The best advisers pay for themselves in the first three months and then continue to pay dividends by way of saved time and money every month thereafter.
Advisers, good ones, are not cheap. Information and access to contacts take years, and sometimes decades to build. The idea that an adviser should provide services for free is not even remotely rational or based in any intelligent thought.
Would you work for free? I did not think so. So why would any of you ask an adviser to work for free? Because your child is special?
Would you provide access to years of contacts, and political connections that you have built during your career to someone? Should an attorney or doctor work for nothing? Some are thinking an adviser is not as important as a doctor or attorney and think that is an unfair comparison.
When your adviser saves you tends of thousands of dollars in College tuition at the end of your junior career, and along the way saves you thousands of dollars every year in camp, travel and other costs, he becomes a pretty important part of your family financial wellness program.
Your adviser will likely save you an average of $5000 each year. So if you use him for three years to get an NCAA commitment, he saves you $15,000 over that time. Plus, he will likely help you save a minimum of $10,000 per year on your College education. Sometimes those savings are a lot greater.
So lets say you chose not to use an adviser, that’s fine, not everyone does. But if you don’t and you do not see those savings, have you saved any money?
An adviser is an investment. The dividend is the difference between his cost annually and the annual savings of using him. The stock split is in the annual College tuition savings when you are not even paying the adviser any more.
If I told you that by giving me $10,000 that I would return you $55,000 over the course of seven years, that would be a pretty good investment wouldn’t it? If the return is $95,000 or more then that is an incredible investment. Remember the last four of those seven years, you are not even paying the adviser.
That is how you need to look at hiring a good adviser.
I know there are those out there that say they have a one time fee. Think you are getting great service when that person has to pay his bills every month with one time fee’s or lifetime service for one fee?
Do you think every phone call or email is answered in a timely manner if you are not the top client who is for sure going to the NHL?
There are no shortcuts in this game. No fast forward buttons. No accelerating the process of advancement without proper planning. There is no instant gratification.
What comes with a good adviser? A plan. Contacts. Connections. Political expedience. Greater opportunity. And the most important thing is peace of mind. Peace of mind knowing that someone else is fighting for you, doing the work, so you can focus on training and becoming a better player before next season starts.
Peace of mind knowing you are not chasing opportunity that does not exist waiting time and money in the process.
Then again, you can always continue to go on your own and see if you get different results.
Joseph Kolodziej – Adviser
