Lytle Rather on the Death of a Spouse

We had a widow referred to us. Wow. She was 76 years old. She had owned a business with her husband
And he passed away suddenly. He was the guy taking care of the financial part of the business.

She was very important to the business, but she didn’t, she didn’t understand all of that. And when she came in, she was confused. You’ve got the unbelievable emotional turmoil going on when you lose a spouse, but then, when you add the financial burden and owning a business on top of that, she was lost by me asking her, what are you scared of? What are you worried about?

And as she started telling me about those things, and we were able to tell her that Here’s what we’re gonna do, here’s how we’re gonna handle that, and I could almost see the relief of her seeing that someone understood and could help her get through this time, and that we were in this thing together.

For me, that’s so much more rewarding. And so far beyond investments, we want to help people make smart decisions with their money. And the only way we can do that is to get to know them at a very deep level. And that’s hard. But when a client trusts us enough to share their life and their dreams and their fears with us, that is an unbelievable responsibility. There’s a relationship there, and I don’t think I would be doing this if we weren’t able to connect and have relationships with our clients.