"A Letter to my Stockbroker." Could we be seeing the beginning of a client revolt against traditional financial services firms? There is a saying in sales training, "In every interview a sale is made; either you sell the prospect or the prospect sells you." Another goes, "Control the interview!" I see the beginnings of an emerging market to train clients to control the planning process in order to direct money to places that are good for the client, or for society, but on which advisors do not get paid. Examples:
- Make a direct gift to charity.
- Give with others in a giving circle to build social ties and expertise
- Buy farm land
- Buy land and add a carwash to pay the taxes while the land appreciates
- Buy a franchise
- Reduce expenses and protect against inflation and economic chaos by drilling a well, adding attic insulation, putting up a windmill, starting a vegetable garden, adding solar panels.
- Lend money to family and friends at rates lower than the bank charges borrowers, but higher than the interest banks pay on deposits.
- Deposit money in a locally controlled credit union.
- Start a co-op to raise and distribute locally grown food.
- Go back to school to learn a trade useful if all hell breaks out; e.g., prison guard, midwife, bank dick, strolling minstrel, undertaker, or grave robber.
Some of those attempting the rebalancing of the client/advisor power dynamic are life coaches turned Wealth Coach. Others are coming at it from philanthropic consulting. C.A. Fitts is a Wall Street insider turned potent client educator. Those firms and advisors who partner with clients will take bread from their less cooperative peer's table as clients move to those who serve them best. Advisors, in these increasingly dire times, who fight the megatrend and seek to control the client, the process, and the profit points, may increasingly find themselves puzzling over letters like the one linked above.
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