Twelve Steps to Make Your Business Fun Again

Thursday, February 14th, 2013

by Bob Simp­son, Syn­chronic­ity Per­for­mance Consultants

The past ten years have been labeled “The Lost Decade for North Amer­i­can Secu­ri­ties”.  Investors have lost con­fi­dence in finan­cial mar­kets and hope that their finan­cial goals may some­day be realized.

Finan­cial advi­sors, I have spo­ken with recently, talk about how the indus­try isn’t fun any more.  They tell sto­ries about how they cringe when the phone rings and call dis­play sends them a mes­sage that a cer­tain client is call­ing.  Clients are get­ting totally dis­il­lu­sioned by volatil­ity and poor ten-year per­for­mance numbers.

On top of this, com­pli­ance makes it almost impos­si­ble to do busi­ness.  I can sit in front of my iMac, do some research and pound out an arti­cle like this, reread it a few times, log into my blog’s back­end, paste the arti­cle, reread it a cou­ple more times and hit post and the arti­cle is there for the world to see.  Then my friend, Pierre Daille at Advi­sor Ana­lyst, picks it up, posts it on his web­site and sends out a mes­sage to 28,000 advi­sors to read.  Jealous?

In 1989, I became dis­il­lu­sioned with my role as an advi­sor and made a deci­sion to pur­sue man­age­ment.  I had a book of $120 mil­lion, great rev­enue, a great team and was well respected within my firm (I think) but I wasn’t par­tic­u­larly happy.  I was turn­ing 40 and sim­ply couldn’t see myself doing this work for another 20 or 25 years.

The stock mar­ket crash in 1987 had taken its toll on client con­fi­dence and even though my clients did well that year, pri­mar­ily because I was fixed income focused rather than equi­ties focused, it was really dif­fi­cult to mobi­lize them on opportunities.

I can hon­estly say I have been in your shoes.  1987 was quick and over com­pared to what you are expe­ri­enc­ing but the hang­over is the same.  Based on my per­sonal expe­ri­ence, here are my top 12 rec­om­men­da­tions to make your busi­ness fun again:

1. You have the best job in the world.  You make more money than most peo­ple you know and have all the free­dom in the world.  You can take hol­i­days or days off when­ever you want and attend lit­tle Johnny’s or Mary’s games or dance recitals and you don’t need to spend one to six months per year on a plane or in a hotel room.
2. Don’t get caught up in the num­bers.  Your num­ber one goal should be hap­pi­ness, not assets under man­age­ment or rev­enue.  If man­age­ment is putting pres­sure on you to increase rev­enue, find a firm that under­stands that today’s busi­ness is about gath­er­ing assets, sat­is­fy­ing clients and charg­ing fees based on the value you pro­vide and that rev­enue is sim­ply a bi-product of doing good work.
3. Focus on build­ing equity.  Every new client, every new dol­lar of AUM and every new COI rela­tion­ship you develop con­tributes to build­ing equity in your firm.  In many cases, your busi­ness is the most valu­able asset on your per­sonal bal­ance sheet.
4. Dis­en­gage from toxic clients.  Most busi­nesses have them.  They are the ones that you try to avoid at all costs.  I will bet that if you did a dif­fer­ent kind of seg­men­ta­tion:  where you rank clients into four cat­e­gories – Awe­some peo­ple to work with, Good peo­ple to work with, OK peo­ple to work with and Hor­ri­ble peo­ple to work with, you can eas­ily iden­tify the ones from whom you should dis­en­gage.  My rule of thumb is that 3 – 5% of clients cause 95% of grief.  The most suc­cess­ful advi­sors only work with peo­ple they like.  It is much less expen­sive to break free from a high value toxic client than split with your spouse and give up 50% of your net worth because you are miserable.
5. Deal with bad invest­ments and deci­sions.  I remem­ber read­ing an arti­cle back in the ‘80s on when to sell an invest­ment.  Ask your­self the ques­tion “Would I buy this invest­ment today?”  If the answer is No, you should sell.  Mis­takes that are not prop­erly dealt with reduce con­fi­dence for you and your clients.  Seg­ment your invest­ments into two cat­e­gories – 1. Would buy today and 2. Would not buy today/should I sell.
6. In his book, The Hap­pi­ness Advan­tage, Shawn Achor writes:  “Neu­ro­sci­en­tists have found that finan­cial losses are actu­ally processed in the same areas of the brain that respond to mor­tal dan­ger.  In other words, we react to with­er­ing prof­its and a sink­ing retire­ment account the same way our ances­tors did to a saber-tooth tiger.”  Clients need time to deal with their 2008 expe­ri­ences.  They need to work through their five stages of loss – Denial, Anger, Bar­gain­ing, Depres­sion and Accep­tance.
7. Start hav­ing “let’s start over” client meet­ings.  Some­times, it is a good strat­egy to sim­ply start over.  After a ter­ri­ble loss Vince Lom­bardi started a prac­tice by say­ing “Gen­tle­men, this is a foot­ball.”  In today’s volatile world, things change very quickly.  Think about hav­ing a start-over meet­ing every three years, start­ing with a new dis­cov­ery meet­ing. Explain to your clients that dur­ing tur­bu­lent times, it makes sense to reassess their sit­u­a­tion, their goals and their plans and look for the best solu­tion, based on cur­rent information.
8. Lay the facts on the table.  If you put clients into invest­ments in the late ‘90s that were based on buy and hold, which was the proper strat­egy for the sec­u­lar bull mar­ket from 1982 – 2000 but not a very prof­itable strat­egy for the past 11 years, dis­cuss sec­u­lar bull vs. sec­u­lar bear mar­kets and volatil­ity, rel­a­tive return strate­gies vs. absolute return strate­gies, etc.
9. Do your home­work.  You should spend at least one day per quar­ter exclu­sively ana­lyz­ing port­fo­lios, invest­ments, invest­ment man­agers, mar­ket per­for­mance and out­look and post your find­ings for clients.  Sec­u­lar bull mar­kets make advi­sors lazy and this may have come back to bite you.  Don’t put too much faith in sin­gle sources for information.
10. Exer­cise and eat prop­erly.  Exer­cise leads to the pro­duc­tion of endor­phins in your body.  Endor­phins make you happy and help you deal with stress, as well as all the other phys­i­o­log­i­cal advan­tages of exer­cise and proper nutrition.
11. Put every client on a Roadmap.  This will add order to your busi­ness, increase client sat­is­fac­tion and refer­rals and free up time for you to spend time pur­su­ing your per­sonal goals and spend­ing time with fam­ily and friends.
12. Find the right work/life bal­ance.  The rule for suc­cess is 1.  Be happy and 2.  Be suc­cess­ful.  Most peo­ple think that they need to be suc­cess­ful to be happy but you sig­nif­i­cantly improve your chances of suc­cess if start with being happy.

