- What your financial advisor
should know about every single client.
In this episode, by the end,
you will understand that there are four things
that the best financial advisors know
about every single one of their clients.
(upbeat music)
So I'm Doug Andrew.
I've been a financial strategist
and retirement planning specialist now
for north of 48 years.
And during that time period,
I have taught thousands of people
how to optimize their assets, minimize taxes,
and empower what I call their authentic wealth,
but also I've taught thousands of advisors.
And so in this episode,
I'm going to shoot straight with you and show you
four things that every single financial advisor
ought to know about you, their client.
Because if your advisor
doesn't know these four things about you,
I worry about how you are going to be able to make it
through some of the the topsy turvy market volatility,
taxes going up, inflation, eroding away,
purchasing power, and on and on and on.
So I wrote a book called the "10 Keys Transformation"
for business owners and entrepreneurs.
And in this book, I disclosed 10 keys
that they need to learn
if they want to do the best job for their clients.
And so in this, the very first key
is identify the profile of your ideal client.
Don't try to be the Jack of all trades
or a one-size-fits-all advice for everybody.
You need to focus on the type of client
that you will be able to help the most, okay?
And unfortunately, a lot of advisors
anybody that fogs a mirror,
they just wanna help them and do and implement something.
And if they don't make very much money,
they will not give you very much of their time
or what have you.
So let me explain what I'm talking about in this
'cause it's critical.
And you want an advisor who understands these concepts.
So when I have written several of my books,
my third book became a New York Times,
Wall Street Journal number one bestseller.
It was called "The Last Chance Millionaire",
came out in 2007.
And in the preface of that,
I talk about four, up to five different types
of of mentalities or people
that's either intergenerational
or through somebody's lifetime.
And I call them strivers, arrivers,
thrivers, survivors, and divers.
So in a nutshell, striver are what a lot of advisors
call the financial jellyfish.
They will always have too much month
left at the end of their money and so forth.
They are the masses, unfortunately.
And so there's a lot of advisors
that you see on TV and so forth, that's their market.
And behind closed doors, they say,
"My market are the financial jellyfish."
And I realized a long time ago,
if people are not disciplined to live on less
than what they earn and so forth,
they need to go to those advisors
to finally learn how to get out of debt or whatever.
I'll let them do that.
But once they become mature financially,
those advisors are not the ideal ones anymore
for those people, okay?
And so these are the arrivers who begin to arrive
at some financial independence.
They understand three marvels
of wealth accumulation, compound interest,
tax-free accumulation, and safe positive leverage.
And so those are the arrivers.
This is where our key market begins.
So all of the net that I throw out,
all my books and my educational videos
are mostly for these people here, okay?
Now arrivers are different than thrivers.
Thrivers repeat the process.
It's not a one-off.
Instead of getting one rental home, for example,
if they're gonna try to do real estate,
they get multiple rental homes.
They continue to leverage safely with liquidity,
but it's not just one.
They don't just get one laser fund,
they end up with several laser funds
throughout their lifetime.
So thrivers repeat the process.
Now survivors are those that sometime hit retirement.
I've never liked the word retire.
It actually means put out of use.
Do you know that?
It came out in the industrial revolution
where in the factories, when equipment got worn out,
they would retire worn out equipment.
Most people would work in the fields
or as farmers till the day they died.
They decided to come up with putting people out of use
by retiring people and replacing them
with younger people cheaper.
And so when all of a sudden people retired,
the average life expectancy was only seven years
'cause you put people outta use.
If they don't redefine themselves,
they are six feet under within seven years.
And that's when social security was introduced.
And that's why social security was only designed
to have to pay out benefits for seven years
after somebody retired.
And now people are living longer
and they're running up healthcare costs.
And that's why, you know,
social security is a train wreck waiting to happen.
The government owes about 130 trillion
in future social security benefits.
And if they stopped collecting money
out of people's paychecks,
they would be broke in that fund in nine months, okay?
And so those are sometimes survivors
who then retire, put themselves out of use
and they hunker down and just wanna survive.
I like to capture them.
I like to rescue them before they get into that mentality
and redefine themselves.
So this is my ideal market.
The divers are the ones who just say,
"No, I'm just gonna try to hang on until I die."
And they end up dying as a self-fulfilling prophecy.
So once I identified that,
then I begin to ask myself four questions
about how do I find these people and serve them the best?
Because these are not my ideal ones.
Okay, so there are four different questions
that your advisor should understand about you.
Number one, what are the attributes of their ideal client?
I ask myself, what are the attributes?
Now you may not be able to read this here,
but I do this all the time.
