Latest / Only Fee-Only / #172 - The Review Meeting Is the Client Experience with Brendan Frazier

Transcript

#172 - The Review Meeting Is the Client Experience with Brendan Frazier · Only Fee-Only

0:00
SPEAKER_02: Hey everyone, welcome back to the OnlyFe Only Podcast.
0:03
SPEAKER_02: On today's episode, we've got a returning guest, Brendan Frazier, host of the Human Side of Money podcast and keynote speaker, is back for round two.
0:14
SPEAKER_02: This time we're talking review meetings.
0:17
SPEAKER_02: Firms put so much effort into winning a client, then the annual review meeting turns into a checklist.
0:23
SPEAKER_02: How's the family?
0:24
SPEAKER_02: Here's the portfolio.
0:25
SPEAKER_02: Any questions?
0:26
SPEAKER_02: See you next year.
0:27
SPEAKER_02: Brennan makes the case that this meeting is actually the anchor of the whole client experience, where you prove your value, justify your fee, and earn referrals.
0:38
SPEAKER_02: You'll hear three questions every client needs answered in every meeting: why advisors slowly lose touch with longtime clients without realizing it, how to show up fully for your sixth meeting of the day, and one simple shift almost nobody makes.
0:54
SPEAKER_02: Looking back at progress before planning forward.
0:58
SPEAKER_02: If you've ever walked out of a review meeting wondering whether a client still sees value, this one's for you.
1:04
SPEAKER_02: Here's our conversation with Brendan Frazier on the Only Fee Only Podcast.
1:11
SPEAKER_00: How's it going, everyone?
1:13
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to another episode of the Only Fee Only Podcast.
1:18
SPEAKER_00: I'm Peter Travolo.
1:19
SPEAKER_00: I'm here with my co-host Brock Buckles.
1:21
SPEAKER_00: And today we're so excited to have Brendan Frasier back on.
1:25
SPEAKER_00: He's the host of the Human Side of Money podcast.
1:28
SPEAKER_00: He's a keynote speaker, and he's really well known throughout the industry.
1:32
SPEAKER_00: So, Brendan, welcome to the show, man.
1:34
SPEAKER_01: Hey, thanks for having me back.
1:36
SPEAKER_01: Round two.
1:37
SPEAKER_00: I'm excited to be here.
1:38
SPEAKER_00: Round two.
1:38
SPEAKER_00: Ding ding.
1:39
SPEAKER_00: I love it.
1:40
SPEAKER_00: For those who don't know who you are, kind of where are you based out of?
1:43
SPEAKER_00: What's your quick background story before we dive into things, Brendan?
1:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I'm I'm in Nashville, Tennessee.
1:48
SPEAKER_01: And then the quick background version, a bit quick background story, is that I spent my entire career up to this point in financial advice and financial advice world in a in a variety of roles.
1:58
SPEAKER_01: So consulting with advisors, went the advisor out, started building a practice.
2:02
SPEAKER_01: And then as I was doing that, was when I realized, like, wait a minute, I have all this technical knowledge, which is good.
2:09
SPEAKER_01: And I learned that you need it and it's necessary.
2:11
SPEAKER_01: And then I found myself like in conversations with clients and prospects, being like, and there's one in particular that sticks out where I the QCD qualified charitable distribution stuff had just come out.
2:20
SPEAKER_01: It was like this new thing.
2:21
SPEAKER_01: And I go to this guy that I wanted to be a client.
2:23
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, all right, look at what we can do.
2:24
SPEAKER_01: We got this great like QCD strategy.
2:26
SPEAKER_01: And he even said, like, man, this is great.
2:29
SPEAKER_01: My advisor hasn't even shown me this.
2:30
SPEAKER_01: And but then like he does it, he takes to advice his advisor, they implement it.
2:35
SPEAKER_01: And then like fast forward a couple years later, he leaves his advisor, works on his own, doesn't come and work with me.
2:40
SPEAKER_01: And I just remember thinking, like, I had the best idea possible.
2:44
SPEAKER_01: Like I had the technical knowledge I needed to like impress in that moment, right?
2:47
SPEAKER_01: And to help him in that moment.
2:49
SPEAKER_01: But even that didn't get him to become a client.
2:51
SPEAKER_01: Then you have other clients where you're like telling them, you're giving them advice and you're telling them what they what they need to be doing.
2:55
SPEAKER_01: They say, Okay, I've got this goal that I want to accomplish.
2:57
SPEAKER_01: You go, okay, great.
2:58
SPEAKER_01: I'll show you exactly how to accomplish it.
3:00
SPEAKER_01: And then you follow up the next year and they haven't done it.
3:03
SPEAKER_01: And you're like, wait a minute, what why are you not, why are they not following through?
3:07
SPEAKER_01: So what basically translate all that to say, what I realized was there's this whole aspect of good financial, great financial planning that involves not just the portfolio and the plan, but it involves understanding the person and the psychology of the person and what I call the human side.
3:22
SPEAKER_01: And so as I'm doing, as I'm um building my business and building the practice and working with clients, I started, I'm like, all right, we got I gotta figure out this human side.
3:31
SPEAKER_01: Didn't know if anybody else was thinking this way as far as advisors go.
3:35
SPEAKER_01: And so I launched the podcast, Human Side of Money, started doing a lot of research as much as I could, putting in trying to figure things out and coming back and using it with my clients.
3:43
SPEAKER_01: Lo and behold, he fast forward, like this is that was in about 2022, as I was putting this stuff out into the world on the podcast, other types of content.
3:51
SPEAKER_01: Turns out that there are other advisors out there who were like, Yeah, actually, hang on, this is important.