Bob Simp­son is Pres­i­dent of Syn­chronic­ity Per­for­mance Con­sul­tants.  Bob can be reached on his direct line at 905−502−0100, toll free at 866−646−6002 or by e-mail at bob.simpson@synchronicity.ca.

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Tags: Backend, Bob Simpson, Client Confidence, Compliance, Decade, Financial Advisors, Financial Goals, Financial Markets, Friend Pierre, Hangover, North American Securities, Performance Consultants, Performance Numbers, Personal Experience, Phone Rings, Stock Market Crash, Synchronicity, Turning 40, Twelve Steps, Volatility
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Twelve Steps to Making Your Business Fun Again

Thursday, August 30th, 2012

by Bob Simp­son, Syn­chronic­ity Per­for­mance Consulting

The past ten years have been labeled “The Lost Decade for North Amer­i­can Secu­ri­ties”.  Investors have lost con­fi­dence in finan­cial mar­kets and hope that their finan­cial goals may some­day be realized.

Finan­cial advi­sors, I have spo­ken with recently, talk about how the indus­try isn’t fun any more.  They tell sto­ries about how they cringe when the phone rings and call dis­play sends them a mes­sage that a cer­tain client is call­ing.  Clients are get­ting totally dis­il­lu­sioned by volatil­ity and poor ten-year per­for­mance numbers.

On top of this, com­pli­ance makes it almost impos­si­ble to do busi­ness.  I can sit in front of my iMac, do some research and pound out an arti­cle like this, reread it a few times, log into my blog’s back­end, paste the arti­cle, reread it a cou­ple more times and hit post and the arti­cle is there for the world to see.  Jealous?

In 1989, I became dis­il­lu­sioned with my role as an advi­sor and made a deci­sion to pur­sue man­age­ment.  I had a book of $120 mil­lion, great rev­enue, a great team and was well respected within my firm (I think) but I wasn’t par­tic­u­larly happy.  I was turn­ing 40 and sim­ply couldn’t see myself doing this work for another 20 or 25 years.

The stock mar­ket crash in 1987 had taken its toll on client con­fi­dence and even though my clients did well that year, pri­mar­ily because I was fixed income focused rather than equi­ties focused, it was really dif­fi­cult to mobi­lize them on opportunities.

I can hon­estly say I have been in your shoes.  1987 was quick and over com­pared to what you are expe­ri­enc­ing but the hang­over is the same.  Based on my per­sonal expe­ri­ence, here are my top 12 rec­om­men­da­tions to make your busi­ness fun again:

1. You have the best job in the world.  You make more money than most peo­ple you know and have all the free­dom in the world.  You can take hol­i­days or days off when­ever you want and attend lit­tle Johnny’s or Mary’s games or dance recitals and you don’t need to spend one to six months per year on a plane or in a hotel room.
2. Don’t get caught up in the num­bers.  Your num­ber one goal should be hap­pi­ness, not assets under man­age­ment or rev­enue.  If man­age­ment is putting pres­sure on you to increase rev­enue, find a firm that under­stands that today’s busi­ness is about gath­er­ing assets, sat­is­fy­ing clients and charg­ing fees based on the value you pro­vide and that rev­enue is sim­ply a bi-product of doing good work.
3. Focus on build­ing equity.  Every new client, every new dol­lar of AUM and every new COI rela­tion­ship you develop con­tributes to build­ing equity in your firm.  In many cases, your busi­ness is the most valu­able asset on your per­sonal bal­ance sheet.
4. Dis­en­gage from toxic clients.  Most busi­nesses have them.  They are the ones that you try to avoid at all costs.  I will bet that if you did a dif­fer­ent kind of seg­men­ta­tion:  where you rank clients into four cat­e­gories – Awe­some peo­ple to work with, Good peo­ple to work with, OK peo­ple to work with and Hor­ri­ble peo­ple to work with, you can eas­ily iden­tify the ones from whom you should dis­en­gage.  My rule of thumb is that 3 – 5% of clients cause 95% of grief.  The most suc­cess­ful advi­sors only work with peo­ple they like.  It is much less expen­sive to break free from a high value toxic client than split with your spouse and give up 50% of your net worth because you are miserable.
5. Deal with bad invest­ments and deci­sions.  I remem­ber read­ing an arti­cle back in the ‘80s on when to sell an invest­ment.  Ask your­self the ques­tion “Would I buy this invest­ment today?”  If the answer is No, you should sell.  Mis­takes that are not prop­erly dealt with reduce con­fi­dence for you and your clients.  Seg­ment your invest­ments into two cat­e­gories – 1. Would buy today and 2. Would not buy today/should I sell.
6. In his book, The Hap­pi­ness Advan­tage, Shawn Achor writes:  “Neu­ro­sci­en­tists have found that finan­cial losses are actu­ally processed in the same areas of the brain that respond to mor­tal dan­ger.  In other words, we react to with­er­ing prof­its and a sink­ing retire­ment account the same way our ances­tors did to a saber-tooth tiger.”  Clients need time to deal with their expe­ri­ences of loss and volatil­ity.  They need to work through their five stages of loss – Denial, Anger, Bar­gain­ing, Depres­sion and Accep­tance.
7. Start hav­ing “let’s start over” client meet­ings.  Some­times, it is a good strat­egy to sim­ply start over.  After a ter­ri­ble loss Vince Lom­bardi started a prac­tice by say­ing “Gen­tle­men, this is a foot­ball.”  In today’s volatile world, things change very quickly.  Think about hav­ing a start-over meet­ing every three years, start­ing with a new dis­cov­ery meet­ing. Explain to your clients that dur­ing tur­bu­lent times, it makes sense to reassess their sit­u­a­tion, their goals and their plans and look for the best solu­tion, based on cur­rent information.
8. Lay the facts on the table.  If you put clients into invest­ments in the late ‘90s that were based on buy and hold, which was the proper strat­egy for the sec­u­lar bull mar­ket from 1982 – 2000 but not a very prof­itable strat­egy for the past 11 years, dis­cuss sec­u­lar bull vs. sec­u­lar bear mar­kets and volatil­ity, rel­a­tive return strate­gies vs. absolute return strate­gies, etc.
9. Do your home­work.  You should spend at least one day per quar­ter exclu­sively ana­lyz­ing port­fo­lios, invest­ments, invest­ment man­agers, mar­ket per­for­mance and out­look and post your find­ings for clients.  Sec­u­lar bull mar­kets make advi­sors lazy and this may have come back to bite you.  Don’t put too much faith in sin­gle sources for information.
10. Exer­cise and eat prop­erly.  Exer­cise leads to the pro­duc­tion of endor­phins in your body.  Endor­phins make you happy and help you deal with stress, as well as all the other phys­i­o­log­i­cal advan­tages of exer­cise and proper nutrition.
11. Put every client on a Roadmap.  This will add order to your busi­ness, increase client sat­is­fac­tion and refer­rals and free up time for you to spend time pur­su­ing your per­sonal goals and spend­ing time with fam­ily and friends.
12. Find the right work/life bal­ance.  The rule for suc­cess is 1.  Be happy and 2.  Be suc­cess­ful.  Most peo­ple think that they need to be suc­cess­ful to be happy but you sig­nif­i­cantly improve your chances of suc­cess if start with being happy.

