Financial Planner Life Podcast
Welcome to The Financial Planner Life Podcast. We cover an intimate and honest account of what it’s really like to work in the financial planning profession.
Our guests share their stories of success, failures and learnings, as well as what to expect from a career in the financial planning profession! We host guests at various stages in their careers, as well as multiple roles to ensure that our audience has a variety each week.
Financial planners, business owners, paraplanners and back-office staff all have their own story to share, and The Financial Planner Life podcast is a platform for them to talk about their personal and professional journey. The podcast covers a multitude of topics, from mindset and motivation, health and wellbeing all the way to diversity and inclusion.
We approach each episode with the idea that it is going to educate and spark a conversation within the industry with topics that may not be openly discussed. So, if you are thinking of becoming a financial adviser, or you’re curious about learning more about this brilliant sector, we urge you to give the podcast a listen.
The Host: Sam Oakes is the host of The Financial Planner Life Podcast. since 2008 Sam has been supporting leading national and global financial planning firms in finding the best talent, he was the director of Recruit UK, a 7 figure turnover financial planning recruitment company that he successfully exited in 2024, Sam now works as the Head of Creative for Hoxton wealth, building out podcasts, YouTube and social content for this fast growing fee based international financial planning firm.
Sam has always had a passion for financial services, starting out as a trainer for leading product provider in the UK, he has been in the industry for over 20 years.
He sees himself as a partner to the industry and wants to contribute useful resources such as this podcast to educate those further who are seeking advice and help about how to push their careers forward in this amazing profession.
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Financial Planner Life Podcast
Why You Feel Anxious About Money (And Don’t Even Know It) - with Dennis Harhalakis
In this episode of Financial Planner Life, Sam Oakes is joined by certified money coach Dennis Harhalakis to explore the powerful emotional side of money - and why financial planners can't afford to ignore it.
Dennis shares how our earliest money experiences shape the way we think, feel, and act around money as adults. Whether it’s shame, fear, scarcity, or self-worth, these emotional drivers often get in the way of good financial decision-making.
We discuss:
- Why childhood money stories influence adult financial behaviour
- How money shame blocks clients from implementing advice
- Why planners must understand their own money beliefs first
- The power of creating emotional safety in client conversations
- Tools and training to help financial planners explore money coaching
If you're a financial planner who wants to build deeper trust, improve client outcomes, and bring more human connection into your advice process - this one's for you.
🔗 Learn more about Dennis and Cambridge Money Coaching:
https://www.cambridgemoneycoachinguk.com/
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And today on the Financial Planner Live podcast, I'm joined by Dennis Harlalakis. He is a money coach, got extensive background in financial services and he helps financial planners help them go deeper with their clients to understand exactly what their clients' money beliefs are.
Speaker 2:You can only go as far with a client as you've been with yourself. Really is true in all areas. You can't talk about financial planning if you haven't done the exams. You can't help a client.
Speaker 1:You can't explore a client's money beliefs or what's driving their behavior if you haven't been through that process yourself I've learned loads from dennis over the last couple of weeks about myself, my money stories and my relationships with money. I opened up quite honestly to you and it was a really powerful conversation for me, actually, because we dug quite deep into my upbringing and where maybe some of those money beliefs actually stem from. I think you're going to love this episode if you want to go a little bit deeper around the psychology of money and what your clients might be thinking and how to make them feel comfortable in those initial first meetings. So, dennis, thanks for joining me today on the financial planner life podcast. Awesome to have you on the show to talk about money coaching, what, what it is you do and the value that you can add financial planners when it comes to their clients understanding their money stories essentially. So why don't you just first off give us a bit of an insight into who you are, dennis, and did I get that right?
Speaker 2:You did absolutely so. Thank you so much, Sam. My name is Dennis Hargalakis. I am a certified money coach. I'm also a money coach trainer. So what do I do? What is money coaching In essence?
Speaker 2:I think the most helpful way to think of money coaching is that it's a framework for understanding patterns, behaviors and emotions around money. You don't have to coach people. I think anything that gives you insights into other people's behaviors is really interesting. That's a personal fascination of mine, um, but if you're going to be helping people make financial decisions, which planners and advisors are, then to me, it's really crucial that you understand how people make financial decisions. What is it that drives their, their money behaviors? And, in particular, what is it that person in front of you, the one whose plan that you're building what drives their money behaviors? So that's, if I position money coaching as a framework for understanding patterns, behaviors and emotions, I'm really doing it in the sense of not coaching an individual, but more in terms of wow, I wonder what's going on for that person right now and how can I help?
