Planning & Beyond® - Where financial planning meets human understanding
Planning & Beyond® is for financial advisors who want to go beyond the numbers and build deeper, more trusted client relationships.
Hosted by Ashley Quamme, a licensed therapist and financial behavior specialist, this podcast helps advisors better understand the psychology, emotions, and behaviors that shape client conversations.
Each episode offers practical strategies you can apply in discovery meetings, prospect conversations, difficult money discussions, and major life transition planning. Through conversations with experts in behavioral finance, financial psychology, and financial therapy, Ashley explores how advisors can strengthen communication, navigate emotional moments, build trust, and support clients with more confidence.
If you want to improve the way you connect with clients, ask better questions, and bring more empathy and clarity into your planning process, Planning & Beyond® will help you sharpen the human side of your advisory work.
Topics include:
- Mastering discovery and prospect meetings
- Navigating difficult money conversations
- Understanding client psychology
- Building trust and deepening client relationships
- Managing emotional client situations
- Improving advisor-client communication
- Applying behavioral finance strategies
- Supporting clients through life transitions
New episodes release weekly. Subscribe for practical conversations on the human side of financial planning.
Learn more at Beyond the Plan.
Planning & Beyond® - Where financial planning meets human understanding
66. Transforming Review Meetings into Meaningful Experiences with Brendan Frazier
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Join Ashley and Brendan Frazier, host of The Human Side of Money podcast, for a conversation about review meetings and why they matter more than many advisors realize.
Brendan explains the difference between reactive and proactive review meetings and talks about where review meetings can fall flat, especially when the meeting becomes a routine check-in instead of a chance to understand the client better, celebrate progress, and reconnect with what matters most. Brendan also explains why clients usually do not leave because of performance. They often leave because of communication breakdowns or because they no longer feel understood.
Episode Highlights:
- The difference between reactive and proactive review meetings
- Why review meetings are the anchor of the client experience
- Where traditional review meetings often fall short
- How to help clients reflect on progress
- Why satisfied clients are not always engaged clients
- How to relearn who your clients are as their lives change
- The four R’s of stronger review meetings: reflect, reassure, recalibrate, and reimagine
This conversation is for financial advisors who want review meetings to feel less routine and more useful for the client. Tune in for a clear way to rethink the meeting so clients leave feeling heard, understood, and clear about where they are going next.
RESOURCES AND GUEST INFORMATION
Brendan Frazier helps financial advisors master the human side of advice. As host of The Human Side of Money podcast, he explores how psychology, behavior, and emotion shape financial decisions. A former advisor, Investopedia Top 100 Financial Advisor, founder of Wired Planning, and Chief Behavioral Officer, Brendan helps advisors strengthen client conversations and relationships through behavioral science. He lives with his wife, Shannon, and their three children.
Connect with Brendan Frazier:
- The Human Side of Money Podcast
- Website
- The Ultimate Review Meeting course - get $100 off with this link!
- E50. What Is the Human Side of Money? A 50th Episode Conversation with Brendan Frazier
Connect with Host Ashley Quamme:
- Podcast Website: https://www.planningandbeyond.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashley-quamme
- Beyond the Plan®: https://www.beyondthefp.com
- Monthly Newsletter: https://www.beyondthefp.com
And go like, hey, can you pull up for me all the studies that exist on why clients leave their advisor? I think you and I know this. I sometimes take for granted that this is still like mind-blowing information to people because I've been thinking about it for all these years now. But it's never because of shouldn't say never. The primary drivers are never because of performance. Right. Never because of, oh, they're not smart enough. Right. It's always one of two things. It's either communication breakdown, lack of communication, didn't hear from them, didn't hear from them often enough, or which that one always shocks me and everybody else. Underneath that, which is number two, but I think they're also just really closely linked, is I feel like they didn't get me and understand me. I didn't trust them anymore. And so it's like, okay, how do you prevent that? Well, you need to make sure that you're re-engaging, relearning, rediscovering who that person is so that they feel heard and understood.
SPEAKER_00Welcome to Planning and Beyond, the show where financial planning meets human understanding. As an exceptional financial advisor, you know that financial planning is about more than just numbers. It's about giving clients the clarity they need to align their money with what matters most. Which is why each episode is designed with that goal in mind. You'll learn how to uncover the psychology behind client decisions and gain insights and behavioral strategies needed to create deeper, more meaningful client relationships. You'll discover techniques for navigating emotional client situations, drawn from conversations with leading industry experts in behavioral finance, psychology, communication, and more. Whether it's mastering discovery meetings, handling sensitive client conversations, or understanding what is truly keeping your client stuck, you'll walk away with not only strategies that you can use in your next client meeting, but also the confidence to do so. Oh yeah, hi. To probably introduce myself, I'm your host, Ashley Kwamey, a therapist who somehow wandered into the world of financial behavior and kind of decided to stay. My mission is to help you bridge the gap between financial planning and human understanding. Because remember, finances don't have feelings, but your clients do. Let's dive in. Welcome to Planning and Beyond, the podcast where financial planning meets human understanding. I'm your host, and today, we're gonna do this again. This is our second take, actually, believe it or not, because I botched the first one. Today I've got three-peater Brendan Frazier, host of the Human Side of Money podcast with me. Brendan, thank you for coming on and being patient with me here.
SPEAKER_01Should we three-peat the intro?
SPEAKER_00We could three-peat the intro. It would be nice. Although no one uh well, let me just say that we cannot put out to the world the first intro because of the words that I said.
SPEAKER_01Or you could just put the little E next to the episode.
SPEAKER_00That's true. We could make it an explicit one uh there. I don't think my parents would appreciate that. I think I would get a text message.
