Executive Summary
Given that financial advice is usually, to say the least, not inexpensive, financial advisors often need to be prepared to explain their fee in the context of the value that is offered. This conversation includes how advisors charge for their advice and what they are charging for, especially as the fundamental value proposition of financial advice has evolved significantly over the last decade, transforming from product sales to investment management to goal-focused life planning. Yet as the financial planning process has become more holistic, it has also become more intangible in some ways. For example, the value of a product or investment management may feel immediately related to a client’s problem… but the value of goal-based spending and behavioral finance may be more challenging to articulate, in the moment, to prospects and clients.
In this 200th (💙!) episode of Kitces & Carl, Michael Kitces and client communication expert Carl Richards discuss how the value of advice has changed over time… and how to explain it to clients. Given how abstract life planning can be, when a client first engages an advisor, it is often best to start with the ‘presenting problem’ that first brought a client into the office – such as college planning, an impending retirement, or a sudden inheritance. Advisors can take that first issue as an opportunity to build trust with the client, then can slowly dig deeper from there. Opportunities to go deeper with clients often present in cash flow conversations, where an advisor can help clients explore which spending decisions will ‘actually’ make a difference in the long term.
Another component of the value of advice is related to client implementation. Many clients will acknowledge that they intended to follow through on different action items, such as estate planning or transferring accounts, but life, inevitably, got in the way. While the advice itself may be helpful, ensuring the agreed-upon actions are implemented may be invaluable for some clients. And if/when clients don’t act, that can provide another signal for a deeper conversation to see what (if anything) may be ‘missing’ from the financial planning recommendations.
When great advice is combined with implementation support, it can create an incredibly valuable experience for the client. While marketing "peace of mind" may be cliché, the reality is that it is immensely powerful to have one’s financial affairs in order (and continually updated so that they stay in order!). Ultimately, the key point is that while some components of advice shift with technology and markets, the fundamental value today’s advisors can offer is not just expertise, but a listening ear. When advisors can combine both elements, clients may be surprised not just at how much gets done, but at how aligned their financial capital is with what matters most!
Authors:
***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
Kitces & Carl Ep 01: How To Value The Value Of Financial Planning- "Alpha, Beta, and Now…Gamma" by David Blanchett and Paul Kaplan
- Use of Capital and Planning, by Carl Richards
- 50 Fires with Gretchen and Morgan Housel
- Kitces Research on How Financial Advisors Actually Do Financial Planning
- Trends In Financial Advice Fees: What Financial Advisors Are Actually Charging For Their Services by Sydney Squires
- The Future Of Financial Advice: How Tech And Approaches In 2030 Will Differ From Today by Mike Lecours
- Bain & Company’s "B2C Elements of Value"
- "Advice That Sticks" by Moira Somers
Kitces & Carl Transcript
Carl: Michael Kitces, welcome to the podcast. I'm glad you decided to join me today.
Michael: David Carl Richards III, DCR3, welcome to the podcast.
Carl: That's right. I was going to mention, "Welcome to episode..." but I don't even know. What episode number are we on?
Michael: So this is a milestone. We are episode 200. Recording roughly every other week, which means I actually went and looked it up, we started this in January of 2019. And it has been seven and a half years.
Carl: That cannot be right.
Michael: Seven and a half years.
Carl: Wait a second. I only committed to this for 50 episodes.
Michael: I know. That's why I don't tell you what episode we're on because I'm hoping you won't notice we're past number 50 already.
Carl: I feel slightly, I don't know what the right word is, taken advantage. Two hundred? I've never done anything for seven and a half years except be married.
Michael: It's like your New York Times Behavior Gap.
Carl: Oh, that's right. That went 10 years.
Michael: It probably was close, right?
Carl: That went 10 years. That went a decade almost to the week. And then "Behavior Gap Radio," I just recorded episode 1,512, but those don't quite count. That is amazing. That's amazing.
Michael: Two hundred episodes.
Carl: We should put a book together. We should take all those episodes and put a book together, because people love big, thick books these days.
