If You’ve Never Worked with an Advisor Before
Your guide to what to expect, how we work, and answers to your most common questions.
Is this the first time you’ve considered working with a financial advisor? If so, you probably have lots of questions—and even some concerns. We’re here to help you feel confident and comfortable before your first appointment.
Don’t Be Afraid to Schedule a Consultation
We don’t bite, we promise.
What prompts someone to finally start searching for an advisor can be somewhat unique, but often it’s because you have a financial situation that you no longer feel comfortable handling on your own, and feel like maybe an expert’s opinion will be helpful.
Perhaps you’re struggling with debt, or suffered a job loss, or are worried about getting a child through college, or whether you’re on track for retirement at some point. There are many reasons people finally “pull the trigger” and book some Q&A time with us.
You might be surprised to learn that even if she’s married, over 70% of our first appointments are scheduled by women. If that’s you, feel good that you’re not alone. If you’re one of the 30% of men who schedule the meeting, you’re actually part of an elite group who seek out professional guidance instead of stoically trying to do the hard stuff alone – kudos!
Your First Meeting
Whether you want an in-person meeting or a virtual one (90% of our client appointments are virtual), your advisor will welcome you without a specific agenda. This is on purpose, because we don’t sell any products and we don’t know how (or even if) we can help your situation yet. Our job at this meeting is to let you open up and share what prompted you to find us in the first place. Unless you have lots of questions for us, expect that 80% or so of your first visit will be time for you to share your situation with us. Your advisor will ask questions to help us gain better understanding and clarify what your needs are,
Sometimes prospective clients are ready to get started with us right away after this session. Others want additional information or are in the process of “shopping” financial advisors, and that’s fine. Your advisor will explain the next steps to you should you decide to move forward.
Coming On Board
The decision to come on board as a client will always be yours, without any pressure from us. Either we all agree we’re a good fit for your needs, or we don’t. During the second meeting, after we’ve had a chance to dig deeper into your needs and come up with a recommended course of action, most clients decide then whether or not they want to hire us.
Once you come on board, the scope of our work (financial planning, investing, or both) will be planned out and we’ll prioritize what needs to be done first. We’ll provide you with our regulatory disclosures and we’ll both sign a client agreement that covers the work we plan to do.
Each onboarding experience is unique because we don’t know ahead of time where your investment accounts need to be transferred from, etc. So we start with a lot of collecting information from you, which we do with secure online forms.
Your First Year as a client
The first 90 days as a client can be a flurry of paperwork and meetings as we map out an investing strategy and transfer in your assets, or begin work on your financial plan. Once things are settled and in place, our relationship will calm down , and we’ll begin a series of regular communications and contacts. Typically, our clients want communication from us about their plan/accounts once per quarter, but we’ll of course be in touch as often as necessary.
We communicate with our clients in a variety of ways:
- Urgent Matters that need your immediate attention – text message or phone call
- “FYI” messages – sent as needed by email from us and your investment custodian
- Regular Blog and Social Media Posts – as many as 5 a week!
- Monthly Newsletter – a general publication for all of our clients – this comes by email.
- Personal Video Messages (like a Zoom meeting you can watch anytime) – by email
- Planned Meetings – this is where we get together, at an interval you decide (but at least once per year).
We also always are available for you to schedule meetings as you need them, so if something comes up that you want to discuss right away, you don’t need to wait until your next scheduled meeting to talk about it.