3:55
SPEAKER_01: And we don't really get a whole lot of training and courses or trainings and teaching on it.
4:01
SPEAKER_01: So I decided I was having way more fun doing that.
4:03
SPEAKER_01: So I started that's when I went all in on that and started doing coaching and training and building these platforms for advisors to get better at the human side, is what I'll call it, is how we'll describe it as simply as possible.
4:13
SPEAKER_01: So, you know, we get all the trainings that we need for technical knowledge.
4:16
SPEAKER_01: It's all there, it's all out there.
4:18
SPEAKER_01: It's also being commoditized more and more so by the day.
4:21
SPEAKER_01: And so the idea was all right, we need to know how to work with emotional human beings on the emotional charge topic of money.
4:26
SPEAKER_01: And nobody really wants to be a life coach or a therapist.
4:28
SPEAKER_01: Like, we want to be financial advisors.
4:30
SPEAKER_01: So the idea is always how can we make how can I make it as simple, applicable, and practical as possible to incorporate the human element without having to be a full-blown therapist or life coach.
4:40
SPEAKER_02: For those, for those that are wondering, like what we covered the first time that we that you we had you on, check out episode 84.
4:45
SPEAKER_02: That was back in 2024, where we talk a lot about like the foundational stuff and appreciate you kind of giving the reflection and the overview of all that stuff, Brendan.
4:53
SPEAKER_02: But today, maybe we want to talk about review meetings and why they're so critical, right?
4:57
SPEAKER_02: Because it's really interesting, like there's these different parts, and I'm I'm with you on this because a lot of times I feel like so much effort is put in on the front end, right?
5:06
SPEAKER_02: And it's like getting the client, introducing them to the firm, all the other stuff.
5:10
SPEAKER_02: And then you get to this part where it's time for the review meetings.
5:13
SPEAKER_02: It's just like, check this box, check this box, check this box.
5:16
SPEAKER_02: All right, sounds good.
5:17
SPEAKER_02: See you later.
5:17
SPEAKER_02: Give them a salute.
5:18
SPEAKER_02: Like they're out the door.
5:19
SPEAKER_02: See you next quarter, next, next, you know, whatever, next year.
5:23
SPEAKER_02: So talk to us about why those are so important, man.
5:25
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, okay, I think you pretty much hit a lot of the main things there, which is like to your point, right?
5:30
SPEAKER_01: You sit there and you go, we put so much time and effort into the beginning of the relationship because that's where it takes work.
5:35
SPEAKER_01: You have to earn it, you have to earn, and it's not unlike, or I mean, it's almost exactly like a dating or any type of dating relationship, right?
5:42
SPEAKER_01: Where like you get the best version of somebody at the beginning, you put all the work in at the beginning, you work hard, you're pursuing them, you're pulling out all of your best stuff, and then you fast forward, it's like five or 10 years later, and oh, that's weird.
5:52
SPEAKER_01: They're getting divorced.
5:53
SPEAKER_01: Why are they getting divorced?
5:54
SPEAKER_01: Well, probably because you're not handling it the same way, you're not approaching and treating the person the same as you did in the very beginning.
5:59
SPEAKER_01: And I think what what blows me away about this review meeting idea, or in you can even call like taking care of clients on an ongoing basis, client service.
6:07
SPEAKER_01: What surprises me is that not only do we put so much time and effort into the beginning, we also have quite a bit of like we have sales training, we've got marketing strategists, we have people out there that are willing to help find new prospective clients, they're willing to help you convert through a sales process of prospective clients, and there's trainings and education and stuff that exists for that.
6:28
SPEAKER_01: And then you go, wait, hang on.
6:29
SPEAKER_01: There's not a whole lot, like where if you, if you said if you woke up and said, Hey, I feel like my review meetings are pretty basic, average and stale, and I want to get better at it, like, where would you even go?
6:38
SPEAKER_01: Right.
6:38
SPEAKER_01: And I and I think the problem is that most advisors have solid review meetings, and we'll even say good review meetings with their clients.
6:47
SPEAKER_01: And I think that's the problem, is they are good and they're just good enough that there's not enough pain to actually do anything about it.
6:53
SPEAKER_01: But if you actually talk to advisors, that like they'll recognize that they probably could be doing more, they probably could be a little bit better.
7:00
SPEAKER_01: And then then I started so I'm talking to some advisors about it and just asking them like what they think and what like what their experience is like.
7:05
SPEAKER_01: And I started having this thought where it's like, hang on, these meetings for most advisors and most clients, the review meetings that you have, whether it's annual or maybe it's twice a year, three times a year, doesn't matter.
7:16
SPEAKER_01: Those meetings are quite literally the anchor of the entire client experience.
7:22
SPEAKER_01: It is the number one uh like opportunity, the premier opportunity to uh demonstrate your value, justify your fee, deepen the trust and the connection and the relationship, and actually earn the right to get more referrals from clients, right?
7:36
SPEAKER_01: Yet we just kind of treat it as a maintenance task on the calendar and that we have to do.
7:44
SPEAKER_01: And then we hope that they still like us, that we that they that we hope that they believe that we know their situation.
7:50
SPEAKER_01: We hope that they see the value, right?
7:51
SPEAKER_01: And okay, so let's think about this for a second.
7:53
SPEAKER_01: If we went to everybody that's listening, every advisor that's listening, we said, Hey, take me through what you do in your review meetings.
8:00
SPEAKER_01: I guarantee the vast majority, 99%, would have some version of they'd say, Yeah, the person comes in, we say, Hey, how's life?
8:07
SPEAKER_01: How's it going?
