I recently had a client say that she did want to hire me, but as she'd just paid a large legal bill and was in need of financial advice to create income from her assets she was unable to pay my usual up front $3000 fee right away. What do you recommend I do to test or create her commitment to follow through with payment and implementation such that I could confidently proceed to create her plan?

As her financial advisor where would you recommend she draw the money from to pay you? If she really couldn’t afford to pay you, you would not have offered to be hired. Instead, you would have said, “After reviewing your financial situation I don’t believe you can afford a Financial Advisor, or you can’t afford for me to be your Financial Advisor. My advice for you going forward is…” and you would either refer her to a Do-It-Yourself website / process or to a less expensive Financial Advisor.

However, if you have completed her Financial Road Map® and offered to be hired, then you must know the facts about her financial situation. Knowing those facts, you would say something like, “As your Financial Advisor my advice is that you pay your Financial Advisors fee from…” The options are checking account, savings account, money market account, etc. If she is already not following your advice from the very beginning this is not the way to begin a good client / Financial Advisor relationship, certainly not how an Ideal Client would behave.