Latest / The Efficient Advisor: Tactical Business Advice for Financial Planners / 140: Better Financial Planning Through Emotional Intelligence with Brendan Fraizer

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140: Better Financial Planning Through Emotional Intelligence with Brendan Fraizer · The Efficient Advisor: Tactical Business Advice for Financial Planners

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: In the world of financial planning, the behavioral aspect plays a crucial role.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: It's an aspect that often goes unnoticed but can significantly impact the relationship between a financial advisor and your clients.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: In this episode I am joined by Brendan Fraser, a seasoned consultant to financial advisors, turned financial planner.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Not to be confused with the Brendan Fraser that was part of the blockbuster hit in Sinowman back in 1992.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: But Brendan Fraser is here to discuss this fascinating correlation between behavioral finance and how it affects financial planning.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: Brendan embarked on a journey to explore the emotional dynamics of financial planning after observing, as a consultant, a common theme among advisors.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: They often felt more like therapists than they did like financial advisors, addressing not just the monetary aspects but also the emotional dynamics of their clients financial decisions.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: And by this phenomenon Brendan started going just deep into the world of behavioral finance, making him the perfect guest to discuss this topic with me.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: So in this episode we discussed what Brendan calls the three E questions that open up clients right away.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: And I love, love, love, love, love.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: This was one of my biggest takeaways.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: We discussed the delicate balance between curiosity and following the question versus structure inside of a meeting.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: We talk about strategies to strengthen trust with clients.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: We discuss why understanding the emotional side of money is critically important to financial planning and really truly how it'll ultimately help you get your recommendations right, which will ultimately lead to more sales or implementation.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: Brendan also shares his strategies to incorporate behavioral finance process in his initial client interview process.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: So it's a great episode.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: I hope you guys enjoy it.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: Let's go.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: Brendan, thank you so much for joining me today.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: I am so excited you were one of the few people I would show up to record a podcast with sick, with a super scratchy voice that makes it sound like I just smoked an entire pack of cigarettes.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: I did not.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: I did not smoke an entire pack of cigarettes, but normally I would cancel and be like, hey, this is going to sound horrible, but we've had this on the books for so long that I'm like, Nope, we're doing it, we're doing it.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: I think I think I'm supposed to say thank you to that.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: Thank you, I guess as I light up a cigar here at my desk while we record right.
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: Yes, exactly yeah.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: Well, good, I'm super excited that you're here and you know I've been thinking a lot about there's so many things that we could talk about, Like I know, when I was on your show, we went in like a thousand different directions and I mean you had a central theme, which I appreciated, but I felt like we talked about so much and as I listened to your podcast and taken your content, I feel like there's so many things that we could share, and I know you talk about this ad nauseam, this idea of behavioral finance.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: But I want to have you just kind of for people that don't know you or for people that know you but maybe haven't heard kind of how you got into this space Tell us a little bit about just kind of your origin story of as a financial planner and how you kind of ended up really embracing this, this human side of financial planning.
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so, and, by the way I was just going to say I really enjoyed our conversation on my show.
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: In fact, it's one that I keep thinking back to.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: So my favorites are the ones where you get away from it for a few weeks and you keep coming back to some of the things that you've learned, and that's happened several times.
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: So I enjoyed that.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: We did talk about a lot, but I thought it was good and it keeps popping back into my head.
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: But, yeah so, my like my journey, my inflection point, kind of where this all started, I guess, was actually before I became a financial planner.
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: So I was working with advisors, consulting with advisors on retirement income strategies, and so I'd meet with advisors all over the place, you know, all over the country, and basically the cool thing is I got to talk to thousands of advisors over the course of about seven years or so, and you, I would keep hearing something along the lines of you know, brandon, sometimes I feel like more of a therapist than a financial advisor, or it would be like I think I'm like I think I'd be better off with a degree in psychology than I would in finance or accounting or economics sometimes, and you're sitting like you would hear it over and over and over again.
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: And so, like I know every advisor that hears that's like yeah, yeah, I get in it and it makes sense.
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: We all know it.
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: So then my next natural question after I heard it for probably the 200th time I don't know why it took me so long but on the 21st time my question became I hear that, I hear that a lot.
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: I'm just curious, like, what do you do about that?
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: But that's the case.
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: Like, how do you?
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: What do you do?
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: You didn't get a degree in psychology, so what do you do now?
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: If you feel like a therapist but you weren't trained in any communication skills, what do you do now?
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: And now we just get these blank stares and it'd be like, well, I mean, I read a book.
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: I mean it's kind of like and that's not bad.
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: Right, that's not bad, and there are some training programs out there.
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: But, mind you, this is the start, about 10 years ago, and so we've come a long way since then.
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: And so I was just sitting there having this moment of like, wait a minute.
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: Everybody says that this is important, everybody knows and acknowledges that it's important, this human side but nobody really knows what to do about it or like where to go, or they kind of have a feel, or so everybody's just kind of winging it.
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: And so at the same time, my wife was getting her masters in marriage and family therapy.
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: So she would come home and start telling me all the things that she was learning and the things that they do.
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: Now there's a lot of things that don't apply, but there are oftentimes where she'd be sitting there telling me things and I should have been listening to her and probably saying I make making her feel heard and understood.
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: But all I could think about as she was talking was why don't we know some of these things in financial?
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: Why don't we know, like, how to set up an office to facilitate conversation?
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: Why don't we know powerful ways to get people to open up and talk to us like that were their best friend after one meeting?