Bob Simp­son

Direct Line:  905−502−0100

Toll Free:      866−646−6002

E-mail:  bob.simpson@synchronicity.ca

Text Mes­sage:  905−502−0100

Web­site:  www​.syn​chronic​ity​.ca

Join our Dis­cus­sion Group on LinkedIn:  www​.linkedin​.com/​g​r​o​u​p​s​/​A​d​v​i​s​o​r​-​C​o​l​l​a​b​o​r​a​t​i​o​n​-​4​2​4​8​7​2​5​/​a​b​out

Bio:  www​.syn​chronic​ity​.ca/​a​b​out

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The Behaviour That Erodes Client Confidence

Tuesday, May 22nd, 2012

As part of a recent round of research with investors, a highly suc­cess­ful busi­ness owner dis­cussed his finan­cial advi­sor. On bal­ance, he’s happy with the job his advi­sor is doing, with the excep­tion of one small thing.

Here’s how the con­ver­sa­tion started:

“I’ve got the bulk of my sav­ings with a bro­ker that I’ve worked with for sev­eral years, and I’m gen­er­ally happy with the job he does,” was the open­ing com­ment. “He’s very con­ser­v­a­tive which I like, because it keeps my own aggres­sive instincts in check. As a result, when mar­kets cratered a few years ago, I didn’t get hit nearly as hard as the guys I golf with.”

Then I asked about the con­tact from his advi­sor, and he was happy there as well:

“My bro­ker touches base about once a month and is really quick to return my mes­sages. When we sit down to dis­cuss my port­fo­lio, he’s well pre­pared and has spe­cific sug­ges­tions; so the meet­ings are a good use of my time. And if I ask to meet at my office, he’s always will­ing to come to me rather than expect­ing me to go to him all the time.”

Then he paused and went on:

“There is one thing, though, that does bother me. Some­times when I’m speak­ing to my advi­sor on the phone, I get the sense that I don’t have his full atten­tion. As a result, I’ve had to repeat myself or he asks the same ques­tion more than once. It’s as if his mind is wan­der­ing, or he’s doing some­thing else while we’re talk­ing. And I do recall once or twice hear­ing some click­ing in the back­ground, as if he was typ­ing on his com­puter while we were talking.”

I asked this investor to tell me more about this:

“I don’t want to make a big­ger deal out of this than it is, but it’s really begun to bug me. My time is valu­able, and if we’re going to talk I want his com­plete focus. It’s got­ten to the point that recently I asked if he was set up on Skype so we could talk face to face. It turns out that his firm doesn’t allow Skype, but he did say that he would be happy to sched­ule a call from his home first thing in the morn­ing or at the end of the day.”

“It’s funny: recently my bro­ker asked me if it might be pos­si­ble to get an intro­duc­tion to my golf group and I said I’d see what I could do. What I didn’t say is that my big hes­i­ta­tion is being embar­rassed if one of my bud­dies has the same expe­ri­ence that I’m hav­ing. Given every­thing else my bro­ker does right, I can live with this, but I’m not sure oth­ers would feel the same way.”

Your two pri­or­i­ties on phone calls:

Let’s be clear here: The investor may be absolutely wrong about this, and it’s pos­si­ble that he has his advisor’s 100% atten­tion when they’re talk­ing on the phone. Whether that’s the case or not, he doesn’t FEEL that he has his advisor’s full atten­tion, and that‘s cre­ated a problem.

There are two mes­sages from this con­ver­sa­tion: First, in any inter­ac­tion with clients, we have to give them our full atten­tion. On long phone calls, that can be chal­leng­ing. One solu­tion is to make notes, cir­cling key points that you want to respond to.

And sec­ond, we need to ensure that clients feel they’re get­ting all of our atten­tion, by acknowl­edg­ing what they’re say­ing. Long peri­ods of silence don’t com­mu­ni­cate that we’re lis­ten­ing. On longer calls, you may want to recap client com­ments at key points: “Just to be com­pletely clear on my part, here’s what I’ve heard you say.”

Los­ing 10 points in your IQ:

For many of us, the key mes­sage from this con­ver­sa­tion is that we need to stop delud­ing our­selves about our abil­ity to do two things at once. I’ve seen advi­sors “lis­ten­ing” to con­fer­ence calls while work­ing on their com­puter, and I know that either the call or the work they’re doing (or both) are suffering.

In May, Prince­ton psy­chol­ogy pro­fes­sor and Nobel Prize win­ner, Daniel Kah­ne­man spoke to the CFA Insti­tute annual meet­ing in Chicago. He made the point that research shows we can effec­tively multi– task in a very lim­ited set of cir­cum­stances. If we’re doing some­thing that requires lit­tle con­scious atten­tion; for exam­ple dri­ving down a high­way, we can also carry on a mean­ing­ful con­ver­sa­tion with a pas­sen­ger. Because we’re dri­ving on auto-pilot, we’re able to divert our atten­tion to another activity.

That changes when we have to focus. As soon as the dri­ving requires con­scious thought, for exam­ple mak­ing a left hand turn into traf­fic, both dri­vers and pas­sen­gers instinc­tively stop talk­ing, because both know that the dri­ver shouldn’t be distracted.

The same prin­ci­ple applies to every­thing you do dur­ing the day. Any impor­tant activ­ity needs your 100% attention.

