At SHIFT this year, we were in awe of Brendan Frazier’s 10 Insights to Master the Human Side of Advice. So many of the insights resonated with us and are problems we’ve set out to solve - or at least make it easier for advisors.
For those of you wondering how you can use Lumiant to maximize Brendan’s insights and change your business’s trajectory, you're in luck!
We've decided it would be worth looking at his 10 insights through a Lumiant lens, offering tips, guidance, and advice on bringing his insights to life.
If you didn’t attend SHIFT, you can check out his full article here.
Goals Shift. Values Persist.
Today, we're going to cover his first insight: Goals shift. Values persist - an elegant way of saying goals change. Values don't.
We couldn't agree more!
At Lumiant, we believe you can only set the SMART goals and strategies to live your best life if you understand your values.
In today’s fast-paced consumer environment, where society continues to shift and evolve, we humans have a number of goals trying to distract us from achieving our priorities. And, it’s not often that we stop and take the time to step back and see the wood through the trees. It’s all GO. GO. GO.
With that lifestyle, we never feel fulfillment because we’re not treading our own path. We’re being swept up in whatever other currents happen to pass us by.
That’s why the Lumiant process starts from the top of Brendan’s triangle. At values. However, we believe values form the foundation of good, personalized, and memorable financial planning.
By helping clients to step back, identify what they value in life, define what it means to them, and - most importantly - explain what progress looks like, we can quickly identify actionable goals. In fact on average, each client in Lumiant has 4 goals tracked on the platform and not all of them are financial.
Values lead to goals. More meaningful goals. Goals that help clients transform their lives.
Goals then lead to tasks and strategies. As we nudge clients to complete these tasks to accomplish their goals, and to help them live a life more aligned with their values, your clients will feel a sense of fulfillment. And that will be all thanks to you.
But it's easy to miss the small wins or the fact that you kept to your strategy. Yet celebrating the small wins are what drives big action. Because clients can see and feel the movement. By tracking and checking in on their progress, celebrating the small wins and keeping them on track, clients will be more motivated to act on their financial plan and implement your advice.
So, how can Lumiant help you to maximize the potential of this insight?
Use Lumiant’s Your Values to help clients identify, define and articulate what fulfillment looks like. Articulate to your clients that this will help them to set more meaningful goals that help them to live extraordinary lives.
In between progress meetings, check-in regularly around goals. Track their goals and nudge your clients to add, update and complete them regularly.
When articulating your advice, use our key advice areas module to visually link your advice and the tasks they need to complete, to their goals and values. This will enable you to show your clients their progress toward living a life aligned with their values.
In between progress meetings or in your progress meetings, use the progress baselines you've set around their 8 dimensions of wellbeing, values, and key advice areas to see how they feel. The quantitative monetary progress is only as good as the qualitative non-financial progress of accomplishment and fulfillment that living a life aligned with their values provides.
Let’s get that goal count up and ensure clients have at least one goal for their top five values cards. Place extra emphasis on their top three, as these will be the most meaningful to them.
Make sure you track their non-financial goals. By being an accountability partner across all aspects of their best life, they will be even more grateful for your support throughout their transformation. Best bit: our platform will help nudge them for you, so you don’t have to worry about chasing them and can focus on making your connections meaningful and memorable.
We understand that opening a conversation and getting meaningful answers around values from clients is hard. If someone asked you “what are your values”, would you be able to clearly and succinctly articulate what they are? That’s why we’ve built in prompts and guides in our platform to help you engage with your clients.
And this leads us to Brendan’s second insight - Asking Great Questions is a Superpower - which we will cover in our next blog post.
If you enjoyed this article, let us know what you thought by giving it a rating. And feel free to add your insights, learnings, and opinions in the comments below. We’d love to know how you are addressing values with your clients.