When I formed Watch City Financial Group, I decided to make personalized service more than just a slogan.
By the time I decided to open my own advisory firm in 2006, I had spent a great deal of time thinking about what I would do differently than the organizations that I had worked for, and one particular incident came to mind. About five years ago, when I was working at a larger financial institution - in much the same capacity I am now, as a financial advisor to individual clients - I came to a realization: I was speaking to a client, a woman whose money I had been investing for nearly three years, and it dawned on me that I had never actually met with her face to face.
Not only that, I didn't know what she did for a living, whether or not she had children, if her parents were still alive... What I didn't want to admit to myself was that she was really just an account number to me, and I had no idea what was important to her in life. And that was because we had no personal relationship. I didn't think about it much longer though, because when the call ended, I was on to the next client.
What was lacking at those institutions was personalized service, that human touch that transforms a business transaction into a relationship.
As a community-based financial advisor, we see it as our obligation to treat each client the same as we would treat a neighbor. Because if our clients don't succeed, neither do we.
-Michael Snedeker