The time to buy stock is when it hurts the most.

The deeper the market goes, the safer it is.

Two-star funds probably have more upside potential than five-star funds.

We slash our prices and people run away.

How about that?

In game 5 of the American League Championship Series, the Red Sox were losing 7-0 with two outs in the seventh inning. A combination of luck and skill helped them prevail, 8-7. That’s cutting it way too close. Advisors too often find themselves in similar positions when they don’t prospect some every day. Every time you open a new account, you have lost your best prospect. If you don’t keep the pipeline full, you are playing catch-up ball.

Remind your clients that this business is a marathon. It is not a sprint. There are lots of lucky sprinters. There’s never been a lucky marathon winner ever. Unfortunately, even as we preach long term, we make prices available for checking 24 hours a day, seven days a week. That’s not right. We have got to keep reminding ourselves and reminding our clients our goal is 20, 30, 40 years from now, not this afternoon. Jack Nelson, a Financial Advisor in Florida and a good friend, years ago said to me, “Don, money has consistent behavior. People screw it up.”

It wasn’t that many years ago that our industry was a transactional one. Clients had to go to their local Merrill Lynch office to get information on a company before buying the stock. We would hand out a “tear sheet” and maybe an annual report. If the client had an interest in a mutual fund, we handed out a prospectus accompanied by a fact sheet. The client received what was necessary and not much more.

The onslaught of technology has changed everything. Today’s client has access to as much or more information than Merrill’s trading desk had in those days. And that’s obviously the way it should be.

Yet I’m not convinced that today’s client is any more enlightened or better off than yesterday’s client. He or she still makes the same mistakes, availability of information notwithstanding. Look no further than the technology bubble bursting a few years back. The information was there for all to see and it was still a disaster.

One sea change this information availability has brought with it is that all the data is now commoditized. All firms have the same information and sell the same products; and cheap advice has become a major growth industry, manifesting itself in the form of discount houses and no load funds. For a number of years now, we’ve witnessed the relentless creep of a lower cost structure, the introduction of a lot of low cost product and free advice. That’s a game you can never win. The pushers of product are now an endangered species.

Tomorrow’s new accounts will be opened by those Advisors who truly do see the client’s big picture; who indeed are the best at gathering and analyzing data and truly understanding the client’s goals. Clients can and, all too often, do have many relationships with Advisors. They’ve got choice and the data is commoditized. That’s a dangerous combination.

And that brings us to lesson two in the mentoring program: Get out of the product business and get in the advice business. Sell your advice and your opinion. That’s what people want. That’s why they seek you out. And, for you, a strong opinion makes you stand out from the competition.

There are undoubtedly more than one hundred products your firm could offer its clients. If you so choose (and you should) to know a product better than anyone in the industry, how many products could you know that cold? The answer is not many. If you were to be involved in and control every aspect of a client’s finances and do the thorough job that relationship would require; how many clients could you possibly take on? Again, the answer is not many.

So the second thing my mentor made me do was pick a product. He made it my goal to become synonymous with whatever product I chose. I was to know it better than anyone and be known for knowing it better than anyone. I chose mutual funds. When the wealthy people in my town desired to look into mutual funds, I was to be the logical choice.

Thus, lesson number one is to write down your goals in the simplest, easy to understand fashion and in as much detail as you can possibly muster. Move toward those goals every day. Don’t worry about going slow. Just worry about stopping.

Your second task is to pick that product or those few products that interest and excite you the most. If you are not sure what products to pick, ask yourself and then answer three simple questions. If you answer correctly, you’ll be successful beyond your wildest dreams. Who’s buying it? What are they buying? Where are they buying it? Americans save in excess of $400 billion each and every year. Your broker/dealer undoubtedly has any product you will need to satisfy any financial need your clients may have.

Pick a product or products to know better than anyone in your town and set your goals. You are now off and running.

From this chaos, there will be born the next generation of great Financial Advisors. It is written nowhere that you can’t be one of them. If you so choose, you can today make one of the greatest and most impactful decisions of your life. You can decide to be great.

This is the beginning of the mentoring program. I am simply going to teach you what I was taught. It worked for me. I hope it works for you.

My first mentor was so unpretentious and so comfortable in his own skin that today he’d be called (in fact he is called) old-fashioned. He has very strong family values, he believes in hard work and he believes in America. Beneath that Norman Rockwell exterior is a passion for this business that is unparalleled. He once laughingly said that he loved his job so much that he was afraid the president of the company would figure out how much fun he was having and fire him.

He flat out believes that to be great in this business you need great selling skills. No matter how smart you are, no matter where you went to college, no matter how great your product knowledge, if your selling skills are mediocre, your achievements will be mediocre. His advice to me was pretty straight forward: Get great at what you do. If you are great at prospecting, great at giving a presentation, great at closing the sale and great at getting referrals, you will have a great career. “Don,” he said, “wherever you aim, that’s where you’re going to end up. So you better aim high.”

The first thing my mentor told me was a story about Thomas Watson, the legendary leader of IBM. Watson was asked in an interview how he led IBM to such incredible heights. He explained that he imagined what he wanted and worked backwards. I was urged to do the same. My mentor truly believed that life is a series of decisions and if we don’t make our own decisions, somebody else will make them for us. He asked me which course of action I preferred. I chose the former. Accordingly, he made me declare my life goals and create a road map to use over the years in pursuit of those goals. I’m now asking you to do the same for yourself.

Like Mr. Watson, you must decide where you want to end up. If you don’t care where you end up, it won’t matter which course of action you choose. If you know exactly where you want to end up, we can determine exactly your course of action for every minute of every day. How cool would it be to give purpose to your every single waking hour? Together we can do that.

So close your eyes and picture yourself living the life you have always wanted to live. Imagine yourself running the practice you have always wanted to run. That’s how successful you can be. It all depends on how badly you want it. Your job is to influence and persuade. How far up that economic food chain do you dare go? How high could you go if you were guaranteed not fail? I know that most people aren’t afraid to fail. Most people are afraid to succeed. The toughest part about succeeding is that you’ve got to be able to get out of your comfort zone and stay out of your comfort zone. You’ve got to dare to be great.

So lesson number one is to simply and realistically decide where we are going. You have the steering wheel and nobody can take it away from you. Whether we get where are going is entirely up to you. You decide the destination and then you program the GPS.

What will your success look like when we get there? Will success mean financial independence? Will success mean a certain lifestyle you’ve had in the back of your mind? What will your house look like? What kind of car will you drive? What type of friends will you cultivate? Will you give back to someone coming along behind you? Will you be a mentor? Will you be involved in your community? Will you give up production for management? What outside interests will you pursue? Will you be a person of utmost character and integrity? Write down exactly what your life will look like when you get us where we are going, right down to the minutest detail. Decide exactly what type of golf clubs you may choose to use and exactly what your closet will look like when you walk in. The more detail you can imagine, the clearer will be the path.

Now give your plans a timeline and be honest with yourself. How many years will this journey take? What do you want your life to look like one year from now, three years from now, five years from now, ten years from now and twenty years from now? How do you want to look at the height of your power?

Make you goals tough, yet achievable. These goals must be in writing and they must be magnetic. You can’t set goals so high that they are unattainable. Decide the income you will need to support the lifestyle you will create. Then simply do the math. Write down the amount of assets you must raise during the journey. That’s where we are going. Are you tough enough to get there?