I want my clients to be open minded,
punctual appointment keepers, grateful for the advice,
free in their expression of their feelings to me.
I want them to be open minded, okay?
And be open with me.
Honest in communication.
Use the tools that I provide.
Respect and trust me and have high values like I do,
that they value family and faith and so forth.
If they don't, they're not gonna be happy.
I'm not trying to discriminate.
I'm just saying you're probably not a right fit.
You will not be happy working with us
if these attributes don't align with mine, okay?
And so if your advisor doesn't understand this,
I would think twice.
Now and the second question is,
what makes my ideal client tick?
Your advisor needs to understand what makes you tick.
In other words, what is your main purpose for living?
Who and what is most important to you?
I do that the very first appointment.
I cannot believe how many advisors that I have met
that do not know the answers to these questions
about most of their clients, okay?
And so that is the second differentiator.
Your advisor should understand this about you.
The third thing is,
what do your ideal clients expect you to deliver?
So with you in mind, you need to understand,
okay, what does my advisor ask me
so that they understand what I expect that advisor
to deliver to me?
If they've never asked you that,
what would you like me to deliver?
What did you want to accomplish most?
Which is one of the very first questions I ask
when I meet with people.
What did you want to accomplish most?
And if we were sitting here three years from today,
what has to have happened in your life
in the last three years
to be happy with the progress you made?
And people go, wow,
I've never been asked that question before
by a financial advisor.
I go, well, I like to know and understand this
or else it's probably not a right fit.
And I'm not afraid to let them go.
I only wanna work with people that are in alignment
with what I offer.
So I go down and I say, well, give them the same advice
and direction that I follow.
I only want to give them the advice that I use myself, okay?
I practice what I preach.
I want to clarify principles and be thorough.
Be available directly and indirectly.
Communicate openly and honestly.
Be courteous and professional.
Return phone calls.
Be proactive.
In other words, have the latest and greatest day
on top of the current trends and what's going on.
Be on time and finish what we start
and always say please, and thank you.
Yeah, so that's what I make clear.
Your advisor should know what you expect them to deliver.
And if they've never asked you that, hello?
Maybe you ought to change advisors, okay?
Now what's the fourth question?
What do you need to do to improve your relationship
with your ideal client is what I teach these advisors.
So you ought to be asking yourself,
has my advisor ever asked in our annual meetings,
our annual reviews, hopefully, they're meeting with you
on a regular basis.
What are they trying to do to enhance our relationship?
If it's a slam, bam, thank you, ma'am,
heard you through the process feeling,
maybe you ought to rethink your thinking
as far as the right financial firm or advisor for you, okay?
So it's those four things
that your advisor should understand about you
'cause to be honest with you,
sometimes advisors think it's about them.
And immediately, they start looking
at all that alphabet suit behind their name.
And look, this is my history and I do it.
It's me, me, me, me.
And I go, you know what?
I start right off the bat.
Tell me about how you built this incredible business.
Tell me about how you met your spouse.
Tell me what's most important to you.
And I start talking about them.
It's not about me, it's about them.
If your advisor is always talking about themselves,
you may wanna rethink your thinking.
They should be talking about you, okay?
And so that's the purpose
of understanding these four things.
So again, what are the attributes of my ideal client?
What makes my ideal client tick?
What do your ideal clients expect you to deliver?
And what do you need to do to improve your relationships?
That's what I tell the advisors
that they need to ask themselves.
You need to make sure your advisor
is understanding these four things about you, okay?
And so it's like in the book, "Blue Ocean Strategy",
which has been a number one business bestseller for years.
It connotes that there's a blue ocean
of opportunity out there,
but there are a lot of advisors that deal in a red ocean.
What does that connote?
Bloody, okay?
Dog eating dog, shark eating shark world.
And that is so sad to me
where they're trying to build themselves up.
There's a lot of advisors out there
that only operate by tearing down other advisors.
That's the only way that they can can operate,
is if they tear down all the other buildings in town
so that they're the last one standing.
And there's a whole bunch of advisors out there
that are critics.
Critics are a dime a dozen
and I've been in all kinds of major capitals
throughout the world and I've seen so many statues,
but I have never seen a statue erected to a critic.
But there's a lot of financial advisors
that are simply critics
and they're always criticizing somebody.
And I have a lot that criticize me
and they're just trying to make themselves look better
by tearing me down or whatever.
And they don't even know what they're doing now.
So the "Blue Ocean Strategy" book
talks about how to create a blue ocean.
And one of the key things that I've learned
is to focus on solving my clients DOS.
This came from Dan Sullivan.
DOS is an acronym.
D stands for dangers.
