Episode Summary

Brendan Frazier serves as Chief Behavioral Officer at RFG Advisory, where he leads the integration of behavioral finance into advisor-client relationships. He is also the creator and host of The Human Side of Money Podcast, a bi‑weekly series offering actionable strategies for advisors seeking to deepen trust, improve communication, and guide clients through emotionally charged financial decisions.

In this episode, Brendan delves into the intersection of personal connection, emotional intelligence, and professional success, with a special focus on the financial advisory world. Through meaningful conversations, Brendan explores the art of building trust and fostering authentic relationships by guiding guests to speak from the heart. Reflecting on his experiences and consulting with thousands of financial professionals, he discusses how working effectively in the planner’s role can feel closer to therapy than number-crunching.

Here’s What You’ll Learn In This Episode:

• Introduction
• Why Behavioral Finance is Important
• The Importance of Effective Communication Skills
• Leveraging Technology and the Human Side of Planning
• Learning and Improving from Mistakes
• How to Invite Information Instead of Asking

Quotes

“I want to get these people that I’m meeting with for the first or second time to open up and trust me and connect with me. One of the best ways to do that is to try to get them out of their head and into their heart, speaking with emotion and creating conversational flow. And a key to doing that is to ask them questions that are easy and emotional to answer. And if you think about it, easy questions to answer and emotional questions often delve back into our past because it’s something that we’ve lived before, likely something that we’ve told before. And we love talking about ourselves as emotional beings. So even asking that question right out of the gate is just a great question to get me into the flow, get me going. The only risk you run at this point, by the way, is that I could probably go forever because I get to talk about myself and my past. So, I’m going to try not to do that and make it as succinct and hit the highlights as much as possible to the degree that it matters to anybody that’s listening.”

“I started off consulting with financial advisors. And in that job, it was great because I got to literally meet and talk with probably close to thousands of them over the course of my time doing that. And there is this constant theme that kept coming up where you would hear in some way, shape, or form them allude to the fact they feel more like therapists than advisors at times. Or the other way you’d hear it said or phrased is, sometimes I feel like more of a psychologist than I do a financial advisor. Or I’d be better off with a degree in psychology or master’s in therapy than in finance and accounting. And nobody ever actually thought that that was one hundred percent true, but there was this realization that this job requires more than just an understanding of numbers. It actually requires an understanding of people.”

“…Self-awareness is a really powerful thing and knowing yourself and, like, when your—we’ll call them issues—are coming up or when your beliefs and perspectives are infiltrating the conversation and even the advice that you’re giving. I know, like you read anything on emotional intelligence, like one of the core tenants of somebody who’s highly emotionally intelligent is a level of self-awareness. And in addition to all that, it’s really, really hard to do because most people are like, yeah, it’s not, you know, I wanna hear about I wanna tell other people what they’re doing wrong and where their weaknesses are, but I’m not so sure that I wanna be exposed to my it’s not just about weaknesses. I get it. But it’s funny. Like, yes, that is really important. And at the same time, nobody well, not nobody. Very rarely do we see people rushing to be like, yeah. You know what? Help point out some of my flaws and any issues that I need to address and work on.”

“I have to imagine that there’s going to be more and more focus on how do we leverage this (AI) to automate as many back-office tasks as possible? How do we save more time on things that don’t matter as much for human beings to do that technology can do? And that’s only going to put more of a focus on the things we can do to have better relationships and deeper trust and connection and help people not just invest their money, but start learning, hey, how do I use this money to fund the life that I want to live? We get to have more conversations around, hey. You have all this wealth. Right? What is it that you want to do? What are the things that are truly most important to you in your life? We want to align those things.”

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

• RFG Advisory
• The Human Side of Money Podcast
• “The Undoing Project” by Michael Lewis
• “Advice That Sticks” by Moira Summers
• “Wait, But Why?” blog by Tim Urban
• Derek Sievers
• Dr. Megaan Lurtz

Full Transcript

Sasha: Welcome to the Heart of Advice podcast presented by eMoney. I’m Sasha Grabenstetter.

Connor: And I’m Connor Sung. We’re your eMoney experts. Today on the podcast, we have Brendan Frazier. Brendan is the chief behavioral officer at RFG Advisory. He’s the host of the Human Side of Money podcast, twice named Investopedia top one hundred, keynote speaker, and alumni of Belmont University. Brendan, first off, thank you so much for joining us.

Brendan: Well, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate the work that you guys do, the focus of the Heart of Advice podcast. And so it’s not just saying it’s a privilege and an honor to be here.

Connor: I think near and dear to both of our hearts or all of our hearts.

Brendan: I guess pun intended. Right?

