At Iron Point Financial, we try to do things a little differently from your typical financial advisor. For us, the highest priority is connecting with you as an individual, creating a plan based on your unique circumstances, and then seeing it through together.
So although we are in the business of wealth management, we try to avoid cold, transactional ways of connecting. Instead, we always put our relationships with clients first — and this is why we feel well-placed to offer advice on what to look for in a good financial mentor.
The way we treat our clients is the way we hope your financial mentor would treat you: with integrity, expertise, and compassion. Throughout this article, Greg Liszka, our president, shares insights into what he’s learned about educating clients and coaching them to financial success, drawing from nearly two decades of experience.
Who is a Financial Mentor?
Financial Mentor: a Definition
A financial mentor is someone who:
- Leverages extensive experience and financial knowledge for your benefit;
- Shares stories of their successes and failures, so you can learn from them;
- Helps you to plan out and achieve your own financial goals; and
- Imparts financial literacy through modeling and teaching you best practices for long-term sustainability.
The Role of a Financial Mentor
The best financial mentors want to see you succeed on your own — to coach you so well that one day, you won’t need to lean on them so much, and you will even be able to share the wisdom you have gained with others, as their financial mentor.
In this way, being a financial mentor is much like being a life coach, where their main role is to see you grow as a human being: to flourish in all you put your hands to.
The difference between a financial mentor and a life coach is the subject matter: financial mentors focus on helping you to become a good steward of your finances, while life coaches offer a more generalized approach.
Trait 1: Deep Industry Knowledge and Experience
The first thing to look for in a great financial mentor is a depth of industry knowledge and experience. Ideally, your financial mentor should be a seasoned professional who has navigated economic downturns, booms, and bubbles and has come through all of those with practical wisdom to share.
As the popular quip goes, “Knowledge is knowing that tomatoes are a fruit; wisdom is knowing not to put them in a fruit salad.”
For our purposes, this means that the best financial mentors don’t just carry “book learning” but can speak from a place of authority: “I’ve been there. I’ve seen this work. I’ve learned from this mistake. Here are some things they don’t teach you in Business School…”
This kind of wisdom — born out of lived experience — can set you up to start several steps ahead of your peers… if you are willing to submit to it.
With the right attitude, you can start implementing techniques and practices that took your financial mentor years to learn, and with their help, you can avoid the most common pitfalls, too.
The Importance of Being a Good Student First
If you’re looking for a good financial mentor, then it goes without saying you need to do your part: to adopt a posture of learning and respect towards your prospective mentor.
Greg Liszka, IPF’s founder, has helped thousands of clients over the years, and he’s seen that certain qualities make some people more suited to tailored financial planning (and, by the same token, to taking on a financial mentor):
“This is my criteria: They have to be good people. Because if I can’t sit here and enjoy the conversation, it’s not going to work. Money is secondary. If you’re a good person, I’ll figure out a way to help.
I want somebody who recognizes that they need help, who wants help, who’s willing to take direction. I want somebody who’s honest, who will answer the phone or call me back.
The communication has to be there. I’m not calling you just to shoot the breeze; there’s a purpose. And if you ghost me, you’re standing in the way of your own success!”
In other words: make sure your priorities are in the right place before you start looking for a financial mentor.
If you want someone to treat you like a friend, then be willing to treat them the same. If you want someone to speak into your life, then please be open to at least considering their words. And if you want to hit your financial goals, make sure you’re ready for the commitment that will require over time.
You might find the best financial mentor in the world, but if all you do is ignore them — if you just ghost them and never make time for them or their advice — what’s the point?
Trait 2: Strong Communication and Teaching Skills
As we indicated in the previous section, knowledge alone will not do. A financial mentor’s ability to communicate complex information in an understandable and relatable way is the second key trait we want to highlight today.
The best financial mentors are:
- Patient;
- Realistic;
- Able to teach;
- Able to engage in active listening; and
- Able to impart flexible frameworks rather than rigid rules.
They understand that you won’t necessarily get everything they’re saying straight away, so they’re willing to clarify, listen to your questions, and probe deeper, to make sure you come away with something you feel confident applying to your own life.
And more than that, the best financial mentors will put your interests first: they will be willing to listen to your heart, hear about your financial dreams, and brainstorm with you about how best to move closer to those dreams.
When you consider that at least half of all communication is listening — respecting and truly engaging with what the other person is saying, and letting them express themselves fully — you can see why it’s so important for a financial mentor to have this ability.
