ROL Advisor with Steve Sanduski | E212
Making sure clients focus on what really matters.
On today’s episode of the Fintech Impact, Jason is going to talk to Steve Sanduski, Co-founder of ROL Advisor. ROL Advisor is an online platform that helps advisors or helps coach advisors through a process to help clients focus on return on life as opposed to returning on their investments.
Episode Highlights:
0.32: Steve says that they started the company back in 2017, and it was an outgrowth of some earlier work that Mitch, Anthony, and he were doing related to retirement coaching.
0.54: Steve explains that they decided to create a new legal entity, hired some developers, and created digital tools that they call the ROL advisor, which stands for return on life. And the focus is really on helping financial advisors become life advisors essentially.
1.50: Jason says that the returns are one thing, but at the end of the day, one thing matters are getting what you want out of life.
2.13: What we are doing here at ROL advisor revolves around the discovery process. We think of discovery not as a one-and-done process but as an ongoing process throughout the life of the relationship, says Steve.
3.51: The core of your process is more behavioral and psychological. You want the experiences so that the advisor and the client can better relate to each other as to how they perceive money, says Jason.
5.19: We are not trying to turn advisors into psychiatrists or psychologists. But what we want to do is understand our client stories. Once we know the stories, we can now understand why they’re behaving in this way today, explains Steve.
7.06: There is a series of 20 statements in the ROL index. These twenty statements are divided into ten categories, such as whether or not a person is getting a return on his/her schooling, housing, or accomplishments.
8.20: The ten aspects are broken down into three categories, and then we give a score on a scale of 1 to 100 for each of those three categories, well-being, progress, and freedom, says Steve.
10.19: When advisors are working with a client not as an asset under management or not as dollar signs but working with them one on one as a human being for whom you can add some value and for someone that you care about, and at the end of the day that is what the client’s going to remember, says Steve.
12.07: We have six broad categories of life transitions, and within each of these six categories, we have anywhere from maybe five to ten life transitions related to each of those categories, explains Steve.
14.02: Each time you meet with the client and have a review meeting, the lifeline tool gives you the road map for the conversations because it identifies the planning opportunities that are important to the client and need to be taken care of.
14.47: Jason asks, what are advisors saying that has been the significant change to their practice once they’ve adopted what you’ve spoused here?
19.54: Jason asks Steve, what have you done on the side of the software package to help people facilitate this being with their practice?
26.32: Steve wants to have a superpower of taking in all of the information from many different areas and sources so that he can synthesize and reconfigure it and communicate it back out in such a way that many people can understand it and benefit from it.
3 Key Points
Often, financial advisors get a little frustrated when they see the behavior of their client, and they can’t understand why the client is doing this thing or why they are not doing something that they know is good for them, says Steve.
Technology can augment the conversation like our tools are doing, but ultimately it is about the advisor and the depth of the connection, empathy, and understanding they have with clients, says Steve.
Most financial advisors have been successful over the past few years because the markets have been good, so getting them to try and adopt a new way of doing business has been a little bit difficult because they are happy with what they are doing.
Tweetable Quotes
“So much of our current behavior is influenced and derived from our formative years’ experiences.” – Steve
“We can implement change for clients’ lives, but we can’t control markets. So, talk to me about the next stage, a lifeline, or future plans.” – Steve
“The power of a great financial advisor is to understand what it is like to be in a one-on-one human relationship with someone that no technology is ever going to replace.” – Steve
“Every third Thursday of the month at noon Eastern Time, we ask all of our clients from around the world to join us for a virtual get-together.” – Steve
“It is just human nature that we want to keep doing what we are doing, particularly if we are successful.” - Steve
Resources Mentioned:
Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook
LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn
Woodgate.com – Sponsor