Sasha: Yes. There you go. Pun intended. Yeah.

Connor: Just to start off, you have a unique pathway to where you ended up at RFG today. Do you mind just talking to us a little bit about the journey and how you ended up where you’re at?

Getting to the Emotional Side of Planning

Brendan: Yeah. For sure. And I’ll actually use this as a way to point out or somewhat of a teaching moment around some of the things we may end up talking about. But for anybody that’s wondering or any advisors that are like, hey, I want to get these people that I’m meeting with for the first or second time to open up and trust me and connect with me. One of the best ways to do that is to try to get them out of their head and into their heart, speaking with emotion and creating conversational flow. And a key to doing that is to ask them questions that are easy and emotional to answer. And if you think about it, easy questions to answer and emotional questions often delve back into our past because it’s something that we’ve lived before, likely something that we’ve told before. And we love talking about ourselves as emotional beings. So even asking that question right out of the gate is just a great question to get me into the flow, get me going. The only risk you run at this point, by the way, is that I could probably go forever because I get to talk about myself and my past. So, I’m going to try not to do that and make it as succinct and hit the highlights as much as possible to the degree that it matters to anybody that’s listening. So, I started off consulting with financial advisors. And in that job, it was great because I got to literally meet and talk with probably close to thousands of them over the course of my time doing that. And there is this constant theme that kept coming up where you would hear in some way, shape, or form them allude to the fact they feel more like therapists than advisors at times. Or the other way you’d hear it said or phrased is, sometimes I feel like more of a psychologist than I do a financial advisor. Or I’d be better off with a degree in psychology or master’s in therapy than in finance and accounting. And nobody ever actually thought that that was one hundred percent true, but there was this realization that this job requires more than just an understanding of numbers. It actually requires an understanding of people. And so one day I decided, you know what, like everybody says this, we all agree. Nobody really doubts it. I wanted to find out like, what do we do? What are you doing about that? If it’s that important, what’s the solution? How do you hone that skill set? How do you know what to work on? So I started asking everybody. Yeah. All these conversations I would have. And the best response you’d ever get was, well, I read a book. And you’re like, well, books are good. Books are good. We like books. But is that enough? Right? If it’s that important, are there other ways? Are there other things? And, of course, even in reading books, it was never like the CFP. If you read a study for the CFP, reading a book that’s very practical and specific to financial planning. These books that they’re reading weren’t even about how to do it with clients when it comes to financial advice. And that’s not necessarily bad. But again, it just kind of came back to, well, this could be better. So, around this time, I decided I was going to go out and start my own advisory business, and launch that. This was back in 2018. And along the way, I had this fascination with the human side, the behavioral aspect, and component. And I decided that as I was doing that and running this advisory business and getting off the ground and working with clients, that I was going to, at the same time, go on this journey to try to get better at the human side. And so it was a lot of reading and research, but one of the other key components of that was I decided I was going to start a podcast. And on this podcast, the idea was to have the guests and experts that had the answers to the human side, but we didn’t they didn’t get we needed to figure out how to bring it to financial advice. Or sometimes they were already in the industry, and it was just a matter of, like, trying to amplify the voice and make it louder. So I went on my own journey to figure all this stuff out and figured worst case scenario, um, I’m gonna learn a lot that I can use and apply, uh, in my business and with my clients. Well, fast forward about four years later, and it turns out there was a lot of interest in demand for this. Almost like, hey. Wait a minute. We all thought this was important, and it’s nice to have, like, a way to learn it. It’s nice to have this medium to learn. So I just started learning on my own, and then other people sort of started following on this journey through the podcast and social media. And so about four years later, I’m trying to do I’m working as an advisor, but I’m also getting these requests to go speak on this stuff, to host advisor coachings and trainings on it. So I’m doing both, and I’ve got two kids at home, my wife. And, basically, like, you can’t give a hundred percent to all three of those things, or you can try, but, like, something’s gotta give. And so I decided, alright. I’ve gotta make a decision and decided that I was enjoying this work with the podcast and coaching and speaking more. I went down that path and said, I wanna help solve this human side thing for advisors. And then fast forward another two years-ish later, RFG comes calling and they’re like, hey. We think the future of the industry, the future of this profession, it lies on the human side. Their advisors are gonna be just as much, like, life advisors and human advisors and need that skill set as they are the technical side. And I was like, really? You think so? I kinda tend to agree. What we align on that. Uh, and I’d actually I had saved in my articles to write from back in two thousand and eighteen. I will I had this title already put in there. And one day it was like, one day I wanna write the article. And the title was why every firm will need a chief behavioral officer in ten years. And so they’re like, here’s the title we’re thinking about. They said chief behavioral officer, and I was kinda like, no way. Uh, you’ve gotta be kidding me. And so there’s a lot more that went into all that. Right? But it provided the opportunity to get to do this and make an impact on a bigger scale and get to work with advisors and their clients to spread this message. And so that’s kind of a journey of how I got how we got to this point today.

