Root Ready
A podcast for growth-minded financial advisors
Root Ready
Getting Clients to Open Up: A Framework for Financial Advisors
Advisors often face a gap between what clients ask for and what they truly need. Retirement projections and tax strategies are important, but beneath them is a deeper desire for clarity, purpose, and a meaningful life.
In this episode of Root Ready, James shares a framework that builds trust and guides conversations beyond the numbers. Research shows people view their future selves like strangers, which makes long-term decisions difficult. Reframing choices through the question “What would my 86-year-old self advise?” brings sharper perspective.
With practical questions and strategies, advisors can help clients reduce future regrets and increase meaningful experiences. The result is a relationship that shifts from transactional to transformational.
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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. Today, we're talking about how you can help clients understand what they want most out of life. They come to you for a financial plan, but you, as their advisor, know there's more to it than that. You, as their advisor, know it's about creating that life well lived, creating that successful outcome. That is what they're truly after, but how do you go about doing that? Today's episode is based upon a question. This question comes from Kate, and she says how do you navigate and figure out exactly what people want in their life? What are great, open ended questions to get clients or yourself to open up and explore this? So that's what this is all about. How do we get them to open up their minds? How do we get them to expand their vision, expand their thinking, to actually think about those things that we, as advisors, know truly matter? So, as part of this episode, I'll give some specific questions, but I think what's more important is having the proper frame of reference, understand the proper context, for how are you approaching this conversation versus how is the client perceiving it, so that you understand. You understand the territory, you've got a good sense of what the territory is that you're operating in and you can make better decisions and you can better lead that conversation when you have that proper context. And here's what I'll start with.
Speaker 1:My first point is don't go right to the deep, important life questions. I think that sometimes as advisors, we say, hey, the financial stuff only gets you so far. You need to ask them questions. You need to ask them questions about their life and what they want, but that's not their frame of reference. Their frame of reference is they're coming to you because they need to know what do I do with my 401k when I retired? What do I do with this huge concentrated stock position that I know is potentially going to damage me if I don't have a plan to get out of it? What do I do as I get ready to retire and I have no idea how to manage my tax bill efficiently? That's their frame of reference. So if we're coming to it and saying, hey, client, why don't you tell me what your money mission statement is? They're going to say what the heck are you talking about? Just help me with the financial thing that I came to you to help with. So here's my approach. This is what I've done. I'm not saying there's only one single way to do it, but I found that this really helps.
Speaker 1:Is you have to start by taking the client? Is you have to start by taking the client, taking them to the limit of what they think they need? So here's what I mean by that. They come to you and they wanna know can they retire? If you jump right into the deep personal questions, the deep life questions, the money mission statement questions, those can be good things, but it feels inappropriate to me. What I would typically do is give them exactly what they want. You want a retirement plan? Great, let's start to talk about that and in that first conversation, tell me what retirement looks like to you. What do you wanna spend your days doing? What's most important to you? Ask some good, open-ended questions and see where they go.
Speaker 1:Some people will go deep and right from the get-go. You can start to have those conversations. You can start to get a, but you can recognize in other situations. Sometimes people don't know. Sometimes there's a fear. They don't know what they want to do, they don't know who they are, they don't know what a successful retirement looks like. Don't push just yet. Take your conversation to the limit of where it can go. Ask those open-ended questions. If you can sense that they're uncomfortable answering or they don't know how to answer or they don't want to answer quite yet, don't push, just continue going. So let's make the assumption that's what happens. You can tell there's some resistance or maybe they don't fully know exactly what they want to do in retirement. Keep going with the financial planning part.
Speaker 1:Now for part of this. I'm assuming they want a retirement projection. Maybe they're asking you can I retire? These are my goals. This is what I want to do. Continue with that conversation. Because what I would then do is I would come back to them. I would show them that plan. I would say hey Tom, hey Sally, here's the plan. You told me you want to spend this in retirement. You told me that these are your assets. You told me that this is what you want life to look like. Here's that projection, here's that plan. Take that to the limit of how far it can go. Because what I would then do is I would say here's your plan and look, you can do it. If you do these things, you will be in a position to retire and we have this degree of confidence that that's possible.