Michael: People love big books. Well, you made a beautiful big blue book. I love that. I like to think this podcast just imbues the blue.
Carl: It was not because of you. It was in spite of you.
Michael: You can tell yourself that, but I know subconsciously you bring your microphone as a blue highlight now.
Carl: Michael is talking about the new book, "Your Money," has a blue cover. Wow, 200 episodes. So, what do you want to talk about?
What Is The ‘Real’ Value Of Financial Advice? [02:08]
Michael: Well, so I thought it would be fun to reflect back on the conversation we actually had in episode one, because it's been seven and a half years, and I think our take is going to be a little bit different.
Carl: That's crazy.
Michael: So I went and looked it up because it was seven and a half years ago. I got to remember. So seven and a half years ago, our inaugural episode was how to value the value of financial planning.
Carl: Wow. That's a cool topic.
Michael: What is the value? How do you explain the value? And if you may remember what was going on in our professional world at the time, this was when Morningstar had done its paper on Advisor Gamma. Vanguard did Advisor Alpha. I think Envestnet called it Sigma because everybody's got to put a Greek letter on it. I think it was all these different studies that were coming out, trying to quantify the value of financial planning with what we save on the behavior gap and good savings advice and good tax advice and being more tax efficient with the portfolio. And more studies added in more layers. And depending on whose study you read, it was something on the lines of, "We add 1.5% to 3% of additional value add every year. Good news, that's more than the roughly 1% many of us charge. So, clearly, I'm worth the money, and you should hire me."
And you had that also layered in a conversation of, "Hey, aside from just the dollar value that we're calculating a portfolio ROI on," there's just the reality. We create the space for clients to talk about a really challenging taboo topic of money that has a lot of baggage with it that, often, people have no other place to have those conversations but with us, as advisors. And that's a really powerful thing unto itself. We help clients. I think one of the things you even said we help couples have better conversations about money so they're not as awkward. You can figure out for yourself with your spouse what the value of that is, but if that allows you to have marital harmony and not marital strife, that's probably a pretty valuable thing, even if I can't directly quantify the number of marriages that did not end out in divorce thanks to my valuable financial planning, creating alignment with couples and a better plan that moves them forward.
So that was how we framed the value of financial planning then, circa 2019. So I would then just bring the conversation back to you now to say, so bring us present. Has any of that changed for you in how you think about the value of financial planning and the way we value it to clients?
Carl: Yeah. So all of that sounds really resonant. I'm really excited about it, and I'd even go further now. I've been playing around with this, and I want to break this down, so give me time to do it. But you're a dream maker.
Michael: Okay.
Carl: And we pointed this in a couple of episodes. We pointed the goal clarification over time. And this has been my latest, biggest kick, is if you define financial planning, my favorite version of financial planning... I don't care if other people have different versions, it's totally fine. I'm not putting a stake in the ground. I'm just saying, my favorite version of financial planning is the alignment of your use of capital. It's a Venn diagram. Your use of capital, time, money, energy, and attention, your use of capital with what's important to you. The other circle is what's important to you. You can say your use of capital and your values. I am now so convinced, and this is...I've had the chance.
In 2019, I hadn't done 50 Fires, the project with Magnolia. And we did two seasons of that. So I think we did more than 50 episodes because they were weekly for a while. So I think I can't remember how many episodes, but it was more than 50. And we had some really good...Chip Gaines on, and we had Krista Tippett and Debbie Millman and Rabbi Shira Stutman and Henry Shukman and Willie Nelson's son, Lukas. All of them said the same thing. They were all like, "I never have had a place to have this conversation about what money means in my life and how I can use it to become who I..." There's a...oh, I can't remember who... A Lao Tzu quote, "Be who you really are and go the whole way."
Michael: Okay. Yeah.
