In 2016, at a Cracker Barrel restaurant in Wisconsin Dells, WI, a meeting took place between two Industry leaders who knew it was time for a seismic shift in how financial advice was offered.

One of those veterans was Mitch Anthony, who had long been pointing out the shortcomings of traditional financial advice and planning processes and their over-reliance on numbers and neglect of life factors. The other veteran was Steve Sanduski, CFP®, who had been pointing out how the rapid acceleration of technology was eroding the value of the traditional investment-driven business model offered by financial advisors.

Both Mitch Anthony and Steve Sanduski realized that in order to thrive in the future, financial advisors needed to shift from a Return on Investment focus to a RETURN ON LIFE focus. All the communication processes, from Discovery to Reviews, had to place the life of the client at the center of the conversation and provide immeasurable value that would not be questioned.

The company they founded, ROL Advisor, connects Mitch’s pioneering work in financial life planning with Steve’s work in advisor coaching and practice management, with the big goal to Transform the Way the World Plans™.

Mitch: You don’t start with the financial plan and then work the Life-Centered Plan into it. You start with a Life-Centered Plan and then build a financial plan to accommodate or accelerate that Life-Centered Plan.

Mitch Anthony first introduced the idea of financial life dialogues to financial services in 2001 with his seminal book, Your Clients for Life. In 2002, he created MyFLPTools, the first digital discovery tool platform for financial planning. And in 2005, Mitch introduced a groundbreaking new measure for financial success: Return on Life™.

For almost two decades, Mitch Anthony has been recognized as a thought leader and one of the most impactful keynote speakers in the industry. He appears at major conventions around the world with his themes of “Moving from ROI to ROL” and “The New Retirementality.”

For 20 years Mitch has been developing discovery resources and relational development training for both individual advisors and major organizations throughout the world. He has been named one of the financial services industry’s top “Movers & Shakers” for his pioneering work in Life-Centered Planning. He also has partnered with Texas Tech University to develop a certificate program in Life-Centered Financial Planning and works with many other colleges of financial planning around the world.

The author of 12 industry books, Mitch continues to equip Life-Centered Planners through his books like Your Client’s Story, The New Retirementality, Storyselling for Financial Advisors, and From the Boiler Room to the Living Room, and his Financial Life Planning columns in Financial Advisor Magazine and The Journal of Financial Planning.

Mitch is the founder of four nonprofit organizations: Reasons2live.org (International suicide prevention), Rescuntado Vidas (Suicide prevention – Central and South America), RxtraMiles.org (Air miles for cancer patients – US), and  Peer Power (Youth empowerment – Australia). He also serves on the board of directors of Lifeway Mission International (Christian Charity – Kenya), Airsave Foundation (Financial Inclusion – Uganda), Thrivent Two Rivers Region (US), and Expericorp (US).

Steve: If you are in the “inform” business, and not the “transform” business, you won’t be long for this business.

For more than 25 years, Steve Sanduski has been at the forefront of coaching and equipping financial advisors to build more successful businesses.

In the 1990s, he was part of a team that built a multi-billion dollar AUM RIA firm from scratch and helped lead hundreds of financial advisors to convert from a commission-based business to a fee-based business model.

For 11 years in the 2000s, he was the Managing Partner of Peak Advisor Alliance (now Carson Group Coaching), a financial advisor coaching company, as it grew from 0 to 1,000 financial advisor coaching clients. He designed and presided over 23 Excell Meetings, which have now become one of the industry’s premier practice management conferences.

And through it all, he’s led countless engagements with top financial advisors and spoken to audiences all over the country through keynotes, breakout sessions, and day-long training programs.

A prolific writer, Steve is a New York Times Bestselling author and the co-author of Tested in the Trenches: A 9-Step Plan for Success as a New-Era Advisor and Avalanche: The 9 Principles for Uncovering True Wealth. You can view his articles at Financial Advisor Magazine, InvestmentNews.com by typing Sanduski in the search bar, Financial Planning and MarketWatch.

He blogs regularly at BelayAdvisor.com.

Steve is also the host of three podcasts focused on finance and entrepreneurship:

1. Between Now and Success
2. On Your Mark, Get Set, Grow!
3. Keen on Retirement

Steve has been a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ licensee since 1996.