Speaker 1:to a point. We had a chat on the phone a couple of weeks ago. Um, we got into my sort of personal money behaviors and money beliefs and I opened up quite honestly to you and it was a really powerful conversation for me because we dug quite deep into my upbringing and where maybe some of those money beliefs actually stem from. So when you do this and you talk to, say, financial planners and you might help them discover ways that they can unearth those types of um behaviors and beliefs within their clients, how do you go about doing it? Dennis, when you think about that system of coaching and training, say a financial planner or uh, opening their eyes to, to, to money beliefs and all of that kind of stuff, how do you go about doing it? This set structure that you have, what do you do first?
Speaker 2:yeah. So if we go to kind of a generic how do you understand money behavior perspective, um, I think there's kind of two, two, two parts to it. One is how do we learn about money? How does the brain work? Clearly, brains didn't evolve to have money. Money has been around one, four, five thousand years. Brains in our brains anyway, for significantly longer than parts of our brains are hundreds of millions of years old. So how do brains really work? What do they do? What's their purpose? And their purpose fundamentally is is a survival purpose is to keep us alive. So there's a lot of physiology that goes on that drives our behavior. Fight or flight, for example, it's one of those now you could say well, what are you talking about?
Speaker 2:I'm going? Well, fundamentally, if your client or if you get triggered in a conversation and some kind of survival mechanism got kicks in, then you're going to go into fight-or-flight mode and that may happen with the clock in front of you. They're not going to run screaming from the room, but they may withdraw, they may look at their feet, they may just you know, generally get triggered. They may find it really really hard to think because something that you've said or something that's come up for them has put them into a fear state. So let's face it planning and investing is all about dealing with uncertainty. So that's not an easy topic for the brain to to get comfortable with. In fact, we do everything that we can to get to try and reduce uncertainty in our lives. So there's a physiological aspect to it. You know how does it work, what does it do? And then there's how did he get wired around money? And this is kind of the where it becomes really interesting is how did your, how did your brain get wired around money? How do we get wired around money? And if we look at that as a process, it comes from early childhood and humans are born with no core survival skills. A newborn can't lift his head for three months, and there are biological reasons why that's the case. What it means is that if you have no innate core survival skills, you have to learn, and therefore learning becomes a core survival process, and that's really, really important. If you and that's why babies are sponges right, they have to learn. It's a biological imperative. They have to learn how to get their needs met and they have to learn how to understand how the world works. So, then, that's a deep-rooted process. It's powerful, it's instantaneous. And does the baby decide what it wants to absorb? No, it doesn't, because you absorb everything that's going on around. And then we ask ourselves okay, so what's going on around? Well, does an infant control the environment? No, it doesn't. Does it control the behavior of the people in environment? No, it doesn't. So now we have this powerful subconscious learning process that the infant doesn't control, and he doesn't control the input, he doesn't control the purpose.
Speaker 2:Add money into it and ask yourself okay, well, what do we learn about money going on? Well, we learn from the money behavior of the adults around us as we grow up. And that process of, I mean, it's kind of mechanical in some senses, but essentially it's right. Yeah, that is why so much of what we believe about ourselves and about money and about money and ourselves is hardwired, because it comes from this very, very powerful early life process that is essentially evolved to keep us alive. That's why it feels, you know, like money. Stuff feels like life and death, because that is that is the core survival learning process that we grow up with. And so you can try and layer a whole bunch of stuff on top of it with financial literacy, reading books, but ultimately it's those core beliefs that drive so much of our behavior.
Speaker 2:So if I'm working with a client, if I'm working with an advisor, it's explaining that process and going okay, what did you learn? And going okay, what did you learn about money? What did you learn about money and yourself? What did you learn about yourself? And when we can tease that apart and learn, for what was the behavior, what was the message you took? What are the beliefs? That's created? It then becomes a way of piecing together to add those beliefs to your behaviors. We look at the behaviors and we go well, that doesn't make any sense. But if someone's behavior doesn't make any sense, what that's really saying is I don't understand enough about that person and their story to know why they do that. Behaviors are rational, they evolve or they evolve for a reason. And if you, if you, if you evolved in a household with huge amounts of conflict around money, it makes total sense for money to be a scary thing, for you, um, so does that give you a kind of insight then, into kind of how you can start to piece this together?
Speaker 2:and so the reason it's important is that your own biases and behaviors as a parent leak into the room. But if we're going to focus on clients for the early part of this, it's about understanding them. So a client that's in front of you, what do you know about? What drives their behaviors? What do you know about their beliefs? Because their beliefs will drive how they spend, save and invest. If that's what you're involved with and you don't know what their beliefs are, then you're kind of like trying to do this with one hand behind your back. You're always going to be limited to a certain extent in understanding them and also in terms of connecting with them, to a certain extent in understanding them and also in terms of connecting with them.