Sasha: It’s like, that is first off, it’s incredible. You also speak my language coming from being a financial counselor and really living that life and that background for so long. I just say I wanna say I appreciate the human side of all that you’re doing to help advisors get there. So thank you.

Brendan: Well, I appreciate that, and I admire what you’re doing. And I’ve learned a lot from some of the things that you’ve written and put out there, any money. No joke. I’m not just saying that. This isn’t like a you-pat-my-back; I’ll pat yours. It’s actually the truth. And the one thing I always forget in that story that is actually pretty important, but not really relevant, but I’ll mention it anyway, my wife is a therapist. And so, like, as I’m doing my advisory career, she’s going to get her master’s in therapy, and we’re talking. She’s telling me all these things that they’re doing and learning about how to build connection, set up an environment where people are more willing to open up, like different approaches to conversations. And I’m sitting there like, feels that’s cool. It feels like I should know this. Like, I’m trying to get people to do the same thing, but you’re getting taught how to do it, and I’m not. And so that was also another impetus was kinda seeing, like, okay. Maybe we’re not therapists, but there’s a skill set that we can adopt that still translates and benefits us, like, when working with clients. And so that was another component of it too.

Sasha: Definitely. Those interpersonal skills are just so imperative.

Brendan: That’s right.

Sasha: I kinda wanna piggyback off of this because as you might know, I come from originally from academia and so does my colleague, Dr. Emily Koochel. And we always joke that research is me-search. And so I just wanna ask about, you know, why behave, why behavioral finance? Like, what got you interested in it other than just having these conversations with advisors? Was there something internally that you wanted to know more about?

Why Behavioral Finance is Important

Brendan: Yeah. That’s a great question. And it’s I’m laughing because every time I’ve had a researcher on the show, I think ninety percent of the time, the vast majority of the time, they all mention this me-search term. It’s how I’ve learned it is from having people on the show. But part of the reason I like having researchers on is because it’s, like, bridging the gap between research and application so advisors can go, hey, the research is out there. What do I need to do to apply it day in and day out? I wish I had a really cool, good answer for why behavioral finance. I mean, I know there I there’s a couple client stories that always kinda shocked me, like, showing a client that they could retire and then not being able to pull the trigger and actually do it despite the fact that all the numbers and projections, the planning software would say, like, hey, you can definitely retire and it’s gonna look great. Like, you have nothing to worry about. And they still couldn’t pull the trigger and transition to this idea of living off of their savings. There is one specific meeting, like, around that really stuck out to me. And I remember thinking, like, I mean, I don’t know what else to do. I can show them as many numbers, charts, and projections as I want, but it’s not actually gonna change their mind and get this person to actually retire and do the thing that he’s been building towards and wanting to do the last twenty years of his life. And so that was eye-opening. But I, as I maybe this isn’t right, but the main thing I usually attribute it to is two books, actually. One of them is called “The Undoing Project” by Michael Lewis. And it essentially, I read it and I was like, oh, wow. My mind is tricking me into bad decisions all of the time. And it was really humbling. Like, you kind of look at it, you’re like, I know nothing. I don’t trust myself, I mean, you know, to some degree. And so that opened my eyes to this whole, like, psychology component of not just money but also our mind. We can’t necessarily trust our mind. And so the other one that was more directly related to financial advice is “Advice That Sticks” by Moira Summers.

And I remember reading that book, and it was in, like, two thousand eighteen, I think. And just sitting there and devouring it and being like, I can’t believe this is all fascinating and important, and I can’t believe it’s not talked about more. It’s the whole, have you guys read it or heard of  it?  Alright.  No. Dr. Moira Summers, she’s an academic at heart. Great research. It’s actually up here on my bookshelf behind me. But I always say it’s like should be required reading for anybody that works with clients and their money because it just basically talks about why people don’t follow through on your own advice, the challenges that are presented, why it’s oftentimes maybe our fault, why we have to look at it and go, hey. Is it possible that we’re playing a role in this? And then things to do to help them change their behavior. So I reading that, I was kind of like, how is this not I feel like everybody should read this, but it was sort of like this hidden gem. So that’s the best thing. I that was sort of my gateway. My I was like, I’m really interested in this stuff more than I am, like, Roth conversions. And so I started just diving more so into, like, why are humans why do we do the things that we do? And when they don’t ever make when they don’t seem to make sense.

