Executive Summary
Financial advisors often struggle with a frustrating disconnect: prospective clients typically seek help for a specific, often technical financial problem, yet the value they ultimately appreciate most has little to do with that original issue. Clients arrive asking whether they are saving enough, how much they can spend, or whether they need life insurance. They rarely, if ever, ask for clarity, peace of mind, or a deeper sense of purpose. And they almost never request “life planning” or personal transformation. Yet, 18 to 24 months into a relationship, the language clients use to describe why they value their advisor centers not on the problem that was solved, but on how they feel – less worried, more confident, more aligned, and more at ease about their future.
This dynamic reflects two distinct 'modes' of financial planning. The first is problem-to-solve planning, which addresses the 'presenting' issue that brings a client through the door. These are the functional, tangible concerns at the base of the value pyramid: organizing finances, reducing risk, determining retirement readiness, securing insurance coverage, or optimizing investments.
In this 185th episode of Kitces & Carl, Michael Kitces and client communication expert Carl Richards discuss this oft-transformative journey from the presenting problem to the deeper ones. The presenting problem merely acts as an entry point into the relationship. Attempting to lead instead with abstract promises of 'transformation' risks missing the reality that most prospects don't yet have language for those higher-order benefits, nor are they actively shopping for them.
However, as clients experience life transitions, the advisor's role expands beyond technical problem-solving. In moments of transition, what began as a quantitative planning exercise evolves into education, organization, and emotional steadiness. The technical solution matters immensely, but the intangible value of reassurance and guidance is truly transformative in the long run. It is in these transformative journeys – retirement transitions, widowhood, divorce, business exits, or long arcs of wealth accumulation – that advisors often build their strongest client relationships and referral sources. Clients who experience meaningful change with their advisor frequently become passionate advocates, even if they struggle to articulate exactly why. What the advisor may describe as financial purpose or clear goals, the client will likely describe as a lack of worry or burden!
Ultimately, the key insight is that while most clients will continue to arrive with concrete financial questions, advisors who recognize those problems as gateways to deeper engagement can deliver far greater value than technical expertise alone. By addressing the immediate issue while remaining attuned to the broader life context, advisors position themselves to support clients through the transitions that ultimately define their financial (and holistic) well-being. In doing so, they move beyond simply answering financial questions, instead becoming trusted partners in their clients' evolving lives: creating relationships that are not only more durable and referable, but also more fulfilling for the advisor and more impactful for the people they serve!
***Editor's Note: Can't get enough of Kitces & Carl? Neither can we, which is why we've released it as a podcast as well! Check it out on all the usual podcast platforms, including Apple Podcasts (iTunes), Spotify, and YouTube Music.
Show Notes
The Elements of Value: Bain & Company- No Longer Awkward: Communicating with Clients Through the Toughest Times of Life by Amy Florian
- Kitces & Carl Ep 145: Explaining The Value Of Financial (Life) Planning By Unlocking The Emotional Job To Be Done
Kitces & Carl Transcript
Michael: Well, good afternoon, Carl.
Carl: Hello, Michael Kitces. How are you?
Michael: I'm doing well. I'm doing well. We are well underway into January here, probably February, early March by the time this goes out. It's still cold. We're navigating winter and looking forward to spring.
Carl: Or not. Like, not.
Michael: Unless you ski and you're not looking forward to spring.
Carl: Yeah, Exactly. We've had spring-like weather here, so we're still waiting for winter, actually, which is great.
Michael: That's bad in the mountains of Utah.
Carl: This is bad.
Michael: You actually prefer winter weather that has skiing.
Carl: This is bad. Yeah. I want to...
The Gap Between Financial Planning's Value And A Prospect's Immediate Problem [00:48]
Michael: What would you like to explore today? What's on the docket for you?