Carl: And so that's what I'm thinking about that circle. What's important to you? I'm now convinced, that's the most important part of the work we do, is who else in anybody's life can they have? Look, Michael, money is just the entry point. It's just a giant righteous trick. I don't care about money at all. All I care about is humans and humans doing the stuff that lights them up, humans becoming who they really are, humans living aligned lives of deep value and meaning. That's all I care about. So we could have done this through another vehicle, but I don't know, work or being a rabbi. But money is the easiest, most universal way into giving us an entry point to a conversation about what really matters to you. Because if we can see how you're spending your money and your time, now we can have a really interesting conversation, because we're going to expose inauthentic behavior. We're going to expose places where you're aligned.
"Look at that. You spent all that money on food, great restaurants with your family, and you feel guilty about it? But you told me the most important thing you could ever do with your family is beautiful experiences, and your family deeply values food." "Oh, my gosh. I'm living in a..." "You know what, you should spend more. Those types of conversations, that's what I've... In the last seven and a half years, I've become more deeply involved in the idea of, who are you, and what do you really want to see with your life? Okay, great. How else can I have a conversation about that than say, "Hey, could you track how you spend your money for the next 30 days, and let's just talk about it?" Oh, that's just a book. I'm sorry. That's just a secret trick into figuring out and running iterations of experiments.
"Turns out I don't like the second home in Myrtle Beach. I'd rather rent a different place every year. Why? Because I care deeply about my family. Oh, let's do more of that." Morgan Housel, on 50 Fires, "I think I should be a car guy. So every couple of years, I forget. So I run an experiment at the Hertz counter. I say, 'Give me the Porsche.' I don't even get off the lot before I realized, beautiful, I appreciate it, but I'm not a car guy." His wife, Gretchen, said, "Let's run a little experiment. I think I love gardening. I'd like more big rocks in the garden. What if we spend a little bit of money on big rocks? Oh, my gosh, I loved it. Let's spend more money on big rocks." So one experiment was a no, cars. One experiment was a yes, big rocks. That's what we do. What's that worth? So, yes, it's changed a little bit, but it's very similar.
How Can Advisors Market The (Intangible) Value Of Advice? [10:11]
Michael: So, what is that worth? How do I...?
Carl: How do you bill for it?
Michael: How do I bill for it? How do I explain its value and what it's worth? I love how much you lit up for that conversation. So I can clearly see how it feeds your soul and how you get energy from it. But as you even astutely acknowledged, sort of, these are all the righteous trick things I do downstream from the money part. The money part gets you in the door. So cool trick to get to bring your gifts to the world. But how do we get clients to engage with that? Is there...?
Carl: Yeah. Look, I think the good news to me is, look, some people are very good at this, and the people who are very good at this, I'm thoroughly impressed by. I just don't think it works for most of us. Some people can sell that, right? They can help somebody, and we call them broadly ‘life planners’. And I think that's amazing. If you can hang your shingle as a life planner and charge a retainer that makes you and the firm profitable and happy, then amazing. And I think there are people who are slowly getting better and better at that. But I think for most of us, I think you still show up at the presenting problem because nobody, if you remember, and I still think this is true, nobody needs a life plan. Sorry. Nobody knows they need a life plan.
Michael: Right.
Carl: Nobody wakes up in the morning. In fact, I have never even been asked for a financial plan. So I think, still, we can show up at the presenting problem. "I need life insurance. I need to know how. Am I okay?" is out there on the spectrum, closer to life planning questions. "Am I okay?" is a question people ask. "We need life insurance. I just inherited some money. I'm leaving my job." You're like, "Okay, great. I'm going to greet you with empathy at the presenting problem." And then in terms of how we charge for it, guess what, I finally decided, the market, it turns out, we can all run great businesses at market rate. Competitive. We can be competitive in the marketplace and build really profitable businesses, whether that's a retainer or an AUM fee. You could be at the low end of retainers and AUM fees and build a really amazingly profitable business, right?
Michael: Yeah. Yeah.
Carl: So I don't need to get super creative about that unless I want to. If the story about how you charge matters to you in a way that dictates that you want to change the way you charge, then you better change the way you charge. Make sure you're comfortable with the story. But you could just say, "You know what, I don't have to decide. The market says it's about this." Go ahead.
