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Many financial advisors have what they call guiding principles. My colleagues and I have and live by both. Our guiding principles – client-centric, legal transparency, corporate and community citizenship, and non-competitive posturing – are strategic precepts that give us structure and direction for how we contract with vendors and other partners to position ourselves to best serve our clients.
These principles do not waver, regardless of the changing financial environment. They’re how we do business.
My guess is that you have unwavering guiding principles. But perhaps, even though you hold tight to your guiding principles, you feel like there’s something missing. Maybe you feel lost, off track, or that your career doesn’t reflect your true values.
If that’s the case, to do better for your clients and better for yourself, then you need to go beyond those guiding principles.
Identify your core values. Once you do that, you’re well on your way to becoming a better advisor. Let me show you how you can get started.
Your values guide your behavior
Guiding principles are vital to being a financial advisor that clients will trust. But as financial advisors, our core values guide our behavior, how we feel about our clients, and how we interact with them.
This goes beyond the rules of business. It’s about the assumptions we make about the people we know and those we have yet to meet.
Values-based beliefs are the foundation of values-based relationships and are ultimately the key to becoming a values-based advisor. That is someone who creates and delivers a values-based experience in their advice and in every aspect of their practice.
What are your personal values?
To identify your core values, think about your personal values outside of financial advising. For example, my core values are based on five Hawaiian words: mahalo, aloha, ohana, pono, and imua. These words closely align with the values I learned from my mother and my father. They also align perfectly with how people can interact best with one another.
These values may resonate with you, in which case use them. You may have different values; that’s perfectly fine as long as you identify them and use them as a rudder to guide your business interactions.
- Mahalo
Mahalo means thank you. This is the word I use for living with gratitude and the importance of appreciating everything in my life.
With mahalo, you are grateful for the people in your life, and you appreciate their differences, too. You appreciate how they look at life and act in life, where they come from, and where they’re going. You’re thankful for the good fortune to meet many different people on life’s journey.
As a financial advisor, you deal with people from all walks of life with differing beliefs, opinions, and priorities and an endless array of opportunities to express Mahalo.
- Aloha
Aloha means many things, most commonly hello and goodbye. The meaning of aloha I prefer defines how I seek to live and work. It’s to do so with love. Deferring to the core value of aloha insists on treating yourself and the people around you with love.
You care for others and listen and share with them openly, willingly, and with hope. You understand that people and their opinions are neither right nor wrong and that they’re simply different.
Treating people with love or aloha changes how you feel about them and makes you want to do your best for them.
- Ohana
Ohana means family. This core value guides me to treat other people the way I treat the members of my family. With ohana, you are honest and forthright and never knowingly lead others astray.
Sometimes ohana means telling people things they don’t want to hear yet need to hear for their own good, and doing it with the intent of helping them satisfy their desires – even when they can’t see this for themselves.
When you’re truly committed to your clients, you treat them like ohana. You’re there for them not only when you’re working together on their financial plan but whenever they need you.
- Pono
Pono means to do the right thing. It means to live with righteousness – to do the right things for the right reasons.
No one is perfect. If you seek to live your life with pono, your good intentions in your plans and actions are certain to reflect your desire to do right.
- Imua
Imua means always move forward – to keep learning and continuing to grow. With imua, you evolve and become more skilled, compassionate and valuable to yourself and to your clients and others with whom you interact.
Moving forward may require you to change the way you do things, to confront people and problems, and to motivate yourself as well as others to take action.
Anyone can be complacent. Imua takes heart, perseverance, and a certain amount of courage.
Use your core values to guide you
These core values are what I look to when I’m confronted with tough decisions. Having these in place and adhering to them makes my decisions easier. More importantly, they are right for me and for people who seek my counsel.
Your core values may be different. Whatever they are, think of them as your prized possessions, and look to them as the moral code that guides your interactions with people. Allow them to proactively and positively shape the way you approach others.
Your core values affect your revenue
Some financial advisors worry that living by a code of conduct such as this will affect their ability to build their practices and make money. This is true, though perhaps not the way you might think.
Adhering to core values improves your ability to make money. Over time, as you incorporate your values into how you serve people, selling becomes much easier. By selling, I don’t mean convincing people they need to buy from you but rather building a relationship where people want to buy from you.
Your prospects and clients sense honesty and good intentions and they’ll trust you. They will actively seek you out for advice.
It’s ideal that people feel they can come to you, confident that the advice you offer is based on their best interests, not yours. And whether you’re in banking, insurance, investments, taxes, or law, they’ll see you as their financial guiding light.
You will become their lead financial advisor – not only a trusted advisor but a values-based, aloha advisor.
Identify your core values
When you have core values, you understand and appreciate what your clients want, without judgment, and then identify what they need to satisfy those wants. That ensures they’ll come away with a very positive experience.
They’ll gladly write favorable reviews about you and provide you with testimonials. They’ll eagerly share their experience with others, talking about you to their family, friends, and colleagues. They’ll refer the people they respect and care about most to you.
Think about your core values. What are they? What would you like them to be? How might your values affect your relationships with those you serve?
Use the values I shared as a starting point, if that helps you. No matter what, find the core values that resonate with you. If you do, you’ll be amazed at what a positive difference it makes.
For more advice on how to do better for yourself and the clients you advise, you can find Aloha Financial Advising on Amazon.
Stephen Kagawa is committed to helping financial advisors love the work they do. This purpose drives his efforts as the CEO of The Pacific Bridge Companies, an organization comprised of various international firms spanning the US and Asia that helps financial advisors guide their clients wherever their lives may lead. Stephen is a consistent qualifying and lifetime member of the Top of the Table of the Million Dollar Round Table, the premier association of financial professionals. He’s a GAMA International Diamond award winner who regularly speaks on international consultative and wealth management principles around the world.
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Advisor Perspectives welcomes guest contributions. The views presented here do not necessarily represent those of Advisor Perspectives.