Financial Mentors as Educators and Accountability Partners
We believe financial mentors should possess this kind of skill and intentionality because this is exactly the kind of approach Greg and the rest of the IPF team take with clients:
“Here’s my job: my job is never to tell you that you can’t do something (unless it’s so obviously unattainable). My job is to figure out how to make it happen for you. I’m not going to rain on your dreams.
It’s also not my job to see it through your exact lens — clients are not always hiring me to agree with them — but I’m here to fix problems.
When they ask, “How do we achieve this goal? How do we get there?” It’s my job to say, “Here’s what we can do: we could do this. We could also do this, or this. These are the trade-offs…
It’s all about communication. It’s about showing the clients the math and providing different avenues to fulfill those needs.
At the end of the day, people can make whatever decision they want… but there are consequences!
I can’t save people, and nor is it my job to save people from themselves. It’s my job to educate people as to the consequences of their decisions, and then ultimately they are the boss.”
Nobody can navigate your life for you, but the right people can come alongside you to discuss how best to approach the many different paths ahead of you.
So if you find a financial mentor who understands both what they’re talking about and knows how to point you in the right direction, we reckon you’re on to a winner.
Trait 3: Trustworthiness and Transparency
Financial matters are inherently personal and often sensitive, precisely because the way you direct your financial resources says a lot about your values and purpose in life.
That’s why it’s important that your financial mentor is someone worthy of your trust, someone who will partner with you in seeing what you hold most dear bear fruit in your life.
In the financial world, there’s a term that directly references how important it is for financial professionals of all types to be transparent and trustworthy: fiduciary.
This word has its roots in the Latin word, “fidere” (“to trust”) and refers to a person legally charged with acting in the best interests of an organization or charity’s beneficiaries.
It stands to reason that when looking for a financial mentor, you should expect to find the same values: someone you believe will offer advice and mentorship in your best interests, and who is willing to stick around for the long term to prove their commitment to you.
But what exactly does it mean to be trustworthy? Well, we’ve already covered the importance of good communication as part of a financial mentor’s teaching skillset, but deep levels of trust go beyond that, in the form of (1) honesty and (2) consistency.
No Shortcuts: The Quality of Realism in a Financial Mentor
Honesty — in the form of healthy realism — is an important quality for a financial mentor in building trust with their mentee. There are no shortcuts in life, and a good financial mentor will also tell you when your goals or plans are unreasonable:
“Sometimes those conversations are very difficult… If you tell me, “I’ve got $100,000 but I want to retire in 15 years, and I want $150,000 a year in retirement.” Then I have to say, “OK, well you’ll have to save (for the sake of example) $350,000 a year.”
And if you tell me, “Well, I only make $80,000…” Then I’m sorry, but you will just have to figure out the rest. You’ve got to fix that goal, because it’s impossible with what you have and where you are.
Nobody wants to hear that, and I don’t want to say it, but facts are facts. You can’t paint unrealistic pictures. You have to set the right expectations.
But if we can do it, then I can tell you, “Alright, you need to save — again, for the sake of example — an extra $8,000 a year, which is $675 a month. Then we can get you there. (Accepting, of course, that there are no guarantees.)”
On the flip side of your financial mentor’s honest communication, you need to be willing to take their comments on board, do the math together, and plan within realistic time frames and financial boundaries. As Greg likes to reassure IPF’s clients, “I can’t control tomorrow… but there are some cool things we can do.”
Authenticity & Consistency in a Financial Mentor
The second key facet of trust that we will mention today is consistency: practicing what you preach. While there is some overlap here with the first trait we mentioned (Deep Industry Knowledge & Experience), it’s worth stressing this value for what it offers in and of itself.
If your prospective financial mentor tells you to do something they have never done themselves, would you feel uncomfortable? And if they coached you to travel in one direction, but you could see they were actively pursuing the exact opposite path, would you be happy moving forward?
If you are anything like us, your answers are probably: yes, I would feel uncomfortable, and no, I probably wouldn’t go ahead with that course of action. We believe that is because consistency promotes authority and believability: when others see that you’re bought into the strategy you’re suggesting, they’re more likely to follow.
When this topic comes up in conversation with IPF’s clients, Greg is happy to model this (not as a sales tactic, but simply as a way to build trust, as there are no guarantees in the financial world):
“My job is to meet with the client, listen to their story, understand what makes them tick, then develop a big plan. And then I have an investment team that implements the strategy. They manage my money too.
