Introducing LifeDesign+
Much like life, my career as a financial advisor has been an evolution as an individual and a professional. You can look back over the years of the content on All About Your Benjamins, my personal website, the podcasts, and YouTube channel and see the journey.
My role as a financial advisor is not to place my personal financial beliefs on my clients but to help them discover their own and help them build a plan and live their life in line with those beliefs and values. Despite my best efforts to keep my personal and advisory beliefs separate from each other, it is only natural that they would eventually overlap–this doesn’t mean I’m telling clients how they should view their relationship with money. I’m still advising and planning in alignment with my clients’ values. The overlap comes with HOW I want to help clients and the type of service I want to provide going forward.
For over eighteen years I’ve done what I would consider “traditional financial planning”--think planning for retirement, college, home purchases, travel, and other important milestones in life. I’ve passively tried to influence conversations to go down the route of life planning but I’ve never explicitly told clients we have to dig deeper and really find the core of what money means to them, find their authentic life, and create a plan that leads to minimal regret over their lives. I’d like to think we’ve done a pretty good job at achieving these but without a direct focus on it and buy-in from clients, I worry that maybe we left something out by not being as intentional as I’d like to be today.
The reason for the evolution into the advisor I am today is partly because my profession does not have a clear career path or training regiment. Early in my career I really didn’t have any mentors to teach me about financial planning or even that the concept of life planning even existed. I was naturally curious and it was organic for me to ask deeper questions of my clients about why they had the goals they did, what money meant to them, and other questions that allowed me to identify with the life planning process when I finally found out about it.
Another reason for my evolution was my personal journey and growth. Since entering the profession I’ve gotten married, had kids, watched my wife launch a successful business, launched my own advisory firm, experimented with other business ventures, networked with the best advisors in my profession, and most recently burned out and found peace, clarity, and my authentic life as a result. This peace, clarity, and authentic life is something I want more people to experience and I am uniquely positioned to be able to help more people find it–I’ve learned through my experiences, the experiences of my clients, conversations with others, and studying that a connection of spirit, mind, body, and money is critical to living an authentic life.
As I hope to inspire more people to pursue their authentic life through my content, I have looked at my life and have determined to live my authentic life professionally, I need to shift to a new level of planning.
That new level of planning is what I’m calling LifeDesign+.
LifeDesign+ is a new relationship for RLS Wealth and it is the ONLY relationship that we will take new clients on in. We will continue to take care of our existing clients and I’ll bring as much LifeDesign+ to those relationships, as I’ve tried to do over the years but since that was not the relationship they began working with me under, I’m not forcing them into everything LifeDesign+ requires of clients.
I’m excited to launch this new relationship as I believe clients who commit to the process will benefit greatly from the planning, will make life changing decisions, and ultimately live their authentic life and evolving as that life evolves.
LifeDesign+ is intense. It’s a relationship 99.5% of people will pass on…it’s high touch with monthly meetings, it’s demanding with journaling and other requirements, it’s expensive given the amount of time involved, and it requires a lot of honest assessments about what clients value in life.
But the results…the results are invaluable.
I view the LifeDesign+ less of a financial advisor relationship and more of a life coach/architect (I hate those terms but haven’t found a better one yet) who can address the financial implications of designing an authentic life when needed—the financial planning is the “+” in the name.
When I think about the next 18 years of my professional career, working with my existing clients excites me, but embarking on new relationships focused on traditional planning does not excite me. LifeDesign+ excites me and if I’m going to practice what I preach, structuring the future of RLS Wealth to be focusing on taking care of and continuing to improve the client experience of existing clients and building LifeDesign+ slowly (one client a month, max) is my authentic professional life as a financial advisor.
If the concept of LifeDesign+ intrigues you, check out the description below from the Relationships section of our website:
LifeDesign+ is for the individual or family looking to connect mind, body, spirit, and money. By connecting these four areas of life, we believe our clients can find and live their authentic lives.
The LifeDesign+ relationship requires a significant commitment from both you and us but can yield life changing results:
Monthly meetings held on the same day and time each month. Missing two meetings will result in termination of the relationship.
Completion of tasks in Notion Dashboard including journaling, mindfulness practice, fitness routine, and a spiritual practice.
Having a creative outlet that has consistent creation.
Our WealthManagement financial planning relationship with an annual financial plan update meeting.
LifeDesign+ is a high touch, high impact relationship designed to help clients find their authentic life. It is more life design than financial planning, hence LifeDesign+, with financial planning being the (+).
We only welcome 1 LifeDesign+ client per month, given the scope of the relationship.
Fee Schedule:
$1,000 a month plus 0.35% Assets Under Management (AUM), if desired.
If LifeDesign+ isn’t a good fit but you’re still interested in finding a financial advisor to work with, please feel free to reach out as I know a lot of great financial advisors and will happily make a connection to a couple I think fit what you’re looking for.