Root Ready
A podcast for growth-minded financial advisors
Root Ready
Want to Be a Better Advisor? Learn to Frame Wealth the Right Way
What if real wealth goes beyond money?
In this episode of Root Ready, Harry Sommers joins James for a thoughtful conversation on redefining wealth—not just for clients, but for ourselves as advisors. Together, they explore a more expansive framework of financial planning that considers time, energy, relationships, and purpose.
This isn’t about chasing higher balances. It’s about aligning resources with what matters most. Through real client stories and behavioral insights, Harry and James reflect on how emotional sensitivity, trust, and patience lead to the breakthroughs that truly move the needle.
If you’re committed to serving clients with more depth and intention, this episode is for you.
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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.
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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. One of the things that I've talked about a couple times in this podcast is the importance of helping clients to organize their thinking Not just telling them information, not overwhelming them with information, but properly setting things in context to understand what certain words mean, to understand how to prioritize things, to understand how to think about things as opposed to what may just be the traditional thinking or the normal line of thinking people fall into sometimes. And today is special because today we have a guest, our first guest on the podcast. Our guest is Harry Summers. Harry is a financial advisor with us here at Root. Harry, thanks for joining me on the Root Ready podcast.
Speaker 2:Yeah, James, thanks for having me and just so excited to talk more about this topic.
Speaker 1:Let's jump in and the topic is wealth. And wealth, I think, comes with a lot of connotations and people hear that word and they automatically have maybe a vision, either consciously or unconsciously, in their mind, of what that word means. And going back to what I just mentioned, we can't do our best work as financial advisors unless we properly help organize thinking around. What does this word even mean? So let's start there. As you think about wealth, how would you hope that people think about that word?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, james, and exactly to your point. It's all about defining the terms as we're being that guide and that support network for our clients and wealth. While it traditionally is looked at as money you know, the dollar bills in your pocket really is so much more than that. A non-inclusive or a non-fully encompassing list of those items would be your money, of course, your time, your attention, your energy and your focus, and how to leverage all of those things together in a financial plan that's meaningful for someone.
Speaker 1:And, as you think about that, why does that matter? Why does it even matter to properly define what that term means?
Speaker 2:Well in helping sort through and really assisting clients in identifying what's most important. Each of these resources is key and core to what's most important in prioritization. Spending time with family requires spending money, but it also requires using time and having the energy to plan it, the focus to enjoy it and be present in it, and so each part of this is part of why the money is helpful, but it's simply a tool, a coupon for these other things that, when paired with your other resources, can really reinforce and create a more meaningful and enjoyable life meaningful and enjoyable life.
Speaker 1:I think the one thing that's helpful kind of just a thought experiment, even for clients when I'm talking about this is let's pretend that our job is to help you optimize your wealth. It is, I would say that is our job, but let's pretend, I should say, that we have a very narrowly defined version of what wealth means. And what wealth means simply means portfolio balance, money in the bank, net worth. If I'm doing my job right, I'm probably telling you, harry, don't ever stop working, don't spend money on those family trips, save as much as you possibly can. What I'm doing is I'm helping you to optimize your wealth. So, job well done.
Speaker 1:If I'm going into this with the wrong definition of what wealth really means, done if I'm going into this with the wrong definition of what wealth really means. If I'm going into it with a proper version of what wealth really means, that would be horrible advice that I just told you, because, yes, the money has been optimized, but the other things along the way, the things that you defined as wealth, have been neglected. So walk me through. How do you approach that with clients? How do you help to frame that and position that to set the stage for some of the work that needs to be done.
Speaker 2:And what a fun question. And real quick apologies if you can hear some lightning behind me, this is proof that we don't over edit our videos, but just in case someone's hearing that with headphones on, that's what's happening. So, really, to go back to that question, how do we frame this with clients and how do we help clients see that it's valuable? And it goes back to understanding not just what's important from a balance sheet, but from their values. Is it that the money is there to create security? Is it there to enjoy community and it's different for everyone and what's valuable to them. And so it's prioritizing those values and then creating goals from that.
Speaker 2:Back to your example, james. If we were focused on just the money as the definition of wealth, well, how much and how many times have you seen a client where their focus and their attention is on worrying about the money because they don't know what it's for? And so when talking to clients, it's taking a step back at first and not jumping right into those things that maybe we're trained to find exciting or why it was exciting to join this industry at the beginning. A lot of us join it because we find an interest with numbers or solving problems with people and fixing. But if we take a moment pause, step back from the numbers and fixing and just really assess what's meaningful to people and all of the resources that go behind those things, developing a financial plan becomes a far more intentional and deliberate process that connects with people and their values much more effectively.
