Root Ready
A podcast for growth-minded financial advisors
Root Ready
How to Master the Skills That Usually Only Come With Age
What makes a truly great financial advisor? It’s not just technical knowledge or years in the industry. In this episode, we explore what clients—especially those approaching retirement—really want: a trusted guide who understands the emotional side of financial planning.
Many people ask, “Can younger advisors provide meaningful advice about retirement?” The answer lies in how advisors show up—not just with expertise, but with empathy, clarity, and confidence.
We share how doing hard things in your own life—starting a business, embracing discomfort, building resilience—can shape you into the kind of advisor clients trust most. Because at the end of the day, financial planning isn’t just about returns, it’s about helping people live well through life’s biggest transitions.
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Advisory services are offered through Root Financial Partners, LLC, an SEC-registered investment adviser. This content is intended for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered personalized investment, tax, or legal advice. Viewing this content does not create an advisory relationship. We do not provide tax preparation or legal services. Always consult an investment, tax or legal professional regarding your specific situation.
The strategies, case studies, and examples discussed may not be suitable for everyone. They are hypothetical and for illustrative and educational purposes only. They do not reflect actual client results and are not guarantees of future performance. All investments involve risk, including the potential loss of principal.
Comments reflect the views of individual users and do not necessarily represent the views of Root Financial. They are not verified, may not be accurate, and should not be considered testimonials or endorsements
Participation in the Retirement Planning Academy or Early Retirement Academy does not create an advisory relationship with Root Financial. These programs are educational in nature and are not a substitute for personalized financial advice. Advisory services are offered only under a written agreement with Root Financial.
Welcome back to another episode of the Root Ready Podcast. I'm your host, james Canole. As an advisor, there are certain things that you can learn, and you can learn these things pretty quickly If you are dedicated to your craft. If you're dedicated to learning, there's a lot you can learn in a relatively short period of time. Then there are other things, things such as wisdom, things such as life experience that play an incredibly crucial role in our role as advisors, but those things take longer. So what can you do as a younger, more growth-minded advisor if you want to accelerate your path to that, if you want to be able to have that type of wisdom, that type of life experience to best lead your clients, but you don't yet have the age and the experience that you typically think of when someone possesses these types of traits. What I'm going to do is I'm actually going to read to you a message that came from a client of Root as he was onboarding at Root, and essentially what he's saying is hey, I have all the confidence in the world that you at Root have all the technical knowledge. How do you also look for that wisdom, that experience, that life guidance that we, as clients, are looking for when you have a relatively young team or when I'm working with an advisor that is relatively young, and then we're gonna run through this episode based upon the question this client is asking. I'm going to call this client Tom. Tom says Hi, ari, I hope you don't mind me reaching out directly. I'm generally a private person and rarely post online, but I wanted to share a quick thought after watching a few of your videos. I also really enjoyed Steven's take on planners versus advisors from your live show yesterday. It gave me a fresh perspective on this whole topic.
Speaker 1:Over the past year, we've been navigating the decision of whether to work with a new financial planner for many reasons. One thing we've found challenging is finding the kind of wisdom that comes from experience, someone who has walked the path we're about to take. It's the emotional side of financial planning. Many of us have spent a lifetime building and accumulating our financial foundation. This transition to retirement is often the scariest part. While Roots planners are undoubtedly skilled with the numbers, this transition to retirement is often the scariest part. While Root's planners are undoubtedly skilled with the numbers, the ability to truly understand a client's wants, needs and fears around retirement and offer meaningful life guidance feels like a huge value add. Perhaps tough to do, given how young the team is, but I think this would be a fantastic topic to do a video on and explore to reinforce an advisor enablement.
Speaker 1:He then goes on to say some nice things about Root, but what he's essentially saying is I know that there's a technical competence here. That's great, but how do you also ensure that your advisors have more than just that, and that is a really important thing for people who want to be the best advisors they possibly can. How do you get that life experience that enables you to be all that you can be? So I'm going to come back to that message from Tom in just a bit, but what it reminded me of is my thought process, the way I used to think about things.