Still not con­vinced? A recent arti­cle on multi-tasking pointed to research show­ing that try­ing to do two things at once causes a 10 point drop in IQ, and reduces pro­duc­tiv­ity by as much as 40%. That 10 point drop in IQ is equiv­a­lent to los­ing a full night sleep, or twice the impact of smok­ing marijuana.

Read the arti­cle excerpt below and then resolve that start­ing today, on any impor­tant issue you will give that issue your full and undi­vided atten­tion; before it endan­gers client rela­tion­ships or costs you a referral.

Delud­ing your­self on multi-tasking:

“The pio­neer of this research is Pro­fes­sor Earl Miller, a neu­ro­sci­en­tist at MIT. He scanned vol­un­teers’ heads while they per­formed dif­fer­ent tasks and found that when there is a group of visual stim­u­lants in front of you, only one or two things tend to acti­vate your brain, indi­cat­ing we’re really only focus­ing on one or two items. In other words, our brains have to skit­ter to and fro inef­fi­ciently between tasks. But the real prob­lem occurs when we try to con­cen­trate on the two tasks we are deal­ing with, because this then causes an over­load of the brain’s pro­cess­ing capac­ity. This is par­tic­u­larly true when we try to per­form sim­i­lar tasks at the same time; such as writ­ing an email and talk­ing on the phone, as they com­pete to use the same part of the brain.

As a result, your brain sim­ply slows down. Even just think­ing about multi-tasking can cause this log-jam, as Glenn Wil­son, a psy­chi­a­trist at the Uni­ver­sity of Lon­don, reported a few years ago. He found that just being in a sit­u­a­tion where you are able to text and email, per­haps sit­ting at your desk, can knock a whole ten points from your IQ. This is sim­i­lar to the head-fog caused by los­ing a night’s sleep.

This is why Pro­fes­sor Miller, for one, is highly wary of the mul­ti­task­ing lifestyle.

“Peo­ple can’t do it very well, and when they say they can, they’re delud­ing them­selves,” he says. “The brain is very good at delud­ing itself.”

Not only does multi-tasking affect our men­tal clar­ity, switch­ing between tasks also makes us less effi­cient. An Amer­i­can study reported in the Jour­nal Of Exper­i­men­tal Psy­chol­ogy found that it took stu­dents far longer to solve com­pli­cated math prob­lems when they had to switch to other tasks; in fact, they were up to 40 per cent slower. And stud­ies in the US show that stu­dents who do home­work while watch­ing TV get con­sis­tently lower grades.

In the words of UCLA psy­chol­ogy pro­fes­sor Rus­sell Pol­drack:
“There is a cost to the way that our soci­ety is chang­ing. Humans are not built to work this way. We’re really built to focus.”

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Tags: Background, Business Owner, Client Confidence, Contact, Full Attention, Instincts, Investor, Investors, Job, Skype, Successful Business
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Twelve Steps to Making Your Business Fun Again

Thursday, March 8th, 2012

The past ten years have been labeled “The Lost Decade for North Amer­i­can Secu­ri­ties”.  Investors have lost con­fi­dence in finan­cial mar­kets and hope that their finan­cial goals may some­day be realized.

Finan­cial advi­sors, I have spo­ken with recently, talk about how the indus­try isn’t fun any more.  They tell sto­ries about how they cringe when the phone rings and call dis­play sends them a mes­sage that a cer­tain client is call­ing.  Clients are get­ting totally dis­il­lu­sioned by volatil­ity and poor ten-year per­for­mance numbers.

On top of this, com­pli­ance makes it almost impos­si­ble to do busi­ness.  I can sit in front of my iMac, do some research and pound out an arti­cle like this, reread it a few times, log into my blog’s back­end, paste the arti­cle, reread it a cou­ple more times and hit post and the arti­cle is there for the world to see.  Then my friend, Pierre Daille at Advi­sor Ana­lyst, picks it up, posts it on his web­site and sends out a mes­sage to 28,000 advi­sors to read.  Jealous?

In 1989, I became dis­il­lu­sioned with my role as an advi­sor and made a deci­sion to pur­sue man­age­ment.  I had a book of $120 mil­lion, great rev­enue, a great team and was well respected within my firm (I think) but I wasn’t par­tic­u­larly happy.  I was turn­ing 40 and sim­ply couldn’t see myself doing this work for another 20 or 25 years.

The stock mar­ket crash in 1987 had taken its toll on client con­fi­dence and even though my clients did well that year, pri­mar­ily because I was fixed income focused rather than equi­ties focused, it was really dif­fi­cult to mobi­lize them on opportunities.

I can hon­estly say I have been in your shoes.  1987 was quick and over com­pared to what you are expe­ri­enc­ing but the hang­over is the same.  Based on my per­sonal expe­ri­ence, here are my top 12 rec­om­men­da­tions to make your busi­ness fun again:

1. You have the best job in the world.  You make more money than most peo­ple you know and have all the free­dom in the world.  You can take hol­i­days or days off when­ever you want and attend lit­tle Johnny’s or Mary’s games or dance recitals and you don’t need to spend one to six months per year on a plane or in a hotel room.
2. Don’t get caught up in the num­bers.  Your num­ber one goal should be hap­pi­ness, not assets under man­age­ment or rev­enue.  If man­age­ment is putting pres­sure on you to increase rev­enue, find a firm that under­stands that today’s busi­ness is about gath­er­ing assets, sat­is­fy­ing clients and charg­ing fees based on the value you pro­vide and that rev­enue is sim­ply a bi-product of doing good work.
3. Focus on build­ing equity.  Every new client, every new dol­lar of AUM and every new COI rela­tion­ship you develop con­tributes to build­ing equity in your firm.  In many cases, your busi­ness is the most valu­able asset on your per­sonal bal­ance sheet.
4. Dis­en­gage from toxic clients.  Most busi­nesses have them.  They are the ones that you try to avoid at all costs.  I will bet that if you did a dif­fer­ent kind of seg­men­ta­tion:  where you rank clients into four cat­e­gories – Awe­some peo­ple to work with, Good peo­ple to work with, OK peo­ple to work with and Hor­ri­ble peo­ple to work with, you can eas­ily iden­tify the ones from whom you should dis­en­gage.  My rule of thumb is that 3 – 5% of clients cause 95% of grief.  The most suc­cess­ful advi­sors only work with peo­ple they like.  It is much less expen­sive to break free from a high value toxic client than split with your spouse and give up 50% of your net worth because you are miserable.
5. Deal with bad invest­ments and deci­sions.  I remem­ber read­ing an arti­cle back in the ‘80s on when to sell an invest­ment.  Ask your­self the ques­tion “Would I buy this invest­ment today?”  If the answer is No, you should sell.  Mis­takes that are not prop­erly dealt with reduce con­fi­dence for you and your clients.  Seg­ment your invest­ments into two cat­e­gories – 1. Would buy today and 2. Would not buy today/should I sell.
6. In his book, The Hap­pi­ness Advan­tage, Shawn Achor writes:  “Neu­ro­sci­en­tists have found that finan­cial losses are actu­ally processed in the same areas of the brain that respond to mor­tal dan­ger.  In other words, we react to with­er­ing prof­its and a sink­ing retire­ment account the same way our ances­tors did to a saber-tooth tiger.”  Clients need time to deal with their 2008 expe­ri­ences.  They need to work through their five stages of loss – Denial, Anger, Bar­gain­ing, Depres­sion and Accep­tance.
7. Start hav­ing “let’s start over” client meet­ings.  Some­times, it is a good strat­egy to sim­ply start over.  After a ter­ri­ble loss Vince Lom­bardi started a prac­tice by say­ing “Gen­tle­men, this is a foot­ball.”  In today’s volatile world, things change very quickly.  Think about hav­ing a start-over meet­ing every three years, start­ing with a new dis­cov­ery meet­ing. Explain to your clients that dur­ing tur­bu­lent times, it makes sense to reassess their sit­u­a­tion, their goals and their plans and look for the best solu­tion, based on cur­rent information.
8. Lay the facts on the table.  If you put clients into invest­ments in the late ‘90s that were based on buy and hold, which was the proper strat­egy for the sec­u­lar bull mar­ket from 1982 – 2000 but not a very prof­itable strat­egy for the past 11 years, dis­cuss sec­u­lar bull vs. sec­u­lar bear mar­kets and volatil­ity, rel­a­tive return strate­gies vs. absolute return strate­gies, etc.
9. Do your home­work.  You should spend at least one day per quar­ter exclu­sively ana­lyz­ing port­fo­lios, invest­ments, invest­ment man­agers, mar­ket per­for­mance and out­look and post your find­ings for clients.  Sec­u­lar bull mar­kets make advi­sors lazy and this may have come back to bite you.  Don’t put too much faith in sin­gle sources for information.
10. Exer­cise and eat prop­erly.  Exer­cise leads to the pro­duc­tion of endor­phins in your body.  Endor­phins make you happy and help you deal with stress, as well as all the other phys­i­o­log­i­cal advan­tages of exer­cise and proper nutrition.
11. Put every client on a Roadmap.  This will add order to your busi­ness, increase client sat­is­fac­tion and refer­rals and free up time for you to spend time pur­su­ing your per­sonal goals and spend­ing time with fam­ily and friends.
12. Find the right work/life bal­ance.  The rule for suc­cess is 1.  Be happy and 2.  Be suc­cess­ful.  Most peo­ple think that they need to be suc­cess­ful to be happy but you sig­nif­i­cantly improve your chances of suc­cess if start with being happy.

Bob Simp­son is Pres­i­dent of Syn­chronic­ity Per­for­mance Con­sul­tants.  Bob can be reached on his direct line at 905−502−0100, toll free at 866−646−6002 or by e-mail at bob.simpson@synchronicity.ca.

About Bob Simpson

Syn­chronic­ity Per­for­mance Con­sult­ing has been coach­ing finan­cial advi­sors since 1998.

Bob Simp­son, pres­i­dent and founder of Syn­chronic­ity has been involved, directly or indi­rectly in the finan­cial ser­vices indus­try since 1981. He has been a very suc­cess­ful finan­cial advi­sor with Nes­bitt Thom­son Inc., a major Cana­dian finan­cial insti­tu­tion. Between 1981 and 1989, he built a busi­ness with more than $120 mil­lion in assets under man­age­ment, was branch man­ager and SVP National Sales for Mid­land Wal­wyn and has been coach­ing finan­cial advi­sors since 1998.

You can fol­low Bob Simp­son via:

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Tackling today’s number one client challenge

Wednesday, March 16th, 2011

Talk to advi­sors about the chal­lenges they face today and you’ll get a lengthy list — often headed by unhappy clients, reduced income and a strug­gle to stay pos­i­tive and productive.

While these are all seri­ous issues, for most advi­sors they are dwarfed by the num­ber one obsta­cle to get­ting busi­ness back on track — and that’s rebuild­ing client trust in our com­pe­tence and our integrity.

Given the intan­gi­ble nature of advice, it’s impos­si­ble to have a func­tion­ing rela­tion­ship with­out a min­i­mum thresh­old of client confidence.

The good news? There are clear steps that every advi­sor can take to begin the process of reestab­lish­ing trust.

One investor’s story

Rebuild­ing trust starts by under­stand­ing what’s led to its decline.

While recent per­for­mance may have been the cat­a­lyst for con­sumer skep­ti­cism, this is far from the sole cause.

A recent arti­cle in Atlantic Mag­a­zine titled “Why I fired my bro­ker” detailed why one investor became dis­il­lu­sioned with his advi­sor. In the arti­cle, he quotes a high pro­file US money man­ager to the effect that “the finan­cial sys­tem is rigged against the aver­age investor” and talks about the absence of con­tact from his bro­ker since last fall.

The good news is that he has not given up on the indus­try, but he is much more guarded going forward.

His part­ing sentences:

“Our main job now is find­ing some­one to advise us. This is a very dif­fi­cult task.

This search is made more dif­fi­cult because we don’t have enough money to make our­selves inter­est­ing to most of the best advi­sors and the typ­i­cal advi­sor is not suf­fi­ciently independent-minded to be effective.

Uncon­ven­tion­al­ity makes me ner­vous, but less so than con­for­mity. I’m fin­ished with con­for­mity. In pick­ing an advi­sor, I’m also look­ing for some­one who is unlever­aged; some­one who is putting his own money into the invest­ments he’s rec­om­mend­ing and some­one who can explain to me, in a few sen­tences, in lan­guage eas­ily under­stood by earth­lings, his phi­los­o­phy of investing.”

To read the arti­cle: http://​www​.the​at​lantic​.com/​d​o​c​/​p​r​i​n​t​/​2​0​0​9​0​5​/​g​o​l​d​b​e​r​g​-​e​c​o​n​o​m​y​?​x​=​2​3​&​a​m​p​;​y=2

Begin by tak­ing responsibility

So that’s the prob­lem, how about the solution?