Speaker 1:But my job as your advisor is not just to get the numbers right. My job is to really help you get the most out of life with your money. If you can't look back on your life one day and say I had a better retirement, I had a better life, I had a better outcome because of my work with James and I'm not talking about a better outcome in terms of taxes saved, I'm not talking about a better outcome in terms of portfolio gains realized I'm talking about a better outcome in terms of a better life lived, a more intentional life lived. If you can't say that, I'm probably not properly doing my job as your advisor. Now here's the thing. What I've just shown you is you can do this. You can retire. You can create the $10,000 per month of income that you think it's going to take to retire on.
Speaker 1:But in my experience in working with other people who've been in your shoes before, that's going to not feel totally adequate. At some point You're going to retire. Maybe you enjoy it for a little bit, but then you're going to start feeling a little lost. You're going to start feeling like you don't know what to do with your time. You don't know what to do with that loss of structure or purpose or identity that you had with work. So you are good from a financial standpoint, or here's a plan to make sure you're good from a financial standpoint.
Speaker 1:My guidance, my recommendation, would be to really deeply understand what do you actually want out of this next season? What's most important to you? And I fully recognize that some of these things that are most important to you you probably don't have an answer at the tip of your tongue. You've spent the last 30 to 40 years focusing on your career path, focusing on raising a family, focusing on being financially responsible, focusing on doing things for other people, whether it's your children, your spouse, your coworkers, your boss. You're now at this really unique inflection point in life where you have retirement in front of you, which is really a blank slate. My job is not just to ensure that there's money there to fund that, but to help you understand what's most important. How do we use that money in such a way that it leads to you having the most fulfilling, most purposeful, most enjoyable retirement possible? And when you start to frame it that way, what you've done is you've given them what they want. You've given them the financial side of things, and there's huge value, immense value, in the financial side of things. Some of them might be good.
Speaker 1:Some clients probably say I know exactly what in my retirement All I need was the financial piece. Let's keep working, let's keep optimizing. Yes, there's still. Some aspects of this have helped me live better, helped me do things on purpose. But other clients, they think it's all about the finances. There tends to be a correlation between clients who have saved a lot of money. They've lived within their means, they've done a tremendous job of building the financial side. But they've done that by saying no to, maybe, some of the life things. They've done that by saying no to the spending, by saying no to the extravagant trips, by saying no to some of the fun things they could have done along the way.
Speaker 1:So, ironically, sometimes this isn't universal, but sometimes the people who are in the best financial position to retire are in the worst emotional position or psychological position to do that. But it is oftentimes those same people who have been so laser focused on the financial side. So if I came to that person right away and said, hey, tell me your deepest personal desires and what you want to do, they're going to say James, what are you talking about. We need help with the financial stuff. That has been their train of thought. That is what they are focused on.
Speaker 1:If I'm not addressing their immediate concern or their immediate pain point, they're not going to give me the time of day to talk about what I think they should be talking about. So don't fight it, go with it. Show them the financial projections, show them where they are and then, once you've done that, you've shown them that you can give them what they think they want. And now you're in a position of trust where you can say can I actually tell you what I think you need? You don't need to say it just like that, but you can frame through the gates. It allows you to get into that point where things are open and then from there you can have the deeper conversations about what's needed. So those aren't specific questions yet, but that's one way I like to think about it. Don't fight what your client thinks they want. Give them what they want. They're coming to you because of that. Once it's given, then there's context of that. Once it's given, then there's context, then there's level of trust, then there's a level of they can see that you've done the financial piece and they can also start to see the limits on how far that can take them If they don't know what they want to do with their life, if they don't know what they want to do with retirement.
Speaker 1:No amount of money is going to fix that. You can double their portfolio value, triple their portfolio value. There'll be a quick, brief moment of excitement, but that's going to fade because no amount of money is going to change the fact that this isn't a financial thing that they're struggling with. It's a life thing. So how do you now start to help them with that?
Speaker 1:So let's now talk about that and, going even back to the question, the original question how do you navigate and figure out exactly what people want in their life? What are great open ended questions to get clients or yourself to open up and explore this? The first thing I'll say there's not one magic question. There's not even two or three or five magic questions. There's no single question that, if you ask it using the perfect wording, at the perfect time, with the perfect cadence, there's nothing magical that's going to unlock or unleash all these thoughts and all these things that come flowing out of your client.