To help my clients eliminate
the greatest dangers that cause most people,
maybe to outlive their money in retirement.
I'll give you an example here in a moment.
Eliminate the barriers.
Next is to help my clients seize the greatest opportunities.
I don't want them miss out on the greatest opportunities.
And number three, to use the best strengths.
My strengths, their strengths,
and the strengths of what I'm recommending.
So when you focus on doing that,
instead of being in this competitive world
where you're trying to tear down other people,
yeah, there's a lot of advisors out there
that do nothing but tear down other advisors.
And so they spend 80% of their time doing that
and only 20% of their time really focused about you.
You need to flip that.
The secrets to my success have always been 80% of my time
is focused on solving my client's DOS, okay?
It's like a blue ocean of opportunity.
So let's talk about the three biggest dangers
that cause most retirees to outlive their money
that I've eliminated for years.
Taxes.
Most people in retirement,
when they start taking money out of IRAs in 401ks,
they pull out 100,000 and they only net 65,000
'cause they have to pay tax
and they thought they were gonna be in a lower tax bracket.
I eliminate that by using a laser fund,
a max funded IUL, which is tax free.
So it doesn't matter what taxes go to in the future
'casue of irresponsible government spending
or the printing of money.
I'm immune from taxes 'cause I convert to tax-free.
Inflation.
Inflation will cut the purchasing power
of the American dollar in half about every five,
seven years at the current rate of inflation
as of the recording of this episode.
It's like a hidden tax.
Third is market volatility,
where people lose sometimes 20, 30, 40%
by having their money in the market.
And most advisors just say, "Hey, hang in there.
The market will always come back."
Well, you need predictable income.
You can't just wait around for the market to come back.
So those are the three dangers
that I eliminate for my clients.
Your advisor ought to do the same thing
or maybe rethink your thinking of changing advisors.
What are the three greatest opportunities?
To convert to tax-free vehicles.
That's why my favorite vehicle
is a max funded indexed universal life policy.
I'm immune from taxes.
You link your returns to the things that inflate.
I don't like inflation anymore than anybody,
but it doesn't hurt me.
It helps me.
I've always been able to outpace inflation.
In 1980, inflation was 10%, I earned 15 and a half.
In 2021, inflation at 15% plus.
And many of our clients earn 25 and even 61%
on their index universal life policies.
And then market volatility.
We eliminate that by using indexing,
indexed universal life,
where you make money if the market goes up,
but you do not lose one dime when the market goes down
because your money's not invested in the market.
So those are the three opportunities
that I'm passionate about teaching people like you about.
And then what are the greatest strengths?
Well, I like to educate people and so forth,
but the strengths of index universal life
are the key elements of a prudent investment.
Liquidity.
The ability to access your money when you need it
and not have to wait 'til the market comes back.
Two, safety of principle
so that no matter what happens
when the market goes down, you don't lose.
And any year you make money, like in 2021, people made 61%.
We had a client that started out
in March of 2020 with 800,000.
And by the end of March of 2021, 1 year later,
that 800,000 had grown to 1,380,000,
made over half a million.
If the next year the market dropped 40%,
he does not lose one dime
of the half million he made the year before.
That's called safety of principle.
Number three is a rate of return.
Not high-in-the-sky rates of return.
You're not gonna earn 25 and 61% every year,
but you'll probably average between six to 10%.
Especially if you rebalance,
you'll probably end up every million bucks
will generate a 10% payout,
100,000 a year of tax-free income
without depleting principle, okay?
So that's predictable rates of return.
So folks, if you wanna learn more
and you realize, golly, my advisor does not understand me.
Well, you can go through and learn on your own
and then find an advisor.
I can point you to those who understand
how to optimize assets and minimize taxes.
My favorite vehicle I've alluded to is max funded IUL.
So this is my 11th book.
It's called "The Laser Fund",
which is a property structured maximum funded IUL,
done correctly by advisors who get it.
Unfortunately, 99% of advisors out there
don't know how to do it correctly.
Now this retails for 20 bucks on Amazon, don't pay that.
I'll gift you a copy for free.
You claim your free copy by simply going to laserfund.com.
Laserfund.com or click on the link below.
You contribute a nominal amount
towards the shipping and handling,
have some skin in the game.
I'll cover the rest of that cost
and I will pay for the book and I'll fire it out to you
and you can watch and learn.
You can listen and learn.
There's all kinds of options in there,
but this is about you and your brighter future.
And there, you'll be able to make an appointment
with one of the financial advisors out there
that I trust knows how to do this correctly
and follows the guidelines
that I've laid out in this video episode.
So here is to your brighter future.
(upbeat music)