Who Is David? | What Does Twin Tier Financial Do? | Company Purpose & Values
Who Is David?
David Lewis is the owner and founder of Twin Tier Financial. He is a member of the International Association of Registered Financial Consultants, a former instructor for Joint Education and Training, Inc. located in Elmira, NY, and the author of numerous essays and articles on the topic of personal finance.
David has been an independent financial adviser since 2005, and was a registered representative with Metropolitan Financial Services prior to that.
David offers an alternative to the popular "dependency approach" to financial planning in which financial advisers make recommendations and dictate client needs. The dependency approach, David argues, only leads to client helplessness and an increasing dependency on the financial adviser over time.
The alternative? Help the client to help themselves. David's "theory to practice" model helps clients to explicitly identify and develop a central productive purpose in life, set rational financial goals which are oriented around that purpose, and then motivates the client to accomplish those goals.
The client is in "the driver's seat", while David acts as an instructor, guide, and coach. Because clients are actively learning, rather than passively following the instructions and recommendations of an adviser, they have a much higher probability of success in achieving their financial goals.
What Does Twin Tier Financial Do?
Traditional financial planning focuses on the ideology of authoritarianism. Plagued by irrational and contradictory government regulation and competing industry organizations vying for supremacy and control over the financial services industry, the traditional model of financial planning is broken because its ideological roots are contradictory.
What is needed is not more authorities, government regulation, or a new compensation model for advisers. What is needed is a revolution in how financial planning is presented to clients, in the basic structure of the business model, a revolution in the financial planning process and the method by which financial advisers interact with clients. Twin Tier Financial is the leader of that revolution.
Twin Tier Financial is a financial services company specializing in a unique and entirely new theory-to-practice approach to financial planning, emphasizing educational as well as practical solutions to personal and business financial problems for clients. Twin Tier Financial helps clients by focusing on what it thinks are the core principles driving both personal and business financial planning:
- Maximizing income and productivity
- Making a budget and saving money without making sacrifices
- Reducing or eliminating investment risk
Learn more about the services David offers...
Twin Tier Financial Purpose & Values
Purpose Driven
The company's purpose is to teach clients principles of financial planning, demonstrate that those principles are both moral and practical, and help clients apply those principles to their own life. This, in turn, will help clients achieve their own financial goals which are directed towards a defined, productive, purpose. Twin Tier Financial sees productivity as essential to financial success, and so its business model aims to help clients become as productive as possible while focusing on long-term profits for itself in the process.
Ignorance is not bliss. Educated clients are competent and motivated clients. Competent and motivated clients are often more willing to pay for good advice, high quality education, financial coaching and guidance to continually enhance their understanding of their own finances and what it takes to achieve their personal goals. This, in turn, increases the probability of the client achieving their financial goals. Twin Tier Financial thinks this "theory to practice" model creates long-lasting client relationships and sustainable, long-term, profits for the company.
Company Values
Reality Oriented
Reason Based
Self-Esteem
Productivity
Honesty
Integrity
Justice
Pride
Emotional Stability
Reality Oriented -- What is, is. To say it another way, "wishing won't make it so". Twin Tier Financial recognizes that ignoring the reality of a client's financial situation is detrimental to the client's financial well being. Nothing beneficial has ever been produced in the history of man by ignoring reality. For this reason, emphasis is always placed on reality-based financial planning. Twin Tier Financial operates on the premise that all financial problems are ultimately rooted in the evasion of reality. When a client evades a particular problem or shortcoming he has, only disaster can result. For example, a client who is overconfident about his investment abilities will usually end up losing his life's savings just at the time when he needs it the most.
Reason Based -- All animals have a means of survival. A lion has claws and teeth to hunt and stay alive. Turtles have a hard shell to protect them from predators. Man has a rational faculty--reason. Reason is the integration of facts of reality into concepts and abstractions. Abstract ideas, in both personal and business finance, may form the basis of a principle. A principle is a basic truth or idea upon which all other truths or ideas rest upon within a given context. In financial planning, principles are used to guide clients towards a course of action. The principle of a central purpose in life, for example, will guide a person to thinking about and creating the "ultimate end" he wants to achieve in life. Without this, he risks a lifetime of pointless contradictions, financial goals which take him in a multitude of directions in life but ultimate lead him nowhere.
Self-Esteem -- Self-esteem is more than just feeling good about yourself. It's the conviction and certainty that you are worthy of living. What builds self-esteem? Twin Tier Financial thinks that efficacy builds self-esteem. Your ability to produce and achieve your financial goals. When you achieve goals towards a clear, focused, purpose in life, then you will naturally build this type of certainty. Of course, the natural emotion associated with self-esteem is happiness. Ultimately, Twin Tier Financial wants to see a client happy because of the achievement of his values and financial goals.
