Susan B. Weiner's Blog, page 45

Communicate with your clients about their legacy

When you’re a financial advisor, you can deepen your relationship with clients when you learn more about their values and the legacy they’d like to leave. That’s one of the reasons Kathleen Burns Kingsbury encourages you to conduct legacy conversations with your clients. She suggests a list of questions in her book, Breaking Money Silence: How to Shatter Money Taboos, Talk Openly about Finances, and Live a Richer Life. Her list is reproduced with permission at the bottom of this blog post. (By the way, if you enjoy this post, check out Kingsbury’s presentation to the NAPFA Fall Conference in Orlando later this month. I’m looking forward to it.)

Advisors, start with yourselves!

In an interview conducted via email, Kingsbury explained why she suggests that advisors start by answering these legacy questions for themselves.

Advisors are people too! Just like their clients, there can be a tendency to avoid talking about their legacy plans with loved ones.  Answering these questions is a great way for advisors to start this dialogue with their own families, as well as gain some insight into what the experience of answering these inquiries may be like for their clients.

One area that may be particularly helpful for advisors are the questions related to their business and their plans for their practice once they retire. If an advisor has not done any succession planning, then it may be challenging for them to hold their clients accountable to do the same.  Anyone who has seen me speak or read my previous books and articles, knows that I firmly believe that the best advisors are the ones who are emotionally intelligent and have insight into both their strengths as well as potentially blind spots when it some to financial communication.

She also noted that if advisors personally experience the value of completing the questionnaire, they’re more likely to present it to clients in a compelling way.

Introducing the questions to your clients

Burns Kingsbury suggests introducing this questionnaire to your clients as a tool to assist them in preparing to discuss their legacy plans with their children. She said:

As many of the clients will be couples, the idea is for both partners to answer the questions separately, then for the advisor to facilitate a dialogue between the partners about shared values, intentions, and ideas around end-of-life care and preparing their heirs to receive wealth. This provides the couple (and the advisor) with a structured way to begin their journey of communicating important emotional and financial data to the next generation. Once the couple has agreed or found common ground in some or all of these areas, they will feel more prepared to communicate these values and their intentions to their children and/or grandchildren.

The questionnaire can be a take-home exercise for your clients—I think that’s how I’d prefer to fill it out—or you can ask the questions in person.

Success stories

I was intrigued that the legacy question list starts with success stories. Kingsbury said,

Advisors find that when they ask their clients to share their success story with their children, that some people are resistant at first to do so. This tends to be a generational phenomenon with people from the traditional and later boomer generations feeling that sharing their financial successes is a form of bragging. But when the advisor explains that telling the next generation your success story is a great way to identify and share your core values, they tend to be more open to do so.

Pushback and pitfalls

I wondered if clients ever resist answering the questionnaire. Kingsbury said,

The only pushback comes from clients who are very resistant to thinking about their mortality. If this occurs, then the advisor can simply focus on the question around the client’s success story first, or give the questions as a take-home assignment. Sometimes it takes clients a while to see the value of these conversations but with gentle persistence over time, most find this process not only helpful but also rewarding. Families who have engaged in this type of money talk are often very glad they have done so, especially once a parent becomes ill or dies.

I also asked if there are pitfalls advisors should avoid. Kingsbury said,

With any client inquiry, it is important for advisors to be focused on listening to the client’s responses, and asking clarifying questions to fully understand their client’s intended responses. It is vital that you suspend any judgments during this exercise. There are not right or wrong answers to these questions, just the one’s your clients provide.

I would also encourage advisors to refrain from self-disclosure unless a client asks for this information directly. For some people, knowing more about the advisor’s mindset is useful, but for most it can be a way of deflecting or trying to find out data to provide the “right” answer to please the advisor. Remember that these are not simple inquiries so if the client can only answer a few of the questions initially, that is okay. The goal of this exercise is to help facilitate meaningful reflection and conversation over the course of time, not to just fill in the blanks.

Benefits of legacy conversations

Wrapping up, Kingsbury described what she sees as the benefits of advisors conducting legacy conversations.