Speaker 1:When, as much earlier on in my career, I remember the firm that I was working with when we would have someone that came to us and they were not on track they were not on track for retirement goals that felt like I could validate myself. I could validate myself, I could justify myself. I could help them solve for how to invest, how much to save, how long to work all those things when you think of it as like solving a math problem. I want to be that person solving the math problem to help this person reach their goals.
Speaker 1:I remember feeling a tremendous sense of insecurity when someone would come in and they had done quite well. They didn't need to solve the problem, they had, in my mind, already arrived they they had, in my mind, already arrived, they already had the portfolio, they already at the position where they could retire. And in my mind I was just trying to justify what on earth do I do with this person? They're coming to me looking for advice. My advice feels like hey, you've already won the game, you've already done what you need to do. What else can I provide?
Speaker 1:And what I soon came to realize after going through that experience time and time and time again, is it's not a math problem to be solved. People aren't coming to us as advisors just to solve the challenges. Yes, that's a piece of it, but there's a bigger piece here. There's something far more important that to be the best advisors we can be, we need to fully be able to understand this and be able to have solutions for this. So when I think back of my perspective, my wrong perspective at the beginning is how can I help you rearrange what you're doing, save more, work longer, invest differently to reach your goal and solve your problem?
Speaker 1:I was misplacing, or I was misidentifying what the real goal was. The goal was not for them to solve a math problem. The real goal was to live with confidence. The real goal was financial security. The real goal was that freedom from insecurity and doubt and that confidence that comes from not just having your financials in order, but having someone to guide you along the way, having someone that understands what you're navigating, from an emotional standpoint as well as a financial standpoint, to help you make that transition as smoothly as possible. So maybe some of the advisors resonate with that.
Speaker 1:And if we do, here's how I think about this. Here's how I would think about getting better at this, being the type of person that has lived experiences, life experiences, even if you're relatively young, so you can guide that person who is much older, probably much more life experience, probably much more money than you. How can you still come alongside of them and give them high quality advice that gives them the confidence that they want to do? And step one to do that understand what the real problem is. The real problem isn't am I rebalancing my 401k correctly. The real problem isn't do I have enough money to retire? Those are aspects of it. Those are some tactical things that need to be addressed, but the real problem or the real goal, I should say, isn't retirement. The real goal is a life well lived. We misplace the goal as retirement because we're financial advisors and people come to us to talk about investments and taxes and insurances. So we think that everything's a financial problem, but those are just the things that equip us to be able to have that life well lived. But reframe that and that's a very important distinction if you want to be the best that you possibly can be. So step number one is identify the correct goal. The goal is in retirement. It's to have a life well lived.
Speaker 1:Step number two is identify the barriers to that goal. With our financial planner minds we always go back to how are you invested? Do you have the right tax strategy? Do you have the right withdrawal strategy? We think that's the thing. Even many clients sometimes think that is the thing. But that's not the true barrier. The true barrier is fear. The true barrier is a lack of confidence. The true barrier is the unknown and the anxiety that comes with that and not having someone to guide them through that journey with them. Yes, of course there's a major financial component to this. There are taxes, there are investments, there are insurances, but those aren't going to be the things that, by themselves, really get your client to where they need to go, especially when we're talking about a client that doesn't need their financial situation fixed. They need someone to guide them, they need someone to help them, they need someone who has some of these lived experiences they can walk alongside them. And then step number three once you've identified the goal, once you've identified the barriers, is be the type of person that can guide people through those barriers, and that's what we're going to be talking about today. Now, just a quick reminder before we continue on. If you're listening to this and you have questions that you want me to answer in a future episode, go to the rootreadypodcastcom. That's the website. Rootreadypodcastcom. You can submit a question and I will answer it on a future episode here.
Speaker 1:But back to what we're talking about today. I'm going to actually go back to the email that our client, who I'm going to call Tom, sent. He said again. To repeat what he said. He said while Roots planners are undoubtedly skilled with the numbers. The ability to truly understand a client's wants, needs and fears around retirement and offer meaningful life guidance feels like a huge value add. I'm going to repeat that last part again the ability to truly understand a client's wants, needs and fears around retirement and offer meaningful life guidance feels like a huge value add.
