Kissing Frogs & Referring Colleagues

You might not know this, but I kiss a lot of frogs.

In my neck of the woods, it’s spring peeper season, which means that if you’re near a pond at dusk you’ll hear a chorus of tiny little frogs making some of the most beautiful music on earth. (Have a listen here.)

These aren’t the frogs I’m kissing.

Would you be surprised to hear that the single most common question I hear from clients isn’t should I pay myself a dividend or salary? or can I afford to retire? or where does all my money go?

Nope. It’s: can you recommend an insurance advisor/lawyer/accountant/investment counsellor?

Identifying where my professional expertise ends and connecting clients to colleagues I trust to do right by them is one of my core mandates. It only makes sense to find smart, engaged professionals who know more than I do in their own fields. It increases our collective intelligence, and lets us do more, better...provided they care about my clients’ well-being as much as I do.

And here’s where the frog kissing comes in…

Clients don’t ask me who to trust (which is what all professional recommendations boil right down to) because they don’t know how to Google “insurance advisor [my town].” They ask because discerning the difference between someone who will serve them and someone who will sell to them is hard to do.

I have spent a lot of time meeting with accountants, lawyers, insurance advisors, and investment counsellors, asking about core values, walking through process, and discussing the kinds of clients they feel best equipped to serve. Often, they turn out to be steady, reliable folks who keep their heads down and do the work. Sometimes they turn out to be toads (ugh).

Every once in a while (more often than you’d think, but less frequently than I’d like) I find royalty: professional colleagues who have incredibly high ethical standards, radical transparency, generosity with knowledge, and who care fiercely for their clients’ well-being.

These are the ones who make it all worthwhile, and who I recommend to clients. I still expect my clients to ask the hard questions even after an introduction, but helping them by providing a short list to start from is worth all the frog kissing.

On that note:If you know any professional royalty, I’d love to know them too. (Remember to practice good email introduction hygiene.)

Now that tax season is over, please forward copies of your 2017 tax returns and notices of assessment (or introduce me to your accountant so they can do it for you!)