The more an advisor can learn about a client’s values and feelings about their wealth and legacy, the better. This helps the professional foster trust, and shows the clients that he or she cares about more than just making money off their investments. Conversations about these important aspects of life and aging will demonstrate to your new and existing clients that you want to help them in a holistic way (a very female-friendly practice) and differentiate your services from other more transaction-oriented advisors and fintech offerings.

These questions and the accompanying conversation are great to use to prepare for or as part of a family meeting. This helps the advisor begin to develop a relationship with their clients’ children. Overall this type of money talk is good for the clients and great for the advisor’s business. And most importantly, it helps advisors empower their clients to break money silence in their lives. Ultimately that is the goal of my new book and more work going forward.

Legacy questions

Reproduced with permission from Kathleen Burns Kingsbury, Breaking Money Silence: How to Shatter Money Taboos, Talk Openly about Finances, and Live a Richer Life

Your Success Story

a. What is your personal or family success story, and how does this story express your core values?

b. What are the financial lessons embedded in this story?

c. What other family stories may be helpful to communicate to your family? These may include successes, but also mistakes and lessons learned.

2. Your Core Values

a. What are the three most important personal or family values you want to pass down to the next generation?

b. What makes these values important to you?

c. What stories or examples from your own life may help communicate these values to your heirs?

3. Your Charitable Giving

a. How do you view philanthropy and charitable giving as part of your legacy?

b. What charitable organizations do you currently give to and what organizations might you include in your estate plan?

c. What type of gifts (include financial and non-financial) would you like to give the next generation and when do you plan to gift them?

4. Your Business (for business owners only)

a. Do you have a business succession plan? If not, what is your rationale for not having one? If you do have one, what did you learn in the process of developing it?

b. Who will inherit the business, or will you sell your business? Is there a buy-sell agreement in place and if not, when will that be drafted?

c. Have you communicated your intentions to your family and key stakeholders? Why or why not?

5. Your Estate Plan

a. Do you have a will and/or an estate plan? If so, has it been reviewed in the last year? If not, when do you plan to draft one?

b. Have you shared your end-of-life wishes and health directives with the next generation?

c. If not, when do you plan to have this conversation? Who can you enlist to help facilitate this dialogue?

Disclosure: If you click on an Amazon link in this post and then buy something, I will receive a small commission. I only link to books in which I find some value for my blog’s readers.

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Red tulip writing exercise

Want to think creatively about your next article or blog post? Try the red tulip exercise that I discovered in Helen Sword’s Stylish Academic Writing.

Here’s an exercise that Sword suggests for “generating new ideas and perspectives” for academic writing, but you can apply it to other types of writing:

Ask a friend, relative, or small child to write down the name of a randomly chosen object—something specific enough that you can actually picture it: a fat dachshund, a red tulip. Freewrite for ten minutes about all the ways that object resembles your research project.

Freewriting means writing nonstop, without editing, for a predetermined period of time. After you finish, you look at what you’ve written to see what’s valuable in it.

My freewriting about a red tulip

I did a freewriting exercise about blog posts and a red tulip. You can read the results in “5 ways a blog post is like a tulip.” In case you don’t believe that I really did the freewriting exercise, here’s a picture of what I wrote.

If you liked this post, you may also enjoy, “Photo + Mind Map = Blog Inspiration,” my wacky way to generate ideas for blog posts. That post was inspired by a photo of a Barbie on a beach.

 

Disclosure: If you click on the Amazon link in this post and then buy something, I will receive a small commission. I only link to books in which I find some value for my blog’s readers.

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Writing question: how do you know when you have too many details?

How do you know when you have too many details in your writing? That question from a participant in my investment commentary webinar made me think of these six tips. Try them if your writing gets bogged down by details.

1. Go with your gut

Seasoned writers rely on their instincts to know when they’ve stuffed too much into their drafts. They look at the rhythm of the piece or simply go with their guts. That’s fine for experienced writers who’ve honed their instincts through feedback from teachers or editors. But it’s not much help for non-professional writers. That’s why I provide more suggestions for identifying when you have too many details.

