Lesson 4 | Why do it? (4:58 minutes)
Why do it?
Why bother? Why take the time with this? It's like, "Chris, we're going to get at a vision, we're going to figure out what their goals are, and then we're going to hook ... Connect them with the right sort of solutions for that." It's like, "I already skipped the vision part. I go right to the goals, figure out what they want, and get that for them." It's like, that's awesome, that's great, but vision gives you ... It gives you an edge that others don't have. It also gives you an accuracy and, more importantly, it gives you a reason.
Let me tell you what I mean. First of all, it's this. It's ... People say, "Oh, I don't want to slow down and ask somebody what their vision is at the beginning. I want to get right to it. Let me help them find a solution, put that in place, and get moving. Action creates results," and we agree. Absolutely. It's the actions that create the result. The question is what actions? If you ask someone, "So what are your goals?," oftentimes, you get some pretty fluffy answers. Probably more likely, what you get are the answers that they've been taught to give you. "I want to retire by the time I'm 65. I'm going to golf. I'm going to do long walks on the beach with my wife. I'm going to have a sailboat. I'm going to hang around grandchildren."
If that is a person's actual desired future state, how they want it to be, fantastic. However, there's been so much messaging around that and we've been given so many instructions around that that we think that's what we want. A lot of people are not clear. If they think that those are their goals, "I'm supposed to get a boat, I'm supposed to get good at golf, I'm supposed to be able to afford all that stuff," if they think that those are their goals but they're not really, when they go to implement, are they more or less likely to implement? Well, they're less likely to implement. What we want to do is slow down just a little bit at the beginning to get really clear on where are they going and why does that matter to them?
The reason it becomes powerful is this, is that no one else is having this conversation with them, oftentimes including their spouses. They've never talked about this with anyone. Let me ask you, what's your vision for the future? What's your desired future state? I bet you have sort of a mushy sense of this, like, "Well, I kind of want this and I kind of want that," or you might even have it a little bit more concrete. Show me the person who can say, "My vision looks like this. It is this, it is this, it is this, it is this," with a lot of specificity. Very few people can do that.
If you think that most people can't do that, and that most people haven't even had this conversation with some of the most important people in their lives, but you show up on the scene and you're able to help them navigate that conversation, what do you think that does to your relationship with them? It's like, "Wow, you helped me finally get clear on this. For the first time in my life, this really changes how I behave and what I do and the focal point of my life. I better go work with someone else now." No, that's not what happens. I'm going to want to work with you. This conversation creates an emotional connection with the wealth holder that others aren't going to have, but it also creates an understanding that, once you have this, you're able to truly serve them.
Once you've got the vision, then you can identify goals that will take them there but, if you don't have that vision, goals are just things to do. Well, if it ... I'm not ... Most people aren't looking for more to do, they're looking for things that will get them somewhere. The vision is where people want to get to but they can't articulate it.
At the end of this, you're going to have a sense of how do I help people articulate it and, by doing that, you're going to understand their reasons for acting on your advice, which means that, after we go through this discovery and the fact finding and you develop solutions and you come back and you present it to them and you give them a recommendation, their question isn't ... They're not going to be drilling into the minute questions around this solution versus that versus this versus that. What they're going to ask is like, "Will this get me that up there? My desired future state, the piece above the Planning Horizon, is this going to get me that?" You're going to be able to say yes. In that moment, people move forward.
By slowing down a little bit at the front, you speed up at the other end. If you don't do this and then you come up with a bunch of solutions, they're going to have 100 questions about, "Well, should I? Shouldn't I?" You've had the experience that people just drop off. You have great meetings, you come up with great solutions, and then they fall off. It's like, that's not the kind of experience you're going to have with this.
One is to make sure that you're actually clear on the real target, the real bullseye at the end of the day. The second is you're going to create an emotional connection with the wealth holder that other people just plain don't have. The third is that, when it comes to them making decisions, those decisions are going to move faster. So, why bother? You don't have to do it, but you're leaving a lot of opportunity on the table if you don't.