Michael: I say, I don't even worry about the "how you charge" part as much.
Carl: Okay. Are you talking about how you explain it?
Michael: Yeah. How you explain it, only because we see this in our research data. The advisors who run subscription fees have ended out with almost the exact same minimum fee as the minimum assets of advisors who do assets under management.
Carl: Okay, good. So let's set that aside.
Michael: It's about $3,000 of fees either way. As you said, we've converged on remarkably similar fees, regardless of model, because there's just a certain amount it takes to deliver the service. And if you do it more and more deeply and more valuably, the numbers work better.
Carl: Let's just set that aside then. So we're just talking about, how do we communicate the value?
Michael: Yeah.
Carl: Yeah.
Michael: Of that cool thing you said that lit you up in a beautiful way, I know you're amazing at it. How do we get clients excited about that value proposition you just described?
Carl: I think that there is no way to do that except to show them the difference between real financial planning and product sales stuff that they've been through the ringer on. And so the way to do that is greet them at the presenting problem. So if we were to go all the way back to marketing, we'd say, "Get really clear about presenting problems that you solve." We're not going to use that word, right? But get really clear about having a specialty around solving a particular set of problems.
Michael: You're probably trying very hard not to say that word.
Carl: Talk, talk, talk, talk. I'm not even going to let you say it. Go to the places where those people hang out and talk about that problem. And what we're doing here is we're keeping it... The people you serve have a thing on their to-do list, and you want to solve that. So we're basically just trying to, instead of push, push, push, we're trying to generate demand. And some of the language I've heard recently is talk about the work you do in a way that it would be weird for someone not to buy it. If the right person heard it, it would be weird for them not to buy it. And the only way I can think of to do that is get really clear about the problems you solve and who you solve them for and then find out where those people hang out and talk about your problem. Talk about how you help there.
Michael: Because I'm getting hyper-specialized. I help recent widows rebuild their financial life after the loss of a spouse. If that's what you're going through or your dear friend is going through that, how would you not refer me if they've been devastated and need to rebuild their life, and this is what I do for a living?
Carl: And especially if you read a story/case study/whatever of how you do that. So if you do it in the right way that allows people to go, "Hey, that's me. Hey, I want that", then they show up at the presenting problem, and you're just solving the presenting problem. But you're dropping little hints in there of, "Hey, we got to solve the arrow in the arm," right? But at the same time, we got to be able to point to the idea of, "Hey, tell me what's important to you. Where do you want to go?" We're starting to get some definition and some flavor around the "what's important" part. In our language, we often call those goals. I think that's goals and values, fine.
And some of the language I always found myself doing is, if I get excited, like I just did, and it was in a client meeting, I'd be like, "Gosh, John and Martha, I don't know how to tell you. It's hard for me to express because it would sound..." And I know you're used to dealing with salespeople in our industry, and you may have thought about this feeling like a used car experience, I get all that, but it's hard for me to express. There are so many ways we're going to be helpful, and I can't even tell you. But I can tell you, for every single client, I could point to something in the last three years, one event that's made up all of their fees. And the problem is I can't tell you what it's going to be for you. I don't know what it's going to be for you. But I can tell you something will show up, and I wish I could do a better job of that.
But I found myself saying that a lot to clients. "I don't know the ways in which I'm going to be valuable in your life. Yes, of course, planning. And yes, of course this. And yes, of course, tax optimization. And we're going to keep you invested," and all this stuff, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. But there's going to be something else. It's going to be super cool. Sometimes it will be something you're scared of. Sometimes it will be something you're excited about. And I'm going to be here. And over time, the most important thing is going to be that we get your use of capital more aligned with what's really important to you. And that's going to mean things like taking a six-month sabbatical or funding a kid's education. And you just go through a list of things you've done with clients. I think dropping that in every once in a while so people are...if they read it, they're like, "Gosh, that's not the kind of relationship I have."
I know of no other way to do it. And I'm sure there are better ways. I just don't know them.
Carl: What do you think?
