Road to Independence

As I sit to write this, we are keeping a close eye on Gustav. This one-time hurricane, then tropical storm, is again a hurricane and expected to make landfall somewhere in Louisiana, where I happen to live. I remember Hurricane Andrew in August of 1992. The eye of it passed about 15 miles west of town and by the time it reached Baton Rouge, the winds had declined to about 75 mph. The worst damage we had was a few fallen trees and a power outage that lasted for just under a week. Oh, did I mention it was hot and without air conditioning? Things got a bit sticky. The price of water also rose as opportunists came out of the woodwork.
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Last week I began moving into my new office. The phone was connected Thursday as was the DSL line. When the phone company technician came to do the installation, part of it went smoothly and part of it didn’t. He got the phones up and running but when he came to the DSL part, well, let’s just say he hit a snag. He called for support, just like you or I would, and after layer upon layer of “press this” and “press that,” he finally reached a human being. So here they are, two fellow employees talking on the phone, trying to identify and solve the problem.

It soon became clear that the person on the other end of the phone wasn’t very helpful. In fact, you could say she was downright unhelpful, a sentiment echoed by the on-site technician. I suppose service is still one of the most significant competitive advantages today and it transcends all industries. It’s not, “If you build it, they will come” but, rather “If you service them, they will remain.”

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I was in the process of moving my office and thought I had found the new place, until I hit a snag. I learned there’s much more than meets the eye when it comes to renting office space. Here’s how the events unfolded this past week.
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After 15 months into my journey of independence, it’s time to launch my own Web site. There are several items that need to be addressed and many questions to answer. I have to decide what type of content, which links to include, the pages to include, and in which order. More generally, I’ll need to decide as well the site’s level of interactivity, and whether I should include a secure portal for clients.
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Last week was very busy. I presented a financial plan to one client, began to prepare a more complex plan for another, delivered a life insurance policy to yet another client, and had a second meeting with a prospective client. All in all it was a pretty good week.

Financial Planning
I recently took a step back and evaluated my planning value. I’ve determined that there are over 111 metrics I evaluate. Included in this number are various probabilities, debt ratios, a 72 point will inspection, etc. All together there are over 111 different points of inspection in the plan. The recommendations which stem from this are contained in an executive summary format so the client can easily read them at a later date. The point is this: It is very thorough and clients value it.
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