SPEAKER_01It would kill your listenership. Your parents would stop listening.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, it literally, like all of my listens from Durham, North Carolina, like would just like plummet. Like I would know. I would know that my family heard it. Judgment would come around Thanksgiving. I'd hear about it at the table. So uh all right, Brendan. Hey, I'm pumped to have you back here on the show. And we're here for a specific reason today. You and I had been chatting and you brought up this idea that we're gonna we're gonna get into around review meetings. And you've been doing some really good work here around review meetings. I'm trying to be careful around like not spoiling like too many things here for you. I'm gonna be quiet. Let's get into review meetings. What are you doing here when it comes to helping advisors really anchor like the entire client experience and financial advice? Like, why review meetings? Why are they that, you know, really important piece? How do we do them? And where did this idea come from? I don't know if I've asked you this. Where did this idea come from?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, hang on. I think that's a great question of where this idea came from because the idea came from me like asking a similar question to myself, which was like, okay, so I had the ultimate intro meeting and discovery meeting, and it's kind of like, all right, what's next? And I sort of think it's like, oh, we could do a planned presentation meeting and do some research and work on that. And then I start thinking for a minute, like, wait, hang on. There is one type of meeting that virtually every advisor has, that we have like hardly any, if or very little or hardly any really training or instruction or outside guidance around. Like, you can go find a lot of articles and content and people and experts that would love to tell you all about how to conduct a sales conversation or a prospecting process and how to engage somebody that's a prospect to get them to like you and trust you, or how to run a discovery meeting. Because I think it's really, really easy to tie or to see the benefit of getting better at that on and the impact that it has on the business, right? Like, oh, well, yes, you need to get really good at these very first meetings that you have because that's how you ultimately get people to become clients, right? And so I would say there's really no shortage of information, education, trainings that out there that cover that. Like it's just a thing, especially as a sales, foundationally speaking, as an industry, coming with a sales from a sales perspective and a sales background, I think that's just always naturally ingrained in us, right? But then I start thinking, like, wait a minute, there's one meeting that everybody has that everybody should know how to do well, that everybody should be able to nail. You said it, but it's what I've been going around kind of saying is the review meeting is quite literally like the anchor of the client experience. If we're so interested in or so focused on, hey, how do we develop this great client experience that gets people to engage, to like us, to trust us, to refer us, to follow through on what we ask, what all the things you want your clients to do, you want them to be engaged. And if we want that from our clients and we want that out of the client experience, why is it that we treat the anchor of the client experience as more of a maintenance task where you check the box than we do like the anchor of the experience? I even I even said like I think too, it's it's not just that, it's also like the heartbeat of the relationship, it's the ongoing regular point of check-in. And we just tend to treat it as like, oh yeah, I need to do this again because we do this every year and it's just a routine checkup. And you go ask advisors, like, hey, why do you do it the way you do it? And the answer is always inevitably, well, because that's how we've always done it, and it works. And so, like, I've I was telling, I've been going through this with a group of advisors just to kind of hash this concept out. And I was telling them, like, I could stand up here and blast these meetings, and I don't want to do that. I don't want to say that, hey, these are bad. They're actually the way they're done now is actually helpful. You say help people walk out feeling better generally about themselves. It gives them reassurance. But for us to say, hey, this is a meeting that we're gonna have, it's the anchor of the client experience, the heartbeat of the relationship. Why is it that we settle for what's always been done? The only thing I can think of is just we don't really know exactly what to do to make it different or to make it better, quite frankly. And I mean, I and so the last thing I'll say on this is I I remember, I mean, I was talking to another another advisor about this, and it was kind of like he they were saying, I feel like the majority of my review meetings are like virtually the same. They come clients come in. We've they've been clients for a long time, right? They we think that they like us, we like them, things are going well. Uh, we can get into the whole engaged and not engaged piece, right? We be there's a difference between an engaged client and a satisfied client, but they come in, we ask about life, we talk a little bit a little bit about weather, sports, haven't seen them in a year, maybe it's six months, whatever. You talk about all these things, you ask if anything's changed in their life, what's been going on. You do a little, you catch up briefly, then you're like, all right, well, here's how you're doing, here's your account, here's what we're working on over here, right? Here's how you're doing. Everything's looking good, you're on track. And they're like, okay, great. Anything we need to know? Nope. You're all set. Okay, great. Well, let's do it again next year. And it just fascinates me that while that is good, that we would settle for that. When we walk out of a meeting like that, you there's no way you could legitimately or or realistically walk out and think to yourself, man, that was a great meeting that changed that person's life forever and for the better. And if they pay me $50,000, I am worth every penny. Like you most people would walk out going, I hope I did enough. Like, I hope they see the value, like I hope they know how much I care about them. Right. And so, just like all of these meetings, the intro discovery meeting, we tend to leave them to chance. We tend to do things a certain way because we always have. But if you can actually understand why those meetings exist, the psychology behind them, what the clients are feeling and experiencing, what and maybe most importantly, what they need most from those meetings. Once you understand that, then it becomes a lot easier to design and deliver an experience where it actually drives better outcomes for the clients. It boosts your retention rate with clients, it get generates more referrals, they become more engaged. You mean name all the benefits that you want, but you have to know how to do it.
SPEAKER_00You have to know how to do it. I think it reminds me of when I was doing clinical supervision for pre-licensed clinicians and the thing that we would talk about with them. Because even in like therapy sessions, granted, the content is a bit different, but sometimes they can go a little stale, right? It feels, especially if it's a client you've known for a while and you're like, kind of what are we doing? And so my question would always be it is and also kind of a statement of you should leave every single meeting, every single session with a client, having learned something about them. Like, what did you learn about them? And did the client are they leaving, having learned something about themselves? And I just like when I'm hearing you talk, like that's coming up for me, right? And, you know, if we're doing things the same, like our advisors learning something about their client, is the client leaving from that experience, having learned something about themselves? And we could make some guesses, maybe it's yes, or we could say, like, oh yeah, I mean, I learned that, you know, this year they're gonna contribute, you know, more over here, like than they are there. Like, that's not really like, I mean, I don't know if I would consider that learning. I guess you could make the argument for that, but I like where you're going in terms of how can we really transform this meeting in such a way that it is, it's more than just like helpful, right? It there could be a bit of transformation there too. I want to get into though, a little bit of okay, here's maybe the groundwork kind of foundation like for our conversation today, like around review meetings. And maybe there's some people, I would imagine that they're our listeners here, they're probably like, yeah, yeah, they're nodding around, like nodding along. They've probably listened to, you know, all of your content here. Like, there's not a lot of convincing, maybe is my point around like, yeah, the review meeting needs like some work. But before we get into what that kind of work looks like, can you maybe speak to where do review meetings go wrong? Like, what are kind of the no-nos or the things that are, you know, I don't know if we want to say failures, but like missteps kind of within a review meeting.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Okay. So I think it's interesting too to think about this fact. You just said most people are probably nodding along or they agree that this is true and it's the case. And for the people that are still listening, I bet that is right. The ones that there's the ones that aren't listening, they probably stop because they're like, what? That doesn't make sense. I actually have been wondering about this, right? So, like generally speaking, I think a lot of people, it would be, let's put it this way, it would be easy to hear about review meeting, look at review meetings and go, I mean, I I have a the retention rate in the RA world, anyways, in financial advice is like 97% according to the Schwab study that goes out every year. And so it's basically stayed at that level. Now, that's just one certain segment of the industry, but we all know that like retention rates are generally speaking pretty high. And it's easy to look at be like, yeah, I mean, retain most of my clients every year. Like, I must be doing something decent, I must be doing something well. I'm actually intrigued to see just overall, as I like put this work and this course out there into the world, how it does and the feedback that it gets relative to the work on the intro and discovery meeting. Because you uh you find a lot of people like the feedback on I need improvement in an intro discovery meeting is painful and immediate. It's like that felt awkward. They didn't become a client. Clearly, I need to do work and get better, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, it matters. There's a bottom line, like we're trying to, you know, I hate talking like sales language here, but like we're trying to make the sale, like we're trying to like earn and kind of win this, you know, this client here. So there is that urgency there to get better. It makes sense.