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: Like how do we not know and focus on some of these things, better ways to ask questions and listen, and all that kind of stuff?
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: And so then I got into the financial planning role and started doing financial planning, which gave me some good like in the trenches boots on the ground whatever the phrase is that you want to use real life experience doing it, and so I thought to myself all right, we all we need to do a better job of learning this.
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: The answers in the research are out there on how to do this human behavioral side, but they're just not filed under the folder of financial services, they're filed under the.
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: They're filed under psychology, behavior, communication and other places.
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: And so my eyes kind of decided all right, I want to know these things.
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: Maybe other people do too.
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: And so I just kind of went on this journey of researching and then starting the podcast to talk to really cool and smart people that also know these things to.
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: Just I figured, at a worst case scenario, I would learn a lot and could apply it.
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: And here we are, all these years later and it turns out there's advisors everywhere that I think kind of felt the same way, where they're like yeah, I mean I can't like focus on this all the time, but I just need ways to apply it like practically in my practice and my process and my conversations and there was one meeting in particular that I was a part of where it like really stuck out to me.
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: And so I'm just going to fast forward and give you the short abbreviated version because it's kind of a long story.
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: But basically there's a guy that was a couple that was ready to retire and the advisor put like, run the Monte Carlo projections, put their financial plan in.
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: They came in to meet.
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: He was basically he was outlining for me this meeting.
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: Hey, you can finally retire.
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: They're 72 and 70.
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: They've been planning for this moment and it was just like hey, I'm letting you know, we're there, you can retire moment.
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: And he put everything up on the screen and it showed the probability of success.
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: He said you can retire.
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: And this, the 72 year old man, had this look of like fear or disappointment on his face and it was not what you would expect.
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: Right, you're sitting there thinking this is going to be a great meeting, and it was palpable.
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: Like I was kind of looking at him, like this is getting a little bit awkward.
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: And so the advisor asked like, hey, I thought you'd be a little bit more excited about this.
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: And he's like yeah, I can't do it, I just can't do it.
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: And so the advisor naturally is like what do you mean?
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: We can't do what he's like I can't put all my money in the market, like this is our life savings.
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: I can't invest that money in this portfolio Because we need to.
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: We need this money to live off of.
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: I can't stand to watch it drop at the market drops.
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: And so he walked out that day and I'm giving you the short, abbreviated version.
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: There's more conversation but it needed to be invested in order to be able to retire and at least the way that they've set up the plan.
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: And he walked out and, and despite the fact that the numbers showed that he could do what he always wanted to do, he couldn't get over this emotional hump of and this, this mental block of not being able to being able to accomplish what he wanted to accomplish.
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: And his wife was.
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: His wife was disappointed Because she's been waiting to retire to go hang out and spend more time with the kids and grandkids.
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: And I left that day just thinking this is happening all over the world and we aren't equipped to know what to do with this.
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: Because it wasn't a, it wasn't a money problem, right, there's nothing.
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: There's nothing logical about it.
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: There's a human, emotional problem that we don't have the skill set, we're not equipped to the skill set that we need to handle Challenges like that, and so that's kind of the way, the thing that finally pushed me over the edge to go All right, I need to start.
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: I want to try to help if I can.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: So, having had that experience, if you could go back and do that meeting over or really that whole financial planning process over with that couple, what would you do differently?
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great question.
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: So the one thing that I've learned I feel like I've learned from day one that continues to be beaten into my head as I think About and talk to all these people about the human, the behavioral side is that you can't.
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: Logic is never gonna beat emotion, emotions always gonna trump logic.
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: Or Daniel Crosby says that Trying to trying to fight logic with emotion is no, trying to fight emotion with logic it's like bringing a knife to a gun fight and so I think, we in our world, we have a tendency to just you, to say like logic should suffice, logic should suffice.
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: The other thing that we know about people and behavior is that when you tell somebody what to do, it's the least effective way to actually get them to change their behavior.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: All you have to do is be married, have a partner or have kids, and I joke on your presentations and I do this section on how to get people to actually change your behavior.
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: It's like this part is brought to you by spouses and kids everywhere, because if you try to tell somebody what to do, no matter how much sense it makes, tell them what to do and they're not necessarily gonna do it, and so what?
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: I guess what I?
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: As I think back on it, it's like number one.
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: There need to be a lot more time spent like understanding when the fear came from, what, like give absorbing with empathy and showing empathy and saying I can understand why that would scare you, I can understand where that fear is coming from and diving it a little bit more into like, hey, what's going on in your mind?
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: What are you thinking when you see this?
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: Because it could be that he doesn't really understand that what the market's gonna do, he doesn't understand how much the portfolio could drop.
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: But just sitting there and saying, hey, I've got this number that shows a 96% probability of success, and that's one way to do it I get that should work.
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: Logically, you should be able to say, hey, look, you retire today, you're gonna be totally fine, no matter what the portfolio does.
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: But but logic doesn't get the job done when you're dealing with emotion.
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: So any time you're dealing with emotion the mode I think the most important thing you can do is first try to seek to understand where that person is coming from, because before they, before they change or will be willing to change, they need to know that you understand where they're coming from.