Connor: That resonates so much with me as just thinking about some of, like the science is always the science. Right? Like, the mathematical answer there’s one plus one is pretty much always gonna equal two, except for when humans are involved. And then one plus one never equals two and being able to just have, I think it’s a mindset shift that I think all, well, I know that all humans can benefit from, but especially in people helping careers. I think being a little bit more open to understanding yourself a little bit better in order to understand other people better. And then ultimately, if you can do that, then whatever career, whatever you’re helping those people with, I think you’ll just be able to be a more effective communicator, better relationships, and just a better human.

Brendan: There’s no doubt about that. Like, self-awareness is a really powerful thing and knowing yourself and, like, when your we’ll call them issues, are coming up or when your beliefs and perspectives are infiltrating the conversation and even the advice that you’re giving. I know, like you read anything on emotional intelligence, like one of the core tenants of somebody who’s highly emotionally intelligent is a level of self-awareness. And in addition to all that, it’s really, really hard to do because most people are like, yeah, it’s not, you know, I wanna hear about I wanna tell other people what they’re doing wrong and where their weaknesses are, but I’m not so sure that I wanna be exposed to my it’s not just about weaknesses. I get it. But but it’s funny. Like, yes, that is really important. And at the same time, nobody well, not nobody. Very rarely do we see people rushing to be like, yeah. You know what? Help point out some of my flaws and any issues that I need to address and work on. Right?

Sasha: No. I completely agree with that. And earlier you said, you know, like, the psychological piece of, like, kind of staying in your routine because that’s what you know. And even if it’s bad for you, like, that’s really common. So this actually kinda leads me into our next question, Brendan, about I wanna know what you think, like, the most valuable thing financial advisors gain from effectively incorporating behavioral finance principles into their practice. And that’s a big question. I’m very sorry.

Brendan: Yeah. No. I mean at least to me, you’re, like, one of my, you know, one of our, like, my longest classmates I’ve known and still keep in touch with. So it’s really nice that we, you know, a lot of our classmates are professionals, and it’s cool to kind of reconnect with them this way. Agreed. Yeah. That’s great. Well, I know that you’ve been called the financial advisor to millennials on your podcast, so you’re known as that, which ran up until very recently. Number one, I guess, any advice about podcasting session I would definitely be all ears for, but, probably more pertinent to everybody else’s listening. Any experience that you have from running the podcast as an advisor, kind of what some of the takeaways were for your practice, applications, client impacts. If you can kind of just give us a little bit about it and a little bit about what you took away from it, that’d be great. Sure. So, the podcast was called Jack-of-all-trades our business and then worry less about what AI the future of AI means for your role and insulate your value against that. That’s the benefit of learning behavioral finance and applying the human side.

Connor: And if I’ve, so if I’m an advisor and I’ve sat down and I’ve decided that whether it’s mental gratification or if I buy into one of the compensation, like actual monetary benefits of diving into this, where would you recommend somebody starts? And given that we’re also, again, speaking to this small majority of financial professionals that listen to our podcast here, where do you think that these folks should go to either begin their journey to figure out kind of where they’re at as far as the human side skills go or to continue to elevate themselves?

The Importance of Effective Communication Skills

Brendan: Yeah. It’s a really good question, and one that I get a lot and one that I’ve asked a lot. And the more that I ask it, the more that I get it, the more I go, there’s so many different answers to this one question. But I think it’s the right question because so many people are gonna be asking it, right? They get to the point where they’re like, “Okay, yes, it’s important. Now what do I do from here?” And so I think it kind of depends on where you’re at in your business to some degree. On another hand, I think it kind of depends on what your natural skill set is. So when I say that, what I mean is there are some people who are just naturally great at relationships, connection, and communication. Right? And so for them, I would say, you know what? If you excel in that, then we can probably focus on other areas. But if we were to say blanket statement, if you were to work on one thing that anybody listening could benefit from, by learning it and applying it tomorrow, no matter where they’re at, or who their clients are, what type of service they provide, it would have to be around developing better communication skills, like skills that build trust and connection, and then help you communicate and convey topics in a meaningful and understandable way. And I say that because no matter what, no matter where you’re at, no matter what stage you’re at, no matter who you’re working with, or where you’re at in the business, it still comes down to trust and connection. If you wanna get prospects to become clients or you wanna keep clients for a long time. Nobody says like, you know, I don’t think my clients trusting me is a very important thing. And just nobody actually says that. So the most practical beneficial for anybody, generically that’s listening is just learning how to hone and develop communication skills that build trust and connection.