Carl: I'm kind of fired up about a topic that I've been exploring. This is one of those that needs a couple of disclaimers. One is, like, I am often wrong but never in doubt. So, I'm okay with stating an opinion as a fact and leaving room for the idea that there are plenty of other ways. There are plenty of other things. I know this is wrong. But I've been running into this. It's really, like, a two-headed problem, specifically for even our deep profession. We are part of a larger industry. And I think, in this case, this is about the profession. Whatever we want to call it, I'm just going to use a place marker called real financial planning. This is my first disclaimer. I don't know my definition of it. I don't love that term because it implies anything other than my definition is fake. And I don't mean any of that. So, just please give me grace and the benefit of the doubt, everybody listening. I'm just going to use a term.
So, it's just fascinating to me that when prospective clients come to your door, they are almost... And this has been really helpful. I'm working on a new book, and I was writing about this. So, I finally came up with this idea of, there's two modes of planning. And one of them... And they're not better or worse, and they're not higher or lower, right? They're just things we toggle between. And one of them I've been calling, like, problem-to-solve planning. And then the second one I'm thinking of is purpose-based planning. And again, the labels, I bet there's some ways to clean that up a bit.
Michael: Can you define these a little bit further for us? The words have some implications, but...
Carl: Yeah, so, I think we almost always... Let me maybe paint the crux of the problem and then we'll back up to the words. So, I think it's fascinating that when somebody becomes a client, they don't come... I've never had anyone ask to cry on my couch or even goal clarification or help me turn money into meaning or help me find purpose or even life planning. To be honest, I've never had anybody ask for financial planning in all the years. I looked back at all the emails from The Times readers and nobody asked for a financial plan. What they always come with is a problem to solve like, "I need to know how much to save." It could be, "Am I okay?" That's a broad problem. But often, they're very specific.
Michael: "Do I have enough? How much can I spend? Will I be able to send my kids to college?"
Carl: Yeah, they can get specific like that. They can be like, "I need life insurance." There's almost always this problem to solve. And I think it's really helpful, and we'll maybe reference this a bit more in a minute, but Bain's pyramid of values, it's almost like we're building Maslow's hierarchy. At the base of this pyramid is like, "I just need life insurance," or cashflow management or debt management, whatever those things are. Organizing things, getting clear about risks, solving specific problems. That's what people come for. But what's so fascinating to me, and they wouldn't even know to ask about goal clarification or, "Help me live with more purpose." They wouldn't even know to ask. But 18 months later, 24 months, 18 to 24 months later, and that's where...
Michael: Once they've been through the planning process and we've done things and we've improved their situation.
Carl: Yeah. I think my experience, and I would dare say, this is hundreds now between my own experience and then the planners I've talked to experience, is the words that the 18 to 24-month client uses to describe why they appreciate you or why they value the relationship almost always have nothing to do with the presenting problems that you help them solve. They use words like, "Geez, I just don't worry much anymore about it," or, "Gosh, man, we're doing things we've always dreamed of," or, "Clarity." What would you say clients would use at that point?
Michael: "It feels like a burden's been lifted off my shoulders." I mean, truly though, "We just don't worry about it as much anymore." Actually, I recall that a lot over the years.
Carl: "I feel so much better." And so, to me, it's so interesting that the very thing that they will tell their friends about if they tell anyone about it, because we often don't talk about money with our friends, but the very thing that they will value the most is something they didn't even have language to ask about. And to be honest, we couldn't have even marketed... I mean, we should talk a little bit about that. There are some people who have decided to market. Like, maybe we could even call this life planning. But like I said, most people don't wake up with a life-planning problem.
Michael: Wait, I guess, is that the crux of the challenge that you're wrestling with in the first place? Because as you framed it, right, the things that clients appreciate after the fact is never the thing they came for in the first place. Almost never the thing they came for in the first place, unless you're one of those niche-y folks that really markets life planning, transformations. And again, I don't even want to be negative to that, but to me, just the fact that that is a hyper specialized niche, not just the people who do it, but the people where that's what they lead with on their website just reinforces to me, ironically, how few clients are looking for that.
There are some, so they find their way to an advisor that specializes there. But the fact that that is not what has taken over 99% of our websites suggests to me that is still not the message that resonates for most prospects looking for a financial advisor. But as you said, when I look at who gets referred, who gets engagement, whose clients rave about them, it's often the clients that work with those types of advisors.
