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How Young Advisors Build Real Confidence (it's not more certifications) · Root Ready

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome back to another episode of the Root Ready Podcast.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_01: Today we're going to be talking about confidence.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: How do you build confidence, especially as a young advisor?
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: And this topic I know is very near and dear to me specifically when we think about root, because I know at Root we have a lot of highly skilled, highly talented, highly engaged advisors.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: We also have a lot of very young advisors.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I know that one of the struggles, at least I had as a young advisor, wasn't how to develop the technical competency, but how do I develop the confidence to be able to sit across from a client and feel like I can fully own that relationship and deliver to them the best possible experience?
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: So uh Eden is here to help me have this conversation.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: And Eden, I'm curious from your standpoint.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: You're a young advisor, you're a very talented advisor, you're a very accomplished advisor in terms of passing exams, in terms of having a lot of the technical knowledge.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: As you think of your career, though, how do you think of confidence?
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: Like, is that something that you feel?
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: Like, is that a real thing?
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: That's like, yeah, that confidence gap that comes up being a young, a young advisor.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I would say we really see it a lot, especially in these associate roles, as we look forward in our careers and kind of see this gap of where is the gap?
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: And it is nine times out of 10 a confidence gap.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: Because, like you said, we have a lot of really talented advisors here with great experience.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: And we passed the tests.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: We've done those things.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: The technical expertise is there.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: So, what is it that holds you back?
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: And confidence is the answer, nine times out of 10.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I will just say, too, you touched on, you know, it's hard to pass the CFP.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's not an easy test.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I took it when I was 24 and I assumed that once I passed it, I would be super confident and would no longer have fears and would be ready to be a lead advisor.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: Not true at all.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: Not true at all.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: I it did not make me feel that way after passing that test.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: So nail on the head there with the technical expertise.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: But how do we get to that next level?
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: What does that look like?
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: So is I because I know what it looked like for me of just sitting across from a client, and especially when I would sit there with the firm owner of the previous firm I worked at.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: Like it was like, don't, don't leave the room.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: Don't, I don't want to be the one that has to own this.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: And it wasn't that I didn't feel like I knew it.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: It was almost, at least in my sense, I was in my head about are they perceiving me as someone that doesn't know what I'm talking about simply because I'm 24 years old, I'm 25 years old.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: So it wasn't a gap in feeling like I couldn't determine the best solution for them.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: It was this, I'm thinking, what are they thinking?
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: Are they thinking that so it's just this weird circular, what are they thinking?
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh think that I couldn't get out of my head.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: How does it show up for you?
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's definitely part of it.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I think being on Zoom more makes that even more difficult to feel.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: I think you can really get a better perception of that when you're sitting face to face across from someone.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: And there is that question in the back of your head, whether you're going to present in the meeting or not, even just being present, especially as an associate in the support role.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not leading this meeting.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of questions in your head about what does the client think about?
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: Why I'm here, the value I add, do I add value if I'm not saying anything in this meeting?
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: What would happen?
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: And what would the client's reaction be if I did start to participate in this meeting?
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's a lot of kind of mental scripts when you're involved in these meetings, particularly as an associate in the support role, of this little bit of like discomfort with does the client really know what's going on here?
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: And are we all comfortable?
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: Am I even comfortable?
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I think sometimes it's not very comfortable.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: So let's talk about what can what can we do, especially as young advisors, what can we do to combat this?
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: Because um I I guess where my mind first goes, when someone says, Hey, how do I how do I develop confidence?
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: The first thing that comes to my mind is, oh, you just get reps.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: But I think that's I think it's a right answer, but I think it's a somewhat incomplete answer.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: And have you ever uh have you ever heard of the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell?
