Morningstar Magazine - February/March 2018 - 20

Dispatches

The only way that is going to change is one story
at a time. One advisor doing the right thing
for one client-repeated over and over. It is the
compounding effect of honesty.
If you want to accelerate the process, and
make change at scale, the only reliable way I have
ever seen to do it is to share your work in
public. The tools to do this are all free and easy
to use, but it's not the tools that will stop
you from doing it. It's fear.
You're scared. You will make up all sorts of stories
about why you can't share your work. You're
busy, it's too simple, your compliance folks won't
let you. But those are just places to hide. The
truth is you're scared.
Guess what? So am I.

Express Yourself
People need
to hear from real
financial advisors.
BEHAVIOR GAP

Carl Richards

To be allowed to express your opinion in public
is a great gift.
It is also super scary.
The moment you share something in public,
you open yourself up to judgment, criticism, and
scorn. But you also create the possibility
that your work may make a difference in someone's life. Of course, the opposite is also true: If no
one knows about the amazing work

Morningstar February/March 2018

you do, there is very little chance you will get
to help them. If you don't play in traffic,
you will NEVER get hit.
One of my great frustrations is seeing the
unbelievable work real financial advisors all over
the world are doing and, at the same time,
talking to people who desperately need that help
but either don't know where to find it or
don't believe it exists. Based on the email I get
from my New York Times column, I am positive that
if people knew what a real advisor would
do for them they would line up outside the door
to get it.
But here's the deal: They don't believe you exist.
There have been too many stories of bad
actors in our business, too many fake advisors who
should be selling shoes but instead are
peddling investment products, and too many
confusing messages coming from the industry that
real advisors are a part of.
This, my friends, must change, because the people
need you!

Every single time. Every issue of Morningstar
magazine since 2010 when I started writing
this column, I've been scared. Every week for the
past eight years as I write my column for
The New York Times, I'm scared. So, join me in the
fear. Start your email newsletter, create a
blog, ask your local business journal or hometown
paper if you can write for it, give a presentation at Rotary. Speak up. Your work is
too important to hide behind fear. The people
need you!
Please believe me that the difference between
people who share their work in public and
those who don't is not that the former are unafraid.
It's that they feel the fear and do it anyway. K
Carl Richards, CFP, is the author of The Behavior Gap
and The One-Page Financial Plan: A Simple Way
to Be Smart About Your Money. He also writes the weekly
Sketch Guy column for The New York Times.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Morningstar Magazine - February/March 2018