Carl: Yeah. And we have...
Michael: Or, I guess, diving specifically, especially, like, those who have had that kind of experience.
Carl: That's right. And we both know people who market that way. And there's some of my favorite people in the whole profession. And we gotta be... Like, the language we use here is really careful. Like, it's not that clients don't want that. They don't know they want it, yet. And they certainly don't know... It's almost like the fiduciary problem, right? Like, nobody actually cares that you're a fiduciary. Now, they should, they just don't know that they should quite yet. So, I think it's just interesting to me.
Because the question I really have is because... And then with Bain, you know, for a long time, we referred to this as stuff that happened at Nazrudin or, you know, George Kinder's amazing work. Or for a long time, it felt like a thing that happened, you know, over there. And then you have somebody like Bain releasing that – and I'm going to just switch my screen so those of you who are watching might see a little bit of white come up. They call it the “elements of value”, and down at the bottom, they have this whole list of functional values, right? Makes money, reduces risk, organizes, reduces cost. You almost like, as you read that, you're like, "That's where we meet most people." But Bain, the most buttoned-down consulting firm on the planet, Bain says, "Our ultimate value is helping people with," and this is their language, it's crazy, "self-transcendence". That's even further out there than language we would have normally used. But I don't think, I mean, most of us, most of us can't successfully put up on our website because no client comes in asking for self-transcendence.
Michael: I was going to say that I've seen a lot of specialized value props on people's websites. I have never quite seen self-transcendence. Although I guess, to be fair, a few folks that have done the like, "We help hyper successful business owners go from success to significance," like that kind of transition. I've actually seen, at least, one or two over the years that have done...
Carl: Get close, yeah.
Michael: ...some version of that, maybe.
Carl: Yeah. And I think, like, the word alignment, I'll see that occasionally. Like, "We help you make financial decisions that are aligned with your values." But here's where I've landed on this, and I don't know if it's right. It seems like this idea of modes of planning that I'm going to be engaged in with clients, like, problem-to-solve planning and purpose-based planning, in my mind... I'd like to talk about two things. One is, independent of what I call it in the world, what I say to clients, how I market, independent of that, in my mind, I'm thinking, "Okay, these problems... problems to solve..." In other episodes, we've called it the presenting problem. Like, somebody shows up with a presenting problem, instead of sort of... Did we call it a jackhammer of value once?
Michael: Sledgehammer. Jackhammer is very...
Carl: Instead of hitting them over the head with the jackhammer of self-transcendence.
Michael: Sledgehammer. Sledgehammer. You hit them in the face with it. It's like, just like...
Carl: A sledgehammer of self-transcendence, we greet them with empathy at the presenting problem. But in our minds, we're thinking, "Oh, this is just a portal into something deeper. This is just a portal into something deeper."
Creating Deep Client Relationships Over A Transformative Period [11:53]
Michael: Yeah. It strikes me when I reflect on... Because some cases, like clients where we've had the most impact or, like, clients that we end up with the deepest relationships, often the most referral flow and attended things from having served people really well. I do find, they are almost all attached to some version of just, like, a transformation or, at least, a journey that we went along and did with them.
You know, I mean, I'm reminded one of the first clients I was involved with very early in my career, this was back in, like, life insurance days... it proved to be very interesting client because they were a unique challenge to underwrite for life insurance. It was a gentleman in his mid-50s. Successful consulting career. Still had about 10 years to go. Super healthy, like, avid bike rider road. I don't know if it was 100 or 200 miles a week or whatever, like really hardcore, active, very fit cyclists do. And we were having trouble getting life insurance for him because he had an elevated PSA level, which is a warning sign indicator for prostate cancer. And so, he had to go get checked. He got cleared for prostate cancer.
There was all this back and forth with the underwriters to eventually make the point that one of the things that can happen when you're a very hardcore cyclist as a male is it can cause elevated PSA levels. And so, like, months of back and forth with the underwriters to prove out the case that, like, someone who should otherwise be getting the, like, super human healthy preferred. I mean, like, the dude was insanely fit. But we had through, had to fight through this issue of elevated PSA level and unequivocally prove it was not cancer and get him his life insurance. And eventually we did, and he got his coverage. And two weeks later, he dropped out of a stroke.
