Fixed Fees, technology and thinking positive today...

I have never experienced anything like this past month in my life, both personally and professionally. While it’s been a whirlwind, I am trying to learn as much as I can through this experience to use in the future.

The Start

Beginning in February and March, it became clear that the markets would face a sizeable sell-off at some point in the future. The decade since I joined financial services had seen a pretty sweet bull run, but
it would have to come to an end.  Of course, I had no idea as to why or when it would happen, but I had spent time over the last few years preparing clients for the inevitable. In fact, the fears around COVID-19 causing the market dip made discussing the situation with clients easier. Clients were acutely aware of what was going on.

Communication

Even though our clients were calm, we knew communication was key. At that start of this volatile period, we had lots of calls with clients to discuss what was happening in the markets. We are a small organization, allowing us the benefit of being able to personalize every touchpoint with the client. We usually don’t
send bulk emails. However, over those initial weeks of uncertainty, I wrote three emails to all clients to touch base and provide reassurance that we were visible and available. We also called and spoke with every client individually, to make sure that they and their families were feeling safe and well.

Fixed Fee Proving Its Value
When lockdown went into effect five weeks ago, I was quite scared. The thought of not being able to see my family, my kids not going to school and my wife and I altering our schedules so significantly was a lot
to comprehend. While I was spending time reassuring others and being the cool-headed voice of reason, my fears played on my own mind. I feel that the first few days at home were as tough a period as I’ve had in this profession, but being a fixed fee financial planner really came to the fore. It meant that the business revenue didn’t drop with the market. The salary of my staff and my business wasn’t immediately threatened, and that was a huge comfort to me.

Shifting My Mentality

After the first few days things began to settle down and I was able to regain my positivity. Worry and fear are negative emotions and they’re draining. The truth about this current period is that it will pass
and that human ingenuity will find a way forward. After I shifted my mentality I knew I needed to figure
out how to make this period a positive one for myself, my family and for the business and our clients. As mentioned above, Engage is a small, technologically adept business and operating remotely wasn’t a major issue. In fact, cutting almost all non-essential work from our diaries feels very liberating! The team and I
are able to focus on matters that are mission critical to clients and improving what we do. We have refined our documents, reviewed our new business procedures to speed up the engagement process and we’re moving on to our annual review process next. We also made the decision to continue with our podcasts, social media and marketing. It was important to me that we keep visible through this pandemic. Focusing time solely on what’s genuinely important does make me wonder how my days seemed so busy only a few weeks ago! It’s been great to spend even more time with my daughters. My wife and I often remind
each other to be appreciative and have an attitude of gratitude. We have happy, healthy children, we live in a nice house, with a good garden and a park down the road. We have income that hasn’t been affected (as yet) and all our extended family are healthy. To me it is so important to count our blessings, especially in times of stress and now is a perfect time to focus on being grateful for all that we have.

What’s Next?

This brings us to the final step, and that’s getting back to normality – or a version of it. I am of the opinion that life will resume fairly quickly after this is over. There are going to be economic issues abound and I don’t know what that means for markets. What I do know is that I miss my colleagues, my family, my friends and I will be going back to seeing people, shaking hands and hugging them. The single biggest positive learning we can take from the current situation is that it has served as a forceful
reminder of what and who is really important in life.