Connor: I love that answer. And it definitely circles back to some of the research that eMoney has done over the course of the last twelve months. I would be remiss if I also didn’t just say AI so that we now have two versions of it across the recording here. But I really do believe that the value of the advisor is continuing to shift. And before it might have been, you know, this movement into more holistic financial planning, I think technology is gonna end up being the force factor, the variable that’s gonna force again the value of the advisor to shift again. And the relationship, the human side like that, is now going to become that where, you know, technology is evolving so quickly that a lot of, you know, we talk a lot about the commoditization of some of the services that were historically delivered. But I think that commoditization is happening at an even faster speed today. And the enhancement of the human aspect, like the human element, the human side is gonna continue to have an even higher percentage of importance than it has in the past.

Leveraging the Partnership of Technology and the Human Side of Planning

Brendan: Yeah. I mean, certainly biased, but one hundred percent agree. I mean, couldn’t have said it any better. I think if you look at, and I think the thing you said that I really like and I think is important, you said it’s gonna grow and happen faster, the growth of technology. There’s a guy named Tim Urban. He writes a blog called Wait, But Why? And he illustrated this. He’s tried to convey this concept in his blog. It’s really, really good. And I think it was written back in, like, twenty fifteen or sixteen. That’s about artificial intelligence. So if you Google “Wait, but why artificial intelligence,” he explains it really well. But he has this chart where it’s like we think technology grows linearly. Right? Like, it’s just like this linear growth path. And it’s like, we’re eventually one day we’re gonna get there, but it actually grows exponentially. Like, that’s how it learns and grows. And so it’s gonna grow way faster, it’s gonna advance way faster than we probably think, or can comprehend. And so to your point, right, if you think about it, it’s like, okay, if technology is gonna get better and better and better, where is it? What is it doing that it’s gonna do faster, cheaper, and more reliably than a human? And almost, I mean, the majority of the answers there are all around the technical aspects of planning. And, um, you guys may have seen this, but Vanguard did a study where they went out and they asked people, “Hey. What do you value most from a human advisor? What do you value most from technology?” And I wish I had the responses in front of me right now. But the one thing they want from technology was, like, rebalances my portfolio or portfolio optimization, minimizes taxes. It was all I not of course, they’re not coming to me now. But if you go look through it, like, the top answers were all things that technology can do and does faster, cheaper, and more lively. And then the main things they want from humans were basically it boiled down to like, want to feel heard and understood, make sure that they know the things that are important to me be listened to with empathy, right? And so that’s only going to become magnified as technology does more of those things better than we do it. Our advantage really, at that point, is gonna have to pivot to what do we do like really, really well that technology can’t replicate that people want. And that points, again, call me biased, maybe I’m missing something. But to me that points directly to like the human element, and embracing that and learning that and developing that skill set. And then what’s cool is you can pair this better human skill set, we’ll call it, the things that we do well, with the things that AI does well, not just well, they do better than AI technology, whatever that they do better than we do. You pair those together, and we should at that point, we should actually be delivering advice at a higher level than we are now. Right? If we’re just leaning into the strengths of both parties, if you wanna call them parties, whatever you wanna call them. If we’re letting both things do what they excel in, then we should be delivering a quality of advice that’s higher than we’ve ever seen.

Sasha: I can agree with that. I think, Brendan, I don’t know if you’re familiar, but we recently just re-released our AI research. And some of the findings that we found was that these human-centric skills are what’s gonna be, you know, the thing that we need for the future, especially the future of the next generation. And just like quickly, like and I’ve been working with the foundation for financial planning on some curriculum to help foster pro bono and all the things that you’re talking about. These human skills are the things that we’re focusing on, you know, empathy and emotional intelligence and how to have some cultural humility and how to have better communication skills and how to learn a couple dynamics. So I’m just really excited about the future of what this looks like. So yeah.

Connor: Well, I guess just circling back to just humans in general, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention this. So some of the interpersonal skills training and things that I’ve done, I’ve applied very well to my professional life. But honestly, most of the value that I’ve gleaned from it immediately was like, oh my god, this is what I need to do in my own household. Like, my personal life has definitely changed just as much as it’s helped in my professional life. So if that is the value that’s garnered from if that’s the push, like, if you wanna do whatever inside your own household, that is also a benefit of spending some time and investing in yourself in the human side space.