Speaker 1:How do you so? A lot of the people listening to this podcast will be newer advisors. I would say that really want to be the best they possibly can. What mistakes have you made, harry, as you are getting in this industry, have you seen others make? What are the common pitfalls and how can people avoid those so they can help, so they can do what we're talking about and not fall into those common traps?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it really is. Much like Benjamin Franklin would say there's a thousand ways not to make a light bulb, and so I figured out about a thousand ways not to do this in a financial plan. A lot of it is going to the traditional sense of focusing first on the dollars and maybe having that as a prioritization over those other resources. To your example, james. So many times in my career, especially early on, my goal was to help people make more money. That's how I viewed it. That's part of the job, but that's not the whole job. If we expand the definition of wealth, if we're thinking about it as well, it's not always going right to the fix of. Okay, I know exactly what your problem is and here's what you need to do. This is what we do for others.
Speaker 2:It's taking a moment to truly understand that issue. Say, it's someone who has a bit of a scarcity issue as they're thinking about going to retirement and they're not sure they can spend enough or they've saved enough to spend and enjoy the life they want in retirement, even if the Monte Carlo shows they could spend a lot more, double, triple what they're planning. That emotion's there and so part of it is positive, part of. It's not going into that fixing mode and it's taking a moment to, at the beginning, understand people and ask about their values. And this can take a lot of forms and maybe this is a bigger conversation than the conversation we're having today.
Speaker 2:But, at the upfront, one of the questions I ask that I find so meaningful ties to just what's important about money to you.
Speaker 2:Or tell me the story of some of your early money memories or the lessons you've learned from your family growing up about money and that will get into the history and will tie back to the experiences they have in order for you to start to assess what's important, what's important For a lot of people.
Speaker 2:I've had clients who you know the husband or their father taking care of all the money he passes. The mother has had no experience and knows nothing about it and can't deal with it, and that creates a lot of stress, a lot of pressure, a lot of anxiety, a lot of uncertainty, and that's their experience growing up around money. It's all these negative emotions and concerns where taking a moment to stop and realize that part of the job is helping them reframe those negative emotions into opportunities and a way to be better. And so there's a million avenues to answer that question, but the first and foremost, the biggest thing and the area where I failed the most is jumping too quickly into the things we typically assign financial advisors to do and perceive that as the only way to add value to a relationship.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think all of us. It's funny, there's almost a progression to this. So I think that when you get into the industry, you learn all this cool stuff. You learn how to optimize the numbers and the temptation is to jump right into the numbers. Then there's step two to that, which is you learn what you're talking about.
Speaker 1:Oh, it is more than the money. The money doesn't really matter unless you do have these other things a relationship, the health, the sense of purpose, the sense of what you actually want to do with the money. But then there's this roadblock that I find a lot of people face, which is okay, I know it's not about the money, but it feels weird just going into a conversation and, harry, I'm meeting for the first time and I'm saying, harry, what's you know? Tell me your values. And you're thinking well, I'm here to get some 401k recommendations and understand if I can retire. Have you ever experienced that or seen others kind of approach this, the I don't even want to say the wrong way, but just approach it this way and fall into that trap of people like what are you talking about Values? I just want to talk about my money.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a great point and a question I've talked to a lot of different advisors and financial planning students about, and you're completely right. First and foremost, it is very important to build a very strong quantitative knowledge set. Once you get to a certain point, though, learning more about the quantitatives the numbers of the plan has a diminishing return on the effectiveness of the advisor. You can be At that point. Leaning more into understanding people from a psychological or a value-based level is important, but there is a very large gap there, and setting the expectation up front is important and each client's different.
Speaker 2:Some clients don't want to talk about the numbers at all and will talk about their money stories for hours. Some clients are very uncomfortable doing that, and so the idea I think that in our world is kind of formed as emotional intelligence, and I guess a challenge I would maybe state is that we need to pivot away from emotional intelligence to emotional sensitivity. If we think about waves on a rock, you know over time the water can move rocks and erode rocks and shape them, but at any given second the water's kind of passing off, and so part of it is assessing where those people are and asking questions that meet them where they are, without overstepping too much or not maybe pushing enough to ask what's important behind the numbers. But it's incredibly common, totally normal, and it really is the first big roadblock I've seen in my experience and in others that keeps them from really developing the skillset to learn about people as people and put those people into a financial plan that's built for themselves.