Carl: Wow. That's crazy.
Michael: So, no relationship to his PSA level. You know, enough people buy 10 year term insurance and someone actually dies 2 weeks after they get the term insurance, and he was the guy. And so, we...
Carl: Well, first of all, that's a, I'm sorry, that's a pretty intense experience for you guys as well.
Michael: Gave me a very different appreciation for value of life insurance. And then we were at his funeral. We delivered the check to his spouse. And again, there is a... I've got plenty of issues with problematic ways that life insurance are sold, but you do have a different appreciation for its power when you have delivered a claim check to a widow. And...
Carl: Yeah. I want to just acknowledge that it feels kind of silly to move on from that just because those are real... I mean, it's like this is a whole subject for another day. But I think it's always so fascinating that, especially in the life insurance conversation, we are talking about placing values on people's lives. And among a couple of the values will be dramatically different often. We're talking about somebody passing away, like, what would happen and, yeah, it's a really... Like, how much more important could that be if it's done as part of the planning process. So, thanks for sharing that story.
Michael: And when I reflect back, I mean, it was... As for many widows, particularly when, you know, a spouse's death is that sudden, it was 18 months probably of just, like, helping her sort things out, rebuild her life, figure out up, down, left, sideways. This was more than 20 years ago. So, this was a couple of who was very squarely in boomer territory, which meant, very traditional, you know, she managed the checkbook, he managed the balance sheet. So, she knew how to pay all her bills. She had no idea how anything else in her financial household worked. She didn't know where the money was aside from literally, like, the checking accounts that she paid all the bills from, because Bob just handled everything, like, Bob handled it all. And so, we had to teach and train her and get her up to speed on everything about how to put her financial life together and manage this. Fortunately, financially sound, she had an appropriate amount of life insurance. But she had to go through all of that rebuilding with us.
And two plus years later, sadly, I moved on from that firm. She had become one of their most dominant referral sources. I mean, just everyone. I was so distraught when Bob passed away. And my advisor, like, got everything back together and on track. And now, I'm in a good place. Everything's okay. I'm going to be fine. And like, in all of her friends groups and newly found recent widows groups, like, we became her go-to source, and she was our number one advocate. And I mean, it all came from – I guess, to your point – I mean, a fairly basic, Bob originally just wanted to know whether they were on track for retirement and saving enough for the last 10 years.
Carl: That's why Bob came? Like, what...?
Michael: That's why Bob came originally. And we're like, "No, you don't have enough. You need to save more. And frankly, if something happened to you, it would be really bad for your wife. Can we please put some health insurance in place? You're on a 10-year sprint until you can retire at 65. It's 10 year term. You're super healthy. It'll be super cheap. It'll be really easy." Before we knew it, like, the multi-month PSA issued it just to sort through. I mean, it started in the most benign of circumstances because he just wanted to know whether they were saving enough. We pointed out, it might be hard for her if something happened. He thought it was a blow off issue because he was so healthy. We pushed him anyways to get the coverage in place just in case. And because tenure term was so cheap. But the long-term impact was we went along on this journey with her and helped her through all of it and come through on the other side. Like, that's the thing she told all her friends about.
Helping A Client Through Grief As A Planner [19:10]
Carl: Yeah. I can we do something? I'd really love to just maybe make this an announce that this is a two-parter. And we'll talk about how we talk about self-transcendence and transformational experiences. We'll extend that into the next episode because I would love to just spend more time here for just a second. Because it strikes me as this is a really important conversation. And to hear you share that was meaningful to me. So, talk me through how you helped, what do we call? Linda, Lucy?
Michael: Oh, her? Let's say Helen.
Carl: Helen. How did...?
Michael: Trying to not get in trouble here, Carl.
Carl: Yeah, I know. That's why we... We understand now what happened, but talk me through, what was the process for helping her? The non-involved spouse in this case happens to be Helen. What was the process for you helping Helen make sense of things? Like, how did that...? Walk us through those, maybe even a story or two from those meetings, or the conversation you had.