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: I have heard of it, but I haven't read it.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: In that book, I think it was that book where he he popularized the concept of if you want mastery over something, you need to spend 10,000 hours doing it.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I think he uses examples of like the Beatles and the time they spent in the studio, or it there's based upon some study of like, you know, top musicians by age 20, they already spent 10,000 hours at their crap.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: So it's just this sense of, yeah, you expect it's a volume.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's true.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's why, especially for young advisors, like if you're coming through a, I don't know, a Fidelity or a Vanguard or Charles Schwartz, like you're getting a lot of reps depending on the role that you're in.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: And that is helpful to an extent.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: But if I go back to the Malcolm Gladwell book, The 10,000 Hours, he has since not walked back what he said, but but said the kid, that's I maybe oversimplified it.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's not 10,000 hours that creates mastery, it's 10,000 iterations.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if I give the same presentation over and over and over and over again, if I go through the same dog and pony show with a client over and over, it's like, okay, you're very, very good at that very focused presentation for that specific thing.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: But like, how good an advisor isn't just good at one thing.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like an advisor's got to be able to see the entirety of the landscape, understand where you are in that, understand where you want to be, help navigate around both financial challenges, uh, maybe mental, emotional, psychological challenges to help like that's not coming from rehearsing the same script over and over and over again.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so that 10,000 iterations thing, I think, is what it is.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: So, how do we do that as advisors?
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: Because to me, um it's going to happen at some point.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: And what I mean by that is you're gonna go through life.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: And when you go through life, it's you know, there's there's relationships, good and bad, there's the career stuff, good and bad, there's the health events, good and bad, there's the family emergencies, good and bad, there's the marriage, children, mortgage, hard decisions, hard times.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: In other words, there's life.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: And at a certain point, like enough of those iterations have been thrown at you that you're like, yeah, okay, I've I've got confidence, just that's come from saying I've gone through hard times and I've come out the other side of it.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: But if that's the default path, like, yeah, you'll maybe be a confident advisor by the time that you're 50 because all those things have happened.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: That's not what we're asking.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: We're not asking, like, how do we ultimately get there when we're much older and we've had these life experiences that get us there?
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: At least the way I think through is like, how do we pull that forward?
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: How do we have that same level of confidence, that same level of um experience, but we pull it forward?
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like we don't want to wait 20 years or 30 years to have it.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: We want to have it sooner because we want to be excellent at what we do.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: Is that making sense so far?
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: Anything that you feel like I'm missing in that?
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: No, I think that makes a lot of sense.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: And just expanding upon why the answer to this question isn't just take reps.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's much deeper than that.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: And how do we complete the answer more than just take reps?
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of it is, I think, pulling some of that life experience forward.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I do think that's a key thing for younger advisors, especially people who are in the early mid-20s.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: Like, for example, I've never bought a home.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's an area of confidence that I feel I lack when I go into a conversation with clients about buying a home.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: So that's just a prime example of how do how do we kind of absorb those life experiences and pull that forward for us as advisors.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: And what I'm gonna get at ultimately is like, how do you, how do you guide someone through retirement when you've never retired?
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: How do you guide someone through purchasing a home when you've never purchased a home?
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: How do you guide someone through a you fill in the blank if you've never done anything?
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have to do it, but you have like what's the what's the underlying, like what's actually happening here?
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's not the home purchase that's a thing.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's not the retirement that's a thing.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's the major decision in front of me that's the thing.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: And how do I approach that?
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: So like I right before this, there's prep and it's like, okay, who would maybe be a good illustration of this?
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: So I went to Tony Robbins uh LinkedIn page.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: Tony Robbins, so famous business coach, life strategist, entrepreneur, whatever, lots of things.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um he you know, he he's the you go to his conference, you do the firewalk thing, you jump in down thing.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's a big, I don't even know what to call him.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: I think life coach is maybe overly s overly simplistic.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: But um I went to his LinkedIn just to say, what's he posting on there?
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: And he posted, I copied and pasted it.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: He essentially wrote a post about, you know, spend 15 minutes each morning in gratitude.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: So you prime yourself for the rest of the day and you know, you carry that energy through the rest of the day.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: And the the last sentence there was, you decide what to focus on, or the world will gladly decide for you.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the concept being, are you gonna focus on that gratitude and carry that energy, or are you gonna focus on um, you know, whatever Instagram saying or email or Slack, because that's the first thing you open in the morning.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: And it's good and it's great.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, yeah, that's it, that's uh, that's I I like that.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna take that and I'm maybe going to reevaluate um my mornings, or I'm gonna reevaluate how I'm doing things.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: But here's why I wanted to look at that.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: Let's say I didn't know you at all, Eden, and I go onto LinkedIn, and you have that same exact post that Tony Robbins post, like word for word, verbatim.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe if there's an image of the same exact image, nothing's different.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: Tony Robbins got 3,500 reactions on his post.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: This is not against Eden.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: This is not against like if I did the same, it's like I'm not gonna get that many.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely not.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe a handful, maybe and so it's like, why is that?