Speaker 1:So how do we do that? We know that that's something that typically comes with experience, but how can we get there if we don't have 30 years, 40 years of experience, if we personally haven't gone through that retirement transition, so we don't know what it's like to be in that person's shoes, as that person contemplating that decision? How do we do that? That's exactly what we're going to go through, but what's helpful to understand, even as we start going through this, is these are not fears that are unique to retirement. If that was the case, then we wouldn't really be able to provide this type of guidance unless we also had gone through that process of retiring and coming out on the other side and looking backwards and telling this person this is how it is, this is how it goes.
Speaker 1:Let me offer you some guidance. None of us are going to be in that position by default. The only people that have that experience are the people that are no longer working and aren't going to be able to work with clients to help them do so. But the good news is these are not unique concerns to people who are retiring. These are more universal concerns the fear of the unknown, the fear of doing something different, the fear of the what ifs, the uncertainties. So those are things that we can start to learn even if we haven't personally retired before. You're not going to learn this in the CFP curriculum.
Speaker 1:This is something that has to come from learned life experiences, from the way that you live your own life, and so here's some things that you can do to think about that. Or here's things that even we do at root, as we think about that of not just having the technical competencies to be the best possible advisor, but also being the type of person that can lead people well, based upon some of the unique traits you have as an individual. The first thing that you can do and this is maybe less what you can do, this is more what we do at Root, as we are screening for these candidates, as we're screening for advisors and taking them through a very competitive process to say what does it take for us to consider someone to be root, ready to put in front of a client? And there's three things that we look for for everyone at root. Those things are hungry, humble and human. Now, this isn't necessarily only because of what we're talking about today, but if someone is hungry, they're always looking to be better personally, professionally. That is something where you just have this natural zeal for life, for doing things, for living, and that is going to make you into the type of person that can better guide clients.
Speaker 1:Number two humble. If you're an advisor, that's incredibly arrogant. Clients aren't going to feel comfortable coming to you and sharing their concerns, sharing their fears, sharing the uncertainties that they're experiencing. They're not going to feel like that's a safe place for them to express some of those things. So you have to have this humility. You have to be the type of person where people feel safe to let their guard down and to talk to you about the real concerns they're feeling that go beyond their portfolio's performance, their tax strategies, so on and so forth. And then number three is human. When I say human, what I mean by that is we don't want robots, we don't want people that are just technical geniuses when it comes to crunchy numbers, that's great, but that alone is not going to make you a great advisor.
Speaker 1:It's those people that love life, that want to get the most out of life, that look at everything, whether it's relationships, their faith, their health, their activities, their hobbies, their work. How can I be excellent at all of it? It's that type of person that is just naturally going to have experiences from their own life that, even if they have not retired before, they're going to be able to offer perspective on. What do you do when you encounter challenging things? What do you do when you come up to a very scary moment in life like retirement? What do you do when life comes at you and you have to make some decisions that aren't really financial related but are more so about optimizing for what we talked about before, that real goal a life well lived? It's that type of individual. It's naturally going to have some life experiences that can allow them to be the type of person to be a better advisor. So those are just three things we look for at root, but what can you do? Is what I want to spend more time on this episode actually talking about?
Speaker 1:To put it simply, I would say do scary things. And when I say scary things, I don't mean go to not scary farm when there's the crazy clowns at Halloween time and be scared. I mean do things that align with your version of a meaningful life, because a meaningful life doesn't happen by accident. A meaningful life isn't easy. There's a saying that I love. I don't know who to attribute it to, but it is easy choices, hard life, hard choices, hard, easy life. So it's that person's constantly making hard choices, hard short-term decisions that lead to much better long-term outcomes. How can you be that type of person? Look at all aspects of your life. This could be, again, health. This could be faith. This could be relationships. This could be where you work. This could be where you live. People who are getting the most out of life with their money. They're not people who just passively let life take them for the ride. They are people who think deeply about what do I actually want to do, what's most important to me, what does my version of a life well lived look like and how can I take actions to get there. That type of a person does scary things is going to be a better advisor. So do scary things.