Michael: One of the things that shifted for me as I went back and watched the original episode and how we talked about this years ago is I feel like there's a phenomenon where the value of advice for the past 10 or 15 years was the fact that we actually give advice. There were a lot of people who gave "advice" because the advice was pursuant to selling a product. If you go all the way back to '80s, '90s, even early 2000s, a lot of financial plans were to demonstrate a gap in your life because I sold you a product to fill that gap, which is why everything was a needs analysis, because I could prove you need what I have for sale. You don't have enough coverage according to my needs analysis, so here's the life insurance. You're not saving enough for retirement according to my needs analysis, so here's a retirement account with a mutual fund.
And that seemed to shift over the past 10 or 15 years to say, "No, no, no. I'm a financial planner now. I'm a CFP. I charge a fee for advice. You come to me. You pay the fee. I do the analysis. I craft advice. It's holistic and considers your entire situation and all the integrated parts because I'm a comprehensive financial planner." And my advice was valuable and worth paying for because I was really holistic and looked at all the things, and other people only put on the blinders and looked at the part that they needed to look at for selling the products that they were going to sell. And that was the value proposition. It was valuable, and it commanded a fee. And we started increasingly charging for financial planning in a way that we just didn't historically.
When I look now, I feel like we've gotten to a point where the advice is getting fairly ubiquitous. All the financial planning software companies have tens and tens of thousands of users. CFP blew through 100,000. There's almost 110,000 CFP professionals out there now, up significantly. Financial planning is going mainstream at independent firms, at big firms, at asset management-oriented firms, expanding into planning, at firms that just do planning for the sake of as advice only. It's kind of out there all over the place. And so I find myself looking a lot now to say, "What's the next value layer on top of the fact that I give you the advice?" And what I keep coming back to is some version of, "The next value layer on top of giving you the advice is helping to make sure you actually get it done, that you actually implement the advice."
And even to the point that...not to open up all of our industry channel and fee debates, but there's a segment out there that still implements products that castigates the folks "only doing advice" by basically saying, "But you don't actually help your clients implement. You just give them the advice and then send them on their way to do it themselves." And we know, often, they're not necessarily going to do it and follow through on all the recommendations that we gave them. And I will admit sometimes I hear that, and I still worry a little that someone is trying to justify why they do a thing or sell a thing. And I think there's some truth and validity to it that I do see a subset of advisors out there who say, "I gave the client the recommendations. If they're not implementing, it's their fault. They're bad clients. Good clients take the financial planning recommendations and implement them all, and bad financial clients take the advice and then don't do any of it. It's really frustrating. And you should fire those clients because they might come back and sue you if you gave them the advice, and they didn't implement it, but then they blame you for it." That is a fairly common bit of advice in the industry, in the advice world these days.
And so I'm finding myself coming back to saying, what starts to differentiate the advisors going forward? And I increasingly am seeing in this direction of, but did you actually help them get it done? Did you actually help them implement it? I'm not necessarily talking about whether you get paid on a product for implementation. We have a growing range of no-commission products out there available to advisors who charge fees. Maybe you help them implement it, and you don't get paid for the product. You get paid a better planning fee because you actually helped them implement it and follow through and get it done. But how do we get better at that? How do we...?
Implementation As The Next Frontier Of Financial Advice [23:45]
Carl: Yeah. Let me ask you a question because this is tied. What would you say...? I'm interested in this phrase, treatment effect. If we were doing a good...if a financial planner does a good job, what's the outcome? How would you define the outcome? Let's take it even further. If a whole group of financial planning professionals, if 100,000 financial planning professionals are doing a good job, what would the outcome be?
Michael: Well, I think, to me...
Carl: What would the treatment effect be?
Michael: ...it's very much in that vein. What would the treatment effect be? All your clients actually have an estate plan with their wills and trusts properly done, not just... I told them they need wills and trusts. And then a few of them do it, and all the rest ostrich their head in the sand because they don't want to deal with the morbidity.
Carl: Got it. But that's not the end. Why does that matter? And you could have gone on with their portfolio is the right way and they're saving.