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I I think the principle here actually applies to us a lot as advisors of when we say, why aren't people taking my advice?
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like, why don't I have the like I'm telling this client how to purchase a home, I'm telling this client how to retire.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's not the message that's wrong.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if you and Tony Robbins both posted the same exact thing, the message is the same thing.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: So there's nothing wrong with a message.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: I don't wrong's the right word, but there's something the message isn't incomplete, it's the messenger that's different.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that that's the thing, is is we can say all the right things, and the reps gets us to be able to say the right things.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: But our job as advisors, and I can't emphasize this enough, it's not just the message, it's the messenger.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: Why does Tony Robbins get so many more likes for saying the same exact things?
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know, every every financial advisor thinks there's a they're a life coach on LinkedIn, so you can go on and they're saying similar stuff.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, why aren't they getting the same likes?
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, it's a different messenger.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: They're not wrong people, they're not saying the wrong things.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: But Tony Robbins has lived such a life of all these experiences that he's pulled forward.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: He's maybe lived a hundred lifetimes in one.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: And so when you get that, like you become the type of person that when you say that message, it lands well.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: It, it, it's um, he's had the 10,000 iterations.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so at risk of drifting too far off from what the point of this episode is about.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, how do we do that?
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: Like, how when we give that message, here's how much you should convert, here's how you can retire.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: Here let's stop thinking about more reps with the message and how do we become a better messenger?
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: And if you remember, I think it was at our team retreat when Carl Richards was presenting, it's like, hey, if you want to be a better advisor, start by being a better human.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: And the more I thought, and I think it was there that he said that, and and and not better, like, okay, intrinsically everyone's worth the same.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: I get that, but like, be a better human, have more experiences, do more things.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: And the more I think about it, the more I realize, yeah, that is exactly right.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: Like, where's our lack of confidence coming from?
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's our our experience in life has been pretty narrow.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not to say we haven't done a whole lot of stuff by our early 20s, but that stuff's been kind of on one track.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, you go to middle school, you do well, you go to high school, you do well, you go to college, you do well, you get your job, entry-level job, you do well.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's been that, but the the breadth of experiences hasn't really maybe been where it would be.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: And um, like I remember for me, I got fired for my last job when I was 27, and I felt like I was starting to kind of a little bit come into my own, but still wasn't fully confident.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: And like I would step into a meeting, it's like, oh, if this client's got it's so funny how we do this.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: Like if they had got half a million dollars or less, like I feel pretty confident because if for like for some reason the dollar amount changes anything, it doesn't, but it just changes what goes on in your head of, oh my gosh, this is a$3 million client.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: Like what, this is a$10 million client.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: What do it's the same planning concepts, just with bigger numbers.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I got fired, and I remember when I was starting root, because like I'm going to, it was a very scary time.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: I got fired, I owed a bunch of money, I essentially got like taken in a Ponzi scheme and all my money was gone.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like, okay, if I'm going to do this, like I know I'm gonna be probably pretty scared.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: But there's this whole saying that the hardest thing you've ever done is the hardest thing you've ever done.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: So I was okay, I don't want starting root to be the hardest thing I've ever done.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: So what can I start doing on a daily basis to expand the limits of my comfort zone?
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like if these are my limits today, and I, you know, how it's impossible to fully define them, but we all have the limits of what we're comfortable with.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: Can I do things that intentionally push that?
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: Almost that by default, like, yeah, starting this business with no money doesn't feel like that scary in the midst of it.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so I just like quickly brain, okay, what can I do?
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: I say, okay, Toastmasters.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like I've I've I've heard about this thing forever.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's public speaking.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone hates public speaking, it's scary.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna join it.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: Not only am I gonna join it, I'm going to volunteer to be the president right away so that I'm forced to give a speech every single meeting and get up in front of people, even if it's uncomfortable.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to do a very hard crossfit workout every day.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to um reach out to, I forget, like I set some number of this many centers of influences, CPAs, attorneys, whatever, to schedule a meeting, which doesn't sound like a big deal, but to me, that was like the scary.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: We talked about this on our last episode of I never really fully felt like uh my previous boss had that much confidence in what we did.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: So I never felt that confident in what we did.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: I felt like, yeah, this is like if if he's not wanting to have hard conversations with clients, like maybe what we're doing isn't that special.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I think I internalized that.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: And whenever I like the question I hated most at my old friend was, what do you do for work?