8:08
SPEAKER_01: How are the grandkids?
8:09
SPEAKER_01: Any trips this year?
8:10
SPEAKER_01: All right.
8:10
SPEAKER_01: Then you go, all right, well, let's pull up your stuff.
8:12
SPEAKER_01: We look at your stuff.
8:13
SPEAKER_01: Here's your account.
8:14
SPEAKER_01: They go, How's it going?
8:15
SPEAKER_01: Okay, look, everything's going good.
8:17
SPEAKER_01: Looks like you're on track.
8:18
SPEAKER_01: Any questions?
8:19
SPEAKER_01: No, okay, great.
8:20
SPEAKER_01: All right, see you next year.
8:21
SPEAKER_01: Yep.
8:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
8:22
SPEAKER_01: And I want to be really careful here because that's not bad.
8:26
SPEAKER_01: I think I want to stress that first.
8:27
SPEAKER_01: That's not a bad thing.
8:29
SPEAKER_01: There is some value in that, but I don't think most advisors got into this business to do a like decent job for their clients, right?
8:36
SPEAKER_01: Right.
8:37
SPEAKER_01: And I think if we're and I think if you're really honest, if you get an advisor, they'll be really honest with you, but they'll say, yeah, uh, when I sometimes when I leave those meetings, the when they go like that, I leave and I wonder, I start thinking to myself, like, do they still see the value?
8:50
SPEAKER_01: Like, are they still like, do they think the fee is worth it?
8:52
SPEAKER_01: Am I doing enough for these clients?
8:55
SPEAKER_01: Like, should I be doing more than an hour's worth of checking in on their family and then showing them a snapshot of their portfolio?
9:02
SPEAKER_01: Like, should there be more to it than that?
9:05
SPEAKER_01: And the answer is yes.
9:06
SPEAKER_01: The problem is, is that most people, this is it's how it's always been done.
9:10
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
9:10
SPEAKER_01: Number one.
9:11
SPEAKER_01: Number two, that's how it gets trained.
9:13
SPEAKER_01: It's how it gets taught because that's how it's been done.
9:15
SPEAKER_01: And so we just get into this natural rhythm of doing it because it's good enough and we settle, and no one really knows because no one's really telling us how to do it better.
9:24
SPEAKER_01: Like how to do it where you leave, and you go, Man, I feel like I deepened the relationship.
9:28
SPEAKER_01: I they they really genuinely trust me.
9:30
SPEAKER_01: They leave and they go, Man, that's worth every dollar that we spend.
9:33
SPEAKER_01: They want to go tell their friends and family about it.
9:35
SPEAKER_01: There are ways to do that.
9:37
SPEAKER_01: No, we just have to know what to do.
9:38
SPEAKER_01: No one's really telling us how to do it because we've settled for the standard of, well, it's good enough.
9:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
9:44
SPEAKER_00: It's like, no news is good news, right?
9:47
SPEAKER_00: And like there's so much going on, like there's no way that nothing has gone on, right?
9:52
SPEAKER_00: I mean, Brock and I just, you know, I mean, at the end of the day, we run an insurance agency, and you know, we always scratch our head.
9:58
SPEAKER_00: We're like, are they talking about insurance with their client?
10:01
SPEAKER_00: Like, how often does this conversation come up, you know, and then the implementation of it and holding clients accountable or something?
10:09
SPEAKER_00: Because like Brock and I, we have a financial planner for our firm, and you know, sometimes we're like, dang, you know, it keeps reaching out, but like that's the value add.
10:18
SPEAKER_00: And it's like having a coach like showing up when like we're getting a little lazy on something or something should, you know, coming up due and like, you know, just being ahead of it.
10:26
SPEAKER_00: Um, so yeah, it is very much a behavior thing, and like every time, like, you know, we see the fee of the value, we're like, yeah, it's a no-brainer.
10:33
SPEAKER_00: I mean, just the reminders and the touch points alone.
10:35
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, it is like something to program and to have those conversations because like, yeah, no news can be good news, but like there's always something going on.
10:44
SPEAKER_02: Well, and and to your point, Brennan, what you were saying, real quick, if I can jump in, is like you made a really good point about like what does it actually say to your clients, or how are your clients talking about you to other people, right?
10:55
SPEAKER_02: And I remember early on in my career, I had like a coach, right?
10:58
SPEAKER_02: And he was like, There's two types of people that I work with.
11:00
SPEAKER_02: I have clients and I have advocates, right?
11:02
SPEAKER_02: Like clients are the ones that are like, we're doing that, we're like going through the checked boxes.
11:07
SPEAKER_02: Advocates are the ones that are like, you know, when I sit down with Brendan, he actually takes the time.
11:11
SPEAKER_02: He actually asks me intentional questions.
11:13
SPEAKER_02: He wants to know what's doing my life, he wants to know how things are going.
11:17
SPEAKER_02: We're talking about things beyond a Monte Monte Carlo simulation in our review meetings.
11:22
SPEAKER_02: Like, so yeah, I totally agree, man.
11:23
SPEAKER_02: I think that's a great point.
11:24
SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm with you on that.
11:25
SPEAKER_01: I think you hit it on the head, which is people want to know that you fully understand your clients, they want to know that you fully understand their situation.
11:34
SPEAKER_01: Okay, and so when I think about, all right, I said this the other day to a group of a cohort that I was running, we were talking about this this concept, this review meeting concept.
11:42
SPEAKER_01: And we were saying that if you want to have better review meetings, let's just say, like, let's say you're starting out, go, okay, I want to know what if what I'm doing is good or solid or if I could be doing it better, or I used to know, like, hey, am I even doing okay?