2. Word count

How long is your draft and its components? To oversimply, if you’ve written a 20,000-word blog post or a 1,000-word sidebar, it’s too long. It probably includes too many details.

3. What advances your argument?

Too many details may overwhelm your readers instead of convincing them. To cut the excess, ask “What’s the absolutely minimum of details that will make my point?”

Pare your story back to the basics. If it’s compelling, you’re finished.

4. Rule of Three

Examples work better in groups of three as I discussed in “What number of examples is ideal for persuasion?” Do your examples comply with the Rule of Three?

The Rule of Three isn’t an absolute. There’ll be many times when more is better. But it’s a way to filter for easy cuts to your excessive details.

5. Ask what your readers want

Do you have family or friends who are members of your target audience? Show them your draft. Ask them for feedback, including suggestions for what you can cut.

6. Are your sections balanced?

If your piece has three sections and one section is way longer than the others, it’s possible that section is too long. But that’s not always the case. Use your judgment.

Your suggestions?

If you have suggestions for how to recognize when your writing has too many details, please let me know.

Image courtesy of iosphere at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

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Art and mindfulness and blogging

“I love your drawing. And I liked the one you did last time, too.” This statement by a fellow student in an “Art and Mindfulness” class stunned me. It also reminded me of what I believe about blog posts that reflect the real you. Mindfulness and financial blogging can work together.

1. There are many ways to interpret the same instructions (or topic)

The art class teacher’s instructions were simple. First, choose a pastel and draw lines, changing direction each time you switch from inhaling to exhaling. Do that 10 times, then add to your drawing however you wish.

The illustrations show the drawings I made following these instructions in the two sessions of this class. I see similarities between the two. Do you? I think there’s something that makes them distinctively mine.

The drawings that other students made were nothing like mine or one another’s drawings. One person drew a huge, bright smiley face. Another did delicate swirls. Yet another created a minimalist fish.

The lesson for financial bloggers? You may think that writers have exhausted what can be said about your topic. But no one will say it exactly like you. Embrace your differences to make your topic distinctively yours. You have more leeway to do this in blog posts than in other forms of financial writing. Especially if you are a solopreneur or work for a small firm, you’re less likely to be constrained by the idea of a “brand voice” or corporate style guidelines. You can show your personality.

2. People respond differently to your work

I looked at my classmates’ drawings and thought “I wish I could draw like them.” Amazingly, that wasn’t the response of the person who said, “I love your drawing.”

People respond differently to your creativity, whether it takes the form of a drawing or a blog post. I know my drawings aren’t great art, but something in them spoke to my classmate. The same thing can happen to you when you blog about investments, wealth management, or other financial topics.

3. Be open to what your heart and mind tell you

The mindfulness exercise made me tune in to what I was thinking and feeling. I’d like to think that helped me to achieve what the”Art and Mindfulness” instructor called the “Wise Mind” at the intersection of the “Reasonable Mind” and the “Emotion Mind.”

Merging those two in your blog posts can help you to appeal to readers with emotions, while persuading them with your reasoning.

Your openness can also uncover blog post topics. The “Art and Mindfulness” teacher told us to think about the feelings and patterns that come up with mindfulness. They need to be addressed, she said. Looking at my drawings made me think about how I like to analyze messy situations to bring order to them. That led to me thinking about the lessons for bloggers from my mindful art experiences.

4. Have compassion for people whose minds don’t work like yours

In addition to the drawing project, during the second session of the art class we worked on creating a mini-book, making a cover out of a piece of bubble painting that we’d created in the first session. I am not good at following instructions for folding and gluing paper. While I love the cover of my mini-book, the innards are an ugly mess.

The ugliness reminded me to feel compassion for my readers and students. What comes easily to me may not come easily to them. I strive to appeal to different types of learners.

Having compassion for your readers should inspire you to write in a reader-friendly way on your blog. Tailor your content to your readers. Write clearly and concisely.

5. It feels great to work in the moment

It can feel good to be totally immersed in what you’re doing. I experienced that for moments during the drawing exercise. (Yes, I still have a way to go in becoming mindful.) At a minimum, I forgot about my daily stresses. I was also impressed by several participants sharing how mindfulness has helped them to manage chronic pain.

