Our Process

Looking for an advisor often feels daunting because the finance industry is complicated by design; all its moving pieces are created by institutions to be confusing and opaque. The lack of clarity often leaves more questions than answers, which is why we’ve created a completely transparent, plain-English discovery process designed for one thing: clarity for you and your goals – regardless of whether or not you decide to work with us.

Our Commitment for This Step: Absolutely zero sales. This quick 10-15 minute chat is focused on you, and our commitment is that you walk away with more clarity, regardless of whether or not you decide to work with us.

The Goal for This Step: We just want to get a high-level overview of your financial goals and answer any specific questions you may have. No frills, no song and dance. Just clarity for you.

Whether you reach out on a whim, or have a call scheduled, this initial chat centres around these objectives:

• What are your financial goals?

• What finance-related challenges (if any) are you facing?

• What is a general overview of your finances?

• What questions do you have?

There’s a wonderful saying: “The map is not the territory.” This is simply to say that we might be standing in the same spot, but our perceptions and interpretations can be wildly different. This initial conversation is for us to see the territory as you see it. Only by sharing the same map can we even have the chance of giving you real value.

At the end of the call, we’ll both know if a more fleshed-out conversation makes sense; one that really dives deeper into your goals and how you can achieve them. If a deeper conversation is what you’d like, we’ll work with you to schedule a time, but before the meeting actually happens, we move to Step 2…

Our Commitment for This Step: Provide you with our “Clarity Checklist” so you can confidently gather all the relevant financial information you need, while we prepare strategic areas of discussion specific to your goals.

The Goal for This Step: To prepare both of us to have the most valuable meeting anchored with the goals you shared in our initial chat.

Every decision is easy if we have all the information. That’s why we typically like to schedule initial discovery meetings a week in advanced – to give you the time to gather all of your finance-related pieces; from your most recent tax return to existing investment portfolios, whether you use paper statements or know your logins, ensuring we’re able to sit next to each other and examine your finances together is the only way to align reality with the goals you have for you and your loved ones.

This can feel both revealing and vulnerable. If you’re just looking for advice on something particular, that’s okay too, but as an example, it never ceases to amaze how much the average person is overpaying in taxes, and it’s only by seeing the whole picture that you can glean the most value from the initial discovery meeting.

Our “Clarity Checklist” (e-mailed to you once we schedule our meeting) is an easy way for you to know all the pieces of information we can use in order to offer you the most effective assessment and decision-making clarity, regardless of whether or not we end up working together.

While you’re gathering all the relevant pieces, we’ll be reviewing all of your aspirations and concerns you shared in our initial chat, and creating a custom meeting itinerary so we can stay on track throughout that hour and wrap all discussions around your specific financial goals.

From here, we can sail right into Step 3…

Our Commitment for This Step: To give you the absolute clearest path forward; arming you with the most relevant and valuable information so you can have decision-making confidence with your finances.

The Goal for This Step: To spread out everything you bring, examine it all together, and let you know the exact plan we recommend in order for you to reach your financial goals.

Presenting the road map provides the most value for you.  We love this step because it’s the first time we get to reveal so much to you.  Whether its how to better structure your investments so you can pay less tax or how to make the most efficient use of your investments to achieve your goals, we will present our best advice and solutions specifically tailored for you. At the end of the day, this entire journey up to this point has been uncovering your truest financial aspirations, and now, having all the relevant data enables us to provide you with an action plan and a personally customized strategy.

But it goes so much deeper than minimizing taxes. At the end of the day, this entire journey up to this point has been uncovering your truest financial aspirations, and now, having all the relevant data enables us to provide you with both an action plan and actual custom strategies you can implement yourself, have us execute for you, or heck, take back to your existing advisor if you have one.

This isn’t pure altruism.  Many of our clients switched over to us because they were frustrated with the lack of attention and care from their previous advisors.  Did you know that some institutions will not refer clients with less than $250000 in investible assets to their more knowledgeable and experience partners? We here at Zenith think and treat each of our clients as high value clients.  

At the end of the discovery meeting, we’ll ask how you’d like to move forward. Ultimately, whether it’s immediate or days later, you’ll either decide we should work together or not. If you decide we’re not the best fit for you, at the very least, you have a clear plan from our perspective you can compare with other advisors. If, however, you agree we’re the best option for you, we dive head first into Step 4…

Our Commitment for This Step: Thirty minutes of your time; a handful of signatures; clearly set timelines, while we do the heavy lifting and communicating for you to have your funds transferred over so we can get to work.

The Goal for This Step: To ensure all of your funds are transferred successfully, all your previous financial institutions and accounts are closed cleanly, and all regulatory compliance rules are followed to a tee. All of this while both keeping you completely in the loop without the need for you to do any of the actual work.

It all begins with your decision that we are the best option for you to help you reach your financial goals. From there, our on-boarding process is designed specifically to minimize the amount of time and effort from you. About 30 minutes and a handful of signatures is all we need. From there, we submit all the forms to our head office for the compliance team to ensure you’re protected.