11:54
SPEAKER_01: Before you can even think about what to do or doing it better, you have to understand like what goes on inside the mind of a client.
12:00
SPEAKER_01: You got to know, all right, coming into these meetings, what's going on psychologically, what's happening inside their mind.
12:06
SPEAKER_01: Because if I was to go out and dis build and design and run what I consider to be a great review meeting experience, if it doesn't cater to or take into consideration or address what they're experiencing, what's going on in their mind, it's not gonna be great.
12:21
SPEAKER_01: Like it's not gonna hit, it's not gonna land the way it's supposed to.
12:23
SPEAKER_01: And so there's a lot of like, we can go to a lot of the neuroscience and the psychology of what's happening in people's minds and they come into these meetings.
12:29
SPEAKER_01: There's been studies done around that, but because no one's wanting to be a full-blown like you know psychologist or neuroscientist, I try to keep it as simple as possible, like we said at the beginning.
12:38
SPEAKER_01: And you can really boil it down to in every single meeting, every single review meeting, you have to answer at least these three questions for every client before you can do anything else.
12:48
SPEAKER_01: So, number one is do you understand my situation?
12:50
SPEAKER_01: These are the three questions every client needs answered.
12:52
SPEAKER_01: Do you do you fully like truly understand my situation?
12:57
SPEAKER_01: Number two is how am I doing?
12:58
SPEAKER_01: And number three is am I gonna be okay?
13:00
SPEAKER_01: So, do you understand my situation?
13:02
SPEAKER_01: How am I doing?
13:03
SPEAKER_01: Am I gonna be okay?
13:04
SPEAKER_01: Number one is do you understand my situation, Brock?
13:06
SPEAKER_01: This is what you were saying, right?
13:07
SPEAKER_01: Like you come in and we're not just talking about Monte Carlo simulations, we're talking about like the things that are truly most important to me in my life, right?
13:14
SPEAKER_01: So they're not gonna trust your opinion of how they're doing.
13:16
SPEAKER_01: The client's not gonna feel okay if they don't first and foremost feel like the in trust that you truly fully understand their situation.
13:25
SPEAKER_01: And this means not just financially, it doesn't mean pulling up their accounts, it doesn't mean pulling up a balance sheet, it doesn't mean pulling up a Monte Carlo simulation and saying, hey, I know you financially.
13:35
SPEAKER_01: Like, yes, you have they want to make sure that you know what's going on financially.
13:38
SPEAKER_01: It also means like, do you know the things that are most important to me in my lives?
13:42
SPEAKER_01: Do you understand me as a person?
13:44
SPEAKER_01: But do you understand my wife as a person and us as a human being?
13:47
SPEAKER_01: It's not just do you understand my numbers?
13:50
SPEAKER_01: It's do you understand everything that's going on in my life?
13:53
SPEAKER_01: And the challenge is there's this psycho, there's this phenomenon in psychology called the closeness communication bias.
13:58
SPEAKER_01: Closeness communication bias.
14:00
SPEAKER_01: And you see it most often in marriages where there's this assumption that once I get to know somebody well, that's who they're always gonna be.
14:07
SPEAKER_01: And I all I feel like I always know them really well, right?
14:10
SPEAKER_01: So if I met my wife 15 years ago and I got to know her super well, we we don't do this on purpose, it's subconscious, right?
14:15
SPEAKER_01: 15 years later, I feel like I know her because I knew her 15 years ago.
14:19
SPEAKER_01: And I believe, and I think if I'm not proactive about it, I think that she's very like basically the same person that she was when I met her 15 years ago.
14:26
SPEAKER_01: I'm not doing this ongoing rediscovery updating what I know about her process.
14:30
SPEAKER_01: Um, and so what happens is they'll go ask, they'll take couples and they'll say they'll take one of the spouses and they'll take the other spouse and go, hey, we want to ask you a series of questions about.
14:39
SPEAKER_01: We'll say they go to the wife.
14:41
SPEAKER_01: They go, we want to ask the wife a series of questions and say, Hey, how do you think your husband would answer these questions?
14:46
SPEAKER_01: They'll go to a group of friends that they that they hang out with and they'll say, Hey, we want to know, friend, what do you think the husband said to answer these questions?
14:56
SPEAKER_01: And what they find is the majority of the time, the friend will get the question right more often than the spouse because the spouse goes, Oh, yeah, I know what they would say because I've known them for 15 years.
15:05
SPEAKER_01: The friend's like, hey, I just got to know him a couple years ago.
15:08
SPEAKER_01: And so I know the updated version of them better than the spouse does because I'm in this like get to know you mode.
15:13
SPEAKER_01: And this happens with clients all the time.
15:15
SPEAKER_01: Like you're five years, 10 years in, and we think we we think we still fully understand their situation.
15:21
SPEAKER_01: We think we still fully understand them.
15:23
SPEAKER_01: But what we find out is if you're not proactively taking a if you're not taking a proactive approach to rediscover who they are, then you are you that trust is quietly eroding.
15:33
SPEAKER_01: They feel like you don't understand their situation as well as you once did.
15:36
SPEAKER_01: And then of course, like the next one, how am I doing?
15:38
SPEAKER_01: Like, how am I doing?
15:39
SPEAKER_01: That one's pretty obvious.
15:40
SPEAKER_01: I think most advisors probably already would guess that.
15:42
SPEAKER_01: I think most advisors probably what they do in their meetings addresses that to some degree, right?
15:47
SPEAKER_01: Where they go, hey, here's how here are your goals, here's where we're at, here's how you're doing.