Writing blog posts is one of the times that I feel immersed in an experience. That’s especially true of blog posts like this, which involve exploring my personal reactions. It also happens when I research a question that interests me.

I hope that you can experience some of the same sense of flow in your blogging.

 

If you enjoyed this post, you may also enjoy “What Marilyn Monroe taught me about writing.” My art plays a role in that post, too.

 

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What would happen if I stop writing?

Many of you struggle to write as much as you’d like. The large number of inactive financial blogs speaks to the difficulty of writing and posting weekly (or at any frequency). That’s especially true when you face demanding responsibilities as an investment, wealth management, or financial planning professional.

This struggle is why I suggest that you ask yourself  “What would happen if I stop writing?”

When it’s okay to stop writing

Your answer might be, “Nothing bad.”

A “nothing bad” answer is more likely if you have colleagues who can pick up the slack to satisfy your firm’s writing needs.

Or, maybe you’re working on a 25-page white paper on an obscure topic. If few people would read—or be spurred to action by—your output, it’s okay to stop writing. You could benefit from using your time for higher-benefit activities. This is the kind of situation I wrote about in “Marketing lesson from clashing clocks.”

If your answer is “nothing bad,” then stop beating yourself up. Use the time and emotional energy that you save for goals that energize and help you.

When you shouldn’t stop writing

What if you’d lose something by not writing?

Financial professionals who write regularly have told me about the benefits they experience. Understanding the benefits may inspire you to make time to write.

Sometimes the benefits go to the bottom line. For example, a student enrolled in my financial blogging class because he wanted to return to blogging regularly. He said that his blog yielded many leads when he posted regularly, but the leads dried up when he stopped posting.

Often the benefits are less direct. For example, you can rarely attribute a sale directly to a great white paper about an emerging asset class. But you know that it enhances your firm’s credibility and makes it easier for salespeople to spur discussions with prospects.

Another benefit of writing is that it helps you to clarify your thoughts about other people’s ideas, as you explain your take on their ideas to your audience. Also, writing more helps you to improve your writing. These issues came up directly or indirectly in my survey about why advisors blog. Here is how people responded to my asking “What are the goals of your blog?”

23% Educate people
19% Attract clients
15% Improve my writing
15% Spread my ideas
12% Learn from others
8% Keep the clients I have
8% Sell information products
0% Other

If you resist my suggestion to stop writing…

Feel appalled by my suggestion that you stop writing? In your gut reaction, there’s a kernel of something that may spur you to write more. Look for it!

If you think a structured process could help you to write more, check out my book, Financial Blogging: How to Write Powerful Posts That Attract Clients, and my financial blogging class.

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Blog your passions or your audience’s interests?

“How do I balance my passions vs. the interests of my target audience when I write for my blog?” This was a question from one of my readers.

Passion vs. audience: an easy answer

The easy answer? Blog at the intersection of your passions and the interests of your target audience. You’ll find it easiest and most enjoyable to blog when you’re passionate about your topic.  When your passion shows, you’ll attract more readers. When your passions overlap with the topics that your target audience cares about, you’ll find yourself in a sweet spot of blogging.

However, your passions and your target’s interests aren’t always identical. What can you do?

A case against emphasizing audience over passion

The example of marketer Mark W. Schaefer suggests why you shouldn’t ignore your passions.

“…let me tell you the biggest blogging mistake I ever made — I wrote for an audience!” says Schaefer in “Improve your blog. Stop writing for an audience!” Schaefer says got he bored writing to a content plan focused on target audience, personas, and keywords. So he ditched his plan and started writing about things that interested him. The result? “Pretty quickly my blog had a small band of very engaged and loyal readers.”

When you write with passion, you’ll win better engagement from your readers.

Another benefit of playing to your passions? You’re more likely to stick to a blogging schedule. Based on the many abandoned blogs that I’ve seen, keeping up with a blog is a big challenge. In fact, an entire chapter of my financial blogging book is devoted to “Sticking to a blogging schedule.”

