Defending Against AI By Focusing On The Uniquely Human Aspects Of (Fiduciary) Life Planning with George Kinder

[MUSIC] Welcome to the Financial Advisor Success Podcast, where you go behind the scenes with financial planner, speaker, and consultant, Michael Kitzis. To hear stories of how leading financial advisors navigated the inevitable challenges that arise on the path to success, and get insight from leading industry consultants about how to break through to the next level in your advisory business. And now here's your host, Michael Kitzis. >> Welcome, everyone. >> Welcome to the 473rd episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast. My guest on today's podcast is George Kender. George is the founder of the Kinder Institute of Life Planning, which offers courses that aim to help financial advisors practice some more fiduciary, comprehensive, and client-centered form of financial planning. What's unique about George, though, is how his life planning concepts not only can help advisors uncover their clients' deeper motivations and goals, but also help them offer a level of service that artificial intelligence-powered tools are unlikely to be able to replace. In this episode, we talked in depth about how George emphasizes the social nature of financial life planning, as while an AI tool could ask his famous three questions, and perhaps respond to the client's answers, it couldn't provide the same human-to-human connection that an advisor could. How George emphasizes the importance of listening for financial advisors, including allowing for pauses after client responses, rather than immediately moving on to the advisor's next question. And how George finds that a key outcome of the life planning process is the ability for advisors to facilitate a sense of freedom for clients to live their lives as profoundly and richly as possible. We also talk about George's structured evoke process for life planning that begins with an exploration meeting where an advisor might ask a prospect and initial broad question, such as, "Why are you here?" or "What would you like to have as an outcome of our meeting together?" And then spend the majority of time in the meeting listening to the response, rather than trying to ask pointed follow-up questions, how George finds that advisors can help clients find their inspiration by working through three key questions, which have them consider what they would want their life would look life if money weren't an object, if they only had five to ten years to live, and if they only had one day to live. And how George's life planning process can help clients identify and overcome perceived obstacles in the way of achieving the vision they establish. And be certain to listen to the end, where George shares how he is expanding his vision for fiduciary financial advice to the broader corporate world and internationally, why George is proud of the community that has formed amongst advisors within the life planning movement, and how an extended illness led George to reconsider his own answers to the three questions and how he envisions his own legacy. And so with that introduction, I hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast with George Kinder. Welcome George Kinder to the Financial Advisor Success Podcast. Great to be here, Michael. Really looking forward to this. I'm really excited to have you joining us, to have you back, because you have been with us in the past for those who want to go back for the bit of history. Kidsis.com/15 for episode 15, one of our very first guests, all the way back in 2017, we had talked about the rise of life planning over the preceding 20 years. And I think I'm just, I'm excited to kind of bring the conversation present today about this ongoing evolution of financial planning and our value to clients and all the fascinating ways that it continues to change as technology evolves around us as well. You know, when you were on in 2017, the conversation was, so is this like financial planning, life planning, really going to hold up in the Robo era or all the millennials just going to use Robo's advisors will be out of business. And obviously we're still here, that turned out okay. But now we're having the conversation all over again. No, no, no, it wasn't Robo that's going to automate this out of existence. It's AI that's going to automate us out of existence. And I find just there are really interesting conversations as I guess you start to kind of scenario plan game theory this this out. I mean, there's a version that just says the AI's overhyped is not actually going to be as good as we think it is and we're just going to try to along mostly business as usual. But most I think we'll make a reasonable case. The technology is going to march on. It does always get better every year and whatever it is. And so at some point, at least starts to automate more of the technical parts of planning, which maybe right, relegates us to be even more focused on relationships, conversations, the behavioral elements of advice, which I envision you, George's father of the life planning movement, have some perspective on that. I'm going to ask you about a moment. But at the same time, there's also this question of, well, okay, but will the AI tools eventually learn more of our conversation? Like they can learn your three questions. They can speak with empathetic words to quote show empathy, especially when someday, presumably we're not going to be like typing into a chat interface and hearing a disembodied voice. Like it's going to be a 3D render digital avatar that looks human and talks to me through a wizoon window. The way my current advisor talks to me through his zoom window, showing me empathy because we taught it those words. But it's all AI generated, which just takes me back to this fundamental issue. I'm really excited to talk to you about today of how you think about the law. Like where are the lines get John between what does it mean to be a financial