Speaker 1:I would highlight. What you just said is probably the most important takeaway for a lot of advisors listening, at least in my experience. Going back to the natural progression, people think it's all about the numbers and the problem solving. They get excited, they realize okay, it's more than that. People aren't taking action or people really aren't. Still there's still something missing. And then they learn about this side of oh, what's the meaning of this and what do we actually want to do and what type of lives we want to live. And they get discouraged when they start asking these really deep questions and not understanding why people don't really engage, or not understanding, like, why people aren't super forthcoming about that. And it's what you just said.
Speaker 1:You have to meet clients where clients are, if they're really concerned about retirement stuff or tax stuff or whatever it is. And you, if you were to die tomorrow, what would you regret not doing? What are you talking about? Like I'm more so. You have to almost it's almost like the Trojan horse If you have to kind of give people what they're, what they want, so that you can ultimately show them that you know what you're doing, that you can help them with their plane, that they you can demonstrate that they can be confident with you, and then you can start to shift the conversation gradually, using that trust that you've built, to say, hey, we have your plan now.
Speaker 1:Sometimes I actually like to lead with just numbers. I know we're going to get to the more psychological side of what does this all mean? But let's just start with the numbers, because I know that once we get to the numbers and I can say, harry, look at where you are and look what you're on track for, and look at all these millions and millions of dollars you're going to have unspent by the end of your life. That's not success to me. I know that looks like success when I look at a Monte Carlo simulation high 90s, look. But what that means is what all have we missed out on along the way? And so sometimes using the financial plan, the numbers, as the launching point I find is effective to springboard some of these conversations. But until people see that first, they might not always be incredibly open to just jumping right into the psychological side of it all.
Speaker 2:I know I love that analogy, trojan horse, exactly. If you want to think about it in a different context, like medical terms, there's symptoms and there's the underlying cause. A lot of times people go to a doctor to cure a symptom, not the cause. A lot of times, when you meet a new prospect or someone who wants help, they're asking about a specific thing that's causing them discomfort, focusing on that and building the relationship to help them solve that discomfort first. Maybe it solves the underlying cause, maybe it doesn't, but a lot of the underlying cause of the anxieties, pressures and challenges we face with money are because those actions, those resources, aren't tied to the underlying values. And so you're exactly right. Some people want to talk about it up front. A lot of people don't. Leading with the numbers can be very impactful, but it's important to always remember a lot of the things you're going to start talking about with the relationship might not be the underlying cause, but rather a symptom to something more important, and so I completely agree with you.
Speaker 1:Okay, what? What guidance would you give to that person that's listening to this and is hungry to say I want to become an advisor that has that emotional intelligence. I want to become that advisor that has the ability to properly frame what wealth is and what it isn't, and to guide my clients. Well, what advice or guidance would you have for that advisor?
Speaker 2:Well, first and foremost, if you're out there listening, congratulations. If you're listening to this and other things like it, you're already doing an incredible service to yourself and the people you're supporting, and it's continuing to learn and understand. Challenge your perspectives, but be patient. No, it won't all come overnight. There's going to be trials and tribulations. I failed as many times with all of these things as possible, and it's more just for me to say it'll be some time before you figure out how to make it work. But once you make it work, the ability you're going to have to impact people's lives is far greater. With that, some easy steps. To start with, Simply working on active listening, which maybe at some point is a buzzword in our industry of just saying, when someone else is talking, just pay attention to that and maybe be attentive to see if there's voices or thoughts in your own head and try and diminish that over time. Start with curiosity. Don't assume you know what someone means. Rather, if you're not perfectly sure, just ask.
Speaker 2:One of the most important things about listening is that people don't know you're listening until you show them you're listening. And so a simple reflective question of you know, tell me what brings you in today? Well, I'm really worried. I'm going to run out of money. Okay, so it sounds like you're worried, you're going to run out of money. Tell me more about that. And that's not to say that you should pair it. As you've mentioned in past episodes, James, Some of this is mirroring. Use it sparingly at first and you'll build that muscle to know when it's right. But doing the simple basic things of showing and really understanding people through listening is an incredible way to start on developing a skill set.