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: Because it was always like this sheep is, oh, I'm a financial advisor.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like I've I don't feel confident in it.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: I don't feel confident in what we do, I don't feel confident in the in what we deliver.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: So as silly as that sounds, like to me, the scariest thing was just setting a meeting with this CPA or this attorney who is really good at their craft and saying, like, yeah, I'm a financial advisor.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, how many clients do you have?
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: Well, none.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: I'm no clients, just starting a business.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: Don't have so it it was pushing the limits of my comfort zone.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: Now these are these are just examples.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying that all advisors have to do this, but I remember by the end of that, you know, starting root, one year under root, I think by year one, there was like seven million or eight million dollars in assets under management.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: So like going from zero to that, like not that much, significantly less than where we were at my previous term.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: I think my previous term was like 130 million, 140 million when I left, something like that.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: But I remember feeling like my confidence has skyrocketed because one life happened, like hard things happen, and when you come out the other side, you're far more confident.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: But also I had done things intentionally to say what kind of to pull forward some of these experiences.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: I can either wait to have life happen to me, and I'm just gonna gradually develop that confidence when I buy a home, to your example, when I uh have family, sad family events, tough family events, when I have tough relationship challenges, when I like all those things make us stronger and build confidence.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: But if I don't want to wait 20, 30 years to fully deal that, can I do hard things ahead of time?
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: And now all of a sudden I'm 28 years old, not that much older, but significantly more confident, sitting across from someone, feeling confident in what I do, feeling like um I think the biggest thing is that that I that I realized was like, yeah, I used to be super unconfident, lack confident, that you're about to retire, and you're relying on me, a 27-year-old, to tell you how to do it.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what do I know?
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: I'm 40 years away from that.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: But if we strip back the retirement piece, the fear isn't retirement.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: Retirement just happens to be the detail.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: The fear is the unknown.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: The fear is what's on the other side of that?
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: The fear is who am I when I don't have this work thing?
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: The fear is just that.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's like, okay, I didn't, I've never retired, but I've sat across from something that was scary and addressed that fear and went through it anyways.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: And the framework that worked for me to go through that and the life lessons and experiences that worked well for me to do that made me so much more confident to now sit across from someone who's retiring and feel like, okay, this isn't totally foreign to me.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: Even though I'm not going to be where you are for 40 years, I feel like we can come to this conversation as peers.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: And in many ways, I can come as a leader in this conversation because I've done something similar, just had a different detail attached to it.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: Does that make sense?
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: I've been just rambling for 15 minutes, I feel like.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: Any does that make sense at all?
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I think I really like what you're saying about kind of taking the, you know, the idea of starting a company.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: That is massive, huge.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like just saying that, like instant fear, who feels like great confidence in that just off the bat, especially young, that translates directly, especially to people in those early advisory roles, associate roles, feeling like the idea of going to lead advisor can feel like I have to somehow climb Mount Everest.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like the difference between where I am now and looking at become lead advisor is it can feel really huge, but there's a lot of little things that you can do, like what you were saying, just reaching out to other industry professionals.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's not a huge, massive thing.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's a small thing, but it helped you build some more confidence.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's very applicable on the advisory side as well.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't have to be, okay, I must lead an entire meeting my first month into the job if I'm going to be a lead advisor.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: It can be very small.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: You just have to get to base camp and then the next set.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it doesn't have to be climb Mount Everest.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: There's all these little things that you can do to help bring these experiences forward to give yourself more confidence before you reach that pinnacle.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that's super applicable to people in support roles and people very early in the advisory experience.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's a good way of putting it because those little steps, you do them long enough and you do climb Mount Everest.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's just, and I think the the decision for a lot of advisors is do you want to speed climb this thing or do you want to take your time climbing this thing?
