Episode 6

On today’s episode, we will be interviewing Gary Korol, Retired R.F.P, on his role as a Financial Planning Coach and Mentor, the habits that lead to success, and the keys to becoming a competent and confident Financial Planner.

 

Transcript

David Miller

Welcome to the Institute of Advanced Financial Planner podcast. I have with me today, Gary Korol, who is a retired Financial Planning Coach, financial planner for 10 years with MD Management, coach for another 20. Gary, thank you very much for doing this.

Gary Korol

Oh, you’re welcome, David.

David Miller

How are you doing today?

Gary Korol

Everything’s been good. Been retired for a while. So life is fun.

David Miller

Yeah, you’re based in Calgary, right? 

Gary Korol

I am. Yep. 

David Miller

And we’re now going into the fourth wave of a lockdown. How are you doing?

Gary Korol

Well, surviving, planning a vacation, hopefully, to go to Hawaii at the end of October for a month. And unless the planes get shut down, I’ll probably be on there.

David Miller

Well, let’s hope for the best here. You never know with these lockdowns. What I’d like to do is start by just talking a little bit about or maybe tell me a little about your history. I alluded to it, but maybe dive into why you decided to become a coach and why you became a Financial Planner in the first place.

Gary Korol

Yeah, sure. So basically, you know, I don’t want to go back too far in history. But growing up, in high school, numbers was always my interest. I was also interested in business. I went to post secondary and took commerce. I was at the University of Saskatchewan at the time and I thought I would become an accountant. But as I started going through the classes available commerce, every management class that became available, I was interested once I started taking them, and I wanted to take all that was available. So it was in the back of my head. I did go in some basic management early. But I actually started in the financial planning industry in 87 when I got hired by MD Management, as you alluded to, I did financial planning for the medical doctors in Saskatchewan for 10 years. And the company grew and expanded. And they were looking for managers because they began self directed brokerages and doing other products other than their own group of funds. And so I was very interested in becoming a manager and a coach and hiring people. So I did become the manager of Saskatchewan for a year, then I got transferred to Alberta, then became the manager of Alberta for three years. And then finally, I was in charge of Western Canada for MD Management for about a period of six years. And beyond that, I left there and moved into Sunlife, but worked as a regional manager coaching new advisors and new managers as they came on board. Along the way, of course, education was very important. So I attained a Chartered Financial Planning designation, which eventually morphed into the Certified Financial Planning designation. And I became an R.F.P. in 1996, along with a lot of my colleagues. That basically is the background of how I got started. And from there I think we were going to talk a little bit about tips and how I coach and train. That’s the background of where I came from.

David Miller

So maybe a little bit about why you decided to become a coach. You decided, or you at least alluded to, taking some management courses. What did you like better? Being a financial planner, looking after clients, looking after doctors or teaching financial planners to become better?

Gary Korol

Actually, I really enjoyed dealing with that group, a very homogeneous group, an affluent group. If what you told them made sense they were happy to deal with you. There was a very high trust level with all my clients because we had a captive crowd. The company MD, at the time was owned by the Canadian Medical Association. So they felt comfort dealing with people that they knew. And for me, I wanted to get into the management side. I really enjoy coaching advisors and helping them succeed in their roles. And through my nine years of management with MD, probably seven or eight of the advisors that I coached went on to also be interested in management and through the grooming process we were able to move them up in that. But for the advisors that wanted to stay advisors, just continually giving them ideas and tips on how to keep them productive. And I think one of the keys with the management was making sure that you hire the right people. So one of the things that I learned early in life about hiring people was, there was an old saying that I followed, it was called hire for attitude and train for skills and results. And basically, when I look at a resume, if I see a lot of credentials on there, that tells me is that person knows how to learn. They’ve proven that because they’ve maybe got an education or a bachelor’s degree of some sort. But it’s amazing how many times people have gotten hired because of their credentials, but they eventually get fired because of their attitude. And you ask any manager why did you let that person go? And typically, it has to do something with that. So when you’re interviewing people, make sure you have a lot of questions in there. And of course, I took training on how to do behavioral interviewing, asking the right questions, which helped in hiring a lot better consultants.

David Miller

So Gary, what was the number one attribute that you were looking for in a Financial Planner?