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: They need to know that you've taken the time to get to understand them and what's going on in their mind.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: So it's interesting you mentioned your wife Doing her masters it.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: So for me personally, the more therapy I did for myself as an individual, the better I got at every relationship and the better I got at connecting with people like random strangers on an airplane, clients understanding my staff, and now that I have teenagers which is terrifying, by the way but now that I have teenagers, it's interesting like when I think about this idea you mentioned of emotion always trump trumping logic, especially teenagers, because they don't have that prefrontal cortex, like you know, executive functioning.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: They're still up there in that amygdala all right time.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: And being able to like, right, like, and I just remember thinking to myself one time when one of my kids I have two boys and one of them was just, like you know, going bananas, and I'm, like, you know it, and I wanted to say, like, calm down.
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: And I was like who, who has ever actually calmed down by yelling Calm down at them in that moment?
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: Right, and so it's, yeah, and so it's really that like, even from, like, a parenting perspective, like even trying to just understand, okay, what is actually happening right now.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: How do I validate that right?
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: How do I get under that and really try to like, allow that emotional piece to move through so that some logic and some, you know, rational conversation can occur?
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: Maybe not right away, but it's a point.
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, right, right, but you can't meet the emotion with the logic right there in that moment.
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: It literally it's never gonna work.
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: There has to be this sense of they've you.
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: If you were to say, hey, it looks like you're really frustrated right now, it seems like you're overwhelmed right now, or I get the sense that you're Scared that you may run out of money and you won't be able to continue to live in this retirement.
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: Just letting people hear that they're known and understood, letting a, letting them feel the emotion.
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: You have to go there first before you have any chance with logic.
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: It's kind of like the, the thought behind it.
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: The other thing that I think is a little bit counterintuitive for financial advisors or financial planners as far as the way that we're trained and as I think back on that, one thing I would probably think about doing it.
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: I wasn't the advisor, I was sitting in on the meeting, but one thing I would think probably think about is this idea of like giving advice that doesn't have to be Rational or perfectly optimal, but it's better than the alternative.
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: So in that example, if I let's say that I can't remember what it was, but let's say that the idea was in this Monte Carlo projection.
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: It was gonna be a 60 40 portfolio that would have provided this income that would allow him to retire.
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: And he's saying I can't invest it, that's too risky, I need to stay, I need to put my money in all cash because I think I can't stomach the idea of my account dropping In value.
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: Well, you don't have to go like success isn't binary in that's.
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: It's not like getting them to go from zero percent invested to 60 40.
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: There can be a like, a Reasonable approach and say, all right, well, let's start by making a little progress and inch our way there.
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: So, okay, that may not feel comfortable.
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: Would what would feel more reasonable?
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: Would you feel more comfortable If we just if we weren't as aggressive out of the gate and then just like dipped our toes in first?
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: Would that be Without?
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: How would that make you feel?
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: So it's this idea and there's ways to do it without like, aside from investing.
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: Anytime you're giving somebody advice on how much they need to save, for example, it's like, hey, can you save $600 a month?
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: Well, you need, you need to save $600 a month.
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: That's what that's, that's what the software says.
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: It's like they're sitting there going, yeah, I don't know if I could save $600 a month, like I gotta go out and eat, my friends, I gotta get good new clothes, and it's like, okay, maybe you don't have to say that what would you feel, confident that you could say, well, I could, I could probably do $400 a month.
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: And then you're letting them tell you.
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: So you're empowering them.
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: It's now their idea and you've at least gotten them started in the right direction to where it'll be light, you could have potentially get to $600 a month.
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: It's kind of like when somebody goes on a diet and it's like you get, you say, hey, if you want to lose this amount of weight in six months, all you have to do is eat at the thousand calories a day and you'll be in Perfect shape in six months.
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: It's like, well, that's basically one salad is a thousand count and that's not possible, right?
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: So sometimes we that advice might be technically optimal, it may be perfectly right as far as like on a spreadsheet, but it doesn't may may not work in real life.
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: So oftentimes one of the ways to deal with that is just figure out what people feel like they can do and let that serve as the starting point and you can always make progress from there.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: Well, so really, you know, what you're saying is even like how we look at goals for ourselves.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: Like how do we take something that's a big, giant, hairy, audacious goal and break it down into super small, bite-sized Chunks that are palatable, that are easy, that we can do?
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: So, instead of saying I have to lose 20 pounds, I really just have to lose one pound first, and then I can lose one pound second, right, and then you'll get there slowly over time.
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: So yeah, so okay.
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: So I grew up in a family my whole family besides me is in television, and so everybody's in TV in some way, shape or form, most of them behind the camera.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: And you know, I can remember my dad growing up.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: He was always all over me about asking better questions and being a really good listener and he was like, you know, his big thing was always well, journalists, you know, like they're so busy worrying about the next question that they're not even really hearing the answer and following the answer.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: And those are the best interviews that go down where that, you know, where you're naturally curious and so it's interesting, you know, as I like grew up watching TV, or I grew up like I look at everything through this lens of like oh well, I had like five more questions for that person, like where we should have kept going down that that direction.
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: So I'm curious how you you know so I grew up in that environment how did you get so good at asking great questions Like how did you develop that as a skill?
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this is going to not make for a great answer to your question, but I don't, I don't really know.
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: I just I truly don't genuinely have no idea.
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: But I am just like I think at the root of it is just curiosity and being interested in trying and always have like trying to learn and then knowing that when excuse me, knowing that when somebody tells you something like they tell you, there's a reason that they tell you it, like if it's coming out of their mouth, there's something behind it.
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: So the words that people say are one thing, but it's always interesting to me to think like I wonder why they told me that I'd like to know a little bit more about that and what they said.
