Uncertainty is double-edged: some people thrive on it and other people abhor it. But even people that don’t like it can’t help but try to peek behind the curtain of confusion to see if there are opportunities there for them, their businesses or their families.
We work to help you create an increasing certainty for the future, in part by navigating the uncertainty that surrounds us.
The plans we build are based on your family index and on what you want your future to look like, and why that matters to you. The business we’re in is providing wealth coaching to people who’ve worked hard to create something or grow something. They’re people with good brains, good hearts and have typically created good businesses or made a good impact on an existing business.
The plans that we build always start with understanding a vision for the future, or a desired future state. How do you want it to be one day? And then we look at the goals that need to be handled to get there – they behave like steppingstones. What that means is that each client has a different path to a unique future and there is a different plan for each.
At the same time, plans always exist within a market reality and that reality is in turmoil and difficult to predict. While the key indexes are the most visible asset classes and are being watched for signs of stability, recovery and “bounce back,” the fact that they are visible doesn’t always make them the best indicators. A house can look beautiful, but odds are you’re not busy digging into the ground around it to inspect the quality of the foundation. There are foundational metrics in the market that are concerning right now. Being buoyed by media reports or just a handful of strong-performing stocks might be misplaced optimism for the moment, and we say that emphatically: for the moment. We know that the market conditions will shift. They always do. It’s our constant, and it brings us back to handling uncertainty.
When people talk about “embracing uncertainty,” it’s the kind of thing that generally sounds good, until you have to do it. Being OK with not knowing what’s going to happen is not OK if you’re in financial trouble. It’s a wonderful, somewhat altruistic stance that is the luxury of people who are not hurting. We’re sensitive to that. Many of our clients are in good shape right now. There are a few that are especially hard hit, and everyone deserves as clear a perspective as possible.
We’ve been scanning the economic landscape, peering through the fog and trying to find good paths for you to follow through it. The situation is changing constantly, and it makes it tough to find the best routes. We see states opening up. We see states imposing additional constraints. We see stimulus packages creating relief. We see other decisions creating expanded business hardship. It’s difficult for anyone to see what will happen next and how the socio-political-economic situation will play out.
What we do expect is that, between “now” and “OK” there will not be a bounce back; there will be a rebuild. There is a complete re-thinking of the world around us and we don’t expect a return to business as usual. It’s more likely that new ways of doing business and new ways of doing life will be in store for everyone. There will be a re-building, and that means work.