Speaker 1:So you, when we spoke last, you said it's all about knowing yourself as well. So do you. When you, when you coach, when you speak to financial planners, for instance, and you help a number of financial planners with financial coaching expertise and training, you work with them first to get to know their own money beliefs and their own money stories before they can even go out and start to understand others.
Speaker 2:Is that?
Speaker 1:how it works.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, that's a really good question. It kind of depends a little bit on what they want to learn. Well, yeah, that's a really good question. It kind of depends a little bit on what they want to learn. But I think, in summary, the best way to understand someone else's behavior is to understand your own behavior, because the process of understanding what drives you will give you an insight into the generic issues of what's driving someone else and it's going to give you the tools to be able to explore that wisdom. So I think in some ways, what did they say in coaching?
Speaker 2:You can only go as far with a client as you've been with yourself. Really is is true in all areas. You can't. You can't talk about financial planning if you haven't done the exact. You can't help a client. You can't explore a client's money beliefs or what's driving their behavior if you haven't been through that process yourself. You can learn technically and so if you want to go out there and google you know top 50 questions to ask clients about money behavior, you can do all of that, but your ability to take that and explore that with a client is much better if you've been through that process yourself.
Speaker 2:The other thing that comes up in this is that when you understand what drives your own behavior, you end up with a great deal more compassion for other people, because you realize that they're not choosing to be anxious. They're not choosing to be afraid. They're not choosing to be anxious. They're not choosing to be afraid. They're not choosing to have shame, guilt around money.
Speaker 2:If you have a client that can't spend anything in retirement we know those clients who are still accumulating in their 70s it's not a conscious choice. You can't just throw a spreadsheet at them and try and almost like kind of shame them into spending more money. They're trapped with what they have, and I use the word trapped in the sense of they don't consciously control the behaviors that are driving their spending patterns. And so understanding that gives you a way to approach it with compassion and curiosity, as opposed to why are they doing that? That makes no sense to me. So when you reframe that with what you might call a coaching perspective which is that's really interesting I wonder what's driving that behavior?
Speaker 2:What does that behavior get? That process of reframing it with curiosity, compassion because you've been through this process yourself allows you or gives you kind of the tools and the insight to explore that with a client and go wow, that seems to be really hard for you, I wonder. I wonder why that is. I wonder if you could tell me a little bit more about what might be most challenging for you about what I've heard. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it just makes sense that process builds connection.
Speaker 2:That process is showing the client that you're meeting them where they are.
Speaker 1:So that identification as well, knowing that you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's not a kind of technical well, this is the plan and you should, you should, you should implement the plan. This is like where are they with this? You know why is this? Why is this not going through? So is the advice non-compliant? Is that client non-compliant? Or is it that I haven't felt I haven't helped them to feel comfortable enough and safe enough to be forward with it?
Speaker 1:dennis, what's your money story?
Speaker 2:money beliefs so my money story, uh, comes from mainly from my well it. So that's mainly from my father and the origin of my kind of understanding what my money story is. I spent 30 years in financial services. I worked in trading rooms. I built a private bank with three guys for a Taiwanese conglomerate, so I spent a lot of time in money. I know how money works and I thought I knew. I thought I knew enough.
Speaker 2:I was actually operating out of fear and scarcity, which I inherited from my father based on his life experience, and my turning point was listening to a planner who'd just become a money coach talk about where money beliefs come from, and I had this realization that all my life I have been dragging around my father's money hacks on it. This caused me. The upside of it was always a very good saver. The downside of it was that I radiated anxiety out into into the, into the spaces. I didn't like to pay for things. I didn't like to part with money. I didn't invest in myself. There were some other self-worth issues I had around around not around myself which came with it. And so this realization that hang on a minute this isn't mine. I didn't choose to have this, I inherited this. This came from my father. Now I can begin to understand it, and now I could begin to work on it.
Speaker 2:That was 2018. I trained as a money coach. I spent about six months actually in that process, um, and so the lot, the period since then has been an exploration for myself around understanding my money behavior, working with my anxiety, working with my scarcity mindset and the scarcity mindset is also, you know, around myself and then helping other people on that process, whether it's scarcity with whatever it is that they they struggle with. They come to me because they've gone through this cycle of I don't understand it. I'm an adult, it's only numbers. Why can't I do this? And then, what's wrong with me? And once you get to the what's wrong with me space, you're trapped in shame, because the last thing you want to do is talk about what's wrong with you to somebody else, with you to somebody else. And the thing with money.
Speaker 1:Is that we?
Speaker 2:all have stuff that we don't understand. We all have things that we wish we could do better or we knew better, even if they're kind of really below the subconscious level. So my journey around, that is, is essentially to support people with a safe space, in a safe space where they can talk about things that they find really, really difficult. And that's me as a coach. The thing is with planners and advisors is they're doing the same things for clients. They're helping them to talk about things that they may find really, really difficult. You don't know.