Michael: Yeah. And their insurance coverage is the right way, and they're actually saving, and they opened the retirement account.
Carl: Okay, great. Why does any...? Think of Bain's pyramid of value. What's the ultimate treatment effect?
Michael: Oh, the ultimate treatment effect is everyone has self-actualization in Maslow's hierarchy. To me, it's too high. I get it. Maslow was brilliant. I'm not disagreeing with the virtues and self-actualization, but I don't think clients [hire] us to go on the path of self-actualization.
Carl: I agree. I agree.
Michael: They might hire us for the presenting problem, the arrow in the arm.
Carl: Great. If we got that all done, what would the result be?
Michael: But I have a baby, and I don't have life insurance or a will, and I'm pretty sure I need one.
Carl: Great. Estate planning, life insurance, the whole thing, we got all that done. What would the result be in the client's life?
Michael: Aside from our long-term self-actualization, some combination of, "I'm actually on a better financial trajectory."
Carl: Okay. Cool.
Michael: And probably some version of...although I hate to say it because we so overuse it, but some actual version of peace of mind. "I actually feel like my financial house is in order, and that stuff is done, and it's in a good place, and that when I'm hanging out with my friends and the subject of some financial thing comes up, I can say, 'Oh, yeah, I've got all that taken care of. My planner was awesome. He or she actually helped me get all the stuff done and did this and that and the other thing to make sure I got it done, because you know how I always let these things fall through the cracks, but I actually got it done because my planner was awesome because of something that looks a lot like, I don't know, client task management, client project management.'"
How do I actually get my clients to do the things? What if one of our metrics as an advisory firm was the percentage of the recommendations we gave to the client that they actually implemented in the first one, two, and three years working with us? Because they can’t be everything at once. People get overwhelmed. But what if a good firm presents 10 recommendations and 2 of them get implemented, and a great firm presents 12 recommendations and 10 of them get implemented? And you actually get 80% of the stuff done. Done-done, the tasks done, the things done – not just the part that we get paid on, like moving the money, but all the things.
Carl: Wait, wait, wait, back up just a little bit, because I'm nervous about that suggestion. Let me ask. What are the reasons people don't implement?
Michael: I think it's pretty wide.
Carl: You, as a human.
Michael: Yeah. Everything from procrastination and distraction. "I've got too much 'going on' in my life. I don't get around to it." Sometimes it's outright fears. "I don't want to deal with estate issues because I have to talk about my estranged son. That is an awkward taboo subject for the family, and I don't want to deal with my mortality." Some of it, as we've talked about on past episodes, why doesn't the client implement? Because I didn't actually understand their situation.
Carl: That, to me, is the important piece. I think non-implementation is information. Non-implementation is signal. And the signal typically is I probably miss it. For some reason, this is not important to them relative to all the other things they have to do, which gets me back to my earlier question of what's the treatment effect. The treatment effect is a better life. The treatment effect is a more aligned life. The treatment effect is, "I'm finding meaning because I'm aligning my use of capital with what I said. I went on a trip with my kid. I'm feeling less stressed. When we sit at dinner now, we have conversations instead of me being worried. I feel less threatened when my daughter says she got into the best school she could get into and she wants to go. I'm able to respond." That's the treatment effect.
And so, yeah, how do we get people to implement? I think we get better at asking really good questions and understanding what it is that they want to do and why, and then running them through small experiments of implementation to see what they learn.
Michael: I don't disagree. My point actually gets to the same place.
Carl: Yeah, totally. We're not disagreeing.
Michael: So if I'm routinely giving a pile of recommendations and my clients implement too, I might be pushing too much of my planning agenda and not doing enough listening about what they really want to prioritize...
Carl: I think we're exactly the same.
Michael: ...and want to focus on. If we start with the paradigm, "I'm the professional. I give the recommendations. Good clients implement them, and bad clients don't," all the responsibility for failure to implement is on the client. And part of the question that I raise as I look at where do I think this goes, what if it's really our responsibility?