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: But, by the way, it sounds like your dad and I would be really good friends.
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: But yeah, I don't.
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: I honestly I wish I.
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: So I've been asked this before and I wish that I had a really good answer.
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: It'd be cool to answer it with a really good story or like here's how I developed it.
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: But I don't, I don't actually know.
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: I've just kind of always had this natural curiosity, I think is what is what it ultimately boils down to and that's what I keep chasing everything back to is if you have a natural curiosity, you'll naturally ask more questions.
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: And if you naturally ask more questions because you're curious, then you're going to be tuned in and listening, because you're not just asking questions for no reason.
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: You genuinely want to know the answer and you're interested to hear what people say and you can go deeper when they give you the response Like I like it.
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: Whenever I ask somebody a question, I'm not thinking about the next question that I'm going to ask.
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: I'm mostly listening to what they say, because I wanted to go deeper on the things that they're saying now, and that goes to a point that advisors can use as well.
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: As that's considered what, like I always said, the most powerful question you can ask is a follow up question, which is like I ask you a question, you answer and I'm not off to the next topic.
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: I'm asking you a follow up question on what you just said.
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: And the reason why I say it's the most powerful question you can ask is because, especially when you're in the beginning of a conversation or with somebody that you may not know as well or there's still trust to be built and had or established is because as soon as they.
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: When you ask somebody a question, they're responding, they're giving you their answer and you know, everybody knows how this goes.
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: You're sitting there like, maybe subconsciously, but you're trying to get a feel for all right, how much can I say?
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: Are they still interested?
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: Is like, is what I'm saying boring them?
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: Do they want to know more?
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: Can I talk more?
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: Because I like talking about myself.
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: I could probably talk about this for days, but I also don't want them to think that I'm hijacking the conversation and boring them.
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: Right, it's all.
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: We're all doing this.
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: It's to some degree.
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: And so when, as soon as you ask a follow up question about something that they just said and immediately signals that person that you were listening and that you cared about what they had to say, and it gives them permission to open up and talk more, it opens the floodgates of the conversation because it immediately signals like oh, ok, cool, they do care, they want to know more.
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: Now I have permission to open up and go deeper.
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: So if you get bored of people's answers really easily, don't ask follow up questions, because that's what's going to happen.
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: Is there going to be like oh, I feel safe now talking with you, but by I mean.
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: So it's a powerful way to get people to open up and build up and build trust.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: But yeah, sorry, all that to say, all that to say, I don't have a good answer as to how it came about.
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: I think it was natural, but I mean I could be wrong.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: OK, so let's talk really quickly about kind of those initial meetings and this idea of balancing curiosity and sort of flying by the seat of your pants and winging it versus having some key questions or some structure to those meetings.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: So tell me kind of what you're and I know because we chatted about this before we hit record just to smidge but having some structure to that meeting where you're asking similar, same questions every time, or where do you kind of fall Like how do you balance that desire to go down these rabbit holes and have some like kind of staples that you tend to ask, and what might some of those staples be?
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: So that one thing I always like try to hammer home is that a great question asked at the wrong time is no longer a great question.
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: And so, like you can have great questions, but not every question is designed for the very first meeting that you have with a prospect.
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: Like you could, if you want to ask them a deep, intimate, personal question about their life.
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: It's probably not going to be best suited for the first conversation that you've ever had with them.
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: And I mean we know these things intuitively right.
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: You never go on a first date with somebody and ask them like, hey, you know, tell me about the hardest thing you've ever experienced.
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: Like, have you ever had an affair?
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: Do you ever cheat on your boyfriend, right?
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: Like, how much money did you make last year?
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: Like there are things that you just don't ask it and those might not even be good questions, but like you could take a good question, ask at the wrong time, it's no longer a great question.
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: So the way that I think about it is that every single meeting that you have at least the ones that are standard, a standard part of your process, whether you're onboarding a prospect or you're doing review meetings with clients you should have, at the very minimum, a framework of the best questions that you could ask in that meeting.
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: Now, framework meaning like, not a script, it's not rigid, but at the same time, on the other end of the spectrum, you're not weaning it.
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: So everybody's always really nervous and afraid of like well, you know, I don't want a script, I'm not going to screw, I can't, I don't want a script.
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: That's that you know that sounds too scripted and that that feels inauthentic, and I get that you don't want to do that.
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: But in my, from what I've seen, the biggest culprit, or the number one thing that stands in the way of advisors having great meetings, are the good meetings that they have.
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: It's like my meetings are good, they're good enough, and the problem with that, or the reason that comes about, is because, like most of the time we wing it.
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: We said, and I really do think, like in this business, the way it's been designed, most advisors are there at least pretty decent with people and they can go have a pretty good conversation with somebody.
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: But the way I try to stress it is like you can have a good conversation by winging it or if you get a little bit more intentional and you have these natural communication skills.
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: You can use those in a more intentional way and have a great conversation.
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: And everybody's had those meetings, that where you, you walk out of it and you go man that went really well, right, that was good.
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: I wish I could do that every time.
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: Why, why can't?
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: I did the stars a lot that I haven't.
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: I must have had two cups of coffee instead of one.
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: That person must have woken up on the right side of the bed, and it's not like.
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: It's not that you can't do it every time.
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: You just have to know reverse engineer what could make that happen every time.
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: And if you have a framework of questions to operate from that, then you go into it with a more structured approach.