SPEAKER_01Well, and it's also just like why there a lot of people will go out and they'll spend time, money, effort, and energy learning how do I get this person? If you think about a relationship, right? Like, how do I better date this person? How do I get them to like me? I want to take them on a date, I want to pursue them. And then you get into the marriage and you're like, you don't actually go get help until something's broken, right? And so the review meeting concept to me is interesting because oftentimes advisors wouldn't say something's broken, you know? That's like, yeah, I've probably lost a few clients here and there, but I also gained more. So there's a net positive, right? And so so I think I just thought it was interesting that you said that because while I agree with you, I'm gonna be really interested to see how the numbers and the feedback bear out in terms of whether that's actually true. So, okay, all right. Now, I think I've said it this way. I think there's a handful, a number of pervasive failures that contribute to this lackluster review meeting experience. And first and foremost, number one, uh, you just what you in the example you just gave a second ago about going into your therapy sessions and saying, Hey, I want to learn something about them and I want them to learn something about themselves. The way I think through that is you went in with a purpose and an intention for that meeting. If we asked everybody listening, let's say, well, if we asked 10,000 advisors around the world and they said, Hey, you have a review meeting coming up, what is the purpose of that meeting? Like, why are you getting together? And you can't say because I have to from a compliance standpoint. You can't say, well, because it's what I do every year. If you're like, hey, why is it that we're actually getting together? What would you say? And most of them will they'll have like a decent answer, you know, be like, well, you know, we want to review what they're doing and give them, show them how they're like how things are going and blah, blah, blah. Or and if you then you take a step further and you're like, okay, well, what feeling do you want the client to leave with? Or what would you want them to say when they leave the office that would make you feel like that was a successful meeting? And most people just haven't thought intentionally enough through that to have the answer to that question. So first and foremost, I always say if you're gonna redesign and re deliver this meeting experience, you have to start by developing or getting clear on the purpose of the meeting. And then if you what do you want that client saying to the very first person that they talk to when they leave the meeting? And that's like step one, foundational basics. Some people roll their eyes and they're like, Well, I mean, that's kind of woo-woo stuff. I don't know if that and it's like, well, you can call it that if you want, but it's the foundation of making sure that you have a great meeting. And then from there, I would say there's like in the meeting, there's a few things that happen that most people are aware of. We just don't really, we haven't surfaced. Sorry. So, one, first and foremost, I'm gonna go through all three. I think this actually is the biggest one. I don't know that they're all equal, but one would be there's way too much focus on the gap between the current and the future, or the current and the ideal, and then not enough focus on the gap that exists between where you are currently and where you've come from. And so there's this book called The Gap in the Gain by Dan Sullivan and Ben Hardy, and they talk about this concept in there, which is if all you're doing is focusing on where you are today, currently, in your ideal state, your future, your goal, and where you want to go, it's a good place to start, but you're always gonna be striving, you're always gonna be reaching, you're always gonna feel like you're not doing what you're supposed to be doing. You won't get feelings of like motivation and confidence and success because you're focused on what they call the gap. And so I think we do that all the time when it comes to financial planning conversations. It's always, and I know why, right? It's like, hey, we're here to help you accomplish your goals or what you want your money to do for you. And so we put together this plan so that you can go from where you are today to this future state, and we can give you the plan to get there. Like we invest your money this way, and you have 10 years, and we do all these other things and adjust your cash flow. You're gonna be able to retire when you're 65. The focus is always on, hey, how close am I to retiring at 65? It's always this like striving, I haven't arrived, I need to do more mentality, as opposed to taking time to what do what they call measure backwards. And that the whole concept is you have to look back before you can launch forward. So, why don't we, for example, take time in a meeting to say, hey, here's where you are currently. Now, before we talk about where you're going and how you're doing, let's take a minute to reflect and look at look at all the things you've done and how far you've come since we first started working together. When you started, here's where you were, here's where you are today. Or it could be, hey, in the last year, here are all the action items that you knocked out or that we knocked out together. Here's all the things we've done in the last year or the last three years. You're probably already thinking this with your background, but I'm gonna say it for the listeners. When you sit there and you look at, you shift from the gap between where you are and where you want to be, and you go back and say, Hey, what all have I done and accomplished? What that does is it boosts confidence, it boosts momentum, it boosts resiliency, it gives you hope, and it then therefore makes you more likely to do and accomplish the things you want to do in the future and actually to dream bigger about the future because you're like, wow, I'm pretty impressive. I can do some awesome things. And then you're like, I want to, I want to do some awesome things in the future. And so, why is it that we focus so much on, hey, here's your goal, here's where you need to go, here's how far you need to go to get there. We need to do a better job going, hey, look at how great you've done and all the things that we've done with you to get to this point, which, oh, by the way, you do this for their benefit. But what happens is you're also subtly sliding in, look at all the things that we've done together, and then it's like, well, whatever, I don't care what the fee is. Clearly that's worth it. Right. I mean, it'd be like if I was working out with a personal trainer and that you know, paying exorbitant amounts of money. I'm not, but if I was, that would be and there, I'm like, man, that's a lot of money. If he went back, if every now and then he'd pull up, look back and go, Hey, here's what you looked like when we started, here's what you look like now, here's what you were lifting, here's the exercises you were doing. Oh, by the way, here's how you reported feeling mentally before we started, here's how you feel now. I'd be like, I don't care what I'm paying. Obviously, that's worth it, right? And yeah, and it's a way to say, like, here it this is valuable without saying, hey, what we do is really valuable work. And I hope you think it's worth every dollar, right? It's framed through the client's benefit.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that reflection, kind of looking back in the rear view mirror is uh like how I like would frame it, I think is incredibly important for all the reasons you named there and to highlight really just the behavior change aspect. We show and we give them a model. Like, here's a model of how of what you've done. You have done this before, right? Kind of with each like hurdle or like rung on the ladder. Sometimes that feels new and it feels hard in a way that, you know, having that confidence or that reminder of like you've done hard things before, you know, not to get all Brene Brown right here, but like you can do hard things. You have done this before. Here's an example of when you have done this or what we have accomplished or the outcome of when you put this work in. Like that's incredibly important, you know, like laying that path kind of in the brain, right? So when there are seeds of doubt that come up later, and then it goes back to, oh, but I've done this before. Oh, but I've done this before. So yeah, I I think you're right. Like, I don't know if I've thought about review meetings in that way, right? Of being like that, but it does make sense to me. I think that that's an incredible area or some room where they can grow.