15:51
SPEAKER_01: So, and so it gives you a little snapshot of where you're at, but then ultimately they want to know, am I gonna be okay?
15:56
SPEAKER_01: And there's not a spreadsheet or there's not a projection that can truly answer that question.
16:01
SPEAKER_01: They have to feel first of all to feel like they trust you fully, that you understand their situation, right?
16:06
SPEAKER_01: And then you can just simply ask the question, like to get to help them get to the am I gonna be okay part.
16:10
SPEAKER_01: You can just ask a question that's like something along the lines of, okay, so as we looked at everything today, is there anything that we haven't talked about that still concerns you?
16:18
SPEAKER_01: Is there anything that when you leave is gonna be bothering you when you go to bed tonight?
16:21
SPEAKER_01: And if you say no, okay, great, right?
16:23
SPEAKER_01: Like they feel good, they're gonna be okay.
16:25
SPEAKER_01: But they meant what what might oftentimes happens is they'll surface something that they didn't necessarily say because they weren't sure.
16:31
SPEAKER_01: They were like, I don't know if I'm gonna bring this up or not.
16:33
SPEAKER_01: But deep down they're not, they're not thinking I'm gonna be okay, right?
16:36
SPEAKER_01: So it's just there's it, there's no bad outcome to asking that question.
16:39
SPEAKER_01: You either say you either find out, like, okay, they're good, or they're gonna surface what they didn't already tell you, and that gives you a chance to address it.
16:45
SPEAKER_02: No, I I think those are all great points, man.
16:48
SPEAKER_02: Like, I also understand from the advisor's perspective, you're just going, going, going, right?
16:52
SPEAKER_02: Like you might have five, six client meetings today.
16:54
SPEAKER_02: So, like, what's a way that they can kind of get mentally in the mode, maybe have like a ritual or whatever you want to call it, to really be able to be like, okay, I'm gonna give this meeting my all.
17:04
SPEAKER_02: I I'm I'm here with these clients.
17:06
SPEAKER_02: I want to be intentional about this experience.
17:08
SPEAKER_02: Like, how do you how do you frame that for advisors?
17:43
SPEAKER_01: Well, I love this.
17:43
SPEAKER_01: This is a great point that no one talks about, right?
17:47
SPEAKER_01: We just assume that because we are an advisor and we are in an office or on a Zoom call that we can show up and do in with the same presence and capabilities and deliver the same experience every single time just because we're there, right?
17:59
SPEAKER_01: As if we're not human beings, to which I and so uh I have a whole thing that I go through on it's going inside our mind to win the mental battle for the in these meetings, because uh, like you said, there's a lot of things that can prevent that.
18:12
SPEAKER_01: Number one, the first thing you said is sometimes you'll have five to six meetings in a day.
18:17
SPEAKER_01: I'm a big, big believer and proponent of going, hey, if you want to deliver the type of experience that you expect from yourself, the standard you set for yourself, but the one that you want them to have, you have to, have to, have to protect your time and energy.
18:31
SPEAKER_01: Like you have to have buffers that allow you to show up and be your best self no matter what, regardless of the circumstances.
18:38
SPEAKER_01: And so there are some people, there are a few human beings who can do five to six meetings in a day and say, Yeah, my first meeting was just as good as my last meeting, or my last meeting was just as good as my first meeting.
18:51
SPEAKER_01: These are also the humans that somehow wake up without an alarm clock at 3 a.m.
18:55
SPEAKER_01: and go do like a two-hour workout and then get like four hours of sleep and act like it doesn't even affect them, right?
19:00
SPEAKER_01: Like, yeah, do these people exist?
19:02
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
19:03
SPEAKER_01: Should we uh and maybe that's you, but for the vast majority of us, it's just running six meetings a day.
19:08
SPEAKER_01: You can't say that you're gonna be able to be the same, deliver the same experience and presence and care for the person six times a day, especially if you're doing it multiple days a week.
19:17
SPEAKER_01: So there's a little bit of a testing process where you figure out, like, okay, what can I do?
19:20
SPEAKER_01: What do I have the actual capacity to do in any given day?
19:24
SPEAKER_01: There's also the when I we talk about buffers to protect time and energy, that's where where I also think it's try it's really important to build meeting buffers in between meetings, right?
19:33
SPEAKER_01: So not just rolling from one meeting right into the next, right?
19:36
SPEAKER_01: But giving yourself time to like decompress, filter out what you heard, send action items along to whoever it needs to go to.
19:42
SPEAKER_01: But then you also give yourself a predetermined time frame before the next meeting to help yourself get in the right mindset and where you're going through reviewing their situation, the things you talked about last time, spending just as much time, by the way, not on their portfolio, but on the person themselves and preparing to talk to the person and connect with them on an emotional level.
20:02
SPEAKER_01: And the last thing I'll say about this, because I could say a lot of things, but I but sure, but you're but I think it's you're right.
20:07
SPEAKER_01: This is actually, I think this is one of the most underrated components to having a great meeting is getting yourself prepared for it and winning the middle battle to do it.
20:17
SPEAKER_01: And so the last thing that thinks that you I think I have to mention is if you've done this for any length of time and you have any number of clients, like you've probably done hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of client meetings.
20:30
SPEAKER_01: I mean, just we can say the simple example of you have a hundred clients, you meet with them once a year, you're gonna have a hundred meetings in a year, right?
20:36
SPEAKER_01: And so it's really, really easy for us to become a little bit monotonous and routine in the work that we do.
20:43
SPEAKER_01: It's really, really easy for us to also become calloused to the work that we do, to the fact that like we actually do amazing, transformative, life-changing work for people in their lives.
20:54
SPEAKER_01: But if you do it a hundred times, you start kind of losing sight of that.