Michael: I mean, I'm trying to remember back. And, I mean, I was...
Carl: You know, after the mourning process.
Michael: I mean, I was still in a second chair joint meetings.
Carl: Oh, you can't even remember? You can't remember this right now?
Michael: At this age. No, I remember. I remember pieces of it. I mean, it started with delivering the life insurance claim check.
Carl: This is the actual check.
Michael: Oh, yeah. Yeah, I mean, yeah, 2001, probably. So, yeah, like, I delivered a paper check.
Carl: They came to you, to your firm, and then you guys drove it over. Well, and then... Go ahead.
Michael: So, it started with delivering a paper check, and I mean, I can't remember exactly what we said. I mean, something to the effect of like, "Do you know what you're going to do with this giant check?" Or like, "Can we help you figure this out and put all the pieces together?" And just trying to open that conversation, "Can we help? Do you want our help?" And her answer pretty rapidly was yes. Like, she didn't know what she was doing. Bob trusted us, therefore she trusted us.
I mean, notably we did not have much of a relationship with her, not just for even traditional couple dynamics, but, like, they were a relatively new client. They'd only been around for a while because it took so long to get the life insurance in place. But this was not a long-term client we'd been working with for a while. This was a relatively new client that, I mean, we were 9 or 12 months in or something, maybe. It wasn't that far in. Like, we'd done some planning. We did some initial things. We started the life insurance application. It took really, really long. We got it done. And he was out two weeks later. So, it started as that's, "Do you need help to figure out what to do with this or whether you're going to be okay."
Carl: And she says, yes, and what happens then? Like, was there the whole process of, like, organizing things and trying to sort out where things were, and...?
Michael: Yeah. I mean, we knew where a lot of it was because we had, at least, gotten through the first round of the plan with Bob. She didn't really know and understand where all the stuff was. And I mean, this is still the tail end of when people didn't necessarily hold everything in one brokerage account. You had, like, you know, your Davis venture value fund with Davis and your American funds with American and your Putnam fund with Putnam, right? Like, things went direct. People still had individual stock dividend reinvestment plans with individual companies. They had a tiny bit of that stuff. So, it's not even, like, there was a single brokerage account and just like, "Well, this is in your name now." It was a bunch of things to still gather and collect together to kind of clean up and tidy her situation up a little bit.
And then starting to go through the, "So, what are you going to do with this money on the other end?" She kind of knew what her spending and her lifestyle looked like. Because again, they were the, he had the balance sheet, she had the checking account. So, she knew where all the money went every month. She had to kind of reconfigure what did that look like in this new life with her alone. But I mean, I forget what the claim check was. It was, like, $800,000 or something like that. It was a big chunk of change then. But I mean, she had no idea. She never invested money. She'd never been responsible for anything outside the checking account. That was how they did it. So, all of the education, what is a stock? What is a bond? How do investment accounts work? What's a mutual fund? Even just explaining all the things she had. We had to go through all of that and those meetings, right?
It's why... I mean, I think of it, you know, it was a journey of trauma that she was going through that we were walking alongside her to the extent we could, at least, on all the money-related things that we were a part of a conversation for to get her there. I mean, I don't remember. I mean, easily a half a dozen meetings or more, right? I mean, a lot of us who've been through client who is widowed and feel that obligation to step into the void and help them out. I think I've been through that. Just, it can be a lot of meetings, just doing financial education to get them up to speed and help them understand what's going on. And how does all this investment stuff work? And how are they going to live off of it going forward when it's just them?
Carl: Do you recall ever feeling, like, you were in conversations that you were not prepared for?
Michael: Oh, well, very. For me, I was, like, joined with a more senior advisor at this point. I'm like...
Carl: That's a good point.
Michael: Yeah, I'm, like, watching all of it, trying to figure out what to do and how to handle grieving clients who just start crying in the middle of the meeting, which is very not comfortable.
Carl: What was done? What did happen?
Michael: He was very good. He just held space and gave her time.
Carl: Time and tissues.
