A Funny Thing Happened After We Crushed Our Fundraising Goal!

If there is one piece of universally accepted business advice, it may be to set goals. Not far behind would be to be sure that your goals are written, specific and measurable. And then we’d probably get to the advice about setting them high and building stretch goals -- goals that are achievable, but will be difficult to pull off.

Personally I’m a big believer in goals and stretch goals but as an investment manager and financial adviser, I am frequently talking about managing risk, setting realistic expectations and being a prudent investor. Don’t go for the home run. Take reasonable risks, earn an appropriate return for taking those risks and generally go for slow and steady returns in a diversified portfolio.

Perhaps true for investments, but perhaps not for charitable fundraising! Through the efforts of many great friends and our family members, we were able to raise over $7,300 for cancer research. For us and our event, it was a record haul. The annual fundraising event has grown from a few hundred dollars, to $1,000, to over $3,000 last year and then we more than doubled our donation from last year! It was a smashing success by every measure. Last week, we delivered our check, took our pictures, delivered all the thank yous and as we were talking about next year, I went into expectation setting mode and started to say things like it would still be great if we do the $3,000 again next year, just in case we can’t repeat the performance, yada, yada, yada.

Well, the good friend who runs the event would have none of it. “Absolutely not, we have to get bigger and raise more every year! Next year, WE WILL BE BIGGER". And you know what? A funny thing happened on the way to the parking lot. Instead of talking about how to repeat the $7,000 we immediately started talking about ways to grow the event even bigger and raise even more. Stretch goals are as much about attitude as they are about execution. We started to think about how to grow rather than just protect and repeat what we had done. After a bit, it almost resembled a plan! (We'll talk about planning and execution another day) But that is exactly what happens when you set any goal, you start trying to figure out how you are going to achieve that specific goal. As we brainstormed about it more, the ideas started flowing, the excitement grew and we now believe that next year will be bigger and better than ever. Attitude started it all.

Everyone should certainly have investing goals and a plan to achieve them, but if you haven't revisited your personal, professional, civic or charitable goals in a while, give it a try and don't be afraid to stretch, you might be surprised how achievable they really are.

PLEASE REMEMBER:

- INVESTING AND INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT INVOLVES RISK, INCLUDING THE LOSS OF YOUR INITIAL INVESTMENT OR ANY INVESTMENT GAINS.

- PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS.

- THIS GENERIC INFORMATION IS PROVIDED FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY AND SHOULD NOT BE CONSTRUED AS A RECOMMENDATION FOR ANY INDIVIDUAL TO TAKE A SPECIFIC ACTION.

- PLEASE INVEST PRUDENTLY AND SEEK PROFESSIONAL HELP FROM A FINANCIAL ADVISOR, INVESTMENT MANAGER, ACCOUNTANT, LAWYER OR OTHER PROFESSIONAL ON MATTERS THAT YOU ARE UNSURE OF OR THAT ARE UNIQUE TO YOUR PERSONAL CIRCUMSTANCES.

- FINANCIAL PLANNING AND INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT SERVICES PROVIDED BY J. BRADFORD INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT, NASHUA NH.

Confused by the “Covfefe” Tweet? Try understanding the Fiduciary Rule.

Maybe it was spell check gone wrong, maybe he was just too quick to hit send or maybe it was just another idea on how to stoke the flames of the buzz machine. Whatever the reason, yet another POTUS Tweet has captured the attention of the nonstop media and news cycle. It almost certainly won’t be the last.

We may never know what he intended, but there are actually many things coming out of Washington that do merit some paying attention to.

One such item worthy of a few brain cells is the Fiduciary Rule, which is now scheduled to go into effect on June 9th, 2017. It’s quite possible that there may be twists and turns along the way, but holding financial advisors to the fiduciary standard is likely a long term trend that is here to stay.

Most simply, someone acting to the fiduciary standard must give advice and take action solely in your best interest. Practically speaking that means that I cannot recommend products and services to you so that I can draw a high commission, win a sales contest, meet a corporate profit directive or enjoy a lavish perk. Fiduciary advice has to be in your best interest.

It is surprising to many people to learn that the person giving them advice or selling them a product does not necessarily need to meet the fiduciary standard. Which to many, seems crazy. Why shouldn’t the person who you have entrusted with your life savings, do everything in your best interest? They should right?

And many in our Federal Government regulatory agencies also believe that financial advisors should act and be held to the Fiduciary standard. So on June 9th, a set of rules and guidelines will go into place for advisors helping individuals with retirement accounts, such as 401(k)s , ROTHs and IRAs. Those areas will have some amount of fiduciary protection.

Over time, many believe that all financial advice will eventually need to be given at, and held to, the fiduciary standard. In the meantime, you can ask your advisor if some or all of their business operates to the fiduciary standard, and if not, why not. You may be satisfied with the answer, you may not.

As you may have guessed, J. Bradford Investment Management embraces and operates to the fiduciary standard. We are a fee only practice and we do not sell any products on commission. Our recommendations are an unbiased view of our professional judgment.

If you would like help unpacking the meaning of “Covfefe”, try Buzzfeed. If you would like help unpacking the commissions, hidden fees and other potential pitfalls in your portfolio, please schedule time with us, we would be happy to conduct a free portfolio review.