planner? What does technology do to support that process? What does technology do to replace that process? What if anything, like remains uniquely human as we continue forth as financial planners? Great. Well, well, I mean, we could pull apart that question for the next hour and a half, couldn't we? That's quite a question to begin with. And I think, Michael, I mean, I've heard some amazing things about AI with empathic listening in the field of counseling. Just incredible. Of people who feel that they are getting healthy, getting better, being supported. Wonderful, fabulous. And I don't know how can any of us really know where that is going. And yeah, of course, we know the strength of the three questions you had a series of reflections on each of the questions, but many, many words on each of the questions reflecting on them. And AI can pick that up and run with it. I think that there are several things that I think are really different about life planning as we do it and about what people will want. Of course, the financial advice, I think financial advice hugely can be wrapped up with this kind of work with AI. But I think that people really want another person to be there who says, yes, this works to hear it from another person. But there's something much more than that, much more than just simply saying, yes, this will work for you in terms of building the future that you have. The use of the three questions, the three questions are designed and they're just part of a number of goal exercises that we use in our program, the registered life plan program. And those three questions are used, along with these others, to design what we call a torch. It's really a dream of freedom. And it's something that is so exciting and so profound for the client that they can't say no to it. I've never seen a client say no to it. So it is, and moreover, very often it's something that they've dreamed of doing or felt guilty for not having done for decades, not having realized, or that they're thinking, oh, when I retire, 15 years from now, 30 years from now, that's what I'll do. Or they've always thought it'll be a few years away and they've never done it. So we managed to capture that dream in such a way that the client's life is suddenly on fire with excitement. They're feeling the sense of flourishing, of being thrilled with what they're doing, of being thrilled with what their life is. And that's, I think, the real secret of life planning. It comes through great listening, yeah, empathy is part of that great listening. But ultimately, it's like a pivot or a trigger point where and we call it lighting the torch is where the client really comes alive. And there's an engagement, a relationship with the financial planner at that point that is extraordinary because the client is both really excited about it and terrified, right? How on earth can I do this? I've put this off for all these years or I thought it would take me another 15 or 20 years to get there and you're saying I can really go for it. And we say, yeah, now, can you take that kind of confidence from a system that is a computerized system? Maybe some people, and I think, you know, one of the wonderful things about AI is maybe we can tap into greater delivery of financial planning for the underserved, which they certainly deserve and use some of the goal exercises in a way to help facilitate that. But I think there's something a wildly creative about that moment of lighting the torch. And then something profoundly instantaneously humane about that relationship, at that time, that is going to be very hard for a machine to do. Can you share a little bit more in that vein? I think I'm just trying to visually, what is it? Maybe I'm not framing this through a way, but what is it that makes the questions more impactful when they're asked by a human? I think it's the human connection that there's a way in which we've all. It's this stream of freedom that all of us have. I've never seen somebody come in and not have something that they have not put forth into their life that they really want to, that they've really wanted to for a long time, or that they imagine doing in the future. There's something that has held us back from doing that. I think one of the triggering things, one of the things that works, and of course this comes out of therapy as well, is permission. That the client looks you in the eye, and they see that when you say you're meant to do this, this is what you're born to do. This is who you are. They know that you're saying that as one human being to another. How can you beat that? I just don't think you can. Certainly you can rely on systems and mathematical systems and machines to deliver subtle degrees of financial planning, but the wild creativity in planning and the human connection are things that I think will not be replaced by AI. Let me share this in another way of saying this. We know how subtle AI is. We know how rapid it is. I don't know if you've kept up with studies, scientific studies on listening, and I've certainly shared them online myself. Do you know how fast listening is in relation to thinking? No. Okay. We're in a very fast-paced thinking environment, and I know you are in particular. You're a thought leader in a way that is serious. Many people in the profession think thinking is faster than listening. But the truth is that listening is not only faster than thinking. It's enormously faster, almost infinitely faster than thinking. The scientific study out of Scientific American in December of last year, exactly a year ago, 2024, I think that one of the titles they used online was thinking is plottingly slow and compared to listening. Listening is 100 million times as fast as thinking. 