Loewe: In my mid-50s I was participating in an entrepreneurial coaching program that introduced the discussion of “retirement.” They pointed out that retirement means “take out of service.” The more I thought about selling my practice at a future time, the more I began to recognize that I loved what I was doing and didn’t really want to stop. I did, however, want more time to engage in activities that I found interesting. So I gradually added more vacation time to my schedule, with the confidence that I had deliberately built a great support team who could take care of things in my absence. We also began to incorporate some events with clients that could also assuage my play needs such as travel.
Hortz: What specific kind of client engagement strategies or actions does that necessitate?
Loewe: We had to get very organized about scheduling client contact. We created client categories and assigned features to those categories. For example, some clients were seen in person or with a scheduled phone call quarterly, others semi-annually and others annually. Very early on, I also made sure that my team was present at all meetings to build confidence in the clients that they could contact the team with issues and most of the time the team could handle things especially if I was away.
Most of my clients expressed concern that I would retire and leave them high and dry. So I assured them that I would not retire but I wanted to take more time off. I needed them to work more directly with my staff. I got really good at delegating, which might sound flip, but effective delegation is a skill.
Results were better than I expected. I reduced my presence in the office to include only client meetings and key staff meetings.
Hortz: Have you seen many challenges from many clients in refashioning or re-engineering into this new level of relationship?
Loewe: Trust is key. As advisors we know that we must build trust with the clients because we’re helping them with very important matters. But I also recognized that having been in the business for 40+ years, many of my clients had evolved into friends. They would share things that really didn’t have anything to do with their financial well-being, but were bothering them. Sometimes we could talk things through and come to a resolution, and sometimes there was nothing specific I could do. But I was honored that they trusted me with their concerns. So no, I haven’t experienced challenges as most relationships, through my purposeful deep engagement process with my clients, evolved into very open and trusting relationships.
Hortz: Over all your years of experimenting, what have been the most effective practices to build that stronger connection and working relationship with your clients?
Loewe: The most successful and effective practices were the ongoing creation of social events - dinners, traveling with clients. We’ve evolved those open invitation events into what we now call our Friends Connection and our Travel Connection. The key being that there was no business discussed, no sponsors. This enabled us to focus on their hopes and concerns going forward, outside of the money perspective. This allowed us to stay a couple of steps ahead of our clients; getting them to identify the hurdles or things that were challenging or stopping them.
Hortz: What is your New Retirement Paradigm?