Learning and Improving from Mistakes

Brendan: Well, okay. So it’s funny you say that because I almost mentioned that. When you said what’s something that they should where should you start? What should you do? And I was and we went and said, okay. We’ll develop these skills because you can apply it no matter where you’re at or who you’re with. But I almost mentioned in the another benefit and ancillary benefit of that is that you can also use it in life, like, with friends, at parties, with family, especially. And in fact, one of my I was doing a training with an RIA. We’re going through some of the communication skills to get people to open up and connect. So we were going through that. We got back together, like, the next week to kind of reflect and debrief on, like, okay, how did it go? What do you how like, what are you thinking? What worked? What didn’t? And one of the ladies that was in there was like, Okay, I want to say something. I thought it was fine. I was good with our clients. But the best part about this was I used some of this with my nineteen-year-old son, and he actually opened up and started talking to me. And I was like, yes. Yes. That was, like, the coolest thing I’d heard. I mean, yeah, it’s cool to help clients. I have advisors and their clients too, but it’s like, these things at the end of the day, we’re all humans. We all communicate. But I just thought that was such a cool example. She was like, yeah. Yeah. The clients, certainly, yeah, that was good. My nineteen-year-old son told me some things. I learned about him.

Connor: That’s so funny. It is so true, though, and it, honestly, does make a huge meaningful difference in just life and being a better human. But, speaking about being human, I think we can all agree that humans are fallible and people make interesting decisions sometimes. As you think back across all of the engagements that you’ve had, both through coaching, through your own advisory practice, through everything that you’ve done with the podcast, what still surprises you about human behavior or human habits, whether it could pertain directly to their personal finances or not, but just something that really still kinda catches your breath?

On How Human Behavior Surprises

Brendan: Man, that’s a good one. I’m pretty sure that my answer today is the same answer I would have given back when this whole journey started. And I have more awareness. I know why it happens. I have more awareness around it, but it still blows my mind. Okay, so what is it? It’s the whole idea. And this isn’t novel, by the way, we all know this to be true. It’s this idea that we can know exactly what we’re supposed to do to get the outcome that we want in any area of life and not do it. Like, we could say there’s no shortage of information on how to do anything in life. Right? So how do you excel at parenting? How do you excel in a marriage? How do you excel in business? The answers are endless, you could find endless amounts of information on how to be a great parent, live in a thriving marriage, and have a booming business that turns into a billion dollars. But we don’t have an information problem. Ultimately, it’s all out there. And despite that, it’s still really, really hard for us to do the things to get there. And the example that I think of all the time always comes back to health. So there’s a study that was done, I forget when it was doesn’t really matter. But and I’m no expert when it comes to anything in the medical profession. But what I’ve learned from reading this study is that heart bypass surgery is a really expensive and invasive surgery, one that most people don’t want to go through if they don’t have to. The other thing that I learned about heart bypass surgery is that it’s not a cure. So they would be a lot of people probably, they’re like, yeah, Britney, we know. But for those of you that were like me and you didn’t, that they go in, they put a stent in, it opens up the valve, it gets blood flowing through, but it doesn’t mean that it’s gonna stay like that forever. And so they took this sample of about two thousand heart bypass patients. And they went to them and they said, hey, guys. You just had heart bypass surgery. It’s expensive. It’s invasive, and it’s not a cure. So if you wanna not have heart bypass surgery again, if you wanna live longer and be healthier and avoid this same exact scenario again in, like, two years in the future, you have to change your lifestyle. You have to eat less, eat healthier, work out more, stop smoking. Right? And it’s like they go to them and they tell them all these things. Fast forward two years later, and ninety percent of these heart bypass patients haven’t altered their lifestyle at all. And I it’s the best example I know of to sit there and go, wait a minute. If we’re not gonna be able to do the things that we’re supposed to do in a matter of, quite frankly, life and death, like, we know what to do and we still can’t do it, to me, that’s mind-blowing. It’s like, hey, if you don’t do this, you’re probably gonna be back in here or you’re gonna die of a heart attack. And ninety percent of people still can’t change their behavior to do the thing they’re supposed to, not because they don’t have the information or know how to do it. But behavior change is really, really hard. There’s a quote, I’ve mentioned it a lot at this point, but it’s still so good. I’ll mention it anyway, by a guy named Derek, I think he says it Sievers, maybe Sivers. Anyway, Derek Sievers, he says that if all we needed was information, we’d all be billionaires with six packs, because we don’t need to know what to do. That’s not the problem. The problem is actually doing it. And that I think I think that will forever be the thing that continues to blow my mind is that you could sit down and say, I wanna do X, and I’m motivated to do it. And then somebody else could say, okay. Great. Here’s how you do it. Do this, this, this, this, and this. And then the odds of actually doing it are not in your favor. That concept to this day, I I can’t I now know more around why it happens and how to help overcome it. But at the end of the day, it’s the main problem that we battle. And I don’t think I’ll ever be able fully wrap my mind around the fact that you can’t that knowing what to do is not enough.

Sasha: I think it goes back to that oh, go ahead,

Connor: I was just gonna say as a serial offender of that, I can definitely relate?