20:58
SPEAKER_01: You become a little bit callous to it.
20:59
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
21:00
SPEAKER_01: And so, and it's like uh the example I always use is whenever we went to give, like when we uh had our first son, we're in the delivery room and the OBs, like I'm sitting there thinking to myself, like, this is a like a life-changing moment.
21:11
SPEAKER_01: One of those moments that I've thought about my entire life.
21:13
SPEAKER_01: Like, here we are, my our son's like about to come into the world.
21:17
SPEAKER_01: And I don't, I mean, I'm experiencing all kinds of things.
21:19
SPEAKER_01: It's like it's this amazing moment.
21:20
SPEAKER_01: And our OB's over there asking us these, like, it's like we're having a casual conversation on a Wednesday afternoon.
21:26
SPEAKER_01: She's like, What are you guys doing this summer?
21:28
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, Do you see he's like he's right there?
21:31
SPEAKER_01: He's about to come into the world.
21:33
SPEAKER_01: What are we doing?
21:33
SPEAKER_01: And so the more I thought back on that, I'm like, well, of course, like she's probably delivered thousands of babies.
21:39
SPEAKER_01: This is just another day for her.
21:41
SPEAKER_01: Fortunately, in that saying, it doesn't matter as much, but I say that to say this we have to find a way to continually remind ourselves that in that next meeting that you're going into, it may be your 100th of the year, but it's that person's one meeting with you that year, their one opportunity, the one that maybe they've been waiting for to figure out how they're doing.
22:01
SPEAKER_01: Right.
22:02
SPEAKER_01: And so we have to get ourselves in the mindset to go, hey, this may be my hundredth meeting, but I want to show up to deliver this life-changing valuable experience to them.
22:11
SPEAKER_01: And so I call it the one client mentality.
22:12
SPEAKER_01: Like, we need to approach every single meeting as if that per the person you're meeting with is the one client, the only client you have, and then show up and run it that way.
22:22
SPEAKER_01: Is it easy to do?
22:23
SPEAKER_01: No.
22:23
SPEAKER_01: But is it a crucial, like foundational element to delivering and having better meetings?
22:29
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
22:29
SPEAKER_01: You just have to get yourself in the right headspace and then create the buffers.
22:32
SPEAKER_01: And the and the these practices in place to preserve your time and your energy.
22:36
SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
22:37
SPEAKER_02: Well, I think that this goes back to the old like people might might not always remember what you say, but they definitely will make you they'll remember how you made them feel, right?
22:44
SPEAKER_02: And like when people leave that room and it feels like there's been this like, you know, wave that washed over them, like, oh, we're gonna be okay.
22:51
SPEAKER_02: Like they're gonna they're gonna remember, no, you guys are good.
22:53
SPEAKER_02: You're gonna be okay.
22:54
SPEAKER_02: We talked about this stuff.
22:55
SPEAKER_02: I think that's I think that's really powerful stuff, man.
22:57
SPEAKER_02: So what are you working on right now to help advisors with this stuff?
23:01
SPEAKER_01: I gotta mention one more thing about this.
23:02
SPEAKER_01: Okay, just like like if as I'm thinking through, like, okay, what are like the key things that we need to know, or that you can, I wanna get I want to give one that's more practical.
23:11
SPEAKER_01: I want to uh talk about something that's like a hey, here's something that almost nobody does that should be done, that you can start doing almost immediately, and it makes a big difference.
23:21
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so uh as I was talking to advisors and doing research and figuring out like, okay, where what's the current state of review meetings, what would make them better, so on and so forth.
23:29
SPEAKER_01: You find that the vast majority of these meetings, and not surprisingly, like financial planning in and of itself, the idea of the concept is hey, here is where let's look at where you are today, and then let's talk about where you want to go, what you want to do, where you're gonna be in the future, because and then we'll put a plan together to get.
23:46
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's really hard to plan without thinking about the future, right?
23:49
SPEAKER_01: Like sure.
23:50
SPEAKER_01: We're going, here I am today, tell me where you want to be in the future, we'll help you get there.
23:54
SPEAKER_01: Like that's sort of the essence and the core of financial planning and investing and goals-based planning is we're always in this, we're always in this place of today and tomorrow, or the current and the future.
24:05
SPEAKER_01: The shortcoming with that is there's this, we have this entire body of work, this entire track record that came before this current moment, the today, that we look back to in the past, that for some reason we just tend to like neglect and forget about and not address, right?
24:21
SPEAKER_01: And what happens, that the problem is that if you're always future focused, if you're always thinking about where you are and getting to where you want to be, you'll never actually get there, right?
24:31
SPEAKER_01: You're always in this place where you're like, okay, next thing.
24:34
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna do the next thing, I'm gonna get to the next place, right?
24:37
SPEAKER_01: And so you're there's this constant tension of I'm here, but I want to get there.
24:41
SPEAKER_01: And you're ultimately like never really satisfied.
24:44
SPEAKER_01: You've never really achieved anything.
24:46
SPEAKER_01: And what we know from psychology research is that achievement is really, really helpful and powerful in terms of building confidence, building resilience, and building momentum.
24:56
SPEAKER_01: How do how do we do that, right?
24:58
SPEAKER_01: How do we actually in a meeting with the client?
25:00
SPEAKER_01: Well, we can tap into the fact that they have an entire past leap leading up to today where they've done some, probably, if they've worked with you, some pretty cool and awesome things to get to where they are, right?
25:11
SPEAKER_01: And so in the gap in the gain, it's a book by Ben Hardy and Dan Sullivan.