SPEAKER_01So here are the two other what I think are like things we overlook, failures of these meetings, or even in the relationship. So then a second one would be I think we settle for satisfied clients rather than engaged clients. And I've had multiple people on the podcast that come on and they say, like Dan Allison and then Julie Little Julie Littlechild. They came on, they've done the research and they point it out and they're like, Yeah, when we go talk to clients, here's what we find: we find that every advisor has a client base full of satisfied clients, but not engaged clients, or satisfies clients that say that they're willing to refer, make introductions, tell your friends and family about you, but they don't actually do it. Right. And so Julie Littlechild's actually gone deep into this work on engaged clients and creating engagement and the benefits of engaged client versus a not engaged client. And so I'm not like well-versed enough in her research. I know there's four drivers of it. I'm not well versed enough to be able to rattle off those four, but what I do know is that when you go look at listen to those four, read those four, you're like, yeah, I want my clients to be all four of those things hands down. Right. And so it's one of those things where I go, I think we're settling because our clients are satisfied, but they're not fully engaged. And then Meg Lurts was the one mutual friend, friend of the show, friend of both shows. Meg Lurts.
SPEAKER_00Hashtag hashtag um you guys the ultimate guest. Yes.
SPEAKER_01She mentioned something a while back that's always stuck with me, which is just because your clients say that they're fine, right? You're like, hey, okay, how are things going? They're like, Oh, we're good, yeah, everything's good. We'll let you know we need something. Yeah, we'll be back next year. Like, that shouldn't be a badge of honor. That should probably be a warning sign of like they may be happy. And satisfied, but I'm not sure they're actually fully engaged if they're like, yeah, yeah, we're good until next year, right? Like, stay away from me. I'll be back when I need to be. So that's the second thing. The third thing is I think this happens subconsciously. We don't know it's happening, but it happens, which is this subconscious assumption that people and their lives are stagnant. Or said differently, once you get to know somebody, you feel like you know them because you've spent time getting to know them. And then over time, as time goes by, they change and you think that they're still this person they used to be, while they're actually somebody completely different. So in the book, you're not listening. The psychologists have looked at it and they call it the closeness communication bias. You may have heard of this. It's always fun to talk to somebody that knows that like this stuff too. But they they went and they they go do this research on couples, right? And they'll go, hey, who should know you better than your spouse? Like, you guys have been married for 15, 20 years, you know them intimately. And they'll go ask one person in the couple a question, and they'll ask the spouse, hey, what do you think your other like they'll ask the like so they'll ask the husband a question. They'll go ask the wife, hey, what do you think your husband said to answer this question? They'll go through a list of them. Then they'll go ask like friends of these people, and they'll say, Hey, here's what so it's here's what Ashley said. What do you think? What do you think? How do you think she answered it? And you'll find that their current friends in their life, uh on average, tend to know them better than their spouse because the spouse makes this subconscious assumption that the person that they knew and met and got to know years ago is still the same person they are today. But we know from first, we're not gonna go too far into it because this isn't, I mean, I can get into the research all day, but we also know from the end of history illusion that people change way more than they expect to over time. People change, and if you think you know the person well, you probably did, but that doesn't mean that you still do. So we have to be in this constant state, or we have to believe that we need to be constantly rediscovering or re-engaging somebody almost as if they come back and you're like, I probably need to assume that I don't even know who you are. That's a little that's a little bit extreme. But like to some degree, with the assumption needs to be I need to make sure that I'm taking time to relearn and rediscover you because you're going to change. And if you change and I'm not learning that, that's where the people start going, Oh, I don't know if my advisor gets me. I don't know if I trust them, right? Because I don't feel like they know me and understand me.
SPEAKER_00Right. And I think that gets lost in review meetings year after year. Dr. John Gottman, he calls these with couples love maps and how important it is to like update that love map. And so when I'm, you know, listening to you here, like that's what I'm thinking of is advisors don't have a love map with their client, but the review meeting is a really wonderful opportunity to update that map as far as what you know about the client. Like, think about like Apple Maps, like Google Maps, right? Like there are changes, even if they are really small, that are constantly, you know, being made. And, you know, we need a refresh, right? If we're gonna be navigating it correctly. And so I think that you're right. And the review meeting is and really could be that wonderful place and opportunity to find some small ways to update the map. What do you know about your client?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, that's exactly right. But doing that takes intention and it takes purpose. It takes like it can't be walking in and going, so how are the kids? Sports team till doing well, grandkids doing well, what are they up to these days? That's not bad, right? I mean, what that goes into the whole small talk thing that obviously we we've talked about a little bit before.
SPEAKER_00Wait, yes.
SPEAKER_01I'm not saying that that's bad, but you're not gonna necessarily deepen a relationship and make sure that you still truly know and understand somebody if you're not intentionally going in with that being part of the of the purpose of uh of the meeting. And and then I'll tie it back to this, but if you look at if you go look at like all the the stuff that's out there in the industry, and it's like you can go just do a Google search or a chat claw, whatever, and they'll go like, hey, can you pull up for me all the studies that exist on why clients leave their advisor? I think you and I know this. I sometimes take for granted that this is still like mind-blowing information to people because I've been thinking about it for all these years now. The primary drivers are never because of performance, right? Never because of, oh, they're not smart enough, right? It's always one of two things. It's either communication breakdown, like lack of communication, didn't hear from them, didn't hear from them often enough, or which that one always shocks me and everybody else. Yeah. Or underneath that, which is number two, but I think they're also just really closely linked, is I feel like they didn't get me and understand me. I didn't trust them anymore. And so it's like, okay, how do you prevent that? Well, you need to make sure that you're re-engaging, relearning, rediscovering who that person is so that they feel heard and understood.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. All right, you've talked about two different types of review meetings, right? And I want to get into that. What are the two types of review meetings from you know, everything that you've been looking at and creating and doing? Yeah, let's go from there.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So I think it became as I was working through this and going, you know, and talking to some advisors and testing some things out, it became clear that we have to delineate between two different types of review meetings. The very the first type are the ones that advisors love, which is well, I'll call it these aren't like mind-blowing names or very I'd probably need to come up with a cooler name for it. But first one's a reactive meeting. Okay. React meaning it's the situation where the client comes to you, email, phone call, beforehand, whatever, and says, Hey, I have this question. I have this issue that I need to talk through, work out, need your help on. I had this big change in my life that I need some help and guidance on. And so they're bringing to you your opportunity to help and deliver value. So you're reactively providing value, you're reactively helping them out. It'd be the call, like the client that's like, hey, I just left my, I just got uh fired from my job. I think now might be my opportunity to move closer to my kids and grandkids. What do you think? Right. It's like those are the meetings dreams are made of because you sit there and you're like, all right, this is what I was trained to do. I know how to do this, I know how to talk through it, we'll run the numbers. It's like, hey, it's basically handed to you and like, hey, here, will you show me why you're worth the every penny that I'm paying, or you show me your true value right here? And so though we love those meetings. Those don't happen most of the time. The reality is if you have a 20, 30 year relationship with a client, those scenarios probably, I mean, they have every few years. I mean, I know some advisors would say, like, yeah, I'll go seven, eight years before anything major life-changing happens that we end up talking about. And so if this is going to be the anchor of the client experience, if you want to make it meaningful, valuable, and engaging, and something that they like go back and they're like, hey, I love my meetings with my advisors, we have to take it up, we can't just sit back and hope that they and reactively accept this opportunity to provide value, we'll call you as much as I hate that word, sometimes it works. We have to do more proactive. We have to provide more proactive value. So it's reactive is one meeting, proactive is the other. Proactive is where we go, all right, if nothing life-changing is happening, if this isn't just being set in my lap with like, hey, here's what you're gonna do in this meeting, we need to be thinking, like, okay, now the responsibility is on me to take this time that we have together, the anchor of the client experience, the heartbeat of the relationship, and make it memorable, valuable, transformative, life-changing, whatever you want to call it. We shouldn't just sit back and go, well, since something's happened, I'm gonna do a decent job. No, like we can proactively do these meetings better. So those are the two different types that happen. We all love the reactive, but we have to recognize that if you're gonna do this on like for if you do this for a long time, you're gonna have a lot more proactive than reactive meetings. And so that's why it's so, I think that's why it's so important to start thinking through okay, well, what do I need to do differently if I need to like proactively create this memorable transformative experience?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I actually, for what it's worth, I like the names. I think you should keep them.