Speaker 1:I love it to start on developing a skill set. I love it. Do you have any kind of aha moments from your own work where you've gone through this with the client and the quality of that relationship or the quality of the advice you were able to give was so much stronger because of leading in this way?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and there's a few that come to mind. First and foremost, I found that over time, in general, it makes the planning process easier. There's less inaction, there's less chasing clients and really there's more excitement, fun and collaboration in this, and some examples of that are I was helping a client in a prior firm who both spouses had racked up a lot of credit card debt. It was creating a lot of pressure, and it was keeping them from communicating and having a happy and fun relationship, which they had beforehand. Now, thankfully, they both had received some rather sizable pay increases since then.
Speaker 2:When I first met them, though, they had a six figure debt balance and they weren't communicating about money, and so, over months of time and understanding what was important about it, why, and showing them, slowly but surely, that this was doable it was. I mean, I think mid last year, they paid it all off, for the most part at least. Their credit cards were talking about money with each other at least once a week, talking about the exciting things they wanted to do with their daughters and just having less stress, more joy and being more present, and so part of that is it's easy to say you have a lot of debt, we need to pay that off, don't be saving, don't be doing this, this, that, this and it's easy to take the stance of I know better. I'm making a judgment and this is what you need to do to succeed. But putting off all that and just asking some questions about okay, tell me, how would it feel having all this debt paid off?
Speaker 2:What's something you could do today to start to move this forward towards that future vision of a better state and clients will do a lot of that on their own. A lot more of this job becomes being that guide and removing that noise from people's lives than it is saying this is the dollar amount you need to add to a Roth this year in order to make your Monte Carlo look great and there's more examples there. But also want to make sure, just with all the things we could talk about, that we're not taking too much time on exact client specific scenarios, because it looks a lot different for a lot of people and know that that relationship took years. That wasn't something where first meeting, second meeting, we were talking about how would your relationship as a couple be better if we paid off credit with that?
Speaker 1:Love it. I'm going to go back to the beginning, a little bit of you talking about the fact that wealth is more than just financial resources. Wealth is money, as you define it here. I'm just even looking at kind of an outline that we put together the funds you have to spend on goods and services. Wealth is also time, the moment-to-moment experiences that you have. Wealth is also attention, the focus and priority you give to each moment. Wealth is also energy the amount of effort that can be spent on a given activity or task, one's enjoyment how can, how, how does, yeah, how does one's enjoyment increase when they start to expand their thinking of wealth beyond just financial. Like what does it mean to spend wealth from a time standpoint, relationship standpoint, energy standpoint, as opposed to just a financial standpoint?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean so when aligning all of those things I mean first and foremost. I'll give an example of like attention and energy. Back to your example, james. If we just focused on the money, the amount of attention and energy a client would spend focusing on the market and worrying the sky was going to fall is exponentially more than if they understood why their money was doing the things they were and that those things they were doing were valuable to them. And so, very quickly, their attention goes to the exciting things they get to do in retirement versus watching and lamenting the market day to day and where it's moving.
Speaker 2:Another example of this and this is actually some really cool research that was done, I think in 2013, in Sweden, and they did some research about what's called time synchronization, or the enjoyment of time together versus happiness, and so what they did is they looked at vacation time in Sweden relative to the amount of antidepressants being distributed by pharmacies. The first observation's pretty simple People go on vacation, they're happier. The second observation's a lot cooler, though. What they found is the more people on vacation at the same time, the less antidepressants were being dispensed, which shows there's a relationship to time not just being valuable in a singular sense. Time isn't money, in that you can hoard it and grow it, and it's more valuable the more that you have. Rather, time works very differently, in that it's more valuable the more you share it with others, and even on a societal level. If everyone had the day off, you're going to have a better day off than if just you had the day off, statistically speaking. And so using your money and aligning it with your time with people who mean a lot to you.
Speaker 2:If we look at spending a good versus an experience, an experience typically wins out on creating joy. An experience with people who matter to you is even more effective, and so using money today to create experiences, using your time being present with your attention and spending your energy in that moment, can be a very effective way to enjoy wealth, which ties into a lot of ideas, much like legacy planning. A lot of people think that's only in the future, when, in fact, a lot of legacy planning starts today. It's setting an example of what's your relationship with money. What do you want people around you to learn about your relationship with money? What memories do you want to create with the people who matter to you, while leaving money after you pass is great. Is there more effective ways to create joy and meaning today with that money versus just leaving it later on, so to speak?
Speaker 1:We talk a lot about compounding, obviously in our industry, and it's impossible not to appreciate the power of compounding when you can see what small actions leveraged over long periods of time can turn into.