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: And neither are bad.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: Again, the experience is going to happen.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: Experience is going to come, whether you want it or not.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: Like a lot of that just comes from being pushed outside of your comfort zone.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: And life will either do that for you over some period of time.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes that's short.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: If you go through like, you know, you meet people that come from horrible, war-torn countries, total instability.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: They came here and with nothing.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's like by 20 years old, those people are insanely confident because like what they're doing now is so much easier than what they've already lived through.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: Versus if you feel like, man, I've never really done anything that that was that hard or that challenging or pushed me that much, uh, it's gonna take a little longer or a lot longer to develop that confidence because life hasn't happened to you to the same extent.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: So the question is, do I want to wait for life to happen to me to get there?
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: Or do I want to happen to life?
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: Like, do I want to start doing the things that are gonna put me in those positions because I want to be that type of person?
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: And this is, I mean, this is very much a personal decision of what do you want and when do you want it and how do you want to get there?
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, let's talk about some practical ways of addressing that.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: And before I do so, Ethan, we were talking and you were talking about a conversation about career changers.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: And it triggered something in me of of before starting this podcast, the Root Ready Podcast, I reached out to a bunch of people.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: And one was uh uh Professor Lawson, he used to teach at Kansas State.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: I think he was actually Kinsey's old professor, and she's like, hey, chat with him.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: He he um I forget exactly what what I don't know if he runs the whole division or if what course he taught there, but very involved at Kansas State and their um personal finance program.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: And it was interesting, like his feedback was hey, sometimes career changers have more confidence because they see the value of good financial planning.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: They see like they didn't know it, they get it.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so to them it's like, oh man, this makes so much sense.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: I feel fully confident.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: But I think you had maybe a different perspective on that.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: Could you share what you were sharing with me before we went on?
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I think it's really great to see career changers.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'm someone who's been on the very linear path, like picked what I was gonna do in college, and here I am, I'm doing it.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I think there's a lot of value from career changers, definitely the experiences that I've had here at Root talking to people who've changed career and the perspective that they have.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that really speaks to your point that it can be a huge positive to have experience in a completely different.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: industry.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it often really transitions well here, but it can also be kind of scary.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: And the conversation I had was with another one of our very talented, smart, capable associates whose prior experience was a lot, was still in the finance kind of industry, but a lot more on the accounting ledger, that type of side of things.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: And she was kind of coming to me saying, I wish I had a little bit more experience in financial planning specifically.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I would be more confident raising my hands, speaking up and presenting in meetings if I had a little bit more of that background.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: And it just feels like such a change.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's almost like changing your major in college and going into that first new class.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like, wow, I don't really know anything about this.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: And that was kind of her feeling is that's my main lack of confidence right now is just that I don't have X number of years of experience.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: My background isn't specifically in this space.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: And that actually kind of holds me back in some ways.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: And it's it's it's it's very interesting because I know for me, this is all I've ever known right out of so college went right to business school, out of business school, did this and uh because it's all I've ever known, it's almost like you discount the value that you're providing to people versus right I was just talking about um Dr.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: Lawson that from Kansas State who who's no longer teaching at Kansas State.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: I think he runs his own firm or is part of another firm now.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: But he was he was explaining he's like, hey, if as you're making episodes like I think an episode would be really helpful and how do you develop confidence?
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: Because it got all these students who they've taken however many credit hours, they've taken their capstone.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: And by the time you take your capstone like you know more than 98% of the rest of the population.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: But there's still this because it's all you know, like you don't realize the gap that other people have.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas his point was sometimes when you're a career changer, like you realize that gap.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: When when when you go from and maybe it's a little different like you know you're you're in your mid 30s and all of a sudden you're like, I got to get my finances in order and you go in a deep dive and you're like, oh, finally I learned how to do cash flow planning and how to invest and how taxes work.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: Like you really it's that gap is very clear to you and it gives you confidence to jump into this saying like that's the gap that we're helping people with versus sometimes if this is all you ever know, you you don't because it's all you never know, it's like that whole fish in the water.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: Like when the fish asks the other fish, hey, how's water?
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like, well what water?
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's like well hey how's the it's it's just all I know.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: Like it what do you mean water?
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, well what do you mean value?
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: This is just, doesn't everybody know this?