SPEAKER_01Okay. All right, yeah. All right, noted, done. So if I give me a negative feedback on it, I will let you know.
SPEAKER_00Well, they're wrong. Um, there you go.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00It will, but like also here's why. I think it's simplistic enough so that it makes sense, right? And then from there, like if we're having a if it's a reactive meeting versus like a proactive meeting, it just kind of guides the like principles of like, what do I need to do? Right. What's the mindset, right? And also, what is the client's mindset and how can I understand that? And you know, I think client mindset is something that we haven't really talked about yet. And how do we understand their mindset like coming into a meeting or right before a meeting? Tell us a little bit about what the client's mindset is or how we can understand, how advisors can understand that better when it comes to preparing for review meetings.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So I think this is one of those things that if I sit back and go, all right, I need to I need to do a better job in these review meetings. Foundationally, you need to have the purpose and the feeling down, right? What's the purpose of the meeting? But I think on the path to getting to that purpose, it's like almost crucial to be able to sit there and understand what's actually going on and happening inside the client's mind. Like what is it that they're experiencing? Because I can design two meetings. And if one of them is just what I think is great and I put that in front of a client, the other one takes into account what they're thinking, feeling, experiencing, and needing from me. It almost doesn't matter how great this other meeting is, like the one that's more catered to meeting the client where they are is almost inevitably going to be better, right? So it's like kind of popular. And I mean, you've heard people say before when it comes to intro meetings, that when you have a prospect meeting with a prospective new client, they put a meeting on the calendar. Like, let's just be honest and humble ourselves and say, like, they probably didn't wake up and go, I want to meet with a financial advisor today to talk about my life and my money, like stranger. I think that's 200% true. I think that we should probably say or expect that if annual review check-in type meetings in any type of profession or field, like call it, you know, your primary care doctor, dentist, therapist, even like a haircut, whatever you want to do, whatever you want to look at it. But generally speaking, most people don't get fired up for those situations, right? Like I can honestly say, like, I wouldn't sit there and go, man, if I had a blank slate today, the one thing I would want to do is go to the dentist or go to the doctor or go see my therapist. It's like, I don't, I'm just not generally like pumped about it. Now, I don't think that's gonna be a blanket statement. There probably are some clients that look forward to it.
SPEAKER_00Just the weird ones. I'm one. Yeah, but yeah.
SPEAKER_01They and they probably look forward to it because uh honestly, the majority of the time, they're probably retired near their social avenue.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_01But I think the expectation should be or the mindset should be that generally speaking, most people aren't saying if I could choose one thing to do today, this is what I would do. Right? They're there because they maybe feel like they have to be, they're not really, but they're like, I'm here, hopefully it'll be good. And so that from that standpoint, we need to be more thoughtful and intentional about what we're doing in those meetings to make sure that in the future they do look forward to it because it's like, hey, that was actually a really helpful, valuable, meaningful experience. So that's I think that's number one. Tied into that though, is oftentimes there may not be, I'm not gonna say they're dreading it, but maybe they're not ex they're not excited about it. But I think there is a general level, mostly speaking, or generally speaking, there's this level of uncertainty and anxiety that exists, oftentimes because it's like I don't really know exactly what to expect. I know we did the last five years, so it's probably something like that. But what if I'm about to get delivered bad news that I didn't expect? Like I'm here for a little for a checkup, I'm here to know how am I doing. Like I think it's going okay, but is it? I don't know. Like, so I think it's important to recognize the people that they're probably a little bit uncertain, that they're maybe a little bit anxious. And then at the same time, I think this is a key one if we if we talk in a minute about in what to do in these meetings to make like to rediscover and go deeper. If you've done review meetings one way the majority of your career or in the relationship with a client, they're probably, or I mean, they're almost certainly on autopilot in terms of what they're expecting from the meeting and the overall experience, right? It's like, oh, I've done this a number of times before. I schedule it, I go, I park in the same spot right over here. I probably go get my coffee beforehand, I park in the same spot, go on the left elevator, not the right elevator. And when I get out, I make sure I go to the bathroom on my way into the lobby where I'll be greeted by the same person. And so what that does is it creates the expectation that they're all the experiences are going to be the same. And so if you want to deliver a different or a better experience for the first time in a long time, you have to know, hey, that's something I need to disrupt. I need to disrupt their flow, their routine, the autopilot mode that they're in so that we can actually do something uh different and something better. So let's boil it down to this. That's a lot of ways to say, I think what's basically can be boiled down to three things. What is it that's going on in clients' minds and what do they need from these meetings? They need to know number one, first and foremost, that do you know me and understand my situation? But do you still get me know me and understand my situation? Do I trust that you know it well enough? Because if you're giving me advice and you don't, if I don't feel like you know me, why would I trust it? Why would I take it? So, do you still know me and understand my situation? How am I doing? And am I gonna be okay? So if you can check the box on if we want to simplify it, it's like check the box on those three things, and you're probably gonna be doing a really good job. Right now, if you can then if you can then sprinkle in the how well have I done in the past, like how much progress have I made, right? Then now you're taking it to the next level. But at the core, those are like the three things that every client needs that's going on in their mind coming into the to the meeting.
SPEAKER_00All right. Well, you kind of set us up here for segueing into some of my favorite stuff. I think your favorite stuff too, where we are very much aligned, and that is on the practical piece of all of this, right? So for you know, advisors listening, I would imagine at this point they're like, yeah, this is really great, but dear lord, tell me what to do. So, Brendan, all right, let's get into it. What are some takeaways here? Practical things that advisors should be doing, whether they're running a proactive meeting or a reactive meeting, you know, looking at the client's mindset, what are the things that they should be doing?