Start by rec­og­niz­ing the prob­lem, make rebuild­ing trust a para­mount pri­or­ity and begin to put spe­cific strate­gies in place to repair your rela­tion­ship with clients.

In many cases, rebuild­ing trust starts by acknowl­edg­ing some level of responsibility.

It’s not just finan­cial advi­sors who have taken a hit in their trust level. A poll of Amer­i­cans taken early this showed trust in cor­po­ra­tions at 38%, down 20% from a year ago and at the low­est level on record, well below where it stood in the post-Enron era.  In recent arti­cles in For­tune Mag­a­zine, Indra Nooyi of Pep­sico and Jamie Dimon of JP Mor­gan Chase talked about how busi­ness needs to  rebuild trust.

Dimon also addressed the issue of tak­ing respon­si­bil­ity. He wrote: “In order to address the pub­lic anger and out­rage over what has hap­pened to our finan­cial sys­tem, we in the bank­ing com­mu­nity need to take some respon­si­bil­ity. Banks, includ­ing ours, should acknowl­edge that we made some mistakes.”

In inter­views with investors, one of the biggest irri­tants is the fail­ure of their advi­sors to admit any fault or take any respon­si­bil­ity for the melt­down of their port­fo­lios. In some cases, all that investors are look­ing for is their advi­sor to say they’re sorry.

Here’s how one con­ver­sa­tion might go:

“First and fore­most, I’m truly sorry that I was unable to antic­i­pate the events of the past year. I would have dearly loved to have been able to shel­ter you from the mar­ket down­turn — unfor­tu­nately, these took just about every­one by sur­prise, me included. What I would like to talk about is what we’ve learned from this and how these lessons are shap­ing the rec­om­men­da­tions I’m mak­ing going forward.”

Four dri­vers of trust

One of the top names and researchers around the issue of how to build trust is a U.S. based con­sul­tant named Charles Green.

He’s cre­ated a trust build­ing for­mula that advi­sors can apply that has four ele­ments — Trust equals C plus R plus I divided by S.

The first three dri­vers of trust are above the line, or the numer­a­tor if you remem­ber your high school alge­bra. They’re Cred­i­bil­ity, Reli­a­bil­ity and Intimacy.

Remem­ber, there are two ele­ments of trust — trust in your capa­bil­ity and trust in your integrity.

Cred­i­bil­ity addresses the first issue. How much do clients trust your com­pe­tence and how believ­able you are in terms of the advice you’re pro­vid­ing?  Are you seen to have real exper­tise? Does your track record build your cred­i­bil­ity? Do you instill con­fi­dence in clients that you are pro­vid­ing the best pos­si­ble advice?

Even where clients have been com­fort­able on this dimen­sion in the past, their con­fi­dence in your abil­ity to pro­vide good advice has been shaken and needs to be rebuilt.

Reli­a­bil­ity basi­cally speaks to whether you do what you say you’re going to and deliver on your com­mit­ments. That can be lit­tle things — if you say you’re going to call, do you call? Or it can be big things — if you tell a client that their max­i­mum down­side risk in a 12 month period is 20%, does the port­fo­lio you con­struct deliver on that?

The third fac­tor above the line is inti­macy. Do you engage the client at a deep, per­sonal level?  Do you ask ques­tions that tap into their emo­tions and feel­ings? Do they feel that you are really lis­ten­ing to their answers — and is your rela­tion­ship with them such that they feel com­fort­able shar­ing those with you?

These first three ele­ments in the trust equa­tion make up the total above the line.

The most impor­tant dri­ver of trust

The last fac­tor is the num­ber below the line — and is as impor­tant as the first three com­bined. That below the line ele­ment is per­ceived self-orientation, in other words to what extent are clients con­cerned that you may be putting their inter­ests behind yours?

There are a num­ber of things that you can do to address this.

Do you appear to be really inter­ested in what clients have to say? Do you ever seem to be in a hurry — is there any point where you demon­strate impa­tience and the desire to move things along? Do you really seem to be lis­ten­ing to them? (There’s that lis­ten­ing word again.)

Do you con­tact them with ideas and advice even when there is no rev­enue entailed for you? Whether it be on a per­sonal or busi­ness mat­ter, if every con­ver­sa­tion has some­thing in it for you, clients may be legit­i­mately unsure about what dri­ves those calls.

And some­thing that’s espe­cially prob­lem­atic these days, are clients absolutely com­fort­able that your rec­om­men­da­tions are not skewed by the com­pen­sa­tion that results?

Recently, there has been exten­sive media cov­er­age about how advi­sors’ rec­om­men­da­tions may be moti­vated by their inter­ests rather than clients.  Short of doing some­thing for free, com­pen­sa­tion is always an issue. Even when deal­ing with accoun­tants and lawyers, some con­sumers won­der whether all the time they were billed for was nec­es­sary or actu­ally spent.

Com­pen­sa­tion is par­tic­u­larly a prob­lem in the finan­cial indus­try, how­ever, where it is typ­i­cally com­mis­sion based, embed­ded in man­age­ment fees or billed as a per­cent­age of an account. Even when the fees are trans­par­ent, clients some­times won­der whether they are get­ting good value.

There is no per­fect solu­tion on com­pen­sa­tion, other than being upfront and trans­par­ent — here’s what I charge, here’s why and here’s what you get for it. As well, some advi­sors need to be more open about dis­cussing avail­able alter­na­tives on how clients can pay for the advice they receive.

What’s your trust quotient?

Rebuild­ing trust will not hap­pen quickly or eas­ily — and it’s tempt­ing to put it off as a result. Given it’s crit­i­cal impor­tance, how­ever advi­sors who don’t give reestab­lish­ing trust pri­or­ity do so at their peril. Now’s the time and today’s the day to being the crit­i­cal task of repair­ing client trust.

For advi­sors who want to learn more, a twenty ques­tion diag­nos­tic online ques­tion­naire can be com­pleted at no cost at Charles Green’s web­site. You’ll receive a short report that high­lights poten­tial weak spots and makes recommendations.

Go to http://​www​.trustedad​vi​sor​.com/ and click on What’s your TQ rating?

For more infor­ma­tion, please visit http://​get​keep​clients​.com.

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Turning service problems into opportunities

Tuesday, January 18th, 2011

No mat­ter how hard we try to avoid them, it’s inevitable that on occa­sion clients will expe­ri­ence a ser­vice prob­lem — a change of address doesn’t go through, some­thing that was sup­posed to be sent slips through the cracks or a request wasn’t fol­lowed up on.

