Learning to Dance WIth Dragons

Let me start here, I am not a marketing, LinkedIn, or Facebook expert. In fact this is the largest struggle and fear I faced when launching Silver Strand Financial Planning. I had spent almost 20 years working in different size banks where all of this was done for me and when I took the step to start my own firm I was quickly thrown into this. I began by thinking that I needed flashy well created content and deep market and economic insight, and quite frankly I failed. And thank God that I did fail because it brought me to this point - a time of reflection of one year working on my firm and reflecting on this past weekend at #xypnlive.

Through a series of events God directed my path to attending this conference, and for me it changed the direction of Silver Strand Financial Planning. I owe this shift in direction to all of the conference presenters that I listened to and member that I met (what an amazing group of professionals!), but mostly to the final keynote presentation by Carl Richards. He discussed the importance of approaching #financialplanning as helping clients take the next step (however big or small this might be) and then reevaluating and then helping them take the next step. He encouraged us to be the client's guide on a journey not made of an old stable map but a journey where the landscape changes with each step.

The second point that stuck with me was what he called "learning to dance with dragons". He said that dragons always hide or protect the good things. We all have dragons in our lives that are big and scary and maybe even so massive we cannot defeat them, but if we learn to embrace the challenge, learn from challenge, and grow from the challenge, there are good things waiting.

Of all of the amazing things that I have done in my life, they have all started with some sort of dragon and all have started with one small step. Whether it is playing high school football at Denver Christian School or graduating from Calvin University, or starting my life with my amazing wife, or running and completing the #r2r2r in the #grandcanyon, hiking to #ampitheaterlake in the #grandtetons with my wife and daughter, and so much more. All were difficult in their own right but all were worth the challenge and all started with one small step.

I know that my God given dream is to help people truly live life. This begins with helping people gain clarity around their life and helping them begin to understand their financial purpose and live what they decide is their best life; to come along side and be a guide and a thinking partner, to help them take the next (or first) step, and then the next and the next. This starts with open, honest, real, conversations around sometimes hard things (dragons) hiding amazing results, not flashy marketing and deep insightful market and economic analysis.