SPEAKER_01I'm gonna, to make it simple, broken it down to call it the four R's. I love that four of Relax. The way, the way that I'm explaining it and telling advisors is you don't have to do all four of these in every meeting. You don't even have to do all four of them. If you're like that R, I love that R, I'm gonna stick with that R, you should do that. If you're like, I want to do all of them, but I don't know how I do that in one meeting, that it's okay. If they're gonna be a client for a long time, which they are because you're gonna start doing these things, then you've got an opportunity, you can make sure you do you can do one R one year or two of them every year, and then you throw in the other R another year. So just know going into it. It's like I you don't have to do all of these things one hour per year. Yeah, right. So you just think through how you want to build and design it. But four R's reflect, reassure, recalibrate, and then reimagine. I think reflect is basically the exact concept we talked about when we were talking about the gap and the gain and focusing on wins and progress. So the idea there is to make sure there's intentional time set aside to go back and focus on, talk through, look at the wins that they've had and the progress that they've made, right? So that you're framing it in a way that's like, look, you've done some amazing things, you've done great work, you've been successful. And then what that does is it puts them in a positive state. They're feeling confident, they're feeling successful, they're feeling motivated, they're hopeful, right? The things we talked about, right? And so then you're putting them in a better play, they're in a better place mentally in the relationship, but also for the rest of the meeting. That's why I put it first, just because I think that's all oftentimes the best place to start is they're like, hey, look at these great things that we've done. And so that's the reflect part. Now, practically speaking, like I've seen and I've got some examples, but I've seen people that put together, they'll display it for them, they'll do it visually, and they'll have this document that goes back and it looks at all the action items they've all that they've completed, all the things that they've done, and it'll say, Hey, over the last year or the last three years, and it'll just list out. Here are the things that you've done. I've saw another one that they categorize it even by the financial planning topic. So it was like cash flow, investments, retirement. I'm not gonna get all six of them, but like you know, insurance, estate planning, whichever one I'm missing. Anyways, yeah. And so he had it categorized that way, and underneath each one had listed out here's what we did this year. Either you or us, here's what we did in each one of these. Here are the action items that, or here are the things that you knocked out, the things you accomplished, right? So I think that's one piece of it. The other thing you can do is you can also discuss, you can reflect by discussing, meaning you don't have to have if you're like, hey, I'm not how am I going to create a visual to show them that? Well, first of all, what I'd say is it'll probably take one day with AI if compliance allows you. But that's for a different conversation. You can also discuss it and just ask people questions. You can point out the things that they've done, but you can just ask things like, hey, scale one to 10, how do you feel about your current financial situation? Like, how do you think things are going? And you have to ask it the first time to get a baseline, right? Correct. But even the first time you ask it, you can use that as an opportunity to go, okay, well, if you said you said a seven, so that's that's pretty good. Like, curious, why not a six? Why or why not a two? Like what and they'll start listing off the things that they're doing or that they're happy and satisfied with, right? And so, but then from that point forward, you have an anchor point. And so the next year, the next meeting, you probably want to move forward, but if not, you don't want to go backwards, right? Uh, and there's a you know, there's a number of different questions you can ask to give them a feel for hey, how are you doing, and then tie them to progress that's being made. Let's reflect. It reassures pretty, I think quite frankly, it's pretty easy. And it's easy because it's basically how do I help answer the question of how am I doing and am I on track? Yeah. So, in other words, I think that's what the reason I say it's easy is because I think that's what most advisors do day in and day, well not yeah, we day in and day out in their review meetings is they probably already have some version of here's how you're doing, right? Whether it be pulling up their investment accounts, whether it be pulling up a show where their net worth's at, whether it's like a goal tracker of some sort. But I will say this the key to doing that better is to continue reassuring, continue answering the question of, hey, where am I at and how am I doing? But don't just leave it focused on here's where you're at and here's where you're going, right? Like, yes, let them know that they're on track, but also go back and highlight how well they've done to get there. So for example, let's say that the goal, one simple goal would be, hey, I need to build up a $50,000 in a savings account. And you're like, all right, here's one of our goals is $50,000 in savings. Right now you've got $30,000, but and so $20,000 to go, but you've put in $12,000 per year for the last two and a half years up to this point, and that's how you got to this $30,000 or $20, or did I say $25,000 or $30,000? Which is $20, 30. 20. Either way, the point remains. The numbers matter, actually, they do matter. Uh but in this example, the point is like you're still bringing in that reflection progress principle, right? Where it's like reassure by showing them how they're doing, but also letting them know that they've done well up to this point. So the third one is recalibrate. I mean, I think the way I think of uh recalibrator, the analogy that I've that sticks with me on this is if you take an airplane that's flying long distance, right, and it's on track to go from one city to the next, you can alter its course by one degree, and it'll end up in a completely different destination because you're aimed at a different place and with enough time, what happens is you start aiming at the wrong things. You start focusing on or working towards the wrong things. I think that's what happens with clients as they change over time, is they may have said, at one point they may have said, Hey, I want to save for this vacation home in Florida, this beach house in Florida. And so that's what you're working towards. And if you're not recalibrating, in other words, making sure that what's important to them, what was once important to them is still important to them, then you're gonna be aiming towards or shooting towards the wrong goal. Now, some people may be thinking, well, Brendan, if they don't want that anymore and we're working towards it, they're gonna tell me the best thing. No, they're no. Right. Yeah, I don't think they generally, generally speaking, people won't even know that it's not the case anymore. It's like, oh, I because now we're getting into another bias, but like sunk cost bias, where it's like, well, I've already put 200,000 towards it. I can't get out of it now. It's like, yes, you can, but you have to know what's important to you now to be able to justify doing that. And most people won't sit there and go, yeah, this is no longer important to me. I'm just gonna keep working towards this thing that I once thought was important, but I don't really think it's important anymore. But I don't know what else is important. So here we are. Right. Yeah. So you have as an advisor, you have the opportunity to help them recalibrate, which is where I think it's an opportunity to essentially the best thing you can do is go back and treat that a meeting or a conversation as a another discovery meeting. If you want the simplest way to apply it, you just do your discovery meeting all over again.
SPEAKER_00A rediscovery meeting.