Even small mis­takes can be costly — they can cor­rode client con­fi­dence, under­mine good­will and some­times even cost you a client. A while back, I spoke to an investor who pulled his account because of a suc­ces­sion of irri­tat­ing mis­takes over an eigh­teen month period.

As a result, every advi­sor needs a two part strat­egy when it comes to ser­vice problems,

First, you need to put sys­tems in place to keep mis­takes to a minimum.

And sec­ond, you need a proac­tive process to recover from any prob­lems that do take place. In fact, research shows that as long as mis­takes are the excep­tion, speedy and effec­tive recov­ery from a prob­lem can actu­ally leave rela­tion­ships stronger than if the prob­lem hadn’t hap­pened at all.

Here’s a six step plan for effec­tive prob­lem recov­ery that can help main­tain strong rela­tion­ships even in the face of ser­vice problems.

Step One: Let clients know you want to hear about problems

Many clients are incred­i­bly frus­trated by the dif­fi­culty of get­ting small prob­lems resolved with com­panes they deal with. As a result, many have given up com­plain­ing, men­tally shrug­ging their shoul­ders and mov­ing on.

You don’t want your clients deal­ing with you through grit­ted teeth. The first thing you need to do is to clearly com­mu­ni­cate that you truly want to hear if clients ever run into a prob­lem, no mat­ter how triv­ial.

You can’t be sub­tle on this — you need to let clients know that if they ever encounter an issue, you want to know. And make it easy for clients to let you know when they run into a prob­lem, by ask­ing them to drop you or your assis­tant an email or to give you a call.

Step Two: Under­stand the issue

Clients call­ing with an issue can some­times be worked up and overly emo­tional. As a result, your first pri­or­ity is to thank them for bring­ing this to your atten­tion — and then to clearly under­stand the exact nature of the prob­lem. Ask clients call­ing in to walk you through exactly what tran­spired, tak­ing detailed notes.

Then ask if you can play back what you heard just to be sure you got it right.

Step Three: Apologize

Once you’ve heard clients out, the next step is to apol­o­gize in a way that clients under­stand you truly are sorry.

These days, you see a lot of “going through the motions” apolo­gies, apolo­gies that don’t seem heart felt or sin­cere. After a long wait at a TD bank counter one recent morn­ing while the woman I was deal­ing with went to check some­thing, she came back and turned to her screen, mum­bling “Sorry to keep you wait­ing” with­out ever look­ing at me.

Not only did I not feel apol­o­gized to, I felt dis­missed. If this woman had looked at me when she got back, engaged me for a sec­ond and a half and said “I’m ter­ri­bly sorry to keep you wait­ing, we ran into a bit of a delay,” my reac­tion would have been entirely different.

After hear­ing clients out, be sure to take a few sec­onds to ensure they under­stand you sin­cerely regret hav­ing incon­ve­nienced them.

Step Four: Lay out next steps

Next you need to spell out exactly what you’re going to do to fix the prob­lem. Once you’ve done that, ask ”

Even if you need to do some research or to get more infor­ma­tion before iden­ti­fy­ing what will hap­pen, you need to be clear on when you’ll be respond­ing with more specifics.

Step Five: Make sure the prob­lem is fixed

Whether deal­ing with tele­coms, cable com­pa­nies or air­lines, many of us have had the expe­ri­ence as cus­tomers where small mis­take fol­lows small mis­take — it’s incred­i­bly frus­trat­ing when we go through one glitch after another.

When a client encoun­ters a prob­lem, you need ensure that it’s cor­rected quickly and accu­rately — the last thing you want to do is to com­pound a mis­take by fail­ing to deliver the solu­tion you promised.  One advi­sor starts his morn­ing team meet­ing by review­ing a list of out­stand­ing ques­tions and prob­lems, to be sure that noth­ing slips through the cracks.

Step Six: Check back with the client

The final step is to cir­cle back with the client to be sure that you’ve deliv­ered the res­o­lu­tion you promised.

The best way to do this is to pick up the phone after­wards and to say “I’m just call­ing to fol­low up on the prob­lem you expe­ri­enced. I wanted to say again how sorry I am that you ran into this and also to ensure that we’re resolved this issue.”

In the per­fect world, mis­takes would never hap­pen and we wouldn’t need a prob­lem res­o­lu­tion strat­egy. In the real world, occa­sion­ally things break down and clients inevitably expe­ri­ence small glitches from time to time — when that hap­pens, you need to be proac­tive to ensure that you turn prob­lems into an oppor­tu­nity to strengthen relationships.

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Rebuilding client confidence in stocks

Wednesday, July 21st, 2010

These days, there’s a cloud of uncer­tainty over mar­kets, with ques­tions about eco­nomic growth, gov­ern­ment deficits, the tim­ing and impact of inter­est rates increases, unem­ploy­ment lev­els and the US hous­ing market.

Com­bined with recent mar­ket volatil­ity and dis­ap­point­ing stock returns over the past ten years, it’s no sur­prise that many investors have lost con­fi­dence that stocks will be a good place to be over the mid and long term … espe­cially when they hear respected money man­agers like Bill Gross talk about a “new nor­mal” of slower eco­nomic growth and lower returns on stocks.

The result is that many investors have money earn­ing next to noth­ing in cash. That’s fine if some­one only needs a 1% or 2% return to hit their long term goals — but for many investors, their cur­rent allo­ca­tions mean it will be impos­si­ble to achieve their long term goals.

And it’s in this kind of an envi­ron­ment that advi­sors can bring value, by pro­vid­ing per­spec­tive on both sides of the debate about the value that stocks pro­vide at today’s levels.

Expert views on stock valuations

Today, the the lead­ing pro­po­nents that stocks are cheap and that they’re expen­sive are Wharton’s Jeremy Siegel, author of Stocks for the Long Run and Yale’s Robert Shiller, who wrote Irra­tional Exuberance.

Notably, both went on record in early 2000 to the effect that tech stocks were over­val­ued and at unsus­tain­able lev­els — but since then have diverged on their assess­ments of stock mar­ket valuations.

Ten days ago, I trav­elled to Philadel­phia and New Haven and spent an hour with each of Pro­fes­sors Siegel and Shiller, who coin­ci­den­tally are long-time friends who reg­u­larly vaca­tion together on the Jer­sey Shore.

Our con­ver­sa­tions on mar­ket val­u­a­tions are sum­ma­rized in my col­umn in today’s Globe and Mail, which is at the bot­tom of this email and which can be sent to clients.