Speaker 1:I'll give you a perfect example that's very relevant to this in my own life. When I started Root, I had just been fired from my last job and I had a whole lot of things going on in my personal life that were leading to a tremendous amount of fear and anxiety, and that was a moment in my life where I had this overwhelming desire. I never wanted to start a business before, but something struck me as this is what you need to do, not just what you need to do, but this overwhelming desire to start a business. So I remember I was in the midst of this very scary time that I wanted to get used to being afraid. I didn't want there to be anything to say okay, I know I want to start this business, I know this is what I should do, I need to do, but there is going to be this fear that prevented me from doing so.
Speaker 1:So, instead of allowing myself an out, it was how do I just start doing things every day that are scary, doing things every day that are hard, so that I can get this tolerance, I can build up these calluses to fear where? Not that I don't feel it, but it just becomes more natural. It becomes more normal, I become more okay with it. So I just started thinking about what are some things that I can do that are scary to me and not just scary for the sake of being scary, but scary and they're going to lead to better outcomes. They're going to be things that are aligned with my personal and my professional goals, things that are good for me. So it was things like joining Toastmasters and not just joining Toastmasters, but, pretty early on, volunteering to be president, knowing that every single week I'm going to be forced to get up there, I'm going to be forced to give a speech, to introduce people, to run these meetings something I feel totally unequipped to do. But it's a fear that I'm going to become okay with and it's going to lead to a better outcome.
Speaker 1:I remember again at this time I had just been let go for my previous job, was not feeling super confident as an advisor because of all that, and I said I'm going to start meeting with every single CPA, with every single bookkeeper or insurance person in my area, because it's going to force me not to be able to hide. I'm going to have to go there and I'm gonna just say I don't feel super confident in what I'm doing right now, but let me get those reps in. Let me get used to the fact that I'm going to go into situations when I don't feel totally confident and I'm just going to do it. Anyways, I remember committing to doing a very, very difficult workout every single day, and it was a sense of what can I do to not let this fear Overtake my desire to get to where I want to go. And the best way to do that is not to hide from the fear. It's to do a lot of things that are scary. It's to become okay with some of the fears, and I didn't do any of that to be a better advisor. I did that because I recognize this is a very scary time in my life. I just want to get used to it. I want to be okay with this so that I can launch root and that it can be a success. The unintended consequence of that is it did make me a much better advisor, because I was able to confront something where it was a scary thing and I was able to say how can I take steps to get through this? And then, as an advisor, I was only 28 years old when I launched Root, but I was able to talk to people who are twice my age, almost three times my age, certainly a lot more money than I had and be a voice of reason in their lives, be a voice of wisdom in their lives when they were confronting scary things of their own.
Speaker 1:Going back to Tom's question, this retirement thing is very scary. Sure, I know you guys have the technical advice, but how can you guide me with some of my fears, with some of these unknowns, with some of these uncertainties? Had I not gone through something where I also had something that was very scary, that created a lot of anxiety, that had a lot of unknowns, I would not have been as equipped to be able to be as good of an advisor, as strong of an advisor, to help clients in similar situations. And this is why I said at the beginning these fears, these anxieties, these uncertainties that people have when they're about to retire. There is nothing about that that's unique to money or to retirement or to that phase of life. That is a universal fear that is simply being expressed in a very challenging, difficult, fearful time for many people. The good news is we, as advisors, we can go through those same types of things. And when I say good news, I mean yes, we get to go through those types of things. We get to do hard things. This can be with relationships. Ask that person out, ask your partner to marry you, whatever it is.
Speaker 1:Do the scary thing. When it comes to your health, can you make the decisions that maybe aren't scary but require some level of discipline, that require some level of commitment? When it comes to your job, maybe you have a very stable job, but it's a dead-end job, or it has no fulfillment for for you, or you know there's something else you could do better and enjoy more, but it's going to be a scary leap. Make that decision. What are the things in your life that are going to scare you? But on the other side of that fear is something much bigger, much better, much more aligned for the type of life that you want to live. Those are the things that are very important for us to do as advisors if we want to be a more well-rounded advisor. Now, we should not just do this to be a better advisor. That's actually probably not even the best part about doing some of these things. The best part about doing these things finding the things that scare us and doing them anyways, you're going to have a significantly better life and, it just so happens, it's probably going to make you a much better advisor as well. But those are the types of things.