25:15
SPEAKER_01: Gap in the gain, they talk about how you should always measure your progress backwards.
25:19
SPEAKER_01: Like, don't measure your progress from where you are to where you want to be.
25:22
SPEAKER_01: Look back to launch forward.
25:24
SPEAKER_01: And so it's so funny.
25:25
SPEAKER_01: It's like, hey, we do great work for clients all the time.
25:28
SPEAKER_01: But when they come in, we sit and we go, hey, okay, here's a snapshot of your portfolio.
25:32
SPEAKER_01: Let's talk about where you're how you're gonna get to the future.
25:34
SPEAKER_01: When what we need to be doing is reflecting or measuring backwards and going, hey, look at all the things that we've done together over the course of this last year or the course of our relationship, right?
25:45
SPEAKER_01: Like you could be list, you could list out action items, right?
25:48
SPEAKER_01: And go, hey, here's what we did in the last year.
25:50
SPEAKER_01: We did this, this, this, this, and this.
25:52
SPEAKER_01: And what you've done is you've set the that you started the meeting on this trajectory of like, oh, we've done, we've accomplished a lot.
25:59
SPEAKER_01: They feel good about themselves, it builds confidence, it builds motivation, it builds momentum because you're going back and look and starting from a place of like, oh, look what I've done, right?
26:08
SPEAKER_01: You could also look at it and go, hey, in our time, since we've worked together over the last five years, you when you came in, your net worth was here, here's where it is now.
26:17
SPEAKER_01: It could be, hey, you want to, your goal is to set aside$50,000 in savings.
26:22
SPEAKER_01: So instead of saying, hey, you're at$25,000 and you'll get to$50 in five years and put and focusing on the like, hey, you're not, you haven't quite accomplished anything yet.
26:32
SPEAKER_01: You can go back, you look back and go, hey, uh, three years ago when you came in, you had nothing in savings.
26:36
SPEAKER_01: Now you've got$25,000.
26:38
SPEAKER_01: We're well on our way to$50,000 and it just reframes the cut the entire meeting in a way where they feel accomplished and confident and motivated, like right out of the gate, right?
26:47
SPEAKER_01: They come in and they and you and the other thing, by the way, side benefit that we don't do it for this reason, but it's a sneaky way, not sneaky is not the right word.
26:55
SPEAKER_01: We don't do it for this reason.
26:56
SPEAKER_01: But here's the sort of the ancillary benefit that comes with it is if somebody sits there and they look at all the things that they've done and they look at the progress that they've made since working with you, there's a pretty good chance that they're not gonna go, hmm, is this still worth it?
27:11
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm not sure this is actually worth the fee.
27:14
SPEAKER_01: Like if I was to sit there and go, if I if I had a uh personal trainer that was like, hey, here's a picture of you when you started, you little scrawny kid, and here you are now, look and you're jacked.
27:23
SPEAKER_01: I'd be like, listen, I don't know, I don't know what I've been paying you.
27:25
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't matter.
27:26
SPEAKER_01: Like, look at this.
27:27
SPEAKER_01: This is but and it's just such an easy thing to do.
27:30
SPEAKER_01: I think we just for some reason we get so future focused that we forget to reflect on the past.
27:34
SPEAKER_01: And you have to look back in order to launch forward.
27:38
SPEAKER_01: So yeah, you can you can show up, you can show people the things they've done.
27:41
SPEAKER_01: You can put together a list and say, hey, here are all the things we've completed together and show them and create a deliverable around it.
27:46
SPEAKER_01: That's an awesome way to do it.
27:47
SPEAKER_01: You can also just sort of ask questions, right?
27:49
SPEAKER_01: And and to uh go into the meeting with a couple questions and say, Hey, what are you most proud of what you've accomplished over the last year?
27:56
SPEAKER_01: Or in the work that we did together, when you came in, you said you were, you know, you were you said you were worried about this.
28:01
SPEAKER_01: Is that still a concern of yours?
28:03
SPEAKER_01: Or you can start asking people, hey, on a scale of one to ten, how do you feel about your current situation, your current financial situation?
28:11
SPEAKER_01: Scaling questions are always the easiest ones to ask.
28:13
SPEAKER_01: Answer, I mean, right?
28:14
SPEAKER_01: So you if you say, Hey, how do you feel about your current financial situation?
28:17
SPEAKER_01: Then people are gonna be like, uh good, right?
28:20
SPEAKER_01: But you go, hey, one to ten, how do you feel?
28:23
SPEAKER_01: And they're like, I mean, probably I'm probably about a six, right?
28:27
SPEAKER_01: And then you get that data point, they're a six.
28:29
SPEAKER_01: The next time they come in, if you ask it again, they may say they're a seven or an eight, and you can point back to like literal progress that's been made, right?
28:37
SPEAKER_01: So there's a number of ways to do it.
28:39
SPEAKER_01: The point is, is like, let's start doing it, you know, like like instead, let's reflect instead of just focusing so much on the future.
28:46
SPEAKER_01: So, anyways, I just want to that's one of those things that's like powerful and hopefully practical where you can say, okay, I could probably start doing that even in my next meeting that's gonna make a huge difference.
28:56
SPEAKER_00: No, it's amazing.
28:57
SPEAKER_00: I mean, these are all conversations, like you know, Brock and I had formal sales training at Northwestern Mutual.
29:03
SPEAKER_00: So for better or for worse, right?
29:04
SPEAKER_00: They taught you more of how to sell than anything, you know, than financial planning or whatever.
29:09
SPEAKER_00: Um, but you know, really just getting down to like what's important to people, and like that's you know, why some advisors who they might be a great advisor and they might be doing the review meetings, but the clients are leaving and it's you know a little bit empty.
