them. How do you work? You know, for example,

[10:53] I do Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, business hours, central time only, and all by phone and web. That’s not for everybody. Thankfully, it’s for a large percentage of the population. But I just had a situation the other day where somebody lives in Hawaii. We have lots of clients in Hawaii, absolutely positively wants to meet somebody face to face. Well, that’s not going to happen. So great. Let’s get them into somebody else’s hands. And that’s a real obvious one. But there are absolutely others in this specific financial advising space. I think it’s really important that you ask up front, for example, if you’ve decided that you want to get out of the stock market, stock market is at least for the bulk of your money, no longer the place that you’re

[11:39] comfortable with, then you need to be asking up front what investments this person likes to work with. Because if they’re a stock market fan, then that’s immediately not going to be a good match. Same is true if you’ve decided that you want to work with whole life insurance, you want to learn about it, and you want to be taught how to make it fit in, you need to be asking a potential advisor what their feelings are about that specific product. Because, again, if they happen to be, you know, we’ll go to the other side of the table this time, if they absolutely dislike the product, and that’s always an interesting term, how can you be emotional and like or dislike a product, but people, people are,

[12:17] then that’s not a good match for you. If you have somebody that’s disliking a product, they’re not going to do a good job of teaching you how it might fit in. So those are a couple good questions. So three good questions, really compensation, and then getting specific about alternative investments or stock market investments, or whatever it is that you like to do. And then also getting specific about savings and liquidity and where people should store that kind of thing. There’s another one that’s come up a few times recently that’s really interesting to me. And that is this idea of paying zero tax, or the scarcity approach that says, let’s reduce our income so that we pay less tax. That is a strategy that to me is a complete race to the bottom. And I wouldn’t ever want

[13:03] my clients to try to do that. But I’ll have people ask about it. And so I’ll share with them that perspective. And most of the times they’re like, Oh, yeah, it’s not really what I want to be going for. Well, that’s something you should get clear on. Because if you have an advisor that’s trying to help you with this race to the bottom of paying zero tax, then that’s a completely different approach to our maximize, optimize, let’s get as big as we can, let’s pay as much tax as possible. I mean, of course, we want to minimize our tax, but paying a lot of tax means we made a lot of profit. Let’s go after that open ended up scaling heads up out of the water looking around opportunity, you know, prosperity focused approach, as opposed

[13:49] to this race to the bottom zero percent scarcity minded approach. Those are the types of things that I think we should be asking potential advisors and getting clear on ourselves. Not easy, which is most important to us. Well said. You know, I think for listeners that are looking for an advisor in their life, be it with their finances, it could even be with other aspects of their life. When you talked just a moment ago about that prosperity mindset, that really sets the stage for almost everything else. Because you know, when you have a conversation with a person and the first thing they want to do is run to price, and they’re wanting a deal and they’re using that kind of language, we almost already know

[14:35] what pathway they’re going down. But if we hear a prosperity thinker and someone that communicates in a way using gratitude, we know what road they’re going down as well. That is really well said the words that you choose to use say so much about where your thought is and then of course where your action is going to be. And believe me, I make mistakes in this space. I fall into horrible habits sometimes of being scarcity minded thinking and I’m conscious of it and try not to. So pity the person that’s not conscious of it and not consciously with effort applying themselves to not let them fall into that scarcity space because much of our communities are that way. Much of our world is that way. Much of the news is that way, which is why I highly recommend staying out of

[15:30] the news. And yet it is very, very easy to accidentally pick up some of those scarcity words which beget scarcity thinking. I’m not sure which comes first. Sometimes I’m sure it’s a chicken and egg issue and then of course the actions that go with it even scarier. Yes. And I’ll add as we wrap up this, oftentimes the people who are associated and use a certain language gravitate to one another. And so people that are thinking with a prosperous mindset have a network of people that also think with a prosperous mindset. And so for listeners, one thing I do know, Kim has built a network of prosperous type of people that think in a prosperous way and think in a gratitude way. And so if you’re needing other services,

[16:23] besides financial advising, send an email to hello at partnersforprosperity.com and I’m sure you’d be able to connect to those people. And as well, there may be questions that you have or you’re trying to determine if Kim is a fit or if someone else, those can all be answered through a simple email at hello at partnersforprosperity.com. Does that work for you, Kim? Absolutely. Thank you, Spencer. That was a great way to enable people to get the help that they’re looking for and that we love to do. Wonderful. Well, thank you for listening to this episode of the podcast. If you aren’t already subscribed, make sure you hit that button so you can get an episode to you every single week in your car, in your ears, or even on your smart device.

[17:08] Thank you for listening to the Prosperity Podcast. To take control of your money and have it work for you, visit us at partnersforprosperity.com. If you liked this episode, make sure you subscribe and leave a review.