And with his trademark transparency, Teddy added, "Can I tell you something else? A whale can't get harpooned until it comes to the surface. You know what? If you're not standing up at every charity event making a show of yourself, you can do your good quietly and they won't all be trying to get their hands in your wallet."
These are just a sampling of what I affectionately refer to now as "Teddyisms." While Teddy likes to talk in a tenor that would imply that he's just been stumbling through life, the lessons speak of a man who has been making incisive observations all along-observations about money and life and gathering and disbursing. He's been refining those lessons, and then sharing those same lessons in stories that resonate. In short, he has been doing the work of a philosopher. These nuggets about the role of money in life are his contribution. Some might think his outtakes on money matters to be painted with an epicurean tint, but at the end of the day, don't we all want to extract some satisfaction and joy from what we have gathered? What is the point of working all day, every day and then one day falling over?
Rarely do I get a chance to meet someone who is brutally up-front regarding his own foibles-a tell-it-like-it-is persona who is not afraid of telling the real story (to his own blushing). I find it refreshing, especially given the fact that we live in a world filled with impresarios whose conversations are embellished with their own personal PR campaigns. Teddy is that kind of guy and a rare breed of conversationalist, where you start out not knowing where you're going and end up not knowing where you've been. But you walk away grinning, and if you were listening, all the wiser. His wisdom is found in lessons that can only be tempered in the fires of experience-those quite painful and embarrassing-that only a good soul would choose to disclose.
In a business that is always asking, "How much money is being left off the table?" I wonder-with an eye toward our most valued clients-if we shouldn't be asking, "How much wisdom is being left off the table?"
How many valuable experiences are we not simpatico on? How many defining moments are we ignorant of? How many stories have we failed to hear because we did not take the time, within our own business and life, to locate Socrates?
©2011 Mitch Anthony. All rights reserved. Mitch is the president of the Financial Life Planning Institute and Advisor Insights Inc. He is an industry leader in training advisors on building life-centered relationships.