Speaker 1:And I think that a really important application of compounding is that same principle applies to what we're talking about here with wealth, obviously the financial side. We see that. We see what portfolio balances can do when you compound them over long enough periods of time. But apply that to time. You can spend time, as you just kind of alluded to, or you can invest time, and that time invested compounds into greater wealth, greater time wealth, your talents, I would say you and I are exponentially greater advisors and better at what we do today than we were five years, 10 years ago. That's simply a compounding of our talents and investing in talents, your energy. How can you compound it? Like, where are you spending energy and how does that create more of it in the future? So that same principle that applies to money when you properly understand wealth, that principle is universal and all of these things can be better, which I think that the application specifically maybe not specifically, but maybe more narrowly focused on the people, that which a lot of advisors are working with, which tend to be the people that are maybe within a few years of retirement. There's this sense I really got to compound my money, compound my money, compound my money. And you're right, you do. You're in those critical years where we got to prepare for retirement and make sure that we're optimizing the financial wealth. But if in doing that, you succeed perfectly but you've neglected the way you spend your time, you've neglected the way you spend your time, you've neglected the way you spend your energy, you've neglected the way you spend your talents, there's going to be a very empty feeling when you feel like you should be celebrating because you reached this major financial wealth milestone, but it's going to feel pretty empty and it's going to feel pretty incomplete when you realize the other aspects of your life that actually bring that more fulfilling, purposeful sense to you have gone uninvested in and have been neglected and have actually started to deteriorate. So I think it's a very important message for us as advisors to recognize that we have a very important seat at the table with our clients. They are talking to us about things that they don't talk to anyone else about, sometimes even their own spouses, and so that doesn't automatically make you great at being a life coach, at being able to share wisdom, about being able to share perspective, which is why it's more of our responsibility.
Speaker 1:We have kind of four categories, four high-level categories here at Root that we say here's the domains of excellence that we want to pursue. One is, of course, the technical planning. That's the retirement planning, the tax planning, the legacy planning. You need to be a master at the financial, the technical side. The other is investments of. We need to understand how does the investment tie into the portfolio or tie into the plan and enable everything that people want to do?
Speaker 1:But then there's that financial psychology piece, which is what we're talking about here. You need to be able to understand what motivates people, what drives people, what causes people to resist doing certain things, because without that the other two pieces are far more ineffective than they otherwise could have been. And finally, it's just that self-leadership piece of ourselves. How can we be the most effective people possible with the way we manage time, the way we communicate, the way we work with others? But I think that those are critical domains for every advisor to master if they want to be the best they can be. And this is just kind of some examples of how that can be applied in conversations with clients.
Speaker 2:Oh, exactly right. And I mean it's all core and parts to a unified whole which is a well-rounded and effective advisor who can help guide people, and with that, the technical side versus the psychological side. This might be an easy way to connect the dots and this is an idea I've borrowed from others, so I cannot take credit for it, but it's the idea of longevity risk which we're all very familiar with. A Monte Carlo simulation and say write capital will give you a probability of success, of not running out of money. That word success is something we'll talk about in a different conversation. As we both know, that's not true. But what's the opposite of that?
Speaker 2:So running out of money is one risk, but the opposite of longevity risk, could be argued, is regret risk, and that's does your money outlive you. And so, when it comes to tying psychology into numbers because a lot of people, from my experience, feel like there's this giant gap between the two, that they're two very different things Either you join this industry for the numbers or you join this industry for the people, and it's just two sides to the same coin. And so how do you use the tools, the knowledge, the fundamental structures of planning that you've learned and tie it into understanding people, to help them not run out of money, but also not for them to have so much money that all they have because of that money is a past full of regrets of what they could have done with that money.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I love it, harry. Well, as we start to wrap up, are there any final pieces of advice or guidance, or even just anything you would like to leave listeners with before we close out today?
Speaker 2:Yeah, other than just again. If you're listening to this, you're doing a lot of work. It takes time, it takes patience, it takes care. Keep working at it and just over time it'll compound, like James mentioned, to something wonderful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love it. Well, harry, thanks for coming. Thank you everyone for listening and I say on the show, if you want a question answered. The goal of this show is to help aspiring growth-oriented advisors to be the best that they can be, typically in one of those four domains that we talked about. But if you have a question that you would like answered on a future episode, go to the rootreadypodcastcom. There's a section where you can submit a question and it will be answered on a future show. Harry, good to see you, thanks for coming on and we'll see you on the next one.
Speaker 1:Bye everyone.