Gary Korol

Definitely the attitude of the advisor, when they came in. Some people, if you ask them some uncomfortable questions, and just see how they answer them, it tells you a lot about how they might be in a pressure situation. As an example for a Financial Planner, if you’re trying to bring someone on board, ask the question, in competitive situations with other advisors, what were some of the key things that you did to perhaps sway the client to come in and work with you? Or in the environment where you have a number of other staff members, Tell me about a time when you had a disagreement with another staff member and how did you handle it? So more on what they’re thinking and how their process works. I know for most people we hire just based on their credentials, we know they have the background for it, but I want them to be coming in and have a positive attitude. And, of course, when you’re doing training, once you get people on board, always doing things to build people up. I always provide positive feedback in public, make make things known. And any issues you had with people, make sure you kept that private. Really promote a curiosity with the advisors, promote self learning. Because I had 10 year’s experience as a financial planner and we had spectacular results in Saskatchewan, when I’m asked a question, I figure well, I know the answer to that so I’m going to just spew off everything I know about it and tell the advisor, but that doesn’t really teach them anything, because all it teaches them to do is to come to you whenever they have a question. So I found if you promote self-learning, and that’s basically where if you have an advisor comes to you with an issue the first thing you should say is, what have you tried, as opposed to giving them the answer? Like I can’t seem to get over this? Well, what have you tried? And they will say, well haven’t really tried and thought you might know. And I’d say, well, you come back with a few ideas and I’ll give you feedback on your ideas. But I want them to do the thinking because they’ll learn a lot quicker. And they learn by things like that or by continuing education, learning from their peers. Having sharing of ideas in your in your office is an extremely productive way to have all your advisors increase her overall knowledge level.

David Miller

Gary, I’ll stop you there. You said two things that really resonated with me. The curiosity someone has to have, the intuitiveness to go after information. What was the best attribute that your successful financial planners or maybe your best attribute that led to your success? What was that?

Gary Korol

I think for the advisors, it was developing good habits early. There’s certain things that you want to do. So a lot of times what I did is, there was a certain way that really worked with doctors and advisors. And because I’d done it for a long time, every new advisor we hired, I would sit in on at least two or three of their meetings early on, and just sit there and just not say anything, but watch how they handled a client and stuff. And then afterwards, you’d sit down and give them feedback. You want to give them a lot of positive self-learning. Again, with advisors, you definitely want them to be working positively. And if there is something, again, when the meetings over, you ask them questions like, how do you think that went? What are the things that went really well and what are the things that you think you might have changed? And once they’ve given you that, then you provide feedback, but you always let them lead and tell you what they think about what they did.

David Miller

So the feedback loop is really, really important for any advisor. I’ve heard that getting yourself recorded is one of the best things you could ever do. You said something about habits, maybe allude a little bit more towards what habits you’ve seen that really led to success.

Gary Korol

Okay. I think it’s really important that the advisors have a definite way they go about doing things and they do it very similar, because then they don’t skip any steps. Any advisor wants to do the best that they possibly can. And if you give them the positive habits of what they should do, that’s the thing that that will lead to their success. And they always want to know the feedback. One of the things I learned early too was, not only hiring people but keeping people, is that people underestimate the expense of hiring people, and then having to get rid of them six months later, two years later, because they made the wrong hire. But if you understand things from the advisors perspective, there was a thing I learned too early, it’s Dupree hierarchy of needs. We all know Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, that is you need to satisfy your needs for food, water, shelter. But Dupree’s Hierarchy of Needs is, every person that gets hired, they go through about five steps. And the first step is, they want to know what’s my job? So you have to be able to train them because they wonder, what am I supposed to be doing? And the second thing they want to know is, once they learn the job that they’re doing, is how am I doing? And that’s key for you providing feedback on how they’re doing, and it can’t be just once a year, especially early on, you have to be in there early. The Third thing, if they know how they’re doing, the third step in the hierarchy is, does anybody care? So you have to show them that what they’re doing is important, and that you care, and you want them to keep learning, and developed and all that. And if they’re satisfied that they know everybody cares, and they take care of them, then they’re interested in how the company is doing. Like if you ask advisors to get involved in contests or competitions for sales and stuff like that, if they don’t feel you care about them, they’re not really motivated. But if you do, then they’re interested in the company and they want to be part of the team. And then of course, the fifth step is how can I help? And as an advisor, they’re really engaged with you and you know you have succeeded with them when they get to where anytime something happens, they’re quick to volunteer and say, Hey, you know what, what can I do to help you guys?

David Miller

Yeah, and maybe let’s skip a step here. And tell me a little bit about your personal success. What led you, your number one attribute, to become a successful manager?

Gary Korol

Well, I when I do feedback, sometimes it’s good as a manager, to have your advisors give you feedback. If you’re comfortable with that, and if you if you’re honest and open with your advisors, they can be honest and open with you. They want to feel that they’re in a safe environment, if they disagree with you, they’ve got to feel comfortable that they can come and talk to you. And you have to encourage that. As I say, we all want to learn better, and again, one of the things that I learned early is, advisors don’t really care what you know, they want to make sure that you care. You have to prove that you care about them and your interests and their success. And for me, when I see advisors go out and really succeed I want them to encourage. I want them to tell other advisors, what are some of the things. If you sit down with advisors and say, Okay, let’s talk about this area, what have you say had success in? They love to hear from other advisors and their success and what they did. And, again, I’m good at finding old sayings and that but one of the key ones that I really liked was a candle loses nothing by lighting another candle, but it doesn’t make the room brighter. And that’s the same with education. So share your education, let’s make everybody smarter, and your whole office will have way more success.

David Miller

Yeah, and we can segue there very easily into what the IAFP is and a lot of it pertains to mentorship. And that’s what you seem to be alluding to. What your favorite part was, what your biggest attribute to success, helping other people and other advisors get better, we’re going to educate the public, for example. What is your opinion about the IAFP? Why is it still important for you to be involved?

Gary Korol

Well, I found that, again, it goes back to that let’s share the knowledge. We all want to know more about what we do and we want to hear the success stories of other people. So the IAFP, I was a member of the life Underwriters Association, I was a member of Certified Financial Planners Association, but the Registered Financial Planners is a lot closer fraternity. There’s way more sharing, we’re always on the R.F.P. forum, asking what’s an idea about this. People are very vulnerable and opening and asking for help from other R.F.P.’s. And the sharing, it doesn’t take long, you put a question on the forum, and people are right away jumping on because they want to share their knowledge. It’s a very good group. If I was a Financial Planner, and maybe I got a Certified Financial Planning degree, I would be looking at the Registered Financial Planning Designation, because, again, you’re talking to people that not only have been doing financial planning but have been doing it in a lot of ways in an advanced way and they’re all very successful. So why not tap into those people? I think for advisors that might feel they’ve got a pretty good practice and that, you always think you want to improve. Everybody always says, even Tiger Woods had a coach. He might have been the best golfer in the world at the time, but he still had a coach. Again, one of the other sayings that I really like is John Wooden, who coached UCLA Bruins to seven championships in a row, he always took everybody back to basics right at the start. And even the best players and the ones with the biggest egos, he just would always say to them, you know what? It’s what you learn when you know it all that counts. And if every time you think you have all the answers, and if you can sit back and somebody gives you a different viewpoint, rather than say, no you’re wrong, you sit back and think, okay, so why are they thinking that way? Why is that different from what I’m thinking? And what is their perspective? And sometimes you will get a new enlightening thought that you never ever thought possible, and it’ll help improve your practice or maybe change something or the way the way you did it.

David Miller

So it sounds like a key is that continuing education and continuing curiosity is an important part of becoming a competent or confident Financial Planner.

Gary Korol

Exactly. And again, just the last comments you made, that was for financial planners. I learned this back in my commerce days, and it still applies today. When we’re looking at people that are going into the financial planning, and a lot of that involves sales because you are eventually going to talk about products, I find the most successful people that deal with other people go through three phases. Whenever you join a career, you go through a first phase, and it doesn’t matter what the career is, but especially in sales, and planning and stuff. The first phase is what they call blind belief. So you may not have a high knowledge of the industry you’re in but whatever anybody tells you, you’re going to believe it. If they tell you, if you’re an insurance business, and they tell you Universal Life is the best thing possible that’s all you’re going to talk about. Or if they tell you to buy term and invest the difference that’s what you talk about. Or retirement planning you have to have low volatility, you’ll just reiterate everything you talk about. And then once you all of a sudden discern that, well, maybe not everything you’ve learned is true and you start investigating learning on your own. And then typically what happens is you go into the second phase, which is called complicated sophistication, is what I call it. And that’s basically where now I’ve learned almost everything there is to know about this. And when I’m in front of a client, whether they want to hear it or not, I’m going to spew out everything, because I want to prove to them that I know a lot about this industry. And a lot of times the clients don’t understand or it’s like, they always say it’s like Charlie Brown’s mom talking. You don’t understand it or talking to your dog, they don’t understand what you’re saying. And so too many people get stuck in that phase and their clients don’t understand everything they talk about. But if you can move into the third phase, which I call competent, confident, it means that I can explain things extremely simply in a way that the clients will understand. But if they want me to go into in all sorts of detail, I have got the competence to go into as much detail as they want to. But in the meantime, I want to keep everything simple. And so if I’m explaining volatility in the marketplace, one of the things I do is, you know, somebody says, well, I think I want to invest in such and such stock. And, I mean, investing is simple, what’s the purpose of the investment? And that guides you as to where somebody might want to invest. But when they’re talking about markets and stuff like that I just tell them it’s volatile, I couldn’t tell you in the next 10 minutes, whether the markets going to be up or down. And so to give them a perspective, I always, say, you don’t need to know a lot about the markets but as an example, if I’m going to explain it to you, just think of 55, 65, 75. And they say well, what’s that? And I say, Well, in any one day, there’s a 55% chance that the market will be up at the end of the day. And in any one month, there’s a 65% chance that the market will be up in any one month. And so if you’re only investing for a month, you got a 35% chance it’ll be down. And the 75 is in any one year, there’s a 75% chance that the market will be up at the end of the year. So if you look at those three numbers, you know that on average, three out of every four years, you’ll have a positive experience in the market and probably one year out of every four or one and a half out of every five you’re going to see lower expectations or negative markets. So just something like that, they’re going to say, Okay, well, I do see how it bounces around. So just simple concepts, that’s the thing that works with a lot of advisors, and certainly when they’re explaining things to their clients.

David Miller

Yeah, I really like that. The competent confidence. Having things that you can just bring up because you’ve heard them before. Because that’s how you learn, you grow up, you have this blind belief. I love all these concepts. The Goldilocks spot is really that competent confidence. That’s where we all want to get to as advisors. Now, I’m going to switch gears a little bit here, Gary, because I’m running out of time, what are you currently working on? Are you still helping advisors? What are you trying to do with your day to day?

Gary Korol

Well, no, I’m not involved with the advisors unless somebody specifically contacts me. I do keep in touch with a number in a number of different industries. But for the most part, what I do today, with regards to the financial planning is, you know, I try to keep my own education up, I still, as retired member of the R.F.P., I’m probably on that computer an hour a day. I’m attached to a number of different you advisor analysts, different things, investment executive papers. I read a lot. I do listen to seminars from some of the fund managers. I also always listen to economist seminars whenever they’re available. Because I like to know what the longer-term trends are and stuff. But as far as working with people, I have, prior to the pandemic, contacted some different associations, The knowledge that I want to share can be pretty basic and I have a book of about six seminars that I do. They’re anywhere from financial planning basics, debt management, retirement readiness, retirement planning, insurance, education, investment planning, all these books of seminars I’ve presented in my past career, in my last job I did a lot of it. But also, right now it’s my kids. They’re all of the early 30s age and a lot of them have come to me. I’ve had groups of them get together, and I just present them with ideas. They’re interested in different things. But also, I don’t want to be their financial planner. I certainly will be their mentor and they can ask me any questions, but I encourage them to work with a Financial Planner because you want to develop a relationship with a financial planner. I’ve got a list of, I’ve actually got four pages of questions to ask Financial Planners. So if they come to me and say, well I don’t know where to look, I just find out the Financial Institutions that they might deal with. And I’ll say, Okay, well here’s some questions that you might want to ask to make sure that this advisor is a good fit for you. And I tell them about credentials and where you’re more likely to get better inancial planning. And so I think that really helps them. And, other than that, I’m not on this full time. I certainly like to enjoy life and golf a lot and vacation two or three times a year as well. And keep active too. I like to do exercise almost every day and that.

David Miller

Perfect Gary. I’ll go back to the seminars the questions, is this stuff you want to share with the Financial Planning Community or with the public? Can I put it on to our show notes?

Gary Korol

Yeah, like the seminars I do, they’re in no way, even my investment planning seminar, it’s not providing definite investment advice. It’s understanding the types of investments you can get involved with and if you’re interested, where to go look for them. If you want to do it yourself, I’ll give you guidelines on how to go about doing it yourself. These seminars are typically 45 minutes to an hour, and I’m happy to present them. I’ve tried to contact some of my community associations to ask, you know, again, the pandemic’s kind of prevented this, but just if they’re interested, I’ll do them totally on a volunteer basis. What I want to do is send people off in the right direction, so they have a good experience with their Financial Advisor.

David Miller

Yeah, financial literacy of the public is one of the number one problems I see should be taught in schools. It’s not. The more successful clients have actually taken courses in university just to understand some of this stuff. So any kind of Financial Education that you can provide, I think it’s such a resource and a great idea for retired Financial Planners out there. Gary, thank you very much for your time today. Thank you very much for all the tidbits. I hope everybody got a little something out of this. And we’ll talk again very soon.

Gary Korol

Okay David. Yeah, I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on. 

David Miller

Take care.