SPEAKER_01The rediscovery meeting. That's right. And you go, all right, I need to make sure that we're still you do this discovery for a reason, right? It's like, hey, this is to make sure that we know what's important to you, what we're aiming for, how to the goals that you have or the values that you have that are going to drive our decisions. And so if people change over time, shouldn't we continue discovering over time? And to your point earlier, let them discover things about themselves. And then the last one is reimagine, which is more about all right, if we've reflected, we've been they're reassured, we're recalibrated, we know that they're still on track, they're aimed in the right direction, they know that these things are important to them. Then I think this is where it gets the most fun is where you get a chance to go, okay, we've got all those three things down. You've done really, really well, as you can see. You're On track, let's take a minute and just dream and imagine and go, hey, what else is possible? Right? Like, let's not settle for what we've already done that we're doing good things, right? But the idea here is for you to maximize the life you live with the money that you have. And I think there's opportunity to be able to do more things in alignment with what's important to you. And so I let's just think about like I want to let's let's dream together, right? Like, is there something that you've always wanted to do, but you've never done because you were afraid you weren't you weren't able to do it, or you were afraid what people would think. If you had all the money in the world, money was no issue. What's one thing you would spend on that you don't currently? If you knew these are all the like the discovery meeting concepts that I that we all try to teach around, like, hey, let's do better discovery. But the idea is to get them to dream bigger around the things that are important to them, right?
SPEAKER_00And I want to just add, I think that this is actually really I don't know, but I'm curious to know what you think about this. But sometimes I feel like advisors might think they can't do discovery type questions in a review meeting, right? And maybe I'm making that up. Maybe that's an assumption, but that's like a perception that I've observed is like we can't ask those questions like in a review meeting because this is really what a review meeting is. Like this is the definition and like this is what it means. And so I actually really appreciate and love that you're bringing up this like reimagine R here as part of what could and can, and even maybe a little bit, this might sound judgmental, should be a part of some review meetings. And I will say that when I have seen this happen, we were working with a couple, it was a co-facilitated meeting between myself and one of the advisors that we work with. And they asked kind of this question. It was a middle-aged couple, like kind of in their 40s, and they were knocking it out of the freaking park. There had been like a liquidity event, and so you know, a windfall here, and like this whole like reimagine now was like, oh my gosh. We didn't expect this at this point in time. We anticipated this to come like 10, 20 years later, not now. And where like this was the advisor, you know, we kind of teamwork here, makes the dream work, like did a really fantastic job of like uncovering is the husband had thought that the wife wanted an international house. Like that had been talked about 20 years prior, you know, when they're like one day we'll have like an international like vacation house. And in this meeting, he was like, Well, I mean, you know, we can start looking at properties like in Europe. And then the wife was like, wait a second, like I know.
SPEAKER_01Do we talk about this first?
SPEAKER_00Or she's like, I don't want a house in Europe. Like, I actually I don't want to be tied down, I don't want a vacation property. And I I've been thinking a little bit about this kind of client case as you've been talking here, like the updating the map, but even like the reimagining here, too, of like, this is why this is so important. I think to ask some of the questions that you've been, you know, posing here and giving examples is because now for this couple, now it's a conversation of like, oh, wait, I thought you wanted the house in Europe. Wait, now you don't. I've been working under the assumption that when we accumulated, you know, this kind of wealth or when we got to this point, like that would be the next thing that like we're saving for. And the advisor's like, oh, new information, like for me, you know, but then we're like, okay, hey, if like the house in Europe is no longer a thing, you know, we didn't use the word reimagine, but it then was this like, well, what is possible? Like we need to kind of rethink this. So I think that sometimes advisors think like we can't do quote, you know, discovery questions like in review meetings, but I think we can, and I think when we do, it clients leave with far more clarity, and you do too, as a planner, right? Right, right, right, around where are we going? Like, and what are we doing here?
SPEAKER_01The okay, so just I just want to point this out and just so you know, but like the example you gave there is like literally the definition of closeness, communication, bias in couples playing out in real life, where it's like, hey, we talked about this once, so clearly you still want to do this, right? Otherwise, you would have told me that you don't want to do this anymore. So there's zero judgment on them because it literally happens to everybody. Absolutely. Right.
SPEAKER_00It's like Clayton and I, it's happened to Clayton and I. Yeah. When we had no money, I wanted, you know, just flowers and a card for holidays. Now that we have more money, I want nice things.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, right, right. Yeah. Okay, see, that's a it's a great point. It happens to everybody. And I think the uh awesome privilege that advisors have and the opportunity that they have, and we're not going to do this right now again today. Uh, right now I think it's a privilege and an opportunity. In the future, I think it may be more of a necessity for the role, the job, but we uh we have the opportunity, the privilege of helping guide clients through these conversations that they wouldn't otherwise normally have, but we're there to help them have those conversations to get what you said, which is better clarity around what it is that they want and the things that are truly most important to them and then what they want to dream and do in the future. And the reason I say necessity is because I mean, if AI keeps, if we keep going at this rate, right, it's like, hey, the human side shines more. And so, but we I don't I'd actually we don't want to go there right now. That's a whole nother conversation. But if you're thinking about decline experience, delivering value to clients, being worth more than what you charge, wanting them to refer friends and family, wanting them to be happier and more successful in their life and with their money, then that conversation is uh hands down infinitely more val a better use of time than the here's how your portfolio is doing conversation. And yeah, I don't think you can argue that. If you want to argue that, you're well, you're probably not listening anymore. But to your point around, well, I can't do this in a review meeting, you're right, it's not perception, it's 100% true. And so I think part of the reason people think that they can't do it in a review meeting is just simply for time-bound purposes, it's like hey, I only have a certain amount of time. Okay, that's true, but there are ways to restructure and re-architect the way that you're using that time so that you do have time and space to have more of that conversation. And also, by the way, it doesn't have to be the full meeting. Would I make sure we have one of these rediscovery meetings every at least a couple years? I mean, without but it doesn't have to be the whole meeting, it can literally be two questions that you mentioned at the beginning or at the end that at least get them thinking differently. So, this idea of I can't do it because it's review meeting because of the amount of time that I have, that's just an excuse because there are ways like I know an advisor that sends out the market update and the portfolio review and performance via email prior to the meeting. They come in with any questions that they have, but they don't talk about it in the meeting because it gets sent beforehand. So they use that meeting in a more productive, beneficial way. The second reason advisors don't have the that they say I can't do it in a review meeting is because it's like, how am I gonna say I need to rediscovery that I don't know you when you're here for a review and you've been a client for like eight years, right? Right. And that's the one I can actually sympathize with. But the one of like, I don't have time, it's like, no, no, no, no. You like doesn't take a lot of or it doesn't take a lot of brain power to re-architect the meeting structure to get time. Sure. But the fear of I don't want them to feel like I don't like how do I say I don't I'm gonna want to learn more about you. I mean, imagine going to one of your lifelong best friends being like, hey, kind of this obvious thing, I don't really know about you. To which I just I mean, to which I would say, like, first of all, you can always you can frame it in a helpful way, which is like, hey, by the way, you have to do before this one. I said you have to prep people for a better meeting. You can't let them extinct that this they can't go on autopilot and let them think that this meeting is gonna be the exact same meeting that they've always had. And then when they get in there, go, All right, here's what I want to do. It's not gonna go well, it's just not. You have to let them know beforehand that, hey, we're gonna do something a little bit different. We tested this out, our clients love it, and so we're calling it a rediscovery meeting. And the reason we're doing this is because while we feel like we know you pretty well and think we would ace the test, the worst thing we can imagine is setting up or having a picture of your financial life that's not or your life that's not accurate, and then we're making decisions that aren't in alignment with what's most important to you. And who's gonna say, no, no, no, you know me. Come on, we don't need to do that. No, no, no.