Brendan: Me too. Me too. I think maybe that’s probably why I like it too because I’m like, well, at least I’m not the only one. Other people are like me.

Sasha: It’s true. But it goes back to that neuroplasticity piece of, like, this is the routine I’m in, and even if it’s bad for me, I’ll continue to keep doing it. So making those changes can be really difficult for people, as we all know.

Brendan: Yeah. I mean, everybody listening has something where they’re like, yeah. I want to do this, and I’m not quite doing it. I’ve wanted to do that or I need to do this. Why can’t I do it? I mean, literally, nobody’s immune. Nobody’s immune to that.

Sasha: For sure.

Connor: Let’s hope that’s what we get targeted social media ads for.

Brendan: Yeah. That’s it. There you go. Positive spin. Nicely done. Well done.

Connor: Thanks. Uh, I wanna pivot a little bit. Uh, Brendan, I’m not sure if you’re aware, but this year is eMoney’s twenty-fifth anniversary. And as such, we have a handful of questions just as we look back over the last twenty-five years and look forward over the next twenty-five. As you think about twenty-five years in business and the role technology has played in the evolution of financial planning. I know we talked about it a little bit, but are there any specific innovations or tools or things that you feel like will quickly become table stakes moving forward as it pertains to personal financial planning?

Brendan: Well, first of all, congratulations on twenty-five years. I did not know that. That’s awesome. And thank you. And you guys are just going to continue I’m sure there are awesome things on the horizon. Um, I don’t know. I think we’ve sort of hit on the main thing. The main thing that excites me is I just have to imagine based on what we see currently in the industry, as far as the focus, but also the technology that keeps coming out and the way that we see it utilized and enhancing in the ChatGPT, blah, blah, blah. I have to imagine that there’s going to be more and more focus on how do we leverage this to automate as many back-office tasks as possible? How do we save more time on things that don’t matter as much for human beings to do that technology can do? And that’s only going to put more of a focus on the things we can do to have better relationships and deeper trust and connection and help people not just invest their money, but start learning, hey, how do I use this money to fund the life that I want to live? We get to have more conversations around, hey. You have all this wealth. Right? What is it that you want to do? What are the things that are truly most important to you in your life? We want to align those things. There’s going to be more time and capacity to do that and go deeper on a human level, which again, it’s not we’ve already sort of talked about it, but that part really excites me because I think when we do that, not only will clients ultimately be better off because they’re getting serviced and they’re actually getting a better quality of advice. But at the same time, the reputation, the image of our profession should also go up at the same time, which should also improve, I guess we’d say, because we’re not, we’re developing deeper relationships, providing a better level of service. And as a result, we’re not going to be the, oh, they’re just trying to sell me some insurance anymore. Right? We’re having to evolve and deliver a higher quality of advice.

Sasha: I just want to reiterate, like, we just recently had a panel of individuals talking about what the next generation really needs, and this is what’s coming out is the human side. And so I’m pretty excited about this. For we I want to just transition to we’ve talked a lot about human sides. And on your podcast, the human side of money, what’s one of your favorite conversations or knowledge nuggets one of your guests has dropped on you? I’d love to hear that.

Brendan: That is not a fair question. Just so you know.

Sasha: So sorry.

How to Invite Information Instead of Asking

Brendan: I mean, that’s one where it’s like, uh, I got a text yesterday from somebody on the podcast. I’ll ask, hey, if you could gift one book to everybody listening, what would it be? And then he flipped it around on me, and he’s like, hey. You always ask this. What would yours be? And I’m like, hang on. That’s not a fair question. I do there are too many choices. This feels even harder than that or it’s like, how do I go back and pick from however many hundred plus conversations with awesome, bright, smart people? Like, I guess the closest that it’s like, how do you pick your favorite kid? But this feels even harder than that because there are times when I definitely have a favorite kid. So I think I’ll just I’ll just say what comes to mind first doesn’t mean it’s the best answer, but it’s what pops up. And there are two things.

Well, I should actually I should probably mention episode one fourteen with Emily Koochel from eMoney as being, like, the best episode. Right? Shouldn’t I shouldn’t I throw that part out there? You should aside from that. We’ll just we’ll say that one doesn’t count. We need to move on from that. We’ll disqualify that one. Too much bias.

Two things. One, this happened back in episode thirty-three. I had a guest on. She’s an advisor. Her name’s Natalie Taylor, and it didn’t hit me as much at the time. Like, it kinda did hit me at the time, but I kept getting this feedback afterwards where people were like, wow. That was interesting. Wow.

I’ve never thought about it before like that. And I and so I was like, yeah. I guess that was pretty interesting. So she and she talks about a lot in there.