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: So I think the point is regardless of how you get into the industry, there's going to be a confidence barrier that you face.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: And if you have that confidence barrier, good.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: I've seen a lot of people that feel like they have all the confidence in the world and they had so little skill set, so little actual experience to deliver a good solution.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: So to me, if you're not feeling a little bit of that confidence gap, um you I don't know, you might be a psychopath or something because you're not the type of advisor I'd want that just feels like, yeah, I watched, you know, I read one blog, I did one thing now I feel like I'm fully equipped to deliver value.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: Like you have to feel that gap.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: I know one thing I've joked with a bunch of people at this point about this now, but to me the biggest thing I ever did to build my confidence was when I was a younger advisor, the only people that I saw outside of the firm I worked was like a when I was a small firm, there's three or four of us.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: I would read Michael Kitsis, I'll listen to his podcast that was the standard of what like to have that many designations, to be that knowledgeable, to write that clearly about financial planning, that is what success looks like.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: And there felt like a huge gap between me and what Michael Kitsis knew.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: And then I went to a broker dealer conference because my old firm was part of a broker dealer.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: And the quality of advisors at that conference was so incredibly low in terms of how much these people knew, in terms of how they cared I was like, you got you all are advisors.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: It was almost embarrassing.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: But at the same time it's like okay maybe this is the bar.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: And and and and my confidence probably grew 80% just being there.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: Like, okay.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the hard part of root sometimes I think we've talked about this is it's hard when the advisors that we're seeing, we're looking at KDK and Chris Raboli and Chris Brown like we're I mean just all of them like all of the there the the bar is so high and we just see the gap between where we are and where they are after they've been doing this for so much longer.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: And what we're not looking at is the game.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_01: So there's this concept of the gap in the game.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: We're looking at what we don't have as opposed to where was I five years ago in a helpful journal exercise is to sit down like how am I different?
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: You can do this with your career, with your personal life with whatever.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_01: And when you start like where were you five years ago in terms of what did you know?
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: Did you have the CFP?
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: How many hours did you have like your skill set, your knowledge, your confidence all of a sudden you're like, okay, I've made a ton of progress in that time.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_01: Sure the gap's still there and good.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: Like I want that gap to be something that feels like it's pulling me forward to always aspire to be better.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: But also don't lose sight of the fact that you're significantly more confident and equipped as an advisor today, not even five years ago, but than you were five months ago.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_01: And hopefully that's something that always continues.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_01: So so what do we do with this I think is what we want to leave people with.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: Like do you have to go join Toastmasters and get fired from a job and do a hard you can I I actually encourage everyone to do Toastmasters.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's one of the best things you can do.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_01: But the way I would look at it is if I go back to my not my comment, but Carl Richards's comment of to be a better advisor, be a better person.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: If we want to help clients navigate life, because that's ultimately like the core of where our confidence is lacking.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's like no I can tell you like the limits and how much you can put into your 401.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: I can tell you like the financial stuff I can tell you.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's the how do I guide this person?
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: How do I lead this person when they're double, triple my age sometimes for anyone that's listening, I think in this for all of us, you do need to make those hard decisions.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_01: Now it doesn't have to be financial but it's like okay eating you're in a dead end job obviously I hope you're let's just use an example.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_01: Do you hate your job you're not loving it now this is obviously hypothetical.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_01: What are you going to do about that?
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like are you just going to sit in that and accept that and resign yourself to that fate and 10 years later you wake up with a ton of regret that you didn't do anything different?
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_01: Or are you going to go make the difficult decision and make the career change, make the job change?
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_01: Or Eden, you're in a horrible relationship.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: These are all hypotheticals are what are you going to do with that?
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like are you are you going to stay in it because it's safe?