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: You go into it not rigid, not scripted, but you at least can dictate the flow and the outcome of the conversation.
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: And so when I say framework, I'll explain that a little bit more too.
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: It's.
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: I don't mean I've seen this before.
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: I don't mean you have a list of 20 questions that you're going to ask in the meeting.
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: Because, first of all, if you do that, just it's just an interrogation.
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: For if you, if you try to ask 20 questions, and it's not going to go well, at the same time it let's maybe say, well, of course, I don't ask 20 questions, and it's like well, then, why are all these on here?
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: That shows me that there's no clarity around what you want to ask.
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: Right, you haven't spent the time to think about what are the questions that I want to ask, what are the best ones to ask in this particular meeting?
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: So the exercise that I try to take people to is to say, if you have a list of, if you don't have a list of questions that you like, start there.
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: But once you have a list of questions that you like, think about the meeting that you're going to be in Maybe it's the first meeting with a prospective client and then go OK, let's say I could only ask one question in this meeting.
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: I only get one.
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: It needs to be the best question I could possibly ask.
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: What would it be?
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: And so you look at your list like this would be it.
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: You go okay, that's my favorite, that's my number one, the one question I would ask.
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: And you go okay, all right, good news, I can ask more than one.
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: If I could only ask one more, what would be the next one?
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: And you go through this like elimination or clarification filtering exercise to go all right, what are the best questions to ask?
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: And then, if it depends on how long the meeting is, but if it's a 30, 45 minute meeting.
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: You probably only have, like you maybe have five staple questions that serve as the framework and you know, like I'm gonna ask this but I'm also gonna I'm gonna ask it, but I'm gonna be listening to ask more questions about it.
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: So whenever I would do my meetings to remind myself of that or like visually represent that, I would have a sheet of paper with five normal size sheet of paper with five questions on it and I would have them like listed with blank spaces in between.
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: So it wasn't like bullet point, bullet point, bullet point, bullet point.
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: It was like bullet point, big space, bullet point, big space to remind me like hey, I'm leaving space visually reminding I'm leaving space for this to be the conversation.
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: These questions are just sort of like the framework to guide us where we wanna go.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that.
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: So do you have like a question that you have sort of found to be one of your favorites, that you like to ask, that you're willing to, that you're willing to share some of the secret sauce with us?
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: Well again.
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: So it depends on the meeting right.
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: So like a great question asked at the wrong times, not a great question, so that's why I let's talk like initial meeting, like discovery.
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: So I first start with okay, what's the purpose of this meeting?
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: And here's this is the other thing I try to talk about.
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: A lot is like you wanna get really, really clear on the purpose of the meeting.
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: That's gonna help you dictate what you wanna do and how you wanna ask it.
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: So what is the purpose of that first meeting?
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: So for me, it was always I wanna build trust and connection with this person, but at the same time, I want them to walk out feeling like I fully know and understand their problem and can solve it for them.
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: Because at the end of the day, I truly believe that people are coming into that meeting perspective.
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: Clients come in, they're feeling a little bit nervous, they're feeling a little bit anxious about it.
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: They've, by the way, they didn't wake up and say you know what?
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: I have a blank day, I have a full, I have a blank day on my calendar.
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: The one thing I wanna do today is meet with a financial advisor.
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: Like that sounds like the best way to use my time today, and we know this, I think by now a lot of people do.
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: But there's a reason that they're there, and so they're a little bit nervous and anxious, because they don't normally talk about this stuff with anybody else in their life.
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: Something prompted them to spend the time there when they could have been doing anything else in their life.
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: Here they are and at the same time, they wanna like.
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: They wanna like you and trust you.
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: So my thought process is always I need to address every single one of those things.
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: They're nervous and they're anxious.
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: I need to build trust and connection and I need to focus on the fact that they're there for a reason.
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: And so that's my.
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: I'm setting the foundation to answer your question.
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: Like, I don't think it's as easy as saying what are the questions to ask, what are the best questions to ask, cause I think it truly depends on how you're going about this meeting, what you're trying to accomplish.
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: So, with that in mind, my first question that I would ask anybody was never the same, but the purpose was the same and that was to get them out of their head and into their heart.
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: And so you look at some of the best interviewers of all time and you look at, you go dissect their interviews at the very beginning of any conversation.
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: Their number one goal is to ask them questions that get them out of their head and into their heart, and so I call them three E questions.
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: They're questions that are easy to answer, they're exciting to answer and they have an emotional component, right and so that, what does that look like?
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: Well, it can be a number of things, like.
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: My favorite way to do it would be to like look them up and research them online first and have something that I knew that they were passionate and wanted to talk about, passionate about and would want to talk about.
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: But you can also have basic ones, like if you work with business owners.
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: So, like Libby, let's say that you were coming in, you were a prospective client and I know you've got the efficient advisor business I'd probably be like, hey, libby, so I see all this stuff you're doing the efficient advisor, you're doing an awesome job, but where did the idea come from to even start this Cause?
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: Like you had the successful advisor business before?
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: Like what happened?
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: Like how, where did that come about?
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: So that's first of all.
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: You've thought about it a lot, you've answered that before, so it's easy for you, it's not hard.
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: It's exciting, cause you get to talk about yourself and your past and your business and what you're building, and there's always an emotional component when you're talking about things like your business and your kids and that sort of thing.
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: And so you did it to me at the very beginning.
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: How did you get into what happened?
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: And now here I am, just like rambling on.
