Give yourself permission to see financial advice as creative

Imagine for a minute that your website has a tab labeled “work” or “portfolio.” What would you find under that tab?
For most of the real financial advisers I know, they’d find their clients. They’d see thousands of images capturing all the great things that have happened in the lives of those clients. These results are a work of art, but I’ve met very few advisers who would call themselves artists, and that’s a shame.
Why? Because that’s who we are: We’re artists whose finished work doesn’t end up on a canvas but plays out in the real lives of our clients.
I’ve thought about this concept a lot, and when Monica, an adviser in Hawaii, sent me an email about her experience as an artist, I knew I wanted to share it with this group.
You see, a lot of the work we do doesn’t involve things we associate with being creative. Numbers, spreadsheets and calculators don’t hang on the walls of most museums.
For Monica, though, she discovered something super valuable when she worked through the technical part of building a financial plan. Thinking of herself as the Picasso of financial planning sparked her energy. Thinking about her work in terms of producing highly individualized pieces for each client got her creative juices flowing. She was the first to admit it sounded a little silly, but as she walked me through her process, I was blown away by the power of it.
As a real financial adviser, Monica gave herself permission to see herself as creative. That’s huge because I believe that financial planning, at its core, is creative. Think about that for a minute.
Even if you have a standard or set investment philosophy that you rely on, you apply it to each individual client differently. You don’t slip clients into some predetermined slot and check a box, you ask them about their dreams and the things they fear. You ask them what success looks like, and then you help them create the reality that matches their vision.
Going forward, I want you to think of yourself as an artist. You may never say the word out loud and you’ll probably never put it on your business card, but the next time you sit down with a client, say to yourself, “I’m an artist.” I think you’ll like how it feels.
Carl Richards is a certified financial planner and director of investor education for the BAM Alliance. He’s also the author of the weekly “Sketch Guy” column at the New York Times. He published his second book, “The One-Page Financial Plan: A Simple Way to Be Smart About Your Money” (Portfolio), last year. You can email Carl here, and learn more about him and his work at BehaviorGap.com.