SPEAKER_00I I will say that this is something for you know, if you're listening here and you're not really sure, this is something that myself and I think he would be okay with me naming names, but Jake Northrop, we work with experience your wealth, and this is something that we worked on and have done rediscovery meetings. And so I can speak from at least experience in that they have gone well and they have been helpful.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00And they have been positively received. Uh, and so everything kind of there to your point of like there is a way to script it and to frame it. And on the client side, it usually feels like, oh, they really want to get to know me. Like, oh, they really care about me, like they want to know more about like who I am. You know, they're willing to kind of go through this and learn, you know, different things, right? Kind of about or get an update. And so it's usually the advisor sphere. It's not, it's not, I don't want to say that it's not based in reality because that would maybe not be quite fair. Um, a little judgmental, but it's, you know, the on the client side of things, clients usually are like, yes, please, that would be great.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And guess what, by the way? If, well, first of all, I'm gonna say this. Can you imagine going to pick your service provider, Dr. Dentist, therapist? And you went in and you had the same experience as you always do, but then you found out from a friend that goes to them that they did this like awesome new thing that they think is valuable and helpful for the service they provide. And then you go back to them and you're like, Hey, why didn't you do that for me? And they're like, Well, we just thought it'd be a little bit awkward if we did this thing we thought was better for you. You'd be like, What? What are you doing? Like, that no, that doesn't make any sense whatsoever. So I think, yeah, and fear lives in the vague. Fear is we make up these false realities of what we think is gonna happen. Yeah. What I can say is I've had the same experiences. Um, it's not gonna go bad, it's not gonna go poorly. People love talking about themselves. Worst case scenario is you prep them for this type of meeting. You let them know, hey, we're gonna do something a little bit different. I want to mix it up a little bit. Here's why. And then they say, no, thanks. I'm not interested. And then good news, you get to go right back to doing what we've settled for for all these years, but but at least you they've told you, right? It's like, okay, I I tried, but they don't want to do it, and that's fine.
SPEAKER_00So we're I don't have time for that right now. Can we look at this later in the year? Right. Like they might give something, right? Kind of out switches all information, but they still leave with the sense of knowing, hey, my advisor wants to have a cool conversation and get to know me in a deeper way.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. I mean, that I can assure you that clients will be more irritated if they found out that you didn't do something because you were afraid to ruffle their feathers, then they would feel as if you try if you tried to do something or you implemented something you thought was going to be helpful that they didn't want to do. Right. It's like, anyway. So I I obviously I could go all day on that. But we could we could fear is understandable.
SPEAKER_00The fear is understandable. Yeah. And to quote my, I say that she's my bestie, but only because she like commented on one of my LinkedIn posts like two years ago. Brenee Brown. Yeah. Have I told you? Have I ever told you that? Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_01Well, no, I remember seeing the post and texting you about it being like, is this like the highlight of your life?
SPEAKER_00It is the highlight, literally the highlight of my life. My bestie, Brunei Brown, as she says, we can do hard things. And so, with that, for those of you listening, if any of this feels hard or difficult, you can do it. And luckily, luckily, Brendan is here to help you with that. So, Brendan, let's talk a little bit about for those that are listening and they're like, hey, I actually really want to have a different review meeting experience and I want to learn how to do that better. How can advisors, how can listeners go about finding out more about this ultimate review meeting course that you're putting out?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so there's gonna be the course, and there's a course because I think it's the best way to package it into an easy, fast, like practical way to do it with resources and all those kinds of things. And and in the past, when I've done it around meetings, it gets good, it gets received well. If you're one of those people that's like, I will never ever spend any money to make myself and my clients' lives better, then there's other things too. Like I'm gonna be uh writing in several, there'll be several publications in the industry with articles about it. I'm gonna spend most of September writing LinkedIn posts about it so you can go back and dig up all those posts from September of 2026. I'm gonna record a podcast about it and do a webinar. And so, like, there's gonna be enough like good, solid, free content out there that you'll gather some cool things, you'll learn what to do. But if you'd rather say, hey, instead of wasting my time trying to piece it all together, if you just want it in one seamless place, that's what the course is for.
SPEAKER_00I love that. We will make sure that we include all of that information there in the show notes, links with how to get in touch with Brendan around that, all the information there. All right, Brendan, my friend. If people want more Brendan in their life, maybe they want a little bit more of like the review, but if they like if they want more just like Brendan in general, where can people find you? Where can they connect with you?
SPEAKER_01Well, I would tell them they need to recalibrate and rethink what they actually want to be doing and spending their time on. But if they recalibrate and land in the same place, the podcast, the human side of money, uh it was on a little bit of a sabbatical for a portion of the year, but it's there's also a backlog of 156 evergreen episodes of relevant content that with an episode with Ashley as well. Yeah. But that's there, it's uh relaunching here soon. And then, I mean, I hang out on LinkedIn all the time. So those are probably the two best places for now.
SPEAKER_00Awesome. Perfect. We'll make sure that we also include uh that in the show notes there for you. Thank you to all of you for allowing Brendan and I into your ears and into your mind to Nay. It's a part of a week that you don't really have to give us, but you're choosing to. And for that, we are both incredibly grateful for. If this conversation resonated with you, I like Brendan, would also love to keep the conversation going. You can find me on LinkedIn as well, where I hang out probably way too much, sharing insights on the human side of planning. And if you'd like a little bit more beyond the plan in your life, you can head over to our website www.beondthefp.com. You can sign up for our monthly newsletter. If you are listening right now, and it is October of 2026, and we have some exciting news that we will be launching a training called The Practice here starting in January 2027. So if you'd like to get in on that, feel free to shoot us an email or respond here. Uh, if you're listening to this in Apple Podcasts, you can text us, let us know you'd like to get on the waiting list for that. We'd love to have you there. But most importantly, make sure to follow the show wherever you get your podcast so that you never miss a future episode like this one. And as always, my friends, remember finances don't have feelings, but your clients do. Until next time, keep planning, keep growing, and keep going beyond. Thanks for joining me on this episode of Planning and Beyond. I hope you found today's insights valuable and inspiring for both your practice and your personal growth. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. Your feedback helps us reach more advisors like you, who are dedicated to making a difference. For more resources, tips, and to continue the conversation, visit our website at beyondthefp.com. You'll find articles, tools, and information about upcoming episodes designed to support your journey and practice. Stay connected with us on social media and never miss an update. Follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn. And remember, the best way to grow is to keep learning and sharing. Until next time, keep planning, keep growing, and keep going with beef.
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