Speaker 2:I mean, I think maybe the way to illustrate this would be to kind of give you an example. So we haven't really talked about questions yet, but obviously questions are one of those things. One question so can I ask you a question, mike? I wonder if you could tell me a little bit about what money was like growing up. Now, if we kind of role play this a little bit, sam, you say, oh, we didn't talk about money growing. So I'm going to say to you so, sam, thanks for coming in today. Before we talk about anything to do with numbers and everything, I find it really interesting to understand a little bit more about your money story, and would you mind telling me a little bit about the? You know what money was like for you growing up I can actually tell you.
Speaker 1:I guess you want me to tell you my money, should I just do? Just be honest and see where it goes. Let's do that if you're, if you're willing to say the conversation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'll go as far as I can go, but money wasn't. Money wasn't ever really talked about in the home, right. So I always remember being quite fearful to ask my dad for money because he would reject it, and that's even to today. I wouldn't ask him for money even to today, because I feel like there would be a whole. It would be a whole, there'd be a whole story and he would give me the money, but there would be a whole issue around that I'd have to deal with.
Speaker 1:First of all, like right, there was always something that you had. It was always a challenge to get it, whereas my mom, if I asked my mom, I'd pretty much get what I wanted from her. So I had one parent that would give me what I wanted, and like if I wanted a computer game, if I wanted a pair of trainers or whatever, I could kind of convince my mom to tell me. But to showered me with gifts. He never gave me anything outside of christmas presents and birthday presents. He gave me a lot in life, but he never gave me when it came to money. He was very scarcity mindset and whereas my mum was more free-flowing with the cash. Does that make sense?
Speaker 2:absolutely, yeah, it's. It's pretty usual for parents to be on different pages when it comes around. Money comes to money, it comes to money, and part of the challenge is that you're trying to make sense of this thing called money and you've got differing role models. Yeah, so contradiction, conflict they all cause confusion. In fact, it could be very confusing. You could have somebody that said one thing and did something completely different. That also comes out a lot, and so you're ahead, you're trying to form patterns around this, and so I guess you know what I'm, what I'm hearing from you. Um, if I kind of step back into kind of how we could do this as a, as a planner, as opposed to kind of, you know, from a coaching perspective, I could say something like, um, so it sounds to me like talking about money or asking for money in certain situations was quite difficult for you growing up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, asking any question was very difficult. You'd always meet with some sort of craziness.
Speaker 2:Sure. So now what that means is for you and me if I'm a planner and you're a client, if you never talked about money growing up and you never asked questions or it was really really difficult to ask questions around money growing up, that means to me. What I'm hearing, what do you think that means? So that that means, but for me, as a coach, what I'm hearing is this situation that you find yourself in because you've been had an inheritance and now you need to do something out of Japan. This could be really difficult for you, hey, hey. So I'm going to ask you, sam, if you never talked about money growing up, or it was always challenging to engage with your father, and that means that talking about money could be really difficult for you. How are you feeling right now?
Speaker 2:anxious yeah, wow, okay, now I'm not, we're not going to go into coaching space, but can you see that that process, or can you even feel that that process of trying to meet you where you are, is going to take the potential conversation in a certain direction? If the client's really anxious, then then acknowledging that is massively powerful, because it's like me saying to you sam, thank you so much for sharing. A lot of people have anxiety around this and I'd just like you to know that. That you know I as a, as a planner, will recognize that and support that. And then there's no judgment or anything around anything you've done or haven't done, and if you're finding it really difficult, just let me know. And if you want to take a stop or take a break, then that's totally fine by me. So I'm meeting you where you are now. If you were to say to me you know what? We never talked about money, but I'm really curious, I'd are Now. If you were to say to me you know what we never talked about, money, but I'm really curious, I'd love to learn all about it. Is that going to be a different conversation? It's going to be a different conversation. So then you're like, oh, fantastic, great and I've got so much to share with you. Where would you like to start?
Speaker 2:Whereas if you're anxiety, then if I say something like oh, don't worry about it, I know a lot about money, you're is that going to make you feel any safer? No, it isn't right, it isn't. It's not going to make you feel any better, and that's kind of what we tend to do. We'd like oh, you're feeling anxious, don't worry. Yeah, I'm all right, I got you. You kind of come from a good place, but in reality it's not acknowledging where you are and how you're feeling, and so that kind of don't. If you're feeling scared, don't worry, I'm really brave, isn't going to work. It may just kind of like you go, yeah, yeah, fine, and then you've got that kind of bit where you switch off, you don't feel seen, heard or understood, whereas what I'd like you to do is go feel that I understand.