But the one thing she said that was eye opening, especially in this industry was and I may botch the quote a little bit, but it was some version of whenever she goes to provide advice or gets to an implementation phase with her client, she goes, I believe that we’re better off giving them advice that’s eighty percent optimal that they’ll actually implement than advice that’s one hundred percent technically sound and optimal that they have no chance of implementing. And I think, yeah, I think it sort of, like, reverberated throughout the adviser community in the sense of, like, wait. What?

You would give somebody not perfectly sound spreadsheet calculated advice in order like, how do you do it? It’s like, well, the advice that gets implemented is always gonna be better and have better outcomes than advice that’s not.

So that’s one to it’s I think it sticks with me probably because to this day, it was like the one of the ones that just really hit hard right out of the gate. And then the other one another thing that comes up is Megaan Lurtz has been on numerous times because she does such great work on this stuff.

And she taught me some things. We actually recorded an episode on how to ask questions, and it ended up being two episodes because there was so much good stuff.

And just the simple reframing of not asking a question, but instead inviting information in conversation. So instead of saying, why do you wanna retire at sixty five? Like, asking it like that can sound accusatory. It can actually impact the response that you’re getting from the person.

We don’t really think about necessarily. But she was like, instead of asking a question, you wanna invite information. So you use phrases like did they collaborate? Like, I wonder or I’m curious.

So somebody says they wanna retire at sixty-five.

Instead of saying, oh, why do you wanna retire at sixty-five? You go, oh, that’s interesting. I actually, I’m kinda curious. What prompted age sixty-five?

Right? So you got you’re still asking the question, but you’re leading up to it with a a warmer collaborative approach of I’m curious. You know, I’m wondering if we did this, how would that impact your situation? So then it’s not your idea, but it’s their idea.

It was just this, like, next level question workshop, masterclass, essentially. Or so then I took what we talked about, I went back and started applying it in life. And it was and I it started working. And I was like, woah.

This is great. And so if you sometimes if you listen to the podcast now, you’ll hear me do it on there because it’s like now a habit of mine where I’m like, okay. Don’t ask the question. Like, frame it in a different way.

Ask it and or invite information. Don’t ask a question. So, anyways, those are those are two that come to mind. You can’t go wrong with those two.

Connor: Those are perfect. And I think they give folks, some immediate takeaways as they think about, you know, practical application of some of the stuff that we’ve talked about today.

Dr. Lurtz definitely somebody that we partner with as well, and, you know, her question framework is it it is magical. And it when you get hit by it, you don’t even know that you got hit by it until you sit back and think about it. You’re like, wait. I just I just gave way more information than I was intending to, and I don’t know how I feel about it, but it’s out there now. So yeah.

Brendan: She calls that a vulnerability hangover. When you’re like, I just revealed quite a bit. Did they wanna hear all that? I don’t know if they wanted to hear that.

Connor: Well, just to round us out, Brendan, number one, appreciate the time. But lastly, we asked all of our guests the final same question, which is how would you define the heart of advice when it comes to financial planning?

Brendan: Yeah. I think I would just define it the same way ride along a parallel track. The heart of advice is the human side of advice. It goes beyond numbers and dollar signs. It’s not about balance sheets.

It’s more about behavior. And it’s not about what happens with your budget. It’s about what happens in your brain when you’re dealing with your money. It’s not about volatility in the markets.

It’s more about the values that you’re bringing in order to learn how to use your money to align it with the life you wanna live. And I and, you know, and on and on and on and on. It’s more than the numbers. It goes deeper, and it’s an understanding of the people and the human beings that we get the privilege to work with and to serve every day.

Sasha: And you’ve talked about all the things that, like, make my heart happy as a financial counselor, so thank you. Really appreciate it.

Brendan: Yeah. Well, thank you for having me on. And I got I didn’t know you were doing that work with the Foundation for Financial Planning, but everything you went through as far as the curriculum and the topics, I was sitting there like, yes. Yes.

Yes. We need more of that. It’s just cool. I mean, it’s actually really is cool to see that as an industry or profession, as we like, we’re wreck there’s a movement.

Right? We’re recognizing the importance of this stuff. And so, like, if you went to me back whenever I started and my thought was like, hey. How like, why are we not getting any training or development or focus on this?

Like, that’s changing. There’s, like, what you’re doing is out there now. There’s other trainings and designations that are focused on it, and it’s just, it’s just cool to see that we’re embracing this. And not just embracing it, but actually doing something about it.

Connor: Thank you, Brendan.

Brendan: Yeah. Thank you, guys.

To listen to this episode and other full episodes of the Heart of Advice Podcast, visit our YouTube or our Spotify channels.

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