100 million times as fast as thinking. It's almost hard to comprehend. At first you go, "How on earth can that be?" What's happening in a. This is why the relationship aspect of financial planning is so important, and even more so, the building of this torch, the stream of freedom. You're there with a client, and they're saying these things. They say you're AI, and you're processing. You know how to spit out empathy in a particular way. You've seen this kind of frame to a sentence or a paragraph or a dilemma before, and you provide the empathy. There's limited number of ways that empathy are provided, and you're pretty good at it. You've learned the words. You've learned the words, right? But you know, so you're listening from that standpoint. When I'm listening to a client, those things are. Those 100 million mind moments. It's like 100 million mind moments between thoughts. That's happening for me, and I think it's happening for all of us. The more that we fine tune our ability to be present, and this is one of the reasons that we include mindfulness in our trainings, and for our ability to be emotionally intelligent, and another reason that we include the mindfulness practice as well. What mindfulness is about is about the mastery of the present moment. And if the present moment for listening is operating 100 million times as fast as for thinking, I mean, we're talking about all of our senses, and we're picking up cues, and clues. We're picking up the emotions. We're picking up all kinds of things in terms of temperature and chemistry and all that kind of stuff that's happening around us. And all of them are involved in our humanity and in our human relationship with this person sitting across from us. AI is a long, long way from being able to do that. And my hunch is they will never be able to do that just simply because of the human relationship of mother to child. And what it is that we're doing here is birthing our clients into their dream of freedom, into their autonomous relationship in the world in a way that is thrilling and vitalizing for them and invigorating for them. 100 million mind moments per thought. AI can do a lot more, but it's all in the realm of thought. It's not with these six sense bases going on. It reminds me in some ways of the remarkable persistence of other relationship-based professions and services, right? Even things down to like, it's fascinating to me that personal trainers still exist. Like I can find a YouTube video for any possible workout regime structure out there in an AI era. I can tell it, my particular health circumstances, places I want to focus, things I want to work on. Old injuries are constraints that I have and it will comb all the, you know, can this be a body of knowledge because that body of knowledge to to craft an appropriate workout, yet a lot of us still work with trainers because basically I need someone to yell at me when I'm not finishing my reps. And there's just like, there's a weirdly unique human thing there. Right, right on. Yeah. I mean, I get a personal trainer's as a great example and I don't know. I am sure that my friend over here in the UK would not mind by talking about him and even mentioning his name. And he's been a top figure in the financial planning world in the UK certainly for the last decade. And it's, I don't know if you know him, his name is David Jones and he was head of financial advice advisors for dimensional over in London in the in the UK and at one point for all of Europe. He's retiring from that and he's retiring to become a personal trainer. And I had I had lunch with him the other day and I'm, you know, I do, I do my stuff and and you know, I'm very concerned about longevity at my age and I'm doing lots of good things. But it was absolutely compelling to be with him and to see and to hear his story about what he's gone through and then and then how he is applying that incredible creativity and intelligence that he brought to financial planning and to financial planners to the field of personal training. And I and it was absolutely compelling to me and I thought numerous times since that lunch, I should call David up and talk to him. So there's something about that connection again that AI on a machine never going to give us. We're never going to get that from them. I mean, I guess that it's core. Great. Just human beings are socially animals. Right. I mean, we're we're wired to interact with with other with other human beings and have relationships with other human beings to do the things that we do in in our lives, right? For, I mean, for basically all of humanity, the greatest punishment that can be inflicted on someone is isolation from. Yeah. Yeah. And and so there is to me also this fascinating element of this financial planning stuff takes so time so much time. It's so consuming and the other these darn capacity limitations that keep cropping up because we can only handle so many clients at a time. So incomes the technology to expedite and automate and incomes the the startups that, you know, just want to remove the pesky human advisors from the equation because, you know, technology skills infinitely and humans are are frustratingly limited in the number of relationships they can have. But then I struggle with that. Like, so what's the end game? Like, congratulations, we've been so good at automating everything finance and otherwise in our lives that we never actually have to interact with another human being and I'll just be in the four walls of my house forever while Amazon drones bring me bring me all of my my needs and sustenance. Like, that doesn't actually sound good. Oh, yeah. It's it's kind of like weirdly badly dystopian. And so if you start with like I always find entry and they come from the other end if you start with isolationism is actually one of the worst curses on humans and humanity because we crave connection to others and you start with that and then say, okay, how does that apply to businesses and professional service models of various sorts? You're you. I mean, I guess it takes you back in the direction, okay, maybe some more of the technical stuff gets increasingly expedited with AI things. I mean, I don't think any financial planner actually