Speaker 2:This is really difficult for you. I acknowledge that. I validate it in the sense that actually, you know what, if you grew up in that space where there was a lot of conflict around money or a lot of confusion around money, this could be really difficult for you. So I will say to you wow, that's you know. Thank you so much for sharing that. This could be really difficult for you. I understand that. What would be really helpful for you right now? Where would you like to start? So now I'm approaching a planning conversation with compassion, empathy, and you're going to feel a lot better about it because you're like I was really scared about coming in here. This is really hard. The first thing they did was made me feel good about where I am. I'm not coaching you. I'm simply using my insights and my knowledge around money behavior to go to find out how you're doing, not in a kind of hey, how you doing, sam, as in like, how does this feel for you? Is this scary?
Speaker 1:because a lot of people find it scary, and that's okay yes, I think that's a really powerful thing to do when it comes to money is to find that place with compassion and empathy first of all, and create the space where the person you're sat in front of feels comfortable because it is well, it is. To me it's. It's an it feels like a really uncomfortable conversation. It's funny as well because when you see, like marketing for financial planning companies, it never starts with that kind of that, those types of questions in mind either, and I wonder how much of the, how much of the identification or making somebody feel quite safe through marketing or through content, would draw them into their the business as clients and actually go. Do you know what they fit? They're like, they're a bit I don't really understand what financial planning is.
Speaker 1:I know I definitely need it, but I'm freaked out by it, so I'm not going to go and speak to them where instead they also they watch a load of content that is really calm, it's really compassionate, which is really kind, that is honest and makes them in a safe space, talks openly about the fact that maybe not everybody knows about money, and that's okay. Maybe you have inherited a large sum of money and it's okay not to know what to do with it. I like that approach and I feel like if you can kind of tackle that like someone's gone, I've inherited some money and I don't know what to do with it, so they go into google and they search and up comes a video talking about like, before you even talk about the money, let's have a look at who you are first of all, are you you know, how are you feeling about it? What's going on? I kind of like that and I feel I think there's a lot, a lot financial planning companies can do with that.
Speaker 2:Right, absolutely. I'm glad you. The inheritance thing is really interesting because, as an example, if I've inherited, you know whatever, that money is a large sum of money and I come to you then in some ways as a financial planner, in some ways it's a technical question what are we going to do with this? But if I have deep embarrassment or shame about it then and you try and come to me with a technical solution, oh well, you need to put this in your eyes, so you need to put this over there and you need to do all these kind of technical solutions. I'm not going to do any of them because you haven't.
Speaker 2:You're addressing the wrong problem. I'm coming to you because I think I need a planner, but what I really need is a conversation first that helps me get comfortable with the inheritance that I have. And if you don't know that, if you don't ask me, if you don't say to me Dennis, right, wow, that's a really interesting, congratulations, that's great. How are you feeling about the money? If you don't ask me that, you won't know whether I'm trapped in shame and guilt because you know, the last thing I said to auntie die was, was, was, rude, and now I've inherited some money from her or whatever it is or you know, I don't believe I am worthy enough to inherit money when there are millions of people that have nothing.
Speaker 2:And why have I got this money and what am I going to do with it? If I'm trapped in shame and guilt around that, then if you try and give me a technical solution around how to invest it, hey, I'm not going to feel seen, heard or understood, but also I'm not going to do anything with it because I can't move forward from the space I'm in and all it takes is a little question around how you're doing, how you're feeling with it. Some people can really struggle with a heretic money. Tell me a little bit about. That's going to open up. You have a connection between the two of us and I'm going to go.
Speaker 2:You know what I? I if I feel so strange. I mean, I should feel happy, I should feel grateful, I should feel you know, but I don't and I don't understand why. So now I'm heaping shame on myself for not feeling the way people should when they inherit money and if you're going to come at me with all the best women in the world with a technical aspect of what I could do with it, that is not addressing my core need in the moment and also, if they don't speak to somebody, yeah, if they, if they don't speak to somebody as well, they might hold on to that money and, with their existing money beliefs, make bad choices and bad decisions with the money that they inherit as well.
Speaker 1:So it's again it's about drawing them in, drawing them into a place where it is actually safe to explore it, to to explore also your thoughts of what you want to do. You might want to go and buy a brand new, bloody ferrari with your inheritance tax and that might be like something you really, really want, because you want it as a kid or whatever, but that might not be the best thing to do because it could be a better plan at place. But you, you know there's probably a better plan at place, but you just don't know how to invest your money. And then the intensity, yeah, and then the shame and the intensity and the kind of of that is like so, so overwhelming for some that you'd rather push it aside, and then you just make a lot of bad decisions with the money. So it's like, how do you make it safe?
