A Note Before We Begin
A few years ago, I was speaking at a Top Advisor Summit hosted by a large financial firm.
During a break, one of the firm’s senior executives pulled me aside and said, “Don, before you leave, there’s a very special Advisor I want you to meet.”
I asked what made him or her special.
The executive smiled and said, “He’s different. You need to spend some time with this guy.”
Later that afternoon, we were introduced.
At first glance, there was nothing particularly remarkable about him. He wasn’t flashy. He wasn’t loud. He wasn’t trying to dominate the room. In fact, if you walked past him at the conference, you might not have noticed him at all.
But after spending an hour with him, I understood exactly what the executive meant.
This Advisor possessed something I’ve seen repeatedly in the most successful Advisors I’ve met over the last fifty years.
I just knew that people trusted him almost immediately.
Clients trusted him.
Colleagues trusted him.
Management trusted him.
And opportunities seemed to find him.
On the flight home, I found myself thinking about that Advisor and others like him.
What creates that effect?
Why do some Advisors seem to walk into a room with trust already working in their favor while others have to earn every ounce of credibility from scratch?
The answer isn’t intelligence.
It isn’t experience.
And it isn’t personality.
The answer is what I call the Invisible Advantage.
The Invisible Advantage is the collection of impressions, behaviors, habits, and signals that shape how people see you before you’ve fully explained what you do.
Whether we realize it or not, people don’t experience us objectively.
They experience us through the story they tell themselves about us.
This month’s Digest explores that story.
Not how to manufacture it.
Not how to manipulate it.
But how to become the kind of Advisor people instinctively trust before the conversation has barely begun.