Michael: Time and tissues. And the tip that I had learned that still sticks with me to this day... And then I had seen it. I heard it reinforced a few years later with Amy Florian, who did a fantastic book years ago called No Longer Awkward about, like, how to work with clients who are grieving. And the big tip was, you put the tissue box on the table between the two of you, but you give the clients the opportunity to reach for it whenever they're ready. Because if you hand them the tissue box and try to push it into their hands, it's basically a signal of, "It's time for you to stop crying now. Please take this tissue and let's get back to work."
Carl: Interesting. Yeah.
Michael: And so, he actually paused me or pointed me, "Don't hand her the tissue. Put the box in the middle of the table. Let her reach when she's ready."
Carl: Fascinating.
Michael: This still sticks with me to this day, 25 years later.
Carl: Yeah, so important. And then what kind of language would Helen use to describe... Maybe this can sort of tee us up for the next episode, but what sort of language would she use to describe the relationship she had with your, the firm you were at?
Michael: I mean, language then, it probably would have been something like, "They're my finance guys. They just take care of all my money stuff." I mean, it was within words like that. I can't remember exactly what she said, but that was kind of the language and the style. It was very much in the vein of, you know, "I lost Bob. I was really worried about this stuff. And now, I don't worry about it anymore." And I mean, she was one of those clients, like, once she got comfortable and trusted that we had it under control for her, like, she didn't want to talk about anything money related when she came into the client meeting. We would have portfolio, quarterlies, because back then we really printed the portfolio quarterlies. That was still the thing. Like, they always sat on the table. We always brought them. We never cracked the spine. She had no interest in talking about that because, just to me, she was so at a level of trust. She didn't know. She didn't care. She didn't particularly want to know. She trusted that we were doing it for her. And she wanted to talk about what's going on in her life and how she was trying to rebuild after losing Bob.
Carl: I mean, that's obviously a very, very unique circumstance. I was just thinking about like, is that... Actually, I'm curious what you would say. Is that level of trust the goal for every relationship?
Michael: I feel like it is. I mean, now that's... A, I feel like it is. B, that, to me, is, I don't know, when fiduciary hits a whole other level, right? I mean, I would say, when you take the weight on to be a fiduciary for a client, there's a certain weight of doing the right thing and knowing that if the client asks questions, you gotta be able to answer all of them and demonstrate that you did the right thing and made appropriate recommendations, that they were grounded, and all the things that we do to validate them. I mean, this wasn't unique to Hellen. And I felt this for other clients in similar situations over the years.
There is a whole different weight of fiduciary for some equivalent of, like, I'm working with someone like grandma who just relies on me for everything. Like, she's not looking. She has that level of unconditional trust that I'm doing the right thing. And I mean, not to say I wouldn't always try to be thorough with clients, but I always felt like there's, like, an extra, double, triple, quadruple check before meeting with clients like that. Because I'm like, "I better be right about all the things here, because no one, even Helen, is going to look at any of it or question it." So, wow, I feel the obligation to make sure that everything is really truly on target, like, a greater weight for clients like that, at least, to me. That was what I felt, though.
Carl: Yeah. What's the difference? What's the variable on weight? I mean, in this case, it was the ultimate traumatic experience that sort of put somebody in a position where they needed to rely on someone. Because I remember having a very similar experience with someone who came in after their spouse passed away with literally the banker's box, right, of all the unopened letters.
Michael: Oh, yeah. We had lots of those then.
Carl: Yeah. But how...? I mean, it feels to me like there's a level of... I always remember having this conversation with Marty Kurtz about trust because Marty, you know, had slightly... And I can't remember what the slightly different take was on trust, but it was, obviously, we all feel like trust is definitely earned. Does somebody trust you at that level barring...? You know, again, I don't even want to call this a traumatic. I mean, it's like the traumatic experience. Barring something like that happening where they just absolutely need help. Is trust like that built through so thoroughly? I always felt like it was so thoroughly understanding someone. Like, really making sure they felt complete and continually sort of thoroughly diagnosed. Do you think that's the...? Because when do I decide to check everything? When do I decide to go get second opinions? When do I decide to start asking lots of questions? Which again, I mean, any real financial planner is totally welcome.
