For bill bell, president and founder of Bell Financial Inc. in Aurora, Ont., financial planning is about realizing dreams — money is merely a means of getting there.

This philosophy means that Bell’s conversations with his clients focus on their most important life goals and desires. Bell is thereby able to connect with people on a much deeper level than if the relationship were simply about which financial products he recommends.

“Money alone is not what most people want,” says Bell. “It has latent value. But the real key is what kind of lives my clients envision for themselves. Money is a means to realize desires such as a secure retirement, extended travel or buying a house in a better neighbourhood. The question my clients need to answer is not how much money they want, but want kind of lives they want to have.”

Coming up with an answer to this question is not always easy for people. They can get so caught up in their day-to-day routines — involving their families and their jobs — that they don’t pay attention to their dreams and ideals. But, Bell believes, as soon as individuals define their wishes, those wishes turn into goals, and that provides focus and direction.

Goals, he says, must be specific and truly desired by the client. Goals cannot be the result of bowing to the wishes of parents or spouses, or of succumbing to social pressures. If such is the case, the client will not be motivated to take the steps required to realize those goals, he says: “If you are going to devote the time, energy and other precious personal resources to pursue something, it needs to line up with your personal needs, interests and desires.

“The secret is to know what you want. That vision creates the energy that drives you to attain the goal. Many people don’t have the answer right away; the key is to keep asking,” he adds. “Helping people achieve what they truly desire is what makes my job fun and rewarding.”

Bell’s desire to have a positive impact on people’s lives has also made his practice successful. Now in his tenth year as a financial planner, Bell’s firm has about 800 clients. A registered health underwriter and certified financial planner, Bell has six associates, two of whom are partners in the firm, as well as six support staff.

His clients are a mix of corporate executives, professionals, business owners and ordinary working folk. He estimates about one-third of them are from the Aurora/Newmarket area, just north of Toronto, although others are flung far and wide across southern Ontario. Bell Financial also manages about 200 group accounts offering various employee benefits, including health, dental, insurance and retirement plans. Many people who are members of group plans have become clients when they sought assistance outside of their company benefit plans.

“There is no target client. And I resist profiling according to such things as assets or age,” Bell says. “I look for clients I can help and who want to be helped, and with whom I would enjoy working. The best matches are people whose ideas, values and personalities line up with ours. Some generate very little revenue, while others generate much more than the percentage of time and work they require — but that is the essence of democracy.”

People who want to trade investments actively or speculate would be a bad fit to work with him, he says. For these individuals, he would offer to do an overall financial plan, but would then recommend an advisor who is better suited to manage their investments.

When interviewing prospective clients, Bell has them fill out a one-page quiz to determine their “financial personality.” The quiz, designed by Kathleen Gurney, CEO of Financial Psychology Corp. of Florida, measures how a person reacts emotionally to money matters. Money personality types include achievers, entrepreneurs, high rollers, safety players, optimists, money masters and perfectionists.

Once Bell has a handle on a client’s life goals and emotional attitudes toward money, the next step is usually a basic financial plan. He believes in keeping it relatively simple, as well as flexible. He typically recommends a customized mix of mutual funds, appropriately balanced among various asset classes that depend on the client’s profile.

@page_break@Bell’s securities licence is held by Manulife Securities International Inc., and although he diversifies across a handful of major fund companies, about half of his firm’s commission revenue comes from the sale of Manulife products, including insurance, wrap accounts and segregated funds.

“I try to design portfolios that will allow my clients to stay put during market ups and downs,” he says. “The goal is to remove the psychological pressures that can cause clients to react to short-term circumstances and, instead, let the fund managers make the trading decisions.”

Bell says that, although clearly defined goals are great motivators for getting clients to move in the right direction, no client should feel locked in to a course of action if new opportunities come along or fate intervenes, as it often does.

Nobody knows this better than Bell himself, whose first career was that of a math teacher. After four years of teaching at the high-school level, primarily at Rosseau Lake College in Ontario’s Muskoka region, he looked through his mental telescope and didn’t see a lot of variety on the road ahead.

“I couldn’t imagine living my entire life on a teacher’s salary, and decided to venture into business,” he says.

Bell joined Paul Revere Life Insurance Co. in 1984 (now part of Royal Insurance Co. of Canada) as an insurance sales representative in Toronto. During the next 12 years, he worked his way up to sales manager and then general manager of the Toronto office.

“I loved teaching, but wanted my own business,” he recalls. “I wanted to be in control of what I did and why I did it. I wanted to help people and knew that if I did it well enough, people would come knocking.”

He decided from the outset that he wasn’t going to use traditional prospecting methods, such as cold calling, to attract clients. Instead, he decided to give seminars, built around his theory that planning makes things happen, so why not plan to get rich? He distributed flyers around neighbourhoods in Aurora and Newmarket, and it wasn’t long before seminar attendees were becoming clients.

Bell has a life outside his practice, as well. He “golfs like a fanatic,” plays hockey and is involved in the local church. But he makes it a point not to talk about business while participating in these activities. However, as people get to know him and find out what he does, they frequently become his clients, he says.

He never asks for referrals, but most of his business has come to him through recommendations from happy customers.

“I have a lot of personal friends who are clients. But I never bring up business when we meet socially. And if they bring it up, I’m reticent to discuss it,” he says. “I don’t want to be a person who is always switched on, or who views every social situation as a chance to hand out my business card.”

In 2000, Bell put pen to paper and published a book entitled One Step to Wealth, which distills his wealth-building ideas. He is currently working on a second book, Simple Money, Extraordinary Life, that goes into more detail about various aspects of financial planning, including investing, insurance, tax minimization and estate planning.

“Having a book is a great calling card and enhances your credibility,” Bell says. “It gives people a sense of how I think and who I am. I reveal a lot of my personality in the book, and that’s one of my secret weapons. People respond to a personal approach.” IE