At the time, Busillo had one child with another on the way, and yet decided to walk away from a secure job that also included a company car, an expense account, and top-notch retirement and medical benefits. "I walked away from corporate America and left behind a bag full of goodies. I told my wife it was time to move on and that I wasn't cut out for the corporate sector-I couldn't deal with the politics and game-playing," he says.
But his decision was also based on his relationship with Diliberto, who was one of his clients when he was with the pension services company. "I felt he was the kind of person I could take that risk with," he says. "Whenever Roy was involved in a case, it was always the client first and foremost. His rule was, 'We'll make our money by doing the right things.'"
The other shareholder, senior vice president Jeff A. Weiand, was hired by the firm a year after graduating college in 1985. In his initial job search after graduation, Weiand says, he specifically was looking for a job as a financial advisor. When he answered ads, however, he often would end up talking to someone at a penny stock operation. "I remember walking into one place with champagne bottles in each cubicle, streamers hanging from the ceiling and a lot of pep talks," he recalls. "The interview was just about how many people I knew, who were my contacts, how willing I was to work on the phones and if I could work at night."
He found the environment at RTD Financial so much to his liking that, after being told it would be another year before he could be fit into he firm's budget, he worked without a paycheck. "I felt it was an opportunity to be part of a vision," he says. "The focus was 100%, without question, on the client and what their needs were. Roy preached from day one, 'Do good things for people and good things will happen to you.'"
Good Planners, Bad Advice
These days Diliberto is a frequent speaker at industry gatherings, often appearing in tandem with Mitch Anthony, author of titles that include Your Clients for Life, The New Retirementality and, most recently, Selling With Emotional Intelligence. Diliberto and Anthony are currently co-authoring a new book, with the working title The New Meaning of Money, which will explore from an advisor's perspective how the September 11 terrorist attacks have changed people's attitudes.
Diliberto and Anthony aren't bashful about exposing their innermost views when they run one of their sessions, which are typically standing-room only. At a recent TD Waterhouse conference, for example, Anthony told attendees that too many planners view clients as a "safety deposit box to which you are finding the combination and when you find it the inquiry is over."
Diliberto, meanwhile, flatly stated that too many "good advisors are giving their clients what I would classify as bad advice." Elaborating, he feels that many advisors are "geared around financial implications, as opposed to life implications, that it turns out to be bad advice."
As an illustration, he recalls attending meetings with clients and estate attorneys in which the clients expressed a desire to leave a certain amount of money to people in their will. "The attorney tried to convince them to leave the money to other people just for the sake of saving taxes," Diliberto says.
There was another instance where a wife wanted to take $400,000 from her husband's stock option benefits and use them to pay off the couple's mortgage. To Diliberto, it was clear that removing the mortgage debt from their lives was an important goal. Their accountant, however, advised against the move because he calculated it would cost them $35,000 in lost tax deductions.
Where the life planning comes in, Diliberto says, is using the life goals of the client-and not just number calculations-in doling out advice. "How can you give advice about something like that without asking the client, 'How do you feel about debt?' which to me is the most important conversation you can have with a client," Diliberto says. "The objective is to have your client live life free of worrying and pursue their life's dreams and goals without worrying about money on a day-to-day basis."