PLEASE REMEMBER:

- INVESTING AND INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT INVOLVES RISK, INCLUDING THE LOSS OF YOUR INITIAL INVESTMENT OR ANY INVESTMENT GAINS.

- PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS.

- THIS GENERIC INFORMATION IS PROVIDED FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY AND SHOULD NOT BE CONSTRUED AS A RECOMMENDATION FOR ANY INDIVIDUAL TO TAKE A SPECIFIC ACTION.

- PLEASE INVEST PRUDENTLY AND SEEK PROFESSIONAL HELP FROM A FINANCIAL ADVISOR, INVESTMENT MANAGER, ACCOUNTANT, LAWYER OR OTHER PROFESSIONAL ON MATTERS THAT YOU ARE UNSURE OF OR THAT ARE UNIQUE TO YOUR PERSONAL CIRCUMSTANCES.

- FINANCIAL PLANNING AND INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT SERVICES PROVIDED BY J. BRADFORD INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT, NASHUA NH.

Make Your IRA Contribution or Get Forcibly Dragged Out of Our Office!

Pretty outrageous right?

By just about any measure, the United handling of their displaced crew and a seated passenger was an unmitigated disaster. I was torqued off enough about the situation to write letters to my senators asking for a better airline passenger bill of rights. What's in place now barely qualifies as “rights” in any respect, but I'll leave it to the airline travel warriors to blog about those changes. I have three observations that we can all learn from.

It’s true that businesses generally run well with predictable, structured routines with clear rules for every employee to follow. But every business should occasionally take a big step back and look at the path that they are on and what they are doing and how they are operating.

Businesses should ask, “Why are we operating this way” and “does it really makes sense for us to continue to operate this way”? Just because you have been displacing passengers for decades to accommodate your operations and just because you have a very clear corporate policy on how to do it and just because there are federal rules that support what you are doing, doesn't mean that you should. It's amazing how far away from normal, reasonable even humane treatment businesses can stray. Business can avoid that problem by periodically doing a strategic review and having more junior associates, or even better, customers, give the feedback and assessment.

Many companies in the financial services industry are adopting the fiduciary standard for their business even though they might not be required to do so. I suspect many of those companies that are did just what I described above. They took a big step back and said something like – you know what, people are trusting us with their hard earned money and we have a genuine interest to help them – why wouldn't we want to embrace a standard that says we need to put our clients' best interest above ours? It is so clear and so simple, yet the current routines and enabling regulations can obscure even the most common sense approaches.

Next, a truly customer centric company would never have a problem even remotely close to the United disaster. If you truly have your customers at the center of all that you do, they will guide you to successful business strategies.

A genuine engagement with your customers will help prevent a company from going so far off the rails, as happened here. An activity as simple as listening more can be very enlightening. Have you ever read an airline contract of carriage? Imagine a focus group of customers gathering to discuss your equivalent of a contract of carriage?  Are they going to be delighted and amazed at how fairly and reasonably they are being treated? Customer centric organizations would embrace that feedback and make substantive change.

And you know what else they would do? Rather than give passengers some standard peace offering of a free flight or refund, they would ask each passenger individually what they could do to regain their trust and compensate them for their inconvenience. And then do it.

Lastly, organizations that don’t empower their lowest level employees to stop a disaster like this should expect more disasters. What is your equivalent of the red cord on the assembly line that any employee can pull and stop the whole assembly line process?

Constantly managing with top down directives and fostering a culture of “shut up and row” is great for the military, and terrible for just about every customer facing business. 

I’m not sure what’s worse -- that poor doctor getting pulled off that flight in such a disturbing manner OR that no one involved in the incident said to themselves, wait a minute, this is crazy, let’s pause for a second and work this out. It appears that they did a phenomenal job at following orders from above and following established procedures. Which of those two axes does your organization excel at?

In addition to being great business lessons, these are great personal lessons too. We should all take a big step back from what we are doing and ask ourselves in our personal or family life, if what we are doing feels right and makes sense. We should all listen more and we should all give up just a bit of the command and control life we’ve built and see what happens when we empower those around us.

At J. Bradford Investment Management we take investments and financial planning very seriously, but we also strive to learn about our customers as people. We want to know what drives you. We want to understand your values. We want to help you get your money working as hard for you as you work to earn it. Let’s collaborate and I promise I won’t have you dragged out of our office if you don't make your IRA contribution this year.

PLEASE REMEMBER:

- INVESTING AND INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT INVOLVES RISK, INCLUDING THE LOSS OF YOUR INITIAL INVESTMENT OR ANY INVESTMENT GAINS.

- PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS.

- THIS GENERIC INFORMATION IS PROVIDED FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY AND SHOULD NOT BE CONSTRUED AS A RECOMMENDATION FOR ANY INDIVIDUAL TO TAKE A SPECIFIC ACTION.

- PLEASE INVEST PRUDENTLY AND SEEK PROFESSIONAL HELP FROM A FINANCIAL ADVISOR, INVESTMENT MANAGER, ACCOUNTANT, LAWYER OR OTHER PROFESSIONAL ON MATTERS THAT YOU ARE UNSURE OF OR THAT ARE UNIQUE TO YOUR PERSONAL CIRCUMSTANCES.

- FINANCIAL PLANNING AND INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT SERVICES PROVIDED BY J. BRADFORD INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT, NASHUA NH.