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: Are you going to stay in it because it's all that you ever knew are you going to stay in it because it's like ah who who else would I like these the types of things that addressing our fears, addressing where do we want to be in life, what's the gap between where we are and where we want to be and what's the action I need to take to close that gap.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_01: Whether it's with relationships, whether it's with our health, whether it's with our career, whether it's with where we live whether it's with that family dynamic.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like these are the things that all of us have that I think actually make us better advisors.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_01: We can hide behind getting more designations, we can hide behind getting more certifications, but it's the person that's willing to say I see what I see the life that I have and I'm not willing to accept how it is today and I'm going to do the difficult thing.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have to do this but if we want to pull that experience forward and not wait until we're 50 by which point life's happened to us enough times that we finally feel like yeah we can lead that conversation with the client because we've gone through a thing or two ourselves how can we actually envision the life we want to live see what's preventing us from doing that relationally with health with career with living situation and make those decisions and as maybe absurd as that sounds on the surface because it has nothing to do with finances your job as an advisor is ultimately to guide to help people understand how to mark make hard decisions to help guide them through job changes, moving out of state, moving closer to children or moving further away from children, retiring, navigating the unknown, doing something when you don't have perfect clarity as to exactly how it's going to play out none of those have anything to do with Roth IRA contribution limits for 2026.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_01: So to me that was the single biggest thing that closes that confidence gap is yes reps will do it.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: And when combined with life after a certain period of time you'll get there and that's fine, like that's a fine normal career path.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_01: But for those advisors that are young and say I want to get there faster and sooner.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_01: And by the way I want to live a bigger life.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to just have life happen to me.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_01: I want to live an awesome ethic life and do what I want to do that only happens on the other side of hard decisions.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: And the more we can get ourselves accustomed to doing that the more we can uh expand the limits of our comfort zone some weird way like all of a sudden we become far more confident as a financial advisor as we do that.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_01: Agree, disagree, is that resonating at all?
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_00: I I completely agree.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I think there's another really practical takeaway that can come from this because asking yourself internally thinking internally pondering reflecting about the gap for you what it is, how big is it?
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_00: Why is it there?
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: Where do you want to be and when that is all really good stuff to sit with on your own, to really think about it on an individual level.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: But I would also say for me, if you are lucky enough, fortunate enough to have a great relationship, particularly if you're an associate with a lead, and it doesn't even have to be your lead, just somebody that you trust who's maybe older, has more experience, has done kind of the career type of thing you're looking at, I think having the conversation about the gap with someone like that is actually a really great practical takeaway.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'm very fortunate to have a great relationship with Naomi and have had this conversation about the gap for me.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I was able to ask her what was it like for you?
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: And it totally existed for her.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_00: She talked about the things that made her nervous about being a lead she talked about the things that scared her talked about the things that still scare her the confidence gap for her, you know, it's much smaller but it's not closed.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: And to her credit she said it may never be closed, but it's much narrower than it used to be.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I got a lot of value, felt validated, comforted, very rational and reasonable for feeling how I feel about this kind of gap between associate and lead.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like it was great to be able to have that conversation with her.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I would recommend it, especially if you do have that relationship with your particular lead because I got a lot of value out of it.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: And it just made our relationship stronger and helped her know things that she can do to help me close that gap.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: And it's really improved our working relationship and just her helping me build that confidence and close the gap.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: I think I love that.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's awesome.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_01: I think that this does not need to be like a terribly scary thing to navigate alone.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I think there are some things that make it easier or even accelerate it further.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_01: I wrote some things down in notes I I don't think we'll have time to get to all of them.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_01: One is like this fear setting exercise Tim we talked about Tim Ferris I think in the last episode he's got something called the fear setting exercise that how do you when you're making a big decision, when it seems terrifying, when it's whatever it is like I've used this framework for a whole bunch of things.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_01: I maybe we do a separate episode on that.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_01: But there are they volunteer for things that scare you.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_01: Now healthy things like don't just be scared for the sake of being scared like what what's something that's going to be meaningful and and move you forward in life and do it.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_01: Like pick it out and do it.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_01: Pick in things that are physically hard.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_01: I think that the more physically the better you take care of yourself physically, the more mentally strong you'll be the better you'll be able to show up on the the mental and emotional side of your job.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_01: Reflection is a big thing.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like how much of our lives are we living just because it's the default path where we live who we're with the job we're in the people we spend time with how much of that was on purpose versus how much of that was just default?
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_01: And if we don't ever pull ourselves out of this default way of living, we just continue.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe maybe that's fine, maybe it's not but I think that again just some practical things how do you become a better person that'll ultimately give you more confidence to be a better advisor journal.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like just reflect where am I?
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_01: What's going well?
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_01: What am I grateful for?
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_01: What's not going well?