Speaker 2:yeah, you're going to be driven by what makes you have the least discomfort and if that means ignoring it, yeah, you could have a situation where you've you've been what most people call not very good with money over the years and now you're terrified because you've got this inheritance, which is kind of the last thing you you've got from your parents or whoever it is, and you're like I can't go near it because I'll wreck it and that's this is really meaningful to me. And so you again you're trapped in anxiety or shame or guilt and and uh, in in that space, I mean so that it hopefully kind of gives you. Well, this is an idea of. It's not a coaching process. We're not talking about coaching clients. We're talking about exploring who they are, where they are, and this, what's beautiful about this, is that it, um, it builds trust and connection.
Speaker 2:It's not just you know, if I ask you what's in your eyes or what's in your, that that's fact. Fine, that's like you transfer information to me for my benefit, whereas me asking you to share a little bit about your money story or how you're feeling about the inheritance, stuff like that is about me getting to know you so you can feel safe with me so that you can give me the information I need to do my job properly, so that, in our example, I can say to you I've inherited this money, but you know, sam, I'm really struggling with it. I don't want to talk about investments. I'm wondering if you can help me understand a little bit about what's going on. Do you do? You don't?
Speaker 1:do you then go through like I?
Speaker 2:don't, but I do know someone who can. If you're really struggling with this, then I know someone who can and do you ever go through like an emotional index with them?
Speaker 1:so, question after question, would a financial planner go through specific core questions to gauge where that client might be on an emotional level around money? So if you ask like a hundred questions, right, and they're all the same questions, at the end of it you'd have a score or you'd have somewhere like a personality, like a personality test. Essentially that would actually determine what their emotional um money, intelligence, age is, or places or is there a way?
Speaker 2:is it or is?
Speaker 1:it or is it more? Yeah, is it more complex than that?
Speaker 2:So well, I have a money quiz that I use for all of my clients which gives me an insight into the money personality. What is fundamentally driving it? What aspects of fear are driving it? It is this thing that's, you know, very central to our lives. But that can people can present, that people can get trapped in. Uh, you know, um, the the idea of the more stuff I have, the more I. You know, I, I have it, I have enough stuff, so I am enough. You know, there's a very we get.
Speaker 2:The messages around money are very mixed and most of them are not very positive. So it's trying to help people understand the difference between kind of who they are and and the money piece. So, in broad, in a broad sense, the answer is that ultimately, you need to have a conversation. If you're going to go into coaching space, you need to have a conversation with someone. It's not kind of like a risk tolerance thing. It's the conversation that builds the connection, as opposed to hear your quiz results and let's talk about those.
Speaker 2:I think, within the advisor space, it's far more powerful to spend a little bit of time in certainly the discovery meeting, understanding your client's story, time in certainly the discovery meeting, understanding a client's story and even if you don't go into significant details, the the question and answer process is in itself the important thing, which is I can't stop myself before. I'm like before we went into your story, but I hope you, you shared with me some information about your mom being this way and your dad being that way, um, and I would ask a question around that. You know, is it difficult for you to ask for money? Do you find money? You know, it sounds to me like with two different things going on then actually, money could have been quite confusing to grow up around. How do you feel about that? And so we don't need to go into a great deal of depth, we just need to acknowledge the client's history and make them feel that they've heard. So I would, you know, I could say, well, if this is and you say, well, this is confusing, like fine, when it's confusing, I I'll go.
Speaker 2:A lot of people have that. So I want you to know, sam, that at any point you can stop me and go. I'm sorry, please explain that again. Could you show me that again? Maybe you could draw a graph, maybe you could do it this way, maybe you do that way. Just know that, um, you can do that way. Just know that, um, you can do that at any time. Anything that I explain to you now in our conversations around planning, or just let me know if it's if. If you haven't, you haven't heard what I've understood, and that's totally fine.
Speaker 1:It's up to me to help you understand it so when you coach, say, a financial planner, if they're interested in in in uh learning how to coach, ask the right questions and open up that safe space to have those conversations with the client, to delve a bit deeper into their behaviors, how long does it take to do this? Is there a course? Do you deliver a course? Is it uh, over the internet? Is it face to face? How? How does a financial planner who's interested in exploring this further a to understand themselves, because I can imagine lots of financial planners are probably sitting there going I need to understand my money beliefs, um, so they wanted to do their own version and then also understand how to deliver this within client meetings. What's the sort of time scale? Is there a qualification? Is there a course? How is it delivered? How is it done?