Carl: I think, look, whether it's our responsibility or not, the only positive way forward is to assume that it is, right, and say, "Look, we're the professional." Could you imagine a football coach saying, "They didn't implement. That's their fault?" Well, sometimes they do, and we know what happens to those coaches. They get fired. If I can't get buy-in, thinking like a really, really good executive coach or a really good corporate coach or a really good therapist or a doctor prescribing medicine, if you didn't take the medicine...
Michael: And there's a ton of research in medicine on this right now. Dr. Moira Somers did a thing on this a couple of years ago. Her book was Advice That Sticks.
Carl: Advice That Sticks. Yep, yep.
Michael: So go look it up for anyone who wants, Moira Somers, S-O-M-E-R-S, Advice That Sticks. She wrote about this theme as well. I think she wrote about it before we did our first episode. So clearly, I missed the train for a while. I'm catching up now. I'm sorry, Moira. But a lot of her focus was similar. She was pulling up all the medical research that they've done about, how do doctors get patients to better adhere to their prescriptions and recommendations? Because the medical profession is also now saying, "Maybe this is a little bit on us and how we deliver our prescriptions to get patients to have buy-in, to get patients to engage." And I think we're going down a similar track now as advisors. I highlight it because the tools and software we use, the workflows and processes we have, the metrics and the things that we track, the "what we have to pay attention to" to define when a client relationship is going well versus not, you end up with a lot of different things.
The advisors I see that are doing this, they're making Trello boards and shared Asana environments with clients to literally collaborate on the tasks. They're buying tools that help nudge their clients. There's one out there that's literally called Knudge, with a K, K-N-U-D-G-E, to nudge their clients, to give them permission and say, "Hey, one of our value propositions is we help our clients follow through on the things that we all know sometimes we get a little procrastination-y on. So one of our value propositions, if you want us to, we will be that friendly nudge, and we will keep poking you to make sure that you get the thing done. Would that be okay with you, Mr. and Mrs. Client?" And there are a subset of clients out there who will in a heartbeat say, "Oh, we so need that. We know we're not going to get the things done if you don't poke us. Please be kind and respectful when you do it, but yeah, we need that. Go ahead and do that."
Moving Clients From The "Present" Problem To Transformative Planning [32:48]
Carl: Yeah. I think, as we sort of wrap up, I think that the value has never...in my mind, it's never been greater. And I've been saying that every year, but I mean it every year.
Michael: Honestly, I didn't think you didn't mean it before.
Carl: Yeah, I mean it every year. Because it's getting harder and harder to be clear about what's important to me. And it's more and more confusing. And mimetic desire problems and the comparison challenges of the internet have made it more and more confusing for me to figure out what's important to me. And what I want from you, although I will probably not say it in the first meeting because I don't know this, I don't even know to ask you, what I want from you is to help me make a change. I want you to help me change. At a fundamental level, I want you to help me change my relationship with money, which is going to help me change my relationship with the world and my spouse and my partner and my kids, and it's going to help change everything. My relationship I have with fear and anxiety and worry. I want you to help me change that. Now, I'm never going to...I don't even know that. So I'm not going to show up and say that to you.
So what I'm going to show up and say to you is, "My gosh, I don't know what to do with my aging parents." And you're going to say, "Great." And then we're going to enter into a relationship. And over time, I'm going to nudge you to implement stuff. And as you implement stuff, we're going to learn. And that new learning, we're going to incorporate back into the plan. And we're going to say, "It turns out you don't want that beach house in Myrtle Beach." And we're going to keep doing that. So the value is goal clarification over time so I can live a meaningful, aligned life. What's that worth? Well, it turns out it's worth everything.
Michael: Yeah.
Carl: Cheers, Michael.
Michael: Happy 200, Carl.
Carl: So fun. Cheers. We should have a cake.
Michael: Thank you. We should have had a cake. You're right. Blue cake.
Carl: That's right. Fine, fine, fine. Blueberry.
Michael: Fine. Thank you, Carl.