Identifying your audience’s interests

You probably have a good idea of where your passions lie. But how about the passions of your current or ideal audience?

Some tools to help you understand your current audience include:

Google Analytics
Google Webmaster Tools
“Open” and “click” statistics for blog posts that you send via e-newsletter software
Surveys that you run on your blog or elsewhere using technology like SurveyMonkey. For example, you can bounce a list of potential topics off your readers, or you can ask an open-ended question, such as “What do you want to read about?” or “What’s the biggest challenge that you face in terms of…?”

If members of your target audience aren’t visiting your blog yet, then it’s time to do research. Read other people’s research about your target audience. Read the publications that your ideal audience members read. Set up Google Alerts for content related to your ideal readers.

Questions for you

Bloggers, please answer two questions:

Are you blogging about your passions, your audience’s interests, or the intersection of the two?
What tips do you have for bloggers struggling with the issue of whether to blog about their interests or their target audience’s interests?

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Powerful financial article abstracts

How do you get the most out of your financial article abstracts? I’m not talking about executive summaries for white papers. I mean formal abstracts that appear at the start of journal articles.

To supercharge your financial article abstracts, you need to know your goal. In Stylish Academic Writing, Helen Sword got me thinking about what your goal should be. She says:

The purpose of a scholarly abstract is not merely to summarize an article’s content, but to persuade one’s discipline-based peers that the research is important and the article is therefore worth reading.

One way that authors strive to assert the importance of their research is to say that it “will plug a ‘gap” in the existing scholarship,” as Sword says. Surely this is important.

But, Sword argues that starting “human conversations” in abstracts may be even more important. “Authors who adopt an impersonal ‘academic’ tone are neglecting one of the most powerfully persuasive tools at the stylish writer’s disposal: the human touch,” she says.

One way to do that is to give “a voice and presences to human subjects,” Sword says. To do this in finance, you might write about the people affected by your research.

Another way is to write in the first person. Use “I” or “we,” instead of writing impersonally.

Sword also pushes for “clear, comprehensible language” in both your abstract and the body of your academic paper.

Another suggestion for your abstract: Describe “not only its what but its why.” Sword asks, “What is the main point of your article, dissertation, or book?” Also, “Why is it important, whether to you or to anyone else?” These are great questions for the writers of any document.

Check out Stylish Academic Writing

Helen Sword’s Stylish Academic Writing isn’t just for academics. It offers advice that will help any nonfiction writer. It also sparked several posts on this blog.

 

Disclosure: If you click on the Amazon link in this post and then buy something, I will receive a small commission. I only link to books in which I find some value for my blog’s readers.

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Have you ever…?

Have you ever struggled to interest a prospective client in your investment, wealth management, or financial planning services? It’s not easy.

When speaking with prospects, a good “have you ever” question can help you to engage them in a two-way conversation. If you touch on a topic that means something to them, you’ll learn information that can deepen your relationship. Try it to see what they tell you about their challenges, fears, and strengths.

Looking for another example?

My intro gave you one example of a “have you ever” question. Here’s another idea, inspired by Marie Perruchet’s One Perfect Pitch: How to Sell Your Idea, Your Product, Your Business–or Yourself (Business Books)[image error]. In her book, she quotes someone talking about how they help clients, saying “We tell our companies about the bad days—and there will be bad days—and how we will help them through.”

I think that person should ask prospects, “Do you ever have a bad day?” Then, they should wait for the answer, as Perruchet suggests, before diving into their pitch. Your pitch is more powerful when you can tie it to your prospect’s pain as explained in their own words.

As I’ve said elsewhere, your marketing will go further when you focus on your prospects, instead of how great you are. Talk about your readers’ WIIFM (what’s in it for me). You’ll increase their interest in whatever you say.

If you’re writing something, consider taking the approach I discuss in “Make your writing easier with my fill-in-the-blanks approach for structuring articles,” which focuses on your readers’ problems.

Disclosures: I received a free copy of this book from McGraw Hill in return for agreeing to mention it in my blog. If you click on the Amazon link in this post and then buy something, I will receive a small commission. I only link to books in which I find some value for my blog’s readers.