Speaker 2:so we do. We run a money coach training course which is 16 weeks. Um, it's hourly, at two hours a week, 16 weeks. Oh, there's more to it than that. We also have a self-paced online version that teaches you the same content at your own pace, and that's kind of the Rolls Royce of it if you really want to understand money behavior, and that has three components. We teach you how to explore a client's money history. We show you how to do that with two practice clients your own practice clients and you go through that process yourself. So in a sense, it gives you kind of a 360 degree of understanding around how this process works.
Speaker 2:And we have a lot of financial advisors and other money professionals accountants that take this course, and the thing that people need struggle with is how do you have money conversations? How do you teach people how to have money conversations? So I can give you the kind of skinny and we've done a bit of role play and practice in 15 minutes. I've got a two-hour course I'm writing on couples of money. I've got a 10-hour course that I run, which is kind of the 16-week course compressed into 10 hours, which is kind of giving you a lot of insights into how that process works. So we kind of take a full money coaching course, crunch into, into, into into five weeks, take out the client piece in the end you have to practice it, you have to go out, and I think really the best place to start.
Speaker 2:At some point you're going to have to get curious now. This isn't for everybody, so I'm not trying to sell this as as kind of you know, the must-have. I think it is, in many ways, right. The advice you give is only as good as the conversation that you can have with a client, um, but I'm not here in the kind of evangelical ram it down your throat.
Speaker 2:I think it's really important for someone to have a level of curiosity around why they want to do this, and that's going to give them the motivation to do it. And there are plenty of reasons. There are the reason that we've talked about being connected with clients, building trust and connection, holding a safe space for clients' fears and anxieties. You transform the implementation rates because clients are no longer blocked, because you've said, okay, tell me what would be helpful and then explore that with them. So, from an ROI perspective, there, uh, plenty of reasons for it. But I think most planners I've met just want to do the best job they can for their clients, and so learning kind of the intricacies of trust laws in Jersey may be kind of, you know, useful in some senses, but giving someone a skill set they're using, every single conversation with every single client, to me is very, very fundamental. So I would say, if you really want to explore this, start with a workshop, you know, or just have a conversation with me around around where you want to start. We have a. We have a number of options. I'm not really yeah, um, and see whether it resonates with you and if it does it, that's, that's also okay. Um, in some ways, uh, the people that I spend most of my time with, the people that had conversations for 20 odd years, with the people that have had conversations for 20-odd years, go. I want to do something better. I want to do something more interesting.
Speaker 2:I'd love this to be part of the young learner curriculum, which is yeah, here are some technical things you need to know, but you know, in reality, if you have a skill set that means that you can feel comfortable talking to a client that's 30 years older than you, then that is really powerful, isn't it? Because it's a whole kind of imposter thing around coming into the industry age 20 or 30 or whatever it is, and trying to talk to someone who's 55. And people go. Well, you know what, at least I'll still be alive when you retire. I mean, that's kind of nice. But you know, in some senses there is a kind of like. You know I don't have a life experience to connect with my client, no, you don't. But you can learn how to connect with your client by asking them open money conversations.
Speaker 2:So if you think about advice, it's all commoditized. Planning is commoditized. You, you can go to ChatGPT and say, draw me up a plan and it will do it for you. So then the only differentiator becomes how you hold the space for them, how you have that conversation. This is coming down the pipe. Planning evolves. It's 40 years old, but it started and planning started kind of. Ifa started with kind of I'm going to charge you three percent and give you stock tips. And now we've moved through various iterations. The next iteration is coming. And if you, you, why do? Why do? What is it called? 70 of wid? 70% of widows change advisor. Female widows change advisor Because they haven't felt, seen or heard in the process.
Speaker 2:Yeah 60% of wealth inheritors change their advisor Because they haven't felt connected. Now, that's not necessarily an advisor's fault. In a sense, the advisors and planners are products of the system that educates, that says you need to focus on technical expertise and this, and that the other oh, we'll throw in some soft skills. You know you need to listen better. You need to have empathy. You need to do this. So tell me in your experience, how easy is it to have empathy for someone whose behavior makes no sense to you? How do you listen to someone and you're like they're not listening to me?
Speaker 2:I haven't there because I like I don't understand why they do. What the hell are they doing that? It's very, very hard to build a empathy and listening skills all those supposed soft skills when you don't understand the person in front of you and you're not curious and compassionate around them. It's good to me, so the soft skills bumps into the reality Whatever you say about listen for what's not said or listen what a third degree of listening, all these things that we that are put out there in that supposed soft skill sign like yeah, but how do you do that? How do you listen?
Speaker 1:it's also. It's also about not spending too much time in that space and recognizing when you've opened somebody up and they are being open and they're ready for the help. When you've opened somebody up and they are being open and they're ready for the help, that you do also offer the help right and you then take them down the pathway of the financial plan or engaging with them on a commercial basis. Otherwise you're kind of dilly-dallying in the daisies, talking about all the fluffy stuff and not actually getting a deal done. And that's what puts up probably a lot of business owners who have financial planners working for them because they're like, well, they spend their whole time on the soft skill but not doing enough of actual putting the products in place and actually getting the income into the business.
