We would shout this from the mountain top, but alas, we live in Minnesota and well, you know…
We are astounded that a year has passed since we took our business independent. As we reflect on the past 12 months, we are reminded of how we were feeling at this time last year. We were excited, nervous, and a little scared. We had thoughts swirling around our minds like, “What if our clients wouldn’t benefit as much as we thought they would? What if we don’t retain our client relationships? What if the grass isn’t greener on the other side? What if it’s all just too much for us? Will we miss out on precious time with our babies?” Thankfully, this was a decision that was made after careful planning, reflection, and prayer. It was a decision that felt necessary in order to serve our clients the way we had always envisioned. It was a decision that would also keep up with the fast-paced and always changing world of financial planning. This decision was made after careful reflection of our values and staying true and accountable to what we value most as a company, our clients.
Trivas Financial Group’s core values are Faith, Relationships, Integrity, Excellence, and Flexibility. Reflecting on our values is not just a “feel good” exercise. It does make you feel good when you see that you are making really big decisions that do align with your values and your ideal self. Reflecting on our values brings rational decision-making to the forefront and helps take emotions, like fear, off the table. As a team, we make it a practice to review our values annually as part of our business planning process. As we were reviewing them a couple years back, we had a realization. We can have wonderful relationships with our clients and colleagues anywhere, with any type of firm. We could live and work in each of our unique faith systems at our previous firm but we could also do that independently. It was the other three that were giving us a mental punch to the gut: Integrity, Excellence, and Flexibility. Those three are all equally important to the work that we do. When we thought about it, we couldn’t say that we were living and working in alignment with all our values without making a big change. Transitioning our business to an independent broker dealer was the change that could allow us to have complete value alignment. Being with an independent broker dealer means that we don’t have selling requirements. It gives us full flexibility to shop the entire market of investments, insurance or advanced technologies for the complex financial strategies our clients need. Independence means we can provide the most excellent experience and products for each of our unique client situations. It means we don’t have a “one size fits all” product suite or approach. We have full flexibility of options in the open market, which we know is important because our clients have unique goals and values of their own. We can also do our work with full integrity knowing that we have that flexibility and access to the most excellent options for our unique clients. When working with something as important, serious, and impactful as our client’s finances, having the outmost integrity is massively important to us.
We want to give you an update as to where we are today after making this change last year. When we started this journey, we established some mile markers as well as some boundaries. We reached our mile markers months ago. Not every single client transitioned with us, but that was not our intention or our goal. We have transitioned the mass majority of our client relationships that we had hoped would. We are so grateful to each and every one of you. It’s a truly humbling experience and another clear sign that what we do really matters in the lives of our clients. There were some sacrifices along the way. Did we miss moments with our babies? Of course it’s possible, but we have no regrets. As I think back, I think of so many wonderful moments with my babies that make my heart soar. And is the grass greener? Our independent broker dealer, Cambridge Investment Research, is also a values-based company. Their values are “Commitment, Integrity, Flexibility and Kindness” and we see that each day. They made a commitment to us to help us through this transition. They showed up big time. Even more important, they want to make sure that we are doing things the right way. That is a good thing, for you, our clients, and for us and our business. Cambridge is all about flexibility. At first, this was overwhelming but now that we’ve found our stride, it’s such a blessing. And finally, kindness is something you need to experience over time. Over the past year every email, every conversation and every handholding through new technologies and processes was accompanied with kindness. Partnering with a firm like Cambridge feels like home and so, the grass is greener.
As we think about the next 12 months, we are still excited. We have reached the point of our new normal. All the fury of transition is behind us and we have room to grow. When our clients work with us, we will also be encouraging them to do a values exercise. When we know what our clients’ value most, we can help them make better financial decisions. At the very least, it equates to more rational decision making and that has a ripple effect on themselves, but also, future generations. We believe this can change our little corner of the world.
To our beloved clients, thank you for sticking with us throughout this transition. It has humbled us greatly. And to the person who found us out of curiosity, we hope you reach out! We love to hear about what you hope to achieve, and we’d love to see if it would make sense to partner with you along the way.
Leah & Trivas Financial Group