Once that’s done, both we, and our head office contact all of the relevant financial institutions to transfer your funds under our management and cleanly close those accounts. Once that’s all accomplished and confirmed, we move to Step 5…

Our Commitment for This Step: We always like to validate the action plan with you, before we hit the ground running. This chat is a review of your goals and our plan to help achieve them so that we can take flight with confidence. Together.

The Goal for This Step: To be completely aligned. On goals, on timelines, and on expectations.

Once migration is complete, we always like to have a chat, whether you prefer by phone or in person, so that we can recap the custom plan for you and be on the exact same page on what it’ll take for us to get there. We’ve found that new clients will naturally have a whole slue of last-minute questions and this meeting is the perfect time to ask them and for us to clarify everything.

We also like to take about 5 minutes to remind you of our process for existing clients. We believe in offering you true hands-off confidence so you can spend your time where you see fit. But giving people a dashboard without a steering wheel has never been the core promise of what we do. Our core promise is about choice. So if you choose to be hands-on and fully involved, we create the conditions for you to do that just that.

But regardless, at the end of this meeting, this is when the real work for us begins. It’s a marathon; not a sprint.

When it comes to your responsibilities though, everything revolves around clear lines of continued communication especially with our scheduled reviews as well as our unplanned consultations…

Our Ongoing Commitment: We will always maintain open lines of communication while we hustle every day to execute against the plan we create together. Life happens, and circumstances change, so being both available and proactive based on any life changes is the strongest part of our commitment.

The Constant Goal: To always provide you with confidence. Confidence in knowing where you stand. Confidence in knowing where we are with your plan. Confidence in knowing we’re here for you as you navigate your life.

Something we all learn as we transition into adulthood from youth, is that one of the most valuable things in the people we surround ourselves with, is reliability. Those who never fail to show up, and show up on time inspire confidence because when it comes to the most important things… reliability and predictability is everything.

Now, the market is anything but predictable, but we balance that for you. And part of the reliability and confidence we inspire is with the process we stick to when it comes to working with our existing clients to achieve their desired results.

Our transparency and communications process revolves around 4 core verticals as they relate to you and the trust you have in us:

1. Regularly Scheduled Reviews

2. Unplanned Consultations

3. Compliance Upkeep

4. Workshops & Events

We’d love to share the details of all of them…

Regularly Scheduled Reviews

Everyone is different, and when it comes to regularly scheduled reviews, we provide the option of Annually, Bi-Annually, and Quarterly. What we’ve found is that new clients, in the first year, often feel better with quarterly reviews, and then, afterwards, opt to see us Annually after we’ve clearly demonstrated our reliability and results.

The purpose of these regularly scheduled reviews is to bring up the plan we created together, ensure we’re on track, share transparent numbers in terms of growth in your portfolio, and take stock of any changes in your own goals which might affect the plan itself.

We reach out about 6 weeks before the scheduled review to set a tentative date and ask a few prep questions. This call typically takes about 5 minutes. A week before your review, we give you a shout to confirm.

The review itself typically lasts between 45 minutes and 90 minutes, depending on the questions you may have, after which, we send you a comprehensive review summary with all the action items for both us, and you!

Unplanned Consultations

Boxer Mike Tyson once said that “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” This, of course, is overly dramatic, but we all know that life throws curveballs at us from time to time. A change in career? Making a major purchase? A child’s wedding? Whatever the case might be, we are at the ready to help you navigate any of these curveballs.

Reaching out to us via phone or email will yield a response within the same business day. But more importantly, we’ve seen every conceivable special circumstance, and have had the pleasure to help our hundreds of clients navigate everything from the more typical, like ensuring the plan isn’t affected too deeply with the purchase of a new car, to the onerous, like shouldering the new responsibility of caring for children as Godparents after the tragic and untimely death of friends.

No matter what, we know that regularly scheduled reviews aren’t enough, and for all the possible punches that might come your way, we’re in your corner, at the ready, to tackle them together.

Compliance Upkeep

We, like any advisor worth their salt, pride ourselves in maintaining the boring. Though tedious, compliance and regulatory upkeep is what ensures your accounts with us stay in operable standing with no hiccups. The good news is, we handle everything for you. But there are, indeed, still responsibilities that we need to work on together.

Every few years, for example, we need to re-paper your accounts with head office. We’ll do the grunt work, organize the paperwork, set up the pins, so you can knock’em down with a few signatures. We always require a copy of your up-to-date Driver’s License, and will always make a point to remind you to bring it with you for our regularly scheduled reviews so your accounts are always in good standing.

Workshops and Special Events

Although our clients love that they can have the freedom of choice and hands-off confidence, we believe that everyone deserves to be in-the-know. That’s why we hold regular financial topic workshops for our clients. Of course, attendance is entirely up to you, but it’s a great place to make new friends, expand your scope of knowledge, and just have some fun.

We also hold special events based on your interests. Whether it’s golf, horticulture, photography, or cooking, whenever the opportunity strikes, we host special events so we can get to know you better.

Our one rule? No sales at any of these events. Ever.