Speaker 1:If we want to accelerate our ability to have the type of wisdom, to have the type of lived experiences that we can use as advisors to guide our clients, we also have to be the type of people that live life on purpose. And life on purpose doesn't mean we get sucked up into what the culture's expectations or society's expectations of us are. It means that we spend time, reflect, deeply, understand what we really want, and then we take steps, sometimes scary steps, to do the things with our lives to align with that vision of what we want our futures to look like. So in order for us to expect personal growth, professional growth in our own lives, we have to do things that scare us, that push us. It's going to lead to better lives and in doing so, it's also going to make you way more better equipped to be able to guide your clients who are going through transitions of their own, and I'm specifically talking about retirement here. Retirement's not the only transition. Help your clients navigate loss. Help your clients navigate significant changes in their lives. Help your clients navigate these difficult types of decisions that they are relying upon you, not just to have the ability to rebalance their portfolio, but to be able to offer perspective, to be able to help them with life's most important decisions.
Speaker 1:There's a great resource for this. I've gone through it a few times. I'm sure many of you listening are aware of this to some extent. Tim Ferriss is what he calls a fear setting exercise, where anytime you have a major decision, it's essentially defining what exactly your fear is Then based upon those fears. If you were to take action, what's worst case scenario? If worst case scenario happens, then another column and he goes through this whole exercise. I'll actually link to it in the show notes here. What things could you do to rectify that fear if you were to hit worst case scenario? I've gone through this exercise a ton, even since starting Root as to to changes that we're making, as to things I'm trying to do differently within the business. I've done this with changes in my personal life.
Speaker 1:So what can you do to define your fears? I'm talking more to you as an individual of how can you go through this exercise to live a better life, but then, also to be there for your clients, be able to offer more wisdom and guidance in a way that they need it when they're going through life's transitions. So go through the fear setting exercise, because what it really helps you to do is to see life clearly, to see your problems for what they really are. So often we have these problems. They're kind of vague, they're not well-defined, we just have them. And the more we put them off, the more we don't define them, the bigger and bigger and bigger the problems grow. And all of a sudden, when we start to define these things and then in the future we can help clients do the same what we start to see is these fears can be minimized.
Speaker 1:And when we start to understand what's the worst case scenario here and what could I do if that fear were to materialize, what would I be able to do to bring things back to the way they are? But then, most importantly, what's the cost of inaction? What if I don't take this step to take the job I wanna take? What if I don't take this step to get my health right, or to move to where I wanna live, or to ask this person to marry me or to you? Fill in the blank what's the cost of that? Because there's a cost to everything. We are hyper aware of the cost of doing something. What we don't spend enough time thinking about, what we're not aware enough, is what's the cost of inaction in every single area of our life. So the fear setting exercise is excellent.
Speaker 1:I recommend everyone go through that for something when there's something that's coming up that you have a little bit of anxiety or fear to make a decision on. And the last thing I really want to cover here is how do you actually do this? I think that in order to even be able to make these important decisions, there has to be some distance between you and the life you're living. There has to be some distance between the things you're doing on a daily basis and your ability to step back and actually observe your life from almost a third-party standpoint and view. What do I actually want? Where do I want to be? What do I want to do? What's actually most important to me?
Speaker 1:And the difficult thing is for as many benefits as we have in modern society, one of the downsides is we are constantly distracted. Think about your life the moment you wake up. Maybe there's kids, maybe there's getting ready for work, maybe you're scrolling Instagram, maybe you're scrolling Twitter, whatever it is. From the time that you wake up until the time that you go to sleep at night, how much actual intentional time do you spend thinking about you, thinking about your thoughts, thinking about where you want to be, thinking about what's most important to you? The answer for most of us is probably none, zero.
Speaker 1:So this podcast today yes, it's kind of more of a how do you become a better you podcast, because in becoming a better you, you're going to become a better advisor. There's no shortcut here. You can't be an excellent advisor and not also be excellent in your ability to have that self-leadership component to who you are. If we want to get to where we want to be as an advisor, if we want to get to help the Tums of the world, who recognizes hey, I'm sure you're all great at the technical planning, but how do you also come alongside me and address some of my fears and concerns in the emotional side of what I'm doing? You can't just do that without having lived some of this, without having this intentionality in the way you lead your own life. So what can you do? Read, journal, pray, reflect, meditate. What can you do to disconnect from everything that's going on in our busy modern lives, to be able to have some intention, to be able to create some distance between what's going on in your mind, being able to think about your thoughts as opposed to just mindlessly going throughout your day?