I often tell people: “What you have right here, what we’re reviewing, this is the portfolio that I have.” Now, maybe this particular client has a different risk tolerance to me (because I am “all stock,” as I understand the volatility game), but they will be on the same strategy.
I’m selling you the same exact thing. And I’ve always felt that was a fair question for clients to ask me: “What are you doing? Are you doing this?” And I say, “Yeah! Actually, I am!” It increases the trust level, big time.”
Given the nature of this particular relationship, your financial mentor probably isn’t going to be selling you anything (that would be in the realm of a certified financial advisor instead) but the principle stands: financial mentors with a reliable track record of their own and who are willing to let you in on what they have found profitable themselves, get a big thumbs up from us.
Trait 4: A Genuine Interest in Your Success
This leads us to our fourth and final trait to look for in a financial mentor: someone with a genuine interest in your success, who will celebrate with you when things are going well, and show compassion for you when you’re struggling through life’s inevitable challenges.
What this looks like is someone who takes an interest in you simply because they want you to flourish, rather than because they have a hidden agenda or some kind of quid pro quo (i.e. “You scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours.”).
This kind of person is likely to have been blessed with a positive financial mentor themselves, such that they want to “pay it forward” to the next generation.
Or perhaps your prospective financial mentor they grew up without a positive financial role model, but resolved that when they “made it” they would altruistically give others something they never had.
Greg puts it like this:
“We are called to be good stewards of the gifts we are given. That’s what I’m trying to do [at IPF]. We’re not trying to be greedy. We’re just trying to be good stewards of the gifts we’ve been given.
I want to surround myself with people who can be truly happy for other people. That’s important to me. So if “Derek” gets a nice contract, I am so happy for him: that’s fantastic!
Most people fight this “jealousy” thing: that’s a very easy trap to fall into, especially in the materialistic America that we live in. But to be genuinely happy when people succeed: that’s important.
I want people to succeed. It’s not about the money that you have, it’s about the fact that we did it: they reached their goals!”
Another way of thinking about this is that the best financial mentors are willing to pass on something of who they are to their mentees. Instead of trying to compete with others, they have decided that the best way to make a difference is to share what you have, and to multiply your values through others.
How to Find Your Ideal Financial Mentor
Finding the right financial mentor requires introspection (“Am I truly willing to invest in this relationship?”) and research (“Does the person I am thinking about possess the four key traits?”).
We would recommend that you start by defining your financial goals and areas where you are seeking guidance.
Once you’ve got those written down, you could consider attending networking events, joining professional associations, and engaging on social media platforms like LinkedIn in the search for your ideal financial mentor.
And after you have come up with a list of mentors who align with your values — even if it’s only one or two names — don’t hesitate to reach out, but ensure you do so politely and kindly, to signal respect for their time and expertise.
Conclusion: Start Your Journey to Financial Empowerment
In a world where managing your finances can seem like a big ask amongst all the other responsibilities of life, having a financial mentor in your corner could be a priceless asset on your journey to financial independence.
The right mentor can help to demystify the complex world of finance and enable you to make empowered, informed decisions as they bring the following four key traits to bear in your financial walk:
- Deep industry knowledge and experience;
- Strong communication and teaching skills;
- Trustworthiness and transparency; and
- Genuine interest in your success.
This kind of financial mentor won’t just give you all the answers but will instead help you to find them on your own, so that you can apply their knowledge in a personalized way, drawing on it and the strength of your relationship for years to come.
The Iron Point Difference
If you liked the idea of a financial mentor with the four traits mentioned here, but you didn’t want to go through the trouble of finding someone like that (a good financial mentor is a rare find, after all), then why not reach out to Iron Point Financial today?
We do not offer financial mentorship, but we will treat you according to the qualities we have described above in relation to your investment, retirement, or wealth management needs. And more than that, we will do most of the financial leg work for you after you have come in to discuss your unique situation and needs.
Finally, if you enjoyed this article about financial mentors, why not sign up for regular email updates from our blog, so that you don’t miss future posts?
Iron Point Financial is here to empower you to secure a brighter tomorrow. We operate physical offices in Grove City, PA and Greenville, PA.
We primarily serve residents of Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and Florida but we also have security registrations for 22 other states across the continental USA.