The case for stocks as expensive

Robert Shiller looks at cor­po­rate earn­ings adjusted for infla­tion over the past ten years — look­ing back ten years elim­i­nates short term dis­tor­tions in any given year.

Over the past hun­dred and fifty year, stocks have traded at an aver­age mul­ti­ple of six­teen times an aver­age of the past ten year earnings.

Today, stocks trade at around twenty times their aver­age earn­ings. I make the point in my Globe col­umn that while not close to the peak level of forty times his­tor­i­cal earn­ings they hit in 2000, this is still his­tor­i­cally expen­sive — and sug­gests returns in the period ahead below the long term lev­els of 9% before infla­tion and 6% after inflation.

As an aside, In Jan­u­ary I spent 90 min­utes with Shiller over lunch, hav­ing for­tu­itously bumped into him at the Atlanta air­port. At that time, he made the com­ment that even when stocks are at 20 times aver­age ten year earn­ings, investors can still do respectably in the fol­low­ing period.

Today, he is more pes­simistic, as he’s con­cerned that erod­ing con­fi­dence by Amer­i­can con­sumers and busi­ness could lead to a down­ward spi­ral of reduced spend­ing, which in and of itself could trig­ger a dou­ble dip recession.

And he con­cluded our con­ver­sa­tion by say­ing that he’s uncer­tain whether investors will be bet­ter off in stocks or in bonds in the period ahead.

The argu­ment for stocks as cheap

Jeremy Siegel has a very dif­fer­ent take on the value in stocks.

In my Globe col­umn, I note that he uses a dif­fer­ent method to value stocks and reaches a dif­fer­ent con­clu­sion — his analy­sis sug­gests that com­pared to long term aver­ages stocks are under­val­ued by 25% to 30%.

The biggest dif­fer­ence between his approach and Robert Shiller’s is that his is for­ward look­ing, focus­ing on con­sen­sus earn­ings fore­casts for this year and next. Among his crit­i­cisms of Robert Shiller’s method­ol­ogy is that mega-writeoffs such as the $80 bil­lion write­down by AIG will dis­tort the earn­ings base from which back­ward look­ing cal­cu­la­tions are con­ducted for years to come.

Siegel has looked at U.S. stock mar­ket val­u­a­tions over a 200 year period. Dur­ing that time, the aver­age stock mul­ti­ple of earn­ings has been 15 times — that com­pares with a mul­ti­ple of con­sen­sus earn­ings fore­casts of 13 times for this year and 11 times for next year.

The impact of low inter­est rates

Siegel’s aver­age of 15 times earn­ings includes peri­ods of dou­ble digit infla­tion, when mul­ti­ples are typ­i­cally depressed — exclud­ing peri­ods of dou­ble digit infla­tion, the aver­age mul­ti­ple that the mar­ket paid for earn­ings was 17 times.

If earn­ings fore­casts for next year are accu­rate, then return­ing to that long term aver­age of 15 times earn­ings would see stocks increase by 30%, ris­ing to the his­tor­i­cal low infla­tion val­u­a­tion norm would see stocks rise by 50%.

Address­ing the new nor­mal of lower growth

We also dis­cussed some of the argu­ments by Bill Gross at PIMCO and oth­ers about a new nor­mal of slower eco­nomic growth, due to delever­ag­ing, re reg­u­la­tion and a reduc­tion in the pace of globalization.

His response was that these are legit­i­mate con­cerns but that they ignore the impact of inno­va­tion and espe­cially the effect of the internet.

Siegel points to the inter­net as a trans­for­ma­tive tool in accel­er­at­ing the pace of inno­va­tion, as sci­en­tists and researchers around the world are able to work together in real time.

And he went on to say that this will inevitably lead to faster eco­nomic growth.

Com­mu­ni­cat­ing your views to clients

In an indus­try where opin­ion often drowns out rea­son, Robert Shiller and Jeremy Siegel stand out for their care­ful, fact-based approaches.

Which view you and your clients favour will largely depend on your going-in biases — those who are cur­rently neg­a­tive will look to Robert Shiller’s approach, those who are more opti­mistic will side with Jeremy Siegel.

The good news is that these two views lay out clear para­me­ters for the upside and down­side case for stocks — and pro­vide the foun­da­tion for a rea­soned dis­cus­sion about the direc­tion of stocks in the period ahead.

And by shar­ing the argu­ments on both sides of the debate with clients, you posi­tion your­self as some­one who con­sid­ers all the facts before reach­ing con­clu­sions and mak­ing recommendations.

Two routes back into the market

A final com­ment on help­ing clients get back into the mar­ket, if after dis­cussing this you agree that it makes sense to increase their stock allocations.

At that point, you can go in one of two directions.

One is to imme­di­ately move to the tar­get allocation.

The advan­tage of mak­ing the full move now is that clients will ben­e­fit from any run-up in stocks and you won’t have to con­tend with hes­i­ta­tion to com­plete the com­mit­ment in six and twelve months.

The down­side to this approach is that if mar­kets see a short-term set­back, you risk height­ened anx­i­ety from your client and poten­tially los­ing that client entirely.

The alter­na­tive is to phase in that move in stages, with per­haps a third now, a third in six months and the final por­tion in a year.

For many clients this is a more com­fort­able approach than invest­ing the total amount right now.

Fur­ther, by sug­gest­ing that you phase in the com­mit­ment you reduce the risk of clients won­der­ing about whether your advice is influ­enced by the desire to earn higher com­pen­sa­tion from funds that are invested in the mar­ket rather than sit­ting in cash.

To watch two of the inter­views with Jeremy Siegel, click below — note that addi­tional videos are avail­able at www​.cli​entin​sights​.ca

Why stocks are undervalued:

http://​cli​entin​sights​.ca/​v​i​d​e​o​/​j​e​r​e​m​y​-​s​i​e​g​e​l​-​w​h​y​-​s​t​o​c​k​s​-​a​r​e​-​u​n​d​e​r​v​a​l​u​e​d​/​t​y​p​e​:​i​n​v​e​s​tor

Respond­ing to mar­ket concerns:

http://​cli​entin​sights​.ca/​v​i​d​e​o​/​j​e​r​e​m​y​-​s​i​e​g​e​l​-​r​e​s​p​o​n​d​i​n​g​-​t​o​-​m​a​r​k​e​t​-​c​o​n​c​e​r​n​s​/​t​y​p​e​:​i​n​v​e​s​tor

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