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Don’t give up on being different

Do you worry that nothing can make your writing stand out from the rest of the pack?

Here’s some inspiration for you from Roger Rosenblatt’s Unless It Moves the Human Heart: The Craft and Art of Writing:

Eventually, we all tell the same stories, yet none of our stories sound like anyone else’s. Think of your dullest family member, the pixilated uncle who tells the same family anecdote over and over every Thanksgiving. Even he never tells his story the same way twice.

Rosenblatt’s statement reminds us that everyone expresses things differently—and their own way of expressing themselves varies over time. As a result, the way that you express yourself is inherently different.

But, you may say, I don’t want to be a boring uncle. Of course not. That’s why you should build on your differences.

Ways to differentiate your writing

Consider using the techniques I discuss in “How to add personality and warmth to your financial writing, part one” and “Part two. “(The two posts are summarized in “Infographic: 5 ways to add personality to your financial writing.”

Also, strive to make your writing achieve the three C’s of being compelling, clear, and concise.

Another way to differentiate yourself is to speak to a narrowly defined audience. Show that you understand your audience’s unique characteristics.

Do these things, and you’ll achieve a difference that attracts readers.

 

Disclosure: If you click on an Amazon link in this post and then buy something, I will receive a small commission. I only link to books in which I find some value for my blog’s readers.

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Webinar lessons from my annual webinars

Mastering the technology for my first webinar in 2014 was hell, as I have shared in “Tech tips for your educational webinar—learn from my experience.” Things have gotten easier since then, especially because I’ve stuck with GoToWebinar, but things can still go wrong. If you’re an infrequent webinar presenter like me, you can learn from my experience presenting my annual investment commentary webinar.

Lesson 1. Stick with the same software

There may be webinar software that’s better or cheaper than GoToWebinar. But over four years of annual webinars, I’ve learned how to manage its basics. Also, the branding and some other settings that I’ve established in past years carry over from year to year. That saves me time.

You may think that all webinar software functions basically the same. My 2014 experience shifting to GoToWebinar from an awful low-cost provider suggests that’s not true. However, I only have experience with two providers.

Lesson 2. Plan to practice early and often

Things will go wrong with your webinar software. At least, that’s true in my experience. So run practice sessions—including sessions with simulated viewers (and co-organizers, if relevant).

In my experience, moving the cursor is often a source of problems. So, manipulate it a lot. Sabotage yourself, and then practice recovering. Then, if something goes wrong in your live presentation, you’ll recover more rapidly.

By the way, if you’re only moving from slide to slide, you may be able to skip moving your cursor because you can advance slides using an arrow key. However, this means you’re not using tools like polls or highlighters. Nor are you reviewing and managing participant questions or comments. By not using those tools, you lose opportunities to engage your audience. That may hurt the effectiveness of your webinar.

If you uncover problems early enough, you can work with the webinar provider to find a solution that minimizes them. Through multiple exchanges—on the telephone and in the online support community—this year I found a less trouble-prone way to advance my slides.

Lesson 3. Be aware that software may change from year to year

Software changes. There may be “improvements” or the software may change to accommodate new operating systems, like Windows 10.

For example, I believe that, back in 2014, the lines that I drew using GoToWebinar’s drawing tool disappeared when I clicked to the next page. That was convenient. But now I have to erase those lines. That’s an extra step that slows me down so I’ve stopped using the drawing tool.

In short, you assume at your own risk that what works one year will work again the next year.

Lesson 4. The experience of your helpers matters

I’m lucky to have worked with some wonderful helpers on my webinars. One of my helpers had lots more experience in webinar presentations and technology than the others. Her experience made my experience more relaxing.

I highly recommend using helpers to manage your introduction, Q&A, and behind-the-scenes logistics. They’ll improve the experience for you and your audience. However, if you’re a worrywart like me, you’ll also do some practice sessions in which you play all of the roles. In a pinch, I could have introduced myself, launched my polls, and handled technical problems and Q&A on my own. Sure, I would have felt like an anxious mess. But I could have blundered my way through the presentation.

Consider these lessons to give yourself and your audience a better webinar experience.

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

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