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: You're like, oh shoot, I shouldn't have done that.
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: I opened up the floodgates.
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: But I'll contrast that with oh sorry, go ahead.
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: No, I was like I love it and I'm here for it.
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: But I'll contrast it with when I go get my haircut.
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: Every time I go to the guys, the first question you always ask me is so, how's life?
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: And like that's a really hard question to answer.
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: That does not create good conversation.
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: I mean, I'm always like, oh, it's good.
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: Then I'm like struggling and straining for an answer, and it just doesn't set the tone the right way, whereas if you get somebody to talk at the very beginning opening up about something that's easy for them to talk about, that gets them out of their head and into their hearts and it creates conversational flow.
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: So that number one, right out of the gate, is getting them to open up and talk.
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: And then, of course, you have to actually listen and be curious about what they're saying.
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: You don't want to just do it Like you know they'll pick up on it, the fact that you're not interested.
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: That's number one.
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: And then number two again like, want them to open up, like you and trust you.
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: But number two they're there for a reason, and so the first question would always be something like so I understand that you probably didn't.
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: You probably didn't wake up and decide you know what.
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: The one thing we want to do today is go talk to a financial advisor.
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: Imagine, you're probably here for a reason and we're okay with that.
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: We understand that it happens every time.
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: So I'm just curious what prompted you to reach out?
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: What made you reach out?
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: And I don't think there's nothing revolutionary about that.
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: I think a lot of people kind of know that's a good way to start a conversation with a prospective client.
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: It also like puts the focus on them and their needs right out of the gate to signal to them that, hey, this is about you, not me.
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: And then the natural follow-up question that you kind of have a built-in follow-up question when you ask what prompted this to reach to.
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: What prompts you to reach out is why now?
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: And I wouldn't just ask it like that.
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: It would be like okay, so this is what prompts you to reach out Now.
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: You could have reached out two years ago.
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: You could have been reaching out like two months from now.
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: But I'm curious what?
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: Why today?
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: What made you reach out today?
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: Why now?
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: And you'll be amazed at what kind of answers you get, because you ask what prompted this?
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: So like, oh well, we need to start thinking about, we need to start thinking about retiring.
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: You got to think, we got and you probably needed to get our stuff in order and we realized that and you're like okay, well, why now?
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: And they're like, well, mostly because we have this friend whose dad hates his life because he can't retire and he just he tells them all the time that they wish, he wishes he would have started saving earlier.
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: And then you know we realized that we need to do that and so we wouldn't spend some time.
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: We wouldn't spend some time trying to look up like how much we need to be saving and what accounts, and we just got overwhelmed at that point and we didn't know what to do.
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: And you're like, oh, now this can be a good meeting.
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: You've literally just told me it wasn't about retiring, it was about being able to.
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: You didn't want to be the person that didn't have that option and you're overwhelmed trying to figure out your choices.
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: And so it's just.
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: When you ask good questions and good follow-up questions, you get a goldmine of information that you can use later in the conversation when you're trying to explain what you do and the value that you provide.
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: So those are always like the three staples out of the gate in any first prospect meeting was get them talking with a three question of some sort what prompted this and then why?
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: now, Okay, I love that, and you said something early on that I wanna just kind of like pause and double click on for a second because yeah, you may ask a follow-up question on where.
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: now I'm like, okay, good, she wants to know more, this is good.
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, you mentioned the word feel so like, so something I'm a huge stickler about.
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: So, right, we're doing our group coaching program right now and we're getting into our planning process and setting the stage for how do we want our clients to feel during each of these types of meetings right, like what?
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: is the goal.
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: What do we anticipate them feeling when they're coming in, and then how do we want them to feel when they're going out of the meeting, and then how do we provide that transformation in the midst?
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: And so you mentioned the word feeling, and then you also mentioned having like an intent, like being intentional and showing up like what is the actual purpose of this meeting, and it's not just to connect.
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: It's not just to like interact, it's not just to get to know each other.
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: You actually came in with like a business intention, even though it's wrapped in emotional connection and interpersonal skills and all the things.
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: So I love that and I just wanted to call that out, because you mentioned kind of like my two favorite things like being intentional but then also really focusing on their feelings, and I just think that's.
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: I love it.
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: So that's like-.
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: They're feeling.
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: No, you're right, they're feeling like what are they feeling?
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: Coming into it?
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: Because I mean, if you start well, you can't address that.
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: If you're not aware of that, you're not gonna have the best meeting you could possibly have.
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: If they're feeling nervous and anxious and we know, financially, visor, anxiety is a real thing, there's research that shows it If they're feeling that way and you're not doing something to address it, then in that feeling stays there the whole meeting.
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: You're not gonna possibly have the best meeting you can have because you haven't done anything to deal with the anxiety.
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: But yes, what are they feeling?
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: Coming in is important.
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: But then and after talking with you this is where I even bought into this even more so was like, what is the feeling that I want them to have when they leave?
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: How do I want them to feel?
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: And then the other way I think about it is when they get in the car and they talked to their partner or they call somebody, what are the things that I would want them to say and how can I create that Like I would want them to be like?
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: You know what I feel, like that person really gets and understands our situation.
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: I enjoyed that conversation and I feel better, but I'm more confident about where we are now and where we're going than I ever have, and it's like that you sit there and think about what do I want them to feel, what do I want them to say when they leave, and I think that helps dictate like, okay, what do I want to do in this meeting.