Speaker 1:You have to realize that in many cases, this is going to be a process, as I mentioned before so many of these people, the reason they are financially successful is they have devoted, they've dedicated their lives to doing the right thing financially, and sometimes that comes with a huge amount of responsibility at work, at home. They've sacrificed, and that part of them that used to crave adventure, that used to crave adventure, that used to crave fun, that used to crave meaning and purpose, it's still there, but it's maybe been buried beneath a sea of responsibilities, beneath this demands of work, of family, of life, etc. And it's going to be a process to start to bring that back out. So I don't think there's one single question that magically answers this, but here's a helpful way of thinking about this. I want you to think about yourself for a second. Think about decisions you need to make, think about what you most want out of this life. Think about the places that you are with family, with work, with school, whatever the case might be, as you need to make decisions about your life, or you need to state exactly what you want out of life.
Speaker 1:It's tough, and it's tough because you're influenced by emotions, by fears, by pressures, by expectations, by all of these things that are inside of you. It can be very tough to have perfect clarity, to make rational decisions with what you do today to align with where you wanna be in the future. You see this all the time. It's why people stay in horrible relationships. It's why people stay in horrible jobs. It's why people stay in horrible jobs. It's why people put off difficult decisions.
Speaker 1:From the outside, looking in, we can see that relationship stinks, that job stinks, that decision make it, but people don't, because they're influenced by their own fears, by senses of pressure, whether it's external or internal. They're stuck by irrational thoughts or fears or concerns or anxieties or whatever it might be. And so when we look at it from the outside, easy to give that person direction hey, get out of that job, go do anything else, you'll be happier. Get out of the relationship, go, do anything else. Hey, that thing you've always wanted to do, you want to write that book, you want to take that trip, you want to join that club just do it. What's holding you back? But if you were that person, that's in it it's very difficult. So when you're an outsider, it's easy to see objectively, or easier to see objectively, what that person should do. But when you are that person, you're clouded by a whole bunch of other things going on. It's much more difficult. So here's how you can use that principle to help your clients and also to help yourself.
Speaker 1:There was a study done in 2008 by Hal Hirschfield and this study showed that when people thought about their future selves, the brainwaves that were activated were literally the same brainwaves that are activated when thinking about a different person. Meaning, if you were to think about yourself. So I'm 36 today. If I think about 86 year old James and the things that he would have wanted to have been done and the things he's doing with his life and all those things, I think about that person in the same exact way. I think about a total stranger. But when I think about myself today, I think in a very different way. So your brain thinks about your future self as it would a different person, but it thinks of your current self in the way that I just described earlier. My current self maybe struggles to make decisions. My current self is influenced by emotions, by pressures, by fears, by all these irrational things that a future version of myself that a stranger could look at and say that's totally irrational. That fear is crazy. That thing that's holding you back. Don't let it hold you back.
Speaker 1:Here's how you can use this to actually help clients. You can use this to help clients by helping them to make decisions from the framework of their future self. I do this all the time. If there's a tough decision that needs to be made, if there's something where I feel like it's off balance or off kilter in my life, if there's something that needs to be done or something that needs to change, I will often think through the framework of what would 86-year-old James be glad that 36-year-old James did in this moment. What would 86-year-old James have recommended to 36-year-old James in terms of the decision that he should make in this area? What would 86-year-old James tell 36-year-old James to prioritize with his time, with his money, with his attention, with his resources? And the reason that's so effective is when I think through that 86-year-old James isn't facing the same fears, the same anxieties, the same irrationalities that current James is facing Now.
Speaker 1:Another principle to help with this, or another thought exercise or quote to help with this, is I don't know the exact wording of it, but something along the lines of thoughts are disentangled through speaking lips and pencil tips. So how do I take these thoughts. I mentioned that we all have this desire, this desire for purpose and adventure and for more, a yearning for more in our lives. But in many cases that's been suppressed, or maybe it's not suppressed, but it's not been actively tended to, it's not been actively nurtured. How do we do that? Well, I can't just think of what does 86-year-old James think that 36-year-old James should do? But if I start to write it out, it helps. If I speak with someone else, it helps.
Speaker 1:That's the thoughts being disentangled. We have those thoughts inside of us, but how do we express them? How do we get them out? How do we actually start to do the deep work, the deep thought of saying what would I do? What do I want in this decision? That's difficult for me to make, what do I need to prioritize with my time today? And when you start to write about that, when you start to talk through that with others, these thoughts become clearer and clearer and clearer, because what we really want, what our clients really want, is clarity.
