It only takes four qualities.  

It takes four qualities to be a successful investor in order to reach our financial goals.  

It doesn’t matter what that goal is - it could be retirement or a life changing trip somewhere across the world.  

It is very rare for a person to have all four of these traits.  

That is why our role exists…to fill one or all four of these areas for our clients.  

Let’s talk through them:

Knowledge

This is where most folks think the largest gap exists.  It’s funny, that really is not the case.  Our clients are very bright people and many of them have backgrounds in finance or run their own companies.  This helps them to understand what makes a sound investment and that skill carries over well to making personal investment decisions.  If a gap does exist here, it is mostly in the details.  Clients may not fully understand how to read a balance sheet for a company to help find opportunity in investment strategy.

Time

This is a common lacking feature with a majority of our clients.  With all of the advances in technology you would think that we all were getting plenty of sleep, and meeting our friends and family for brunch everyday.  This doesn’t seem to be the case.  Many of us have little time between shuttling the kids to soccer, squeezing in some yard work, taking the dog for a walk, and setting aside some time to have a conversation with our significant other (personal perspective anyway).  I have personally found an incredible amount of peace in choosing to slow down, reduce my commitments, and focus on those things most important to me (family, friends, business, fun and overall health - more on this later).  However, there are still so many hours in the day to do what we choose - which is a great segway to the next quality…..

Desire

As I have said time and again, our clients are bright people.  However, this does not mean that they WANT to spend their free time and brain power researching investments and financial strategy.  Most people are busy these days, whether that be with family, friends, hobbies, or just doing something that really fires them up and makes them feel alive.  I have not met many people that get fired up managing their financial plan - I have met some, but not many.

Discipline

This is where we really get to put the coach hat on.  Many clients do possess every other trait listed above, but know that when challenged with balancing fear and greed - one of the two may get the best of them.  Too much of either emotion can lead to a less than desirable decision.  We help to balance out fear and greed to ensure that our clients make sound investment decisions to reach their goals.

As I said before, for us to provide value to a client there must be a lack in one of the traits above, if not all four.  We have the pleasure of helping fill the gaps in those qualities.