Susan Bradley recalled working with a firm about 10 years ago that was doing a program on women and, when asked for her contribution, she suggested women in transition. That idea drew little interest, she said.
“At the end of the day, they said, ‘we are not really interested in training people about menopause. That’s what they thought, and there was a woman on the board,” she said.
Back then, Bradley said, nobody was using the term transition and she noted that it was not even mentioned in a book she co-wrote in 2000 entitled, "Sudden Money: Managing a Financial Windfall."
But Bradley, founder of the Sudden Money Institute and its training division, the Financial Transitionist Institute, pointed out that the word "transition" is widely used today to describe life-changing events. “Transition means going from here to there,” said Bradley, who spoke during the IWI conference in Florida last week. “And in life, you do that a whole bunch. But sometimes all the underpinnings of life start to shift. Something is radically different, routine, responsibilities, pattens of life, self-identity, relationships, money, all of that starts to change."
She said no amount of software can take away the uncertainty and unnerving feelings of change that you have inside. If you do client-centered work, you cannot avoid these life-changing events, Bradley told her audience. In fact, she said research shows 70% of people who hire financial planners do so because of a major life event.
“Think about it. It’s not just the event, it’s the preparation for the event that needs management. Then it’s the adjustment to life after the event and then there is the status quo until it all happens over again,” she said.
Bradley said these life-changing occurrences are “life and motion events that put money in motion,” and if it’s not handled well, there is a high probability that people will change advisors. She said research also shows that 70% of widows and divorced women leave their advisors within the first two years. The industry data is also dismal for heirs of clients who have died, she said.
Bradley presented advisors with what she refers to as the transition basics she wished she had earlier in her career. “There are some things that if you just know the basics, it changes your conversation with clients going through life-changing events,” she said.
One of the tools she uses in her business is a laminated page with circles representing the four stages—anticipation, ending, passage and new normal—that she said people in the financial planning world go through. Bradley said the piece is designed to be an ongoing conversation that advisors can have with clients in any of the stages. For example, the anticipation stage could be somebody getting ready for retirement, which presents tons of planning opportunities; the ending stage is when there are no do overs, it’s done and you have to deal with transferring and changing all kinds of things; the passage stage is when everything is taken care of but it’s full of uncertainty; and the new normal stage is when the routines and responsibilities level out for a while until it changes again.
Bradley noted that the document is given to certified financial transitionists (CeFT) in the five continents that her business works with. “They’ll have it somewhere in their meeting space so they can take it and can walk somebody through it,” she said.
One of the more involved tools Bradley presented was the Life Happens Package, which she credits to Ross Marino, who is co-author with her on the book "Shaping Change: How To Respond When Life Disrupts Your Retirement Plan." He says every financial advisor needs such a package and it has to be something that is personal, repeatable, scalable and universal, Bradley said. “I would say, it also should be science-based because there is enough science out there to help us dispel some of the myths of behavior during change,” she said.