Speaker 1:I don't know what I wanna do. I don't even know who I am. I'm retiring and I'm terrified of it because I didn't like my job, but at least it gave me some structure. At least I knew that I wasn't wasting my days, because, 40 hours a week I had this structure, I had these things I needed to do. The scarier thing, though, is this freedom to. There's this concept of the freedom from that job, the freedom from responsibilities and alarm clocks and deadlines. That's one type of freedom. The freedom to is a scarier freedom. The scarier decision the freedom to what.
Speaker 1:What do you want to do with the rest of your life to make sure that you don't look back with regrets one day? A very easy or very effective way to do that is to think through your future self, that stranger in your mind. Ask them what would I want to have accomplished? What are you looking back on fondly? What are the things that I did that you are glad I did? What are the decisions I made that you would say, if you make that decision, you're going to look back and regret it. There's more perspective because you're taking yourself outside of your current present self and you're thinking about things from the perspective of a stranger who's more objective, who's less emotionally involved, even if that stranger is still you, just you in the future.
Speaker 1:So, finally, as we start to move on to what are some specific questions. Realize, don't put too much pressure on the specific question themselves. You can start with the context of give the client what they want and then give them what you think they need. Number two it helps to set the context or set the expectation that it's easier to make decisions about what you should do tomorrow or today, even when you're thinking through it through the perspective of what will you have been glad you did, what will your future self look back on and be glad that you did, as opposed to your current self that's influenced by all types of irrationalities and fears. Finally, number three what are some of those questions? Now, these questions, when you're presenting them to a client, don't expect them, in some cases, to have an answer. Read the room, read the client, read where they are in terms of their comfortability with this. Sometimes these are questions that can spark a great conversation.
Speaker 1:Other times I said I'm going to give you a list of questions. Let's maybe talk about them a little bit, but if you don't mind, maybe putting some thought into this, even pull out a piece of paper and write down some thoughts of this. I would love to revisit this at a future meeting Because, again, the limits of your financial plan. You have a great financial plan in place. I'm not worried about that. What I'm most concerned about is I really want to make sure this is the best season of life you've ever had. I want to make sure we're not looking back and regretting anything. I don't wanna regret anything because the financial things or the financial decisions ran our lives when it should have been the personal that we're focused on. It should have been the purpose, the impact, the enjoyment. That's what I want to make sure we're now doing, because I feel really strongly that we have a good financial plan in place.
Speaker 1:Some of the questions, mr or Mrs Client, look back on your life. Let's imagine you're 86 years old. What are the things you were glad that you did between this point today and that point in your life? Let's put yourself back in that future self. You're 86. What memories do you think you're gonna look most fondly on Now, if they start talking about memories with kids or grandchildren or friends or whatever great? What can I do as your financial planner to help encourage you to build into your budget, to build into your plan? What are the things that we can do? What experiences can we create? What can we carve off to fund some of those experiences today? So when you think through in the future what you want to be remembering, what you're going to look back fondly on, you can reverse engineer that today to say what are those things we can do right now? What's one thing we can spend money on in the next 12 months to ensure that that memory isn't something that you'll get to one day, but it's something we can start actively working towards now. The flip side of that question is this let's assume you kept living your life exactly the same way you are today doing the same things, doing that all the way through retirement. You get to age 86.
Speaker 1:What are you going to look back on and regret that you didn't do? One way to build a great future is to think through it through the lens of how do you minimize regrets? None of us want to get to the end of our lives. None of us want to get there and say it's the things I didn't do that I regret. Unfortunately, the default path is most of us stay in our comfort zone. Most of us don't make decisions that we know are going to be good for us long-term but are going to go through, are going to require some pain in the short-term. Most of us put off some of that. One, because maybe we're not intentionally thinking about where we want to go, so therefore we're not intentionally thinking about the things we do today that will steer the direction we're going in the future. But two, because we face the fear, the insecurities, the irrational thoughts today that prevent us from doing some of those things. So, once again, what will you regret not doing Then? How can we reverse, engineer that to today to make sure we are doing the things that you don't want to regret not doing in the future?
Speaker 1:Then, from there, there's so many questions that you can ask what have you felt most alive doing? Who do you feel most like yourself when you're spending time with them? What's a major decision that you've been putting off? So these are just some things that you can ask and again, there's not a perfect question. It's an understanding of what is the client afraid of? What do they most value? And some of these questions aren't going to be things where you ask it and the words start flowing. Occasionally that might happen, but most of the time it's going to spark new thoughts. It's going to dislodge some of those old thoughts in their mind and allow them to start thinking through this, and you, as their advisor, need to understand.