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, and it's silly, but it can apply to every stage of the process, like even a day to gather right, like what are they?
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: Feeling coming in, they might be ashamed of what they haven't saved, or they might be embarrassed that they don't really understand what they have.
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: And how do we want them to feel when they're leaving?
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: And then how do we intentionally create that transformation during the meeting?
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: So I just wanted to call that out because I thought that was awesome and I loved it.
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: Well good, well, I know we're coming up on time here, so I'm super grateful for everything that you shared.
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: I appreciate.
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: Well, you know me, I love very tactical takeaways, so I've already got quite a few that I'm going to distill in the outro to this episode and then in the second episode of the week where we kind of break down actionable steps and items that advisors can take.
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: So thank you for all of that, because it was just so, so good and I feel like I could talk to you for hours and hours, and hours and we should just do like a 27 part podcast series together or something along those lines.
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: But before nobody will.
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: Nobody will listen, but we'll have fun.
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: We are going to have an amazing time.
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: That's really all that matters, right.
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: That's right yeah.
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: So it'll be.
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: It'll be a whole separate thing.
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: We'll have a separate, you know daily show, just the two of us and it'll be just for us and that's.
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: But before I let you go, I always like to ask my guests, especially as a business owner, as a successful financial advisor, as someone who's running multiple businesses, what are a couple of the tips, tricks, hacks, tools, resources, things that you utilize on a daily basis to help you operate more efficiently in your business?
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I really love this question and I know you've asked it a lot and so I've learned a lot from this question.
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: You've asked other people, and so for me it's a few things.
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: One is and I was forced to do this in a course that I took for entrepreneurs, and this isn't anything novel, but it takes a little bit of work and most people will go, yeah, it's important and I'll get around to it.
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: They don't actually do it.
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: It's one of those like important but not urgent things and that is like creating a really really clear vision around what it is that you want to do and who you want to be.
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: And like the point where the course that I went through basically had me write like a biography of this is who Brendan Fraser is and what he stands for and the principles that he stands for.
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: And so you read it in third person and it sounds really strange and awkward.
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: People are probably Brendan's a weirdo and that's fine.
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: I mean that's probably true to some degree, but like, yeah, so I'll look at it and read it once a week just to like anchor myself to who it is that I want to be, with a lot of detail, like really clear, and in there too is like who I want to be as a husband and a dad.
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: And then, as a part of that as well, you create like visuals of like what you want to do, what you want to accomplish, and so there's visual representations and then there's affirmations of the principles that you want to live by, like.
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: One of the things that I read every week to remind myself is you'll never look back when you're 85 and think I wish I would have sent one more email.
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: But you will look back and be like I wish I would have spent a little bit more time with my kids when they were young, right, or you'll never go.
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: I wish I would have, I wish I would have sent that email instead of hanging out with my kids, and so I'll sit there the other day and that'll pop into my head because I'm bringing it to, trying to be aware of it.
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: I mean I could send this email.
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: I could, but my kids are only this little for so long and I'm never going to wish I would have sent this email.
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: So that's one thing.
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: Second thing is the principle or the idea of what is.
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: It's what in the book essentialism appointed over here, what he calls like your essential actions, the idea being like what are the?
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: You can't do everything, and so what are the things you can do that have the biggest impact, the maximum impact, and using that and trying to use that as a filter for decision making and tasks and what to do is like all right, I've got these things I need to do.
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: Which one's going to have the biggest impact on what I want to do and where I want to go?
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: And then the last thing this is a tip just from my the content side content, anybody that does like what does even have to be content creation Anybody that says like you know what I feel, like I always have these really like, really good ideas.
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: I have these great ideas.
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: I'll read something or hear something that pops into my head and then I just forget it.
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: Maybe one of the biggest game changers for me as far as like being able to get ideas down and out there and not forgetting them, is having a place to dump all of my ideas in one place.
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: And I think I heard somebody say your brain wasn't built to store information.
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: That it does, but it wasn't built to just store information all the time, so you need to have a place to store the things that you think about that you want to come back to in reference, and there's a guy named Tiago Forte who he calls it building a second brain.
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: There's a whole, there's a way, a system to do it.
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: But at the very least, have like one place where you can dump all of your great thoughts and ideas and know where they are and come back to.
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: It's the only reason I can do any type of content creation, because I'll have a thought, but I'll be like in the car driving.
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: It's like, well, I can't type this out right now, I can't do it, but I'll just jot it down or talk it out in my my idea dump and then I can come back and pull it up later and I'm not starting from scratch.
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: So I know I just gave you three.
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: I kind of cheated a little bit, but no, I love it so.
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: so yeah, I'm a huge fan of brain dumps.
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: I have like a personal brain dump and a business brain dump and I'm always putting stuff in there.
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: But you are the second guest to mention this, building a second brain.
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: So I'm like I'm gonna have to go check this out.
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: So we do at the Efficient Advisor.
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: We've done it once, we're gonna do it again.
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: We do a fake book club where we all just read the same book but we never actually like discuss it or do anything with it.
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: It's more of just like hey, we should all read this book together and then we're not gonna actually like have any commitment surrounding it because nobody needs anything else on their list of things to do.
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: So I'm like I need to.
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: You know, I just need to read that myself.
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: It holds me accountable to reading more.
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: And we did a Dan Sullivan book.
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: What would we do Not?
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: Oh, which one we did.
