Part of the value in my articles is the research I share with you. Sometimes, these bits of wisdom are hard pills to swallow. Often, building and proving credibility requires people to make difficult choices or recognize painful truths. For example…

The Spectrem Group recently released a report titled "Attitudes of Affluent Investors on Surviving the Economic Crisis." Below are a couple of quotes from that report. You'll see that they substantiate what I've been writing about for the past year. Essentially, consumers do not distinguish between the various types of financial people. Rather, they lump them all together and hold all of them accountable for this terrible economy. This series of articles tells you how to pull yourself out of this lump and distinguish yourself. Now, the quotes:

• Investors do not distinguish between firms that received bailout funds and those that didn't. In their opinion, everybody was bailed out, and they were all bad.
• Investors can't easily demonstrate their anger toward the government, but they can and eventually will demonstrate that anger toward firms they believe are responsible. This will lead to investors changing advisers, arguing about fees or becoming more self-directed.

One of our clients runs a high-level advisor registry. In a recent conversation, we discussed the amount of advisor firings. Where normally it's 6-10%, these days, it's closer to 70%! People are not happy.

When we recount these numbers in our seminars, everyone in the room shakes their heads and says, "Not my clients." But they're wrong. They simply don't know their clients well enough.