Speaker 1:And if we don't ever do that, the biggest risk is we almost get puppeted through life based upon society's expectations, based upon culture's expectations, based upon family's expectations. We do these things and wake up one day and say who actually am I? What do I actually want to do? How do I actually want to live this life? And we realize in many cases that we've been spending the last many years, decades, our entirety of our lives, sometimes not actually doing the things that we want to do as much as the things that we're supposed to do From you're supposed to get into good college, you're supposed to get a good job, you're supposed to marry that person, you're supposed to buy the house You're supposed to, you're supposed to, you're supposed to.
Speaker 1:And if we never take the time to step back and say, is this really what I want to do, we're not going to live those lives of intention and, by default, we're not going to be able to be the most excellent advisors when our job as advisors is to help people live with intention, to help people get the most out of life with their money. But you can only do that if you want to know what you want out of your life. So me, every day, for example, my kids wake up at seven. So if I wait till my day to start at seven, I'm just not going to get the ability to disconnect like I would like to. So I'm going to wake up early, I'm going to read my Bible, I'm going to journal, I'm going to reflect, I'm going to spend time exercising, I'm going to spend time doing things that prioritize my mental state of being, my spiritual state of being, my health all those things to actually think about where I am in life. What do I want to do? Am I taking steps in that direction or am I starting to drift a little bit In doing that? If you just do that, day after day after day, or even week after week after week, you are going to be a person of intention. You're going to be the type of person that is able to recognize what you actually want out of life, which is the first step to being able to live the type of life that you want to live.
Speaker 1:Morgan Housel had an excellent blog post that he wrote a few months back. I'm going to link to it in the show notes. But in this blog post he says if you have no strong views on what kind of life you want to live who are you, what you desire, what makes you happy and what doesn't you're likely to want to mimic the most visually appealing person you come across, often the person with the biggest house, fastest cars or nicest clothes. That may work or it may not. End quote this is so incredibly relevant for our job as advisors, because how many times you ask someone what do you want to do in retirement, thinking once I know what you want to do, then I can get to work building the plan, solving the problem?
Speaker 1:What you then realize is a lot of times people haven't thought deeply about that. They tell you goals, but it's I want to retire, I want to travel, I want this house. They tell you goals, but it's I want to retire, I want to travel, I want this house, and it's kind of apparent how much you actually trust that. How much is that actually your goal, your intention, versus how much of that is what that person thinks they should want, thinks their goal should be, thinks that's what their retirement should look like, because they've never spent time deeply thinking about it. So this isn't to say don't trust what people tell you when it comes to their goals, but as you start to live your own life with intention, as you start to take this degree of self-reflection in everything that you do, lead your own life, make scary decisions, do things that push you, do things that are hard, you're going to be far more equipped to help people and start to understand.
Speaker 1:When someone's having a conversation with you, with the clients telling you what they want to do, you're going to have this natural sense of is that really what you want to do, or is that what you think you want to do Because you see your neighbors doing that, because you see commercials for this, because this is what society tells you you should do. And when you can enter into those conversations, have deeper conversations, help them reflect, help them think, help guide them. That's where your work as an advisor becomes incredibly more effective, more fulfilling, more rewarding. But to do so, we have to be better. We have to be the types of people that live our own lives with intention In doing that. We're going to be the types of people that have those live experiences. Now, we've never retired before, but we've gone through things that were scary. We've gone through things that pushed us. We went through them with the intention of knowing who we wanted to become, and now not only are our lives bigger, more full, more rich, but we now have the benefit of being able to come alongside our clients and be a much better advisor to them.
Speaker 1:So that's it for today's episode of the Root Ready Podcast. If this is helpful to you, if you're enjoying this, please leave a review if you're listening to the podcast or on YouTube. Also, as I mentioned before, if you have a question you want me to answer in a future episode, go to therootreadypodcastcom, submit a question there and I'll answer it on a future episode. Thanks for listening and I'll see you next time. Thank you.