About SCA
Our CEO, Robert Walsh has over thirty-five years of experience in the financial sector. His specialty as an institutional money manager has given him an expertise in a plethora of investment products and strategies. He has actively traded and managed money for some of the largest institutional firms in the financial arena, such as CMM Group, Nikko Securities, Sanwa BGK, and Euro Brokers. He has traded in the U.S., London, Hong Kong and Toronto markets.
Currently Mr. Walsh is a registered investment advisor representative through Centaurus Financial Services, Inc. He maintains life and health insurance licenses and is approved to sell both CT and N.Y. State Partnership for Long Term Care Insurance. He holds series 7, 63, 65 and 24 licenses. Robert is president of both the Connecticut Institute of Finance and Sound Coaching, Inc., helping individuals and businesses reach the next level. He specializes in helping financial planners through time management systems, SOPs and marketing concepts. Robert has also overseen the preparation and planning of personal and corporate tax returns for the last 17 years. He has been a Certified Professional Coach since 2009.
During this process he noticed certain patterns of behavior, a common lack of basic fiscal literacy, and limited support systems among his client base. He mapped them out, categorized them and found an assortment of commonalities and core issues that he could reasonably address; such as underlying thought processes, areas of perception as well as cultural and communal environments and personal wellness: physical, mental, and financial. In an effort to educate himself in the best way to focus on these issues with his clients and create productive and proactive change within them he began examining the principles of a variety of professions. During this journey he learned a lot about the coaching profession. Coaching laid out most of the points that he concluded and imparted a solid overview of the human psyche, detailing systems designed to understand and help his clients with goals, active listening and the like. He had heard of coaching before but in the past, had dismissed the bulk of it as new age nonsense. Upon closer inspection however, he realized that had been a mistaken. By now, most people have heard of coaching. It has been around in one form or another since ancient Greece. The processes of change are understood in our social structures so deeply that it has embedded itself into myths, legends, and fairytales from every corner of the world as illustrated by Joseph Campbell's the “Hero's Journey”. The word Mentor can trace its origins to Homers “The Odyssey”.
People started to hear the word Coach as early as 1830 at Oxford, where the term was used to describe tutors who “carried a student through an exam”. In the 1960s the Human Potential Movement blossomed during the summer of love. Expanding on the principles of Maslow's “hierarchy of needs” specifically the portion on self-actualization, the HPM was the precursor to many companies and movements such as “Mind Dynamics” and LGAT. Thomas Leonard, the man widely recognized as the first person to seriously develop coaching as a business, was an American financial planner. In the early 1980's he changed his practice to work full time developing the tools and techniques that would become what he called “Life-Planning”. In the early 1990s he went on to found the first formal coach-training program called Coach-U. Thomas Leonard also created the International Coaching Federation in 1995 to meet the growing need to credential and oversee companies and individuals who wish to teach or incorporate coaching competencies. 1985 marked the creation of the GROW model by Graham Alexander, popularized by the 1992 publication “Coaching for Performance” written by John Whitmore.
After completing his own certification in 2009 Robert spent the next eight years developing the Sound Coaching Program, refining the techniques he was taught and developing a series of learning acronyms and anagrams, along with the Sound Anatomy of Self, the Model for Perception, and the SOUND Method for coaches. Using those tools and his personal experiences in the financial industry he has produced a holistic coaching experience designed to combat the realities of the current economic climate and navigate the changes that threaten the normalcy of the financial field.
Far too often the power of coaching is lost in the generalization and existential focuses which hold the profession back. The Sound Coaching program circumvents those innate fallacies by grounding itself in providing our clients with a firm fiscal understanding in addition to the emotional intellect and reflective problem-solving skills that coaching provides. This brings us to the reasons that it is so essential to put coaching into the hands of financial professionals.
As financial planners you are uniquely qualified to help your clients on multiple levels. The best financial planners already use coaching with their clients whether they know it or not. In your practice you understand the importance of talking with your clients. If you were simply interested in numbers you would be an accountant. But a financial planner is more than that. You chose to work with people. You're a people person. You enjoy engaging with your clients and really helping them. You don't just invest you investigate. You delve into what your clients actually need and want. You do this with not only budgeting cash flow and sound investments but with the power of storytelling, an understanding of human needs, and by playing to individual values. You take the time to get to know your clients and what makes each one tick. Coaching allows you to access these natural talents more deeply and productively. It complements our profession so succinctly it would be irresponsible not to include it in our practice
Our world is crying out for understanding and meaning, we need it. It is a need as real and consuming as water, as food, as sleep and without it -we die. We die, perhaps not literally but certainly spiritually. There is no denying the desire for even the most basic of coaching principles in our everyday lives. People flock to motivational speakers and “gurus” en masse, paying exorbitant amount of money just to feel heard, simply to feel understood. Why? It speaks to a true lacking in our everyday interactions and a universal understanding that human connection is everything. The ability to express ourselves to our peers has been the driving force of civilization since its conception. Art, music, language itself, all arose from our struggle for recognition.
Though motivational speakers and sponsors do address this need, they are sorely lacking in fundamentals and hone positivity and visioning without tackling the core of the issue, which is how you're going to get there. While we are constantly questioned on what we want to be, who we want to be is not something that is usually examined, and outside of what we do, who we are is essentially ignored.
Fortunately, there's a growing movement to implement these teachings in a variety of professions. Early education, therapy, corrections, and healthcare have all seen an increased awareness to the value of coaching. Business coaching has been used and reserved for corporations for more than half a century, helping companies grow exponentially and create innovative environments for their staff to thrive. However, there is an overwhelming gap in the way the coaching method is broadcast. Outside of grade school coaching isn't utilized by the general public, even then it is a watered down, more digestible version, that gives a very limited understanding of the core competencies. After that, it is the burden of the individual to seek out professional aid for their lives. Therapy, mentoring, coaching, financial planning, these are all specialized services that require specific circumstances to be sought after. Therapy and mentoring are reserved for those who are unwell or feel overwhelmed in their daily lives. Financial services are normally reserved for people who perceive they can afford it, and come from an environment that recognizes, facilitates, and utilizes the benefits of such services.