29:23
SPEAKER_00: But there's another advisor who's calling on them who's just as hungry, who has the personal skills.
29:28
SPEAKER_00: They might not have the technical skills, but the personal skills are what really, really, really separates those from like, you know, who are doing well versus killing it, you know.
29:37
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's just that much different or getting that many referrals.
29:41
SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah, I okay, I think it's important to be to point this out because you're exactly right.
29:46
SPEAKER_01: Um, in that like if you lose, you might lose your client to somebody who has more, we're gonna we'll say personal skills, right?
29:53
SPEAKER_01: And I want to be careful saying that it's personal skills.
29:57
SPEAKER_01: And here's why.
29:57
SPEAKER_01: I think you're so we're saying the same thing.
29:59
SPEAKER_01: I just want to label it something different because I think there's a lot of people that will say, oh, I'm just not that personal.
30:04
SPEAKER_01: Like I'm not like naturally social, I'm not super personable.
30:07
SPEAKER_01: I've no, I don't like connect with people the way that some people naturally do.
30:10
SPEAKER_01: You know, I'm not the person that goes to the party and everybody wants to talk to me, and I can just fire up a conversation with anybody.
30:15
SPEAKER_01: Like, certainly the the people that have these personal skills that we're talking about, when we think about losing to some a client to somebody like that, that's probably who you lose it to, but it's not because they have personal skills, it's because they're just showing a genuine interest in the other person and asking them questions and engaging with them in meaningful ways.
30:32
SPEAKER_01: That's all these like socially adept people that that just can connect and talk with anybody that have emotional intelligence, that's all they're doing, right?
30:38
SPEAKER_01: Is they're just saying, hey, instead of focusing entirely on the plan and the portfolio, like I like engaging with you and understanding you and connecting with you.
30:45
SPEAKER_01: And anybody can do that, right?
30:47
SPEAKER_01: Like it's not that's not a uh that's not something that's reserved just for a select few people.
30:53
SPEAKER_01: It just requires going in with a different mindset and being intentional about hey, am I gonna spend this time explaining the uh the three decimal points at the end of their account statement and like diving into the spreadsheet, which you you can do that too, right?
31:07
SPEAKER_01: Or am I gonna make sure that I'm engaging with them, that I'm asking meaningful questions, demonstrating that I still like understand their situation fully?
31:15
SPEAKER_02: Totally.
31:16
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
31:17
SPEAKER_02: Intentionality, right, is is the big thing, like actually putting in the work and the effort.
31:21
SPEAKER_02: Uh so I'll go back to my question.
31:23
SPEAKER_02: I love that, I love that you you added that, man, because it's really important to get out there.
31:27
SPEAKER_02: But how are you helping people with this?
31:28
SPEAKER_02: I know you I know you got some cool things coming up on the horizon.
31:30
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, always helping um on the podcast, the human side of money.
31:34
SPEAKER_01: It's been on a little bit of a sabbatical, but it's firing back up soon.
31:36
SPEAKER_01: Uh, but that like this stuff will be in there or this kind of stuff throughout it.
31:40
SPEAKER_01: Like there's a whole backlog of this content.
31:42
SPEAKER_01: Share a lot.
31:42
SPEAKER_01: I'm sharing it currently, but I mean, we'll be sharing a lot of it on LinkedIn, putting it out there for the world to see and to read and to learn from, and then um put together the like next on October 1st.
31:52
SPEAKER_01: So I don't know when this is coming out, doesn't matter.
31:53
SPEAKER_01: It'll be out there anyways.
31:55
SPEAKER_01: But I'm I'm launching a course called the Ultimate Review Meeting, where it's basically all this information packaged into one place and it provides this system that you can go through where it's like, all right, I could take this, plug it in, and it just tells you exactly what to do to accomplish some of these things, right?
32:08
SPEAKER_01: So, like the um when we talk about looking back, you know, it's instead of me just like rambling about it for five minutes and explaining it, it's like, hey, here's what, here's why it's important, but like here are actual ways you can do it and implement it with examples and that kind of thing.
32:21
SPEAKER_01: So, like I said from the very beginning, the idea with this thing is hey, there's a lot of effort, time, effort, and research that went into it.
32:26
SPEAKER_01: But the idea is to distill it down and say if an advisor goes through this, they can walk away with like very practical ways to elevate the review meetings pretty much the next day.
32:36
SPEAKER_02: Awesome.
32:36
SPEAKER_02: And for people that want to reach out or follow some of your stuff right now, what you've been doing, uh, you're really great at it, man.
32:42
SPEAKER_02: You're widely respected in the community.
32:43
SPEAKER_02: Uh, what's the best way for everybody to follow along?
32:46
SPEAKER_02: Podcast, LinkedIn, all the above?
32:48
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, podcast and LinkedIn.
32:49
SPEAKER_01: Human Side of Money is the podcast.
32:51
SPEAKER_01: And then I'm on LinkedIn, Brendan Fraser.
32:54
SPEAKER_01: You can find me on there.
32:54
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, those are probably the two best ways.
32:56
SPEAKER_01: Awesome.
32:56
SPEAKER_01: Well, Brendan, thank you so much for your time today.
32:58
SPEAKER_00: We really appreciate it.
32:59
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, thanks for having me back on.
33:01
SPEAKER_01: We'll uh I'll start working on the uh some good material for number three for round three.
33:05
SPEAKER_01: I'll come up with something good.
33:06
SPEAKER_00: That sounds great, man.
33:07
SPEAKER_02: Good to see you.
33:08
SPEAKER_01: See you guys.