Speaker 2:Well, that's absolutely correct, and I do want to acknowledge that. What I'm saying is that it's not necessarily a question about spending all your time with clients talking about early childhood money issues. It's uh, it's about helping clients to feel that this plan is for them, so it actually increases compliance. It actually helps them to follow through.
Speaker 1:If you don't feel, runs alongside.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you don't feel that the advice is relevant to you or it doesn't recognize your situation, you're not going to follow it. That's why clients don't follow good advice. They don't follow good advice because they don't feel that it's connected to them or where they are. So from an ROI perspective, this is a huge amount. It makes a huge amount of sense because you want clients to do the implementation. You want clients to follow the plan. The plans are good. The issue is are you talking to the money or are you talking to the client? Because if you're talking to the money and you've got a great plan for money, that's really nice. I think planning is hugely beneficial. I have my own planner.
Speaker 2:He's a great guy, but he talks to me, about me and understands where I come from in a way that is the human to human connection piece, and then the money bit falls in after that yeah, well, that makes total sense to me.
Speaker 1:I get that totally. That makes total sense to me. So if somebody is interested, dennis, in exploring this a little bit further, where could they find some information? So I put some links into the um show notes and people could go to the show notes and click on the link and find out a bit more about what you do and how they can get stuck in.
Speaker 2:Sure, absolutely so. You can find me at CambridgeMoneyCoachinguk. You can find me on LinkedIn at Dennis Harhalakis, and there's Cambridge Money Coaching as well. But Cambridge Money Coaching or LinkedIn would be the best place to start, and I just want to say that this is kind of new in many ways, and if it doesn't resonate with you, that's okay.
Speaker 2:You know, we, yeah, we, we don't. We tend to stay away from things that cause us discomfort, um, and that you know, that's biologically, that makes a huge amount of sense. Don't go towards things that make you feel bad. Right, that's that's how you stay alive, um, I just uh. So that makes sense. But you know, what I do want to say is that that the discomfort is there for a reason and when you learn to go towards it, you learn something about yourself and you overcome that. It's the same thing how we learn how to do anything difficult is to engage with the, with the discomfort.
Speaker 2:So where I think this kind of manifests itself really well was was was a client of mine who's an ifa and he didn't like to have the fee conversation. Yeah, you really struggled with that one and I think that's, you know, one of those out there, and so if you go to my website. I've written about this. What I can tell you is that with money coaching, it transformed his relationship with the fee compensation from being one that was driven by fear and lack of self worth to being one where he actively engages with it and he looks forward to it because it's now a way for him to showcase what he adds to it.
Speaker 2:So you know, what he adds to the to the client is like you haven't talked about the fees, but I know that, uh, you know, it's probably in your head. You know what am I paying for and I'd hate you to be sitting there thinking what am I paying for? So would it be all right if I tell you a little bit about the fees and how they work? So you know that now that brings the discomfort evaporates, a client goes. Oh, I'm glad you mentioned that, kari. We no longer operate out of a space of defensiveness when we learn to tackle the thing that we're scared of. So if it's fees, if it's talking to clients, if it it's whatever it is, when you learn to engage with that, you're released from that and it's nothing more powerful is there than learning to conquer a fear, because that now becomes your strength. So I mentioned the fee thing because it comes up a lot and I go.
Speaker 2:hey, you know what? You're not the only one that struggles, asking for money, asking for fees, fees, self-worth, all that stuff. When you learn the origins of it, you learn to no longer be afraid of it. You can then go towards it for a position of strength and, guess what? The clients want to recognize that. They're like yeah, I'm so glad you brought that up. Most people are kind of defensive around their, their fears, but you're being totally open and honest and transparent around it and I really appreciate it brilliant.
Speaker 1:Well, dennis, on that note, thanks so much for sharing um today about your coaching, the impact it can have on financial planners and their and their clients. It certainly got me thinking, um. It certainly piqued my interest, because this whole area is the piece of financial planning that I find the most interesting and it's definitely an area that I want to explore further. So I'm certainly going to be digging into the literature that you have, the website and any of those links that you can send across let me have a good look at, and I'll certainly be pushing this out on my youtube and linkedin and just sharing all the good work that you're doing and hopefully passing that on to people that require it. But the bit about the fees is fantastic as well. I love that. So make sure you give me that link as well. So, dennis, thank you so much today for coming on the financial planner life and we wish you all the best sam, thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 2:It's wonderful to be here, thank you.