Speaker 1:This might be a process, this might be something they struggle with for years. This might be something they need your encouragement to say you know what. You're not going to understand exactly what you want to do in many cases, but the one thing that I've seen, the thing that really defines a successful retirement versus an unsuccessful retirement one of those traits is the willingness to try things. To try things, knowing that many of them you're not going to enjoy. Go to that new club, join the pick-up ball club. Join the community service club, join the group that's doing whatever it's doing. Join things. Trial and error. You're not naturally just going to know exactly what you want to do many times, but it's the people that embrace that learning mindset, that embrace that beginner's mindset, and say I'm going to enjoy trying new things, because one that process by itself can become very fun. But number two, you're very likely to find what that thing is that you do truly enjoy. Typically, there's some element of purpose, there's some element of service in that. So where can you find that in your life to be able to live the type of retirement that you look back on without regrets and look back on with very fond memories.
Speaker 1:Now just some practical takeaways here as we start to wrap up as I talk, through the fact that thinking about this through the lens of our future self why that's effective is it really puts things in perspective for us. There's a quote, there's a stoic quote, that says it's not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live. And so when we think of death, it's not really the death itself that gives people fear, at least most times, it's the fact that, wow, I might die without ever having truly lived. I think that resonates with this concern that clients have. Is it's that lack of living that should be the real fear? And that is the real fear when we start to put things in context of removing ourselves from our present situation to make those decisions. So understand that.
Speaker 1:And then here's what you can do as an advisor yes, try to learn the right questions to ask, but master this yourself, what you are doing so oftentimes as an advisor, we have this really unique position in the client's life where it is life coachy in some ways. But just because you have that position does not mean you're naturally going to be great at it. Take that upon yourselves. What can you do? What decisions can you make? Where are you stuck in your life? What are the things that you need to do to make sure that you, when you are 86 years old, are looking back and saying I lived the life that I wanted to live. I lived the life that I was meant to live. The better you can be at that, the better you can guide your clients on that journey. So view it less as what are the questions I can ask to check the box and get clients to start thinking. View it more as how can I be that person? How can I be that person? One for my own life, because it's going to lead to better outcomes for me, a more enjoyable life for me, but two, that's going to help me serve as a guide for this client. If all I've ever learned is the textbook version of this, I read this. I know the question, I know what to ask, I know how to respond. That's far less effective than you being the message, you being the messenger, you being the person that's lived that life so you can better lead those around you, your clients included, if you want a very practical tip if you're listening to this and saying, yes, that's what I want for my life, so I can better not just lead my clients, but better lead my own life, have a better life.
Speaker 1:I use something called the Full Focus Journal. Michael Hyatt has a Full Focus Planner which kind of helps you plan your day, your priorities, your calendar. The Full Focus Journal is exactly what I'm talking about here, the sense of how can you start to disentangle thoughts through speaking lips or pencil tips. Obviously, this is the pencil tips part. Journaling, writing out your thoughts, really helps you to clarify, and that's what we really want. We want clarity of what do I want?
Speaker 1:So this full focus journal, what I use, it's some basic questions.
Speaker 1:If you open it every day, there's a few prompts that are the same every day.
Speaker 1:So it's just pages you can just write. It's just got lines for you to write your thoughts. Some of these things are what are you grateful for? What have you been learning? What's been happening recently? What decisions have you made? So just some basic stuff, just to get you thinking, to get you writing. But then every day there's a really unique prompt and that unique prompt is changing every day. It's got a quote, it's got that, and that's just a great way to say if you want it to be easy, just start writing.
Speaker 1:Just start doing it. Where do you want to be? Who do you want to be? What decisions do you need to make? What's the one thing you can do today to make all of those things easier or more effective in the future? Start doing that. Start doing it yourself. That's probably the best thing you can do if you ultimately want to lead your clients in the same way. So, as we wrap, I hope that was helpful, kate, great question. Thank you for that question. If you are listening and have not already done so, please leave a review for an Apple podcast. If you're on Spotify, it will help more people find the show. The goal is to make this the most valuable thing for growth-minded advisors looking to be the best they possibly can be. Thank you for listening. I'll see you all next time.