How Quantitative Planning Problems Often Indicate Deeper Problems To Be Solved [32:54]
Michael: Yes. Well, yeah, I agree. I think all of those are signs of trust or indicators quite there on trust. I mean, I don't necessarily... I never thought of it in a context of, if my clients don't, don't just unconditionally take all of my recommendations blindly, then I'm failing at trust. Like, I do think there's some gap between the two.
Carl: For sure.
Michael: Some, you know, clients can trust, but still ask good, constructive questions, be to participants in the process. Because they just need to know and want to understand so they understand just the decisions that they're making, what they're buying into. It's only a subset of folks I find that are delegators or avoiders to the point that they really actually don't want to be part of the conversation and just want to trust enough that they can let it go, which did happen to be Helen's style and approach.
But the underlying piece of this, I think getting back to where you queued this up originally, I mean, we had plenty of clients like Bob. "I think I'm on track for retirement, but I'm not sure I would love someone to kind of analyze and let me know if I'm invested properly in saving enough and on track to retire in 10 years because that's what I'd like to do." And, you know, if you can give me a couple of tips along the way to make this a little better financial outcome, that would be great." I mean, that was basically Bob's context coming in. Done lots of those, like, to think I'd provide a reasonable value, every now and then get a referral.
But the clients with the deeper relationships are more of the Helen scenarios. Not that every client never necessarily has to have a death of a spouse event on our watch, but just there's some level of a major journey that we go through with them, a major transformation that we go through with them. And it's how clients talk about it on the other side of the transformation that are the ones that become the super connectors, the super advocates, right? It's the people where I knew them before they had much wealth, and then went through the entire wealth building journey to retirement. And now, they can talk about how they built up and retired successfully because of the working relationship that we had.
It's the business owner who got through the exit as now retired. Because again, retirement is such a big transition. Widow, divorce events show up there as well, right? Like, the major life change transition events where we get to go through alongside with clients. But again, you know, if you serve enough clients long enough, you get your fair share of those because life happens and stuff happens. But unless they happen to be in one of those moments and that is the presenting problem, right, you know, "My husband just died. I don't know what to do with the money."
Carl: Right. That could be the presenting problem. That's right. But it's not know.
Michael: But often, it's not. Like, it's something much more benign.
Carl: Yeah, most of the time.
Michael: It's something much more benign. It's just a good, old-fashioned, money, often quantitative problem. I like solving those. Pretty good solving those. But the strongest client relationships always seem to be the ones where it goes somewhere else, somewhere deeper. Yes, part of that is building trust over time. But to be part of that is, there's some kind of life event or life transition or transformation that comes. And when we help them through into the other end of that, that's where the deepest client relationships come, and usually, not why they hired us in the first place, unless that's a particular specialty.
Carl: Yeah. Let's pick that up in Episode 2 because I think that's really important. I'd like to talk... Like, let's say a couple of, like, the business. Every one of those examples you gave, they didn't come saying, "Will you help me with this transformation? I'm about to sell a business. I don't know what to do. Obviously, I'm going to retire."
Michael: Well, unless that is your specialization and you do lob up those great clients one after another. I mean, there are a few people out there that do that.
Carl: This is true. This is true.
Michael: Not necessarily selling self-transcendence. That might be a little far.
Carl: But if they were to fit there.
Michael: But, you know, being there at moments of transition.
Carl: Yeah, yeah, no, it's for certain. Certainly, like, the word transition. But even as you pointed out, once those clients start referring people, but I've watched clients talk about it. And they'll say like, "Oh, my gosh, you've got to go see Christie." And the person they're referring will be like, "Why?" "Look, look, don't ask me any questions. I know you're trying to figure out, but it's so much more than that. Just go see..." Like, they don't have the language to talk about it, but they're pointing to something deeper.
Michael: All right. We'll take that up next time.
Carl: So, let's queue that up for Episode 2.
Michael: Okay. Awesome. Thank you, Carl.
Carl: Cheers, Michael. Yep.
