May 2013

There were 12 posts published in May 2013 (this is page 2 of 2).

A Store That Sells Financial Advice?

A good friend emailed me looking for financial advice the other day. Pam wrote:

A friend of mine is getting married this summer and…blah blah blah. [The main story/question in Pam’s email isn’t germaine to this article. Plus it’s private.]

My friend really wants a financial planner-type person to help them, but she realizes those people really are for people with money to invest (and ultimately pay the financial planner) and her issue is a shortage of money.

Are there neutral party, financially educated people to advise those who are trying to make good decisions but need some help to see all the implications? Where should she look?

Responding to Pam, I was reminded of a business I wanted to start several years ago, just after I sold Get Rich Slowly. At that time, I had a number of friends and family asking for financial advice. It occurred to me that there was a market for a new kind of financial professional. Here’s what I envisioned:

  • I’d open a storefront in a small space in some sort of high-traffic area like a strip mall.

  • My store would sell personal-finance related material, including a library of high-quality books, magazines, and software. (Yes, I know the market for PF software has now vanished.)

  • The store would also offer workshops and classes about personal finance topics, including budgeting and investing.

  • One special focus of the store would be financial education for children. Another would be entrepreneurship.

  • The main feature of the store would be financial advice. People could drop in and/or make an appointment to chat with me about their financial problems. I’d listen to their situation, and then offer suggestions.

As I was writing to Pam this morning, I realized that this idea excites me even more today than it did four years ago. My skillset is well-suited to a business like this. I’d love to give it a go. There are, however, some problems.

  • First, I’m wary of the legal implications. I’d do my best to give sound financial advice, but what if a person took my advice (on investing, for example) but then lost a bunch of money. What’s my liability? Worse, what if they did not take my advice but still blamed me for losing a bunch of money. What then?

  • I’ve never owned a storefront before, and I’m not sure how much it would cost to run a place like this. (This is a minor concern, though.)

  • I’d love to offer my services for free and only charge for books and software, etc. In reality, this model probably wouldn’t work. I don’t need to make a lot of money with this venture, but I do need to make enough to break even. And, ideally, I’d make enough to live on.

  • I’m fortunate to have a free and easy lifestyle right now, one where I’m able to do what I want when I want. If I had a store, I’d have to be present when the store was open. (This could be solved by just being open whenever I wanted, but then that creates headaches for customers.)

I like the idea of creating and running some sort of “money store”, but I’m not ready to actually do anything about it. Maybe I should do some research. I could find out the legal ramifications of giving financial advice. I could figure out what sorts of products I could offer. I could learn how much it would cost to lease a space for the store.

Who knows? Maybe a couple of years from now, you’ll be able to walk into a store called Get Rich Slowly in your neighborhood…

Note: Do businesses like this already exist? Where do you find them? If you were Pam, where would you send her friend for financial advice?

Action Kills Fear

Last night, Cody and I watched the Portland Timbers battle to a scoreless draw with the New England Revolution. Really, though, the soccer match was just an excuse for two friends to hang out for a few hours. We had a good time talking about life: about fitness (Cody is my Crossfit trainer), writing, relationships…and fear.

I told Cody how productive I’ve been since I started taking my ADHD meds a week ago. “It’s amazing how much I can get done in a day,” I told him. “I’m able to focus. I have no anxiety. I’m able to get started on stuff without being distracted. I don’t let myself get sidetracked by tiny little fears.”

“I’ve been wanting to talk to you about fear,” Cody told me. He knows it’s a pet subject of mine. Plus, I’ve been struggling in the gym since I returned from Europe. Lifts that should be easy for me are proving tough. I even dropped the bar last week, and the bar only had 165 pounds on it.

“I’ve noticed something about people who are learning to lift,” Cody said. “When you start lifting and you get near max efforts” — max efforts are lifts where you’re lifting the most you possibly can — “there’s a fear of getting under the bar. You’re afraid that you’ll drop it, or that you’ll hurt yourself.”

I nodded. I experience this all the time. I just experienced it yesterday while attempting the deadlift. My max deadlift is 345 pounds, but yesterday I was struggling at 275. When it came time to lift 315, I couldn’t do it, partially because I was afraid.

“I get afraid too,” Cody said. “Or I used to. When you do a lift, there’s this moment where you just stop thinking. You have to do the lift, and that means taking an action you’re afraid to do. In order to do that, you have to turn your brain off. It’s when beginners turn their brains off that they’re able to overcome their fear of lifting.”

“Well, instead of waiting for the moment when I’m no longer afraid — a moment that might not ever come if I keep thinking about it — I’ve learned to force myself to not think about it. I think this is key. Thought creates fear; action kills it.”

“I love that idea,” I said. “It reminds me of what I had to do when I went skydiving. I hate heights. And jumping out of an airplane scared me shitless. In order to go through with it, I had to turn my brain off.”

“Right,” Cody said. “You leapt without thought. And in weightlifting, you have to get under the bar without thought. When trying new foods, you have to eat without thought. And so on. You have to reach a point where you’re no longer thinking, you’re only acting.”

As I was falling asleep last night, I thought more about this notion: Thought creates fear; action kills it. It’s not a new idea, but it’s an important one. In his classic The Magic of Thinking Big — the book that’s the inspiration for my upcoming talks and ebook on overcoming fear — David J. Schwartz writes:

Action cures fear. Indecision, postponement, on the other hand, fertilize fear…When we face tough problems, we stay mired in the mud until we take action. Hope is a start. But hope needs action to win victories.

Schwartz proposes a two-step plan to cure fear and win confidence:

  1. Isolate your fear. Determine exactly what it is that scares you.
  2. Take action. Figure out what action will counter your fear.

“Hesitation only enlarges, magnifies the fear,” he writes. “Take action promptly. Be decisive.”

Obviously, this is easier said than done. Overcoming fear takes practice. Being decisive takes practice. You need to practice taking action. But from my experience, action is the antidote to fear. If fear is the mind-killer, action is the fear-killer.

What have you been putting off because you’re afraid? What action can you take today to overcome that fear?