Overview
This deep dive course is intended to help you clarify what you want from your financial advisor and then take you through the steps to find an advisor that is a great fit for you. The course takes place within a trusted community of like-minded investors. You will go through a series of exercises on your own and then come together with your peers to share insights. The robust conversations you will have during your time together will sharpen and refine each participant’s thinking. During the course you will prioritize your goals, create a short list of potential advisors, and walk away with the ability to “close the deal” with a preferred advisor.
Course Structure
The Financial Advisor course is a 3-part series that will be supported by monthly Circle discussions. Members can ask questions on Mighty Networks, and they will be responded to by the Course Creators or other experts.
The process of building a stronger relationship with your current advisor, getting them to integrate your requests for more values-alignment into your portfolio, or finding a new mission-driven advisor can seem daunting. During the course you will prioritize your goals, create a short list of potential advisors, and walk away with the ability to “close the deal” with a preferred advisor.
Meeting Dates
12 pm to 1:30 pm PT / 3 pm to 4:30 pm ET
- February 8, 2023
- March 15, 2023
- April 12, 2023
Outcomes
By the end of the course, you will have:
- Prioritized a list of the characteristics and attributes you want from your financial advisor
- Used the ValuesAdvisor platform to perform research and create a short-list of advisors that could fit your needs
- Conducted at least one informed interview with a prospective advisor
- Built the confidence you need to identify and hire a preferred advisor
- Identified at least one accountability and thought partner to help you complete the process
Prerequisites & Level of Effort
This course is recommended for women who have decided they want professional support with their investing and who are ready to find a values-aligned financial advisor. Although most of the advisors you will be introduced to in this course require their clients to have investable assets between $2 to $50 million, or more, some have no minimums. Thus, regardless of your asset base, you have the opportunity to find someone who could match your need.
Monthly Commitment: 2 to 3 hours
Each meeting is expected to last 1 to 1.5 hours. Approximately 1 – 1.5 hours of homework is required prior to each meeting. The majority of the research will be handled by the ValuesAdvisor platform, so your primary workload will be thinking about your priorities and conducting one or more interviews. A significant amount of the value in this course will be the discussions that you have with other members of your Circle.
Course Content
The process of building a stronger relationship with your current advisor, getting them to integrate your requests for more values-alignment into your portfolio, or finding a new mission-driven advisor can seem daunting. This deep dive course is intended to help you clarify what you want from your financial advisor and then take you through the steps to find an advisor that meets your needs. During the course you will prioritize your goals, create a short list of potential advisors, and walk away with the ability to “close the deal” with a preferred advisor. You will be supported and encouraged along the way by a group of women who are joining you on the journey.
- Meeting 1: Exploring and Prioritizing What is Important to You
To get the most out of, and to offer others your best, you will be asked to identify and clarify the services, knowledge and traits you want in your next financial advisor. You will bring your pre-work results to your first meeting with your peers. Your initial thinking is likely to be augmented by learning about others’ experiences – positive and negative – with their financial advisors. Their stories will illuminate what is possible and what you might want to avoid. You will have the opportunity to adjust your priority list as a result of those discussions. You should leave this session with a fairly good idea of what you want from your financial advisor.
- Meeting 2: Build a Short List of Advisors
Before your second peer meeting, you will watch a short video demonstrating the ValuesAdvisor website. Then you will access and subscribe to the site using a personalized access code. Once in the site, you will be able to set parameters to identify the financial advisors that might be the best fit for you. You also have the ability to review and research all the advisors on the platform. At the end of this session, you should have a short list of prospective advisors. In your meeting, you will discuss the results of your research, exploring why you chose the advisors on your short list. The similarities and differences between the members of your group will further inform your own process. You may even find that a few people have identified the same advisors, an outcome that could be helpful as you move into the next step of the process.
You will be asked to conduct an interview with at least one advisor before your next meeting.
- Meeting 3: Report Out and Discuss Next Steps
During the meeting, Circle members will report on the outcomes of the interviews they conducted, as well as any changes they made to their Prioritization Matrix. Everyone will choose an accountability partner(s) to help you see the selection process through to hiring a new financial advisor.
Course Creator
Lisa Renstrom is a co-founder of ValuesAdvisor, a platform that helps individuals and organizations find values-aligned financial advisors to meet their needs. Previously, Lisa has served as the President of the Sierra Club and on innumerable environmental focused Boards. As she says, “ValuesAdvisor is a solution to a problem I encountered in the DivestInvest Individual Campaign. People committed to divest, but their advisors didn’t know how to invest FossilFree. The excel spreadsheet of value-aligned advisors I shared became a robust platform with all the information my peers sought, organized in a simple interface. ValuesAdvisor.org is my contribution to building beautiful portfolios and a better world.”
Register
Registration is closed.
If you have questions, please contact info@investforbetter.org.