Productivity -- Productivity is the application of reason to the problem of survival. Twin Tier Financial thinks that this is at the root of financial planning. Without productivity, no money is made. Without money, no future financial goals can be made, much less attained. Twin Tier Financial's own financial plan includes striving for increasing year over year profitability. The company understands that its profit targets are only achieved when it helps its clients achieve financial success. This, in turn, motivates the company to help clients realize their full potential and achieve long-term financial success.
Honesty -- Honesty means being consistent with reality. When you are dishonest, you are in conflict with reality. In financial planning, you can't live beyond your means, nor can you pretend to have knowledge about saving, investing or budgeting that you don't actually have. Mean what you say and know what you mean. If you make a financial commitment, you should follow through on your commitment. Likewise, you can't pretend to understand investments that you don't actually understand. Pretending that you are better off, financially, than you really are is a form of dishonesty. Twin Tier Financial encourages honesty in clients and remains consistently honest to clients so that clients get the best possible advice given their financial situation.
Integrity -- Integrity is the recognition that you cannot cheat or fake your own consciousness. Integrity means doing what you say you're going to do. Integrity is loyalty to your own convictions; to your own values; to work towards translating your values into reality. For example, if you say you value owning a home, yet never actively attempt to better your credit score, save up money for a down payment, secure financing, look for homes, and negotiate a deal with the seller, then this represents a lack of integrity. A lack of integrity will prevent any financial plan from being realized and will destroy client relationships, and ultimately, Twin Tier Financial's business model. For this reason, Twin Tier Financial selfishly and ruthlessly pursues integrity in business dealings with its clients, and encourages clients to have integrity when it comes to their financial planning attempts.
Justice -- Justice is the result of judging or evaluating the facts of reality. Twin Tier Financial must judge client relationships in the same way that individuals and businesses must judge financial advisers. Part of Twin Tier Financial's commitment to justice means honestly assessing a client's financial situation, making valid criticisms of a client's existing plan (or lack thereof), contradictory values or goals, while praising everything that the client is doing right.
Another aspect of Twin Tier Financial's commitment to justice means that the company treats all clients fairly. The company does not discriminate against doing business with clients based on sex, race, creed or any other non-essential characteristic. This non-discrimination policy does not have anything to do with some egalitarian civil "right" to receive good financial advice, but because there is no money to be made by discriminating against its potential clients and customers. Just as we all must evaluate whether the food we eat is safe for us, the car we drive is in good mechanical and working condition, we must evaluate (i.e. judge) whether people we work with are good for us. Twin Tier Financial will not work with clients unless there is a clear, mutually beneficial, relationship which can be established and it will discourage clients from working with the company if the company cannot help the client achieve his stated financial goals and purpose.
Pride -- Pride is the psychological reward earned for living, and being consistent with, our values. Pride is "moral ambitiousness", and is the result of being honest, having integrity, being productive, and being rational. It means not accepting any guilt for earning the money you have actually earned. It means that you reject self-sacrifice and deprivation. You should be proud of your accomplishments, your chosen career, the savings you accumulate and your investment endeavors. Pride doesn't just happen. It is earned. Twin Tier Financial recognizes that reveling in one's achievements provides emotional fuel to reach for more challenging goals aiding in the initial motivation to achieve one's financial plan. When clients are successful using Twin Tier Financial's model for financial planning, they may be motivated to continue doing business with the company. The company, in turn, is motivated to help clients continue to achieve increasingly challenging financial goals.
Emotional Stability -- Financial advisers often encourage their clients to "be objective". Unfortunately, what they often mean is to be unemotional about their finances, especially about their investments. Twin Tier Financial recognizes the value of emotions. The company realizes that there is no dichotomy between the "logical" and the "emotional". Emotions are not tools of cognition. We cannot think with our emotions. However, this does not make them invalid, nor does it mean they should not factor into a financial plan. Emotions are lighting-like estimates of reality. They are automatized thoughts and ideas. They are learned behaviors. The real question to ask is: are we feeling the appropriate emotion given the context of the situation?
For clients to be successful, emotions and thoughts must be consistent with one another. If a client feels uneasy about an investment, but claims to be knowledgeable about it, this is a huge red flag. Likewise, feeling good about an investment that a client admittedly knows little or nothing about is just as dangerous. Finally, just because someone is unemotional, doesn't mean they are logical. Financial and investment advisers often fail to outperform stock market indexes when actively investing on behalf of the client using "unemotional" investment analysis techniques such as technical analysis. Twin Tier Financial thinks that the only way to correct these problems is to give clients an educational base from which to work. Teach clients how budgeting, investments, and savings products work; provide continuing education and demonstrate that emotions and thoughts related to financial matters can and should be consistent with one another.