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_01: Like what if I could wave a magic wand would be different about my situation.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_01: Cool.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_01: How do I move forward towards what what what I want life to look like I love to think about the question of if I'm 85 years old and I'm looking back at this moment in time, what is 85 year old James telling 36 year old James about stuff that's going on with my family, stuff that's going on with friends, stuff that's going on with root because when you can detach from your current state, even if it's still you but just like kind of mentally visualize yourself as you know 85 year old version of yourself, 85 year old you isn't concerned about the superficial things that 36 year old James is concerned about.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_01: 85 year old me isn't concerned about the the little fears and the little letdowns and the little things that go away after time like current James is.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_01: So that reflection can be incredibly helpful.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_01: Read.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_01: Read broadly like you have a great relationship with Naomi I would even call it mentorship with Naomi like she can help you with a lot of this stuff I don't I wouldn't say I've ever had like a mentor like a person but I feel like I've had tons of mentors just from like reading amazing stuff.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_01: Like there's so many good books like be well read learn stuff and don't just read like to feel like you've always got it I mean I'm guilty of this sometimes I'm only reading stuff like this is improving my business acumen or improving self-improvement whatever.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_01: Read all kinds of stuff read fiction read nonfiction like expand um your life by reading and then don't avoid hard conversations with team members with clients with friends with family like these are the types of things where life happens and if we want to build that confidence we've just got to learn to do these things in a way that's going to I mean set aside the benefits of becoming a better advisor.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_01: You're going to live a better life you're going to have a more full life you're going to have a more fruitful life and oh by the way you'll happen to be a better advisor as you do this.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_01: So for young advisors I think the temptation I need to get more confident means I got to go get more certifications.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, cool I got the CFP and nothing changed.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_01: We talk about this this is the same this is the concept of goalpost planning for advisors.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_01: You know clients, okay, once I have a million dollars I'll feel more confident to retire.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, cool you hit it and nothing happens.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_01: So you think you chose the wrong number now it's a million and a half and you hit it and nothing happens again.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_01: Now it's it's that same thing.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_01: Once I get the CFP then I'll feel more confident.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe I also need the EA designation.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_01: There's no number of designations that's going to make you feel that and what that really is is procrastination.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_01: You're doing the easy thing because you know studying is not easy per se, but it's just time and it's the known thing.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_01: Like you know what you are getting into and it's not the hard work that we fear.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's the scary and the unknown work that we fear.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's the thing that's going to push us into something that we haven't done before, make us become a different person or challenge us in a different way.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_01: Like that's what hard really is I think all of us are willing to study more and learn more and do more, but like that's that's not going to get us to where we want to be as much as doing the actual hard thing.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_01: So I guess for an advisor's and if all we're doing is talking to clients about navigating transition and making change but we're not doing it or embodying it ourselves, there's going to be a limit on how confident we can become as an advisor and how big of a life we can live ourselves.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_01: Anything that you think we missed or that we should add to any part of this topic?
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think so I I really like the flow of the the conversation today and that there's a lot of practical takeaways.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_00: It might feel kind of lofty maybe even cheesy sometimes some of the things that we're saying but it's really not it is practical small things that you can do today to help build that confidence and just know where you're at, how big is this gap?
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_00: What exists in this gap and what are the little steps I can take to just shrink that over time on whatever timeline feels appropriate for you.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah yeah I know I want to live a big life.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_01: I think team members at Root they want to live big lives like we're not satisfied with becoming like those advisors at that broker dealer conference that I met where it's like yeah you you've had a lot of reps and you've become proficient enough to get by and do well and maybe have a little bit of confidence but you're not that that's not who I aspire to be.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think that's who root advisors aspire to be.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_01: So um the good news is it's totally up to the advisor of that confidence building, that progression, it can take 10 years, it can take 10 months in some regards.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's just how much discomfort are you willing to um pull into a short period of time versus how much is that going to be spread out just as a result of life happening over the next several years.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_01: But I think that's it for today if you're listening and enjoying the podcast please subscribe to it on YouTube, the Root Ready Podcast, subscribe on Apple Podcast or Spotify, wherever you listen, subscribe, leave a review if you're enjoying it and share it with a friend who you think might also get something out of it.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_01: But that is it for this episode and we'll see you all next time