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: Gap and Gain and I yeah, not who, not how, but we did Gap and the Gain and I can't tell you how many people were like I'm so glad we did that fake book club, like that was so good and I learned a lot and it was a great reminder and we had zeroes, discussions, nobody, there was no deadlines, nobody had to show up for anything and people loved it.
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: So I think we're gonna have to do building a second page as our next fake book club.
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: So yeah, I don't know if it's a book that's like but, but whatever it is, I think it is.
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: Oh, it is Okay, all right, I'm pretty sure it's a book now.
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: I'll look into it and you can lead the fake book club.
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: There's a zero time commitment.
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: So yeah, I know it's also.
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: It's also an online course too, which I'm a big fan of those, so I may go that route while you guys read, but since it's a fake book club, nobody will know, that's okay.
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: Exactly, exactly.
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: That's the whole purpose.
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: So I'm gonna find out if it's a book, and that'll be our next fake book club.
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: So well thank you so much for being here.
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: I appreciate you and all of the things that you're doing to elevate the industry, and I know this conversation will be a huge blessing to one of the advisors listening, so I appreciate your time.
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, thank you and I.
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: The feeling is mutual.
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: I think you're doing awesome too, so it was a pleasure to be here, as I've been looking forward to it for a while.
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: So thanks for having me.
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: Awesome, we'll have an amazing rest of your day.
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: Thanks, all right guys.
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: Well, thank you for sticking with me through that episode If you made it to this point listening to Muscretchi voice.
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: But I wanted to just kind of call out a couple of takeaways from this episode.
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: So the first big takeaway that I had was this idea that emotion is always going to trump logic.
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: And you know, brendan mentioned kind of bringing a knife to a gunfight and I loved this.
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: I loved this idea because he's 100% right.
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, think about any argument you've had with a spouse or, specifically, a teenager.
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: Oh, my goodness, I have two teenagers right now and, let's just be honest, logic isn't exactly their thing.
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: Right, we got to get their emotional space right before we can even start to drop logic in them or on them.
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: So I thought that was a really cool takeaway.
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: The other thing that we talked about was establishing ahead of time the purpose of the meeting.
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: Really, what is it that a client is coming into the meeting for?
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: What are you as the advisor attempting to get out of the meeting?
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: Setting that business intention correctly so that as you leave the meeting, you've gotten what you came for and you've really kind of identified what the purpose is.
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: And I also think this is really helpful.
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: So, like in our group coaching program or in our one-on-one coaching, when we talk about how you want your clients to feel going into the meeting and feel leaving the meeting, establishing deliverables, client buy-ins, really understanding what the purpose of the meeting is will help you structure the meeting, so so, so much better.
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: I loved when Brendan said that the most powerful question you can ask is a follow-up question.
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: I thought that was just a really great way of looking at it.
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: I know there are certain people in my life that I think when we're chatting they're so busy, worried about what their next question is going to be.
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: And I can tell the difference when I'm being interviewed by somebody who is, you know, just a really well-seasoned interviewer and has like natural curiosity, versus someone who's got like a list of questions in front of them and is just wanting to ask away.
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: So the most powerful question you can ask is that follow-up question.
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: But then, like we chatted about a little bit of kind of balancing, there's that delicate balance between curiosity and moving the meeting forward and having some structure to it.
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: So one of the things that I thought Brendan kind of mentioned that was cool was this idea of having a framework of the best questions to ask and he shared a little bit about his three E questions being easy, being exciting and having an emotional component, meaning it stirs some side of emotional response inside of your clients.
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: I thought that was really really cool.
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: But going in with this intentional list or framework where we're going to make a list of questions that you like, we're going to get really, really clear and narrow down to the absolute best questions for this meeting, so that's kind of where going back to this idea of understanding what is the purpose of this meeting and, you know, boiling it down, I think he said something like if I can only ask one more question, what would it be?
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: So really getting those one, two, three, four kind of best questions down on paper and memorize so that when you roll into those initial client meetings and, honestly, you should have really great questions built into every piece of your financial planning process.
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: So for those of you that are in the systems to scale group coaching, this is something we're going to be baking in as we go through and we're breaking down each part of your start to finish, prospect to client financial planning prospect.
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: Be thinking about what are these questions that I can sort of script into or establish framework for for literally every single part of our process, every single meeting.
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: So I hope you guys enjoyed this episode.
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: I am going to link all of Brendan's stuff in this show notes along with the book recommendation that we chatted about Essentialism, amazing Book.
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: I totally suggest you guys give it a go if you haven't already.
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: That would also make another really good fake book club book that we should read together.
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: It's been a while since I've read it, so that's one that when he said that, I was like, ah yes, I probably need to come back to that.
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: So, anyways, I hope this episode was impactful for you guys.
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: I'd love to hear what you think over in the Efficient Advisor community on Facebook.
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: We're about 1800 advisors large right now and it you guys, it's just so cool.
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: I love how open and sharing and really just what an abundance mindset this group as a whole really has and what a heart for just the industry and financial planning in general.
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: So when someone asks a question and y'all jump in with like tons of very detailed answers and willingness to share your templates and your things, oh my gosh, love it, love it, love it.
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: And if this podcast has blessed you in any way, shape or form, or helped you even make one simple tweak that has changed the way that you do business or improved the way that you've operated in your efficiency.
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: I would love it if you do me a solid and leave me a five star review over on iTunes or Spotify or wherever you are listening to this podcast.
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: Thank you guys so much and I hope you have an amazing rest of your week.
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: I'll see you guys next week.