Champions Are Made, Not BornBy Joe Templin

Champions are built from strong fundamentals, so let's focus on some basic building blocks that will allow you to achieve greatness. If you are willing to make the sacrifices, you will have an excellent financial-services practice and be on track for a great career.

1. You are in a startup business. Expect to work your tail off. My friends who started technology companies worked more than 80 hours a week. If you were a first-year attorney, you'd be expected to have 2,000 billable hours a year, which translates into more than 200 hours of work a month. You need to be ready to commit a dozen hours a day to build a career your friends will be envious of. You should spend 10 percent of this time learning. If you are not ready to work hard, you should quit now. Seriously. Commit to working hard and winning, or go home and don't waste the next six months of your life and the time of those who want to help you succeed.

2. Game time is not practice time. You do not work on your referral language in front of a client. You should write out your ideal language and practice it twice a day before your first meeting. I prospected the goldfish in my office constantly. I never got any introductions, but I got great at asking. In addition, make an Mp3 of you using your language and listen to it over and over on your way to work, on the way home, in the gym or wherever you can to get an extra dozen repetitions in until it is reflexive. My martial arts master taught me that you need 1,000 repetitions to understand a technique. You can get to that level in a quarter if you really want to.

3. Control the calendar. Time is a commodity that can be wasted easily, so do what you can to control it to make the best use of your day. I had appointment slots of 90 minutes starting at 7 a.m., seven a day, as well as an extra one if I was seeing clients through dinnertime. No one saw me at noon, because it would burn two spots. By creating structure to the day in this way, I could schedule 35 appointments a week like clockwork without expending any mental energy on “Is this a noon or a 12:30 appointment?” By 6 p.m., I'd be out of the office and on to my martial arts class or a networking event or at home studying and doing research. Maximizing your day gives you freedom at night.

4. Be in the office or at a breakfast meeting by 7 a.m. every day, no exceptions. You'll have a more productive day by lunch than your peers will have all day. If you can go to the gym beforehand, you’ll have higher energy levels, lower stress and full mind/body engagement. By the time my peers rolled into the office, I had already kept two appointments, putting me in the bonus round for my activity goal by lunch.

Everyone I came into the business with had better markets and much better skills than I had. The reason they failed and I made it into MDRT is because I built and practiced good habits to make me better, and I worked harder and smarter than they were willing to.

What are you willing to do to be excellent?

Bio:
Joe Templin is head geek of the Unique Minds Consulting Group LLC. You can contact him at headgeek@unique-minds.com, and he tweets as TheRealHeadGeek.

A Lengthy Retirement for Your ClientsBy Anna M. Rappaport

In retirement planning, everyone should focus on the period from the time of retirement until the end of life, which is often 20 years or more. In addition to that long-term focus, effective planning requires preparation for the transition to retirement and thoughtful management during retirement.

The recent financial crisis underscores the importance of helping your clients plan for th eir retirement. A 2009 study, What a Difference a Year Makes, from the Society of Actuaries (SOA), LIMRA and the International Foundation for Retirement Education (InFRE), reinforces the idea that people are feeling less secure about retirement these days.

Retirement planning is for the rest of life. Most people do not have enough retirement income from Social Security, defined benefit pensions or annuities to meet their basic expenses. In fact, four out of 10 widows end up with only Social Security benefits.

Planning for Social Security
It is important to help your clients decide when to claim Social Security benefits, which can be claimed as early as age 62 and as late as age 70. Monthly benefits at age 70 can be approximately 75 percent more than at age 62.

When you add spousal benefits into the mix, for marriages in which the lower earning (or nonworking) spouse gets a significant spousal benefit, the benefits are more valuable if claimed later, and this difference in values grows larger for younger spouses with a larger age difference. The importance of the Social Security benefits paid to the survivor depends on the total portfolio, including the other sources of income for the spouse and the assets that are available.

For people who need more guaranteed retirement income, there is also an advantage to claiming Social Security benefits later, as this is effectively buying an inflation-indexed annuity at an attractive price.

Since about four of 10 widows have virtually no income other than from Social Security, claiming benefits later may mean a huge increase in their retirement income and can make a real day-to-day difference in their lives. The surviving spouse gets a benefit equal to the greater of what he earned based on his own earnings and the benefit earned by the deceased spouse. For people with a pension without survivor benefits, this becomes more important.

You should advise all of your clients to evaluate alternatives for taking Social Security payments and to particularly consider the impact on those who will live long. Retirees often work during retirement, but that option is more readily available to younger retirees.

Annuities to the rescue
For individuals who have predictable basic expenses in excess of their Social Security benefits and guaranteed pension income, buying an annuity provides an added level of retirement income. However, you should remind them that there are major trade-offs: guaranteed income (including the potential to guarantee income to the survivor) in exchange for loss of control of the assets and loss of potential inheritance for a child.

There are many forms of annuities, including some that start at older ages such as 85, usually known as longevity insurance. The right choice requires an evaluation of both the overall portfolio and the client’s risk tolerance. For many people, including some annuities in their portfolio will reduce the chances that they will run out of money and increases their security in old age. You need to help the client understand the trade-offs.

Planning can be viewed as a balance of investment management and risk management. Plan to help your clients produce the income they need and make sure it will last as long as they need it.

For an overview of post-retirement risks with some ideas on how to manage them, consult SOA’s Managing Post-Retirement Risks at http://www.soa.org/files/pdf/post-retirement-charts.pdf.

Bio:
Anna M. Rappaport is a consultant and past president of the Society of Actuaries. You may contact her at anna@annarappaport.com or at 312-642-4720.