We do core values work with all of our clients, and I've used my personal core values to guide my decisions for 15+ years, but I had never created core values for our financial planning firm. They existed, but I hadn't ever named them. I wrote them down this week and it felt really good to get them on paper...
Integrity: We do the right thing for our clients 100% of the time. We believe that doing the right thing for our clients is good for business - win win. Our pricing and business model are extremely transparent - we have nothing to hide and we believe that clients have the right to understand exactly how much they’re paying us.
Empowerment: We empower our clients by helping them understand the why, the what, and the how to achieve what matters most to them. We also empower our team members to refine, improve, challenge and think outside of the box in service of our goal to serve our clients at a higher level and create work / life balance for our team.
Balance: We believe that prioritizing work / life balance is what will enable us to be successful over the long term. This is a marathon, not a sprint. And we believe in balance for our clients, too. Our top priority is NOT helping our clients be as wealthy as possible when they die; rather, our goal is to help our clients manage their finances to support them in living a life in alignment with what matters to them both now and in the future.
Resilience: We expect there to be ups and downs in our work, in our days, and in our lives. We value resilience which enables us to handle difficult situations and recover and learn from them. Resilience doesn’t mean being okay no matter what, it means that no matter what happens, we’ll be okay. We want that for ourselves and our clients.
Excellence: We help clients with critical financial and life decisions, and our standards for the quality of advice and service that we provide are high. Maintaining the quality of our advice requires consistent investment in ourselves to learn and grow in service to our clients. Our clients deserve an excellent client experience and we will make decisions to prioritize the quality of our client experience above growth when needed.
Teamwork: Although much of our work is autonomous, we believe in helping one another, covering for each other and supporting one another in maintaining work / life balance. Whether it’s a casework brainstorm, helping with a task, or taking care of one another’s clients so that we can all get time out of the office, we believe in working together.
Diversity: We desire to build a team and serve clients with diverse backgrounds. We believe that it’s critical to support and empower women, people of color, and the LGBTQ+ community. We strive for our firm to be a place where all feel welcome, safe, and seen, both for team members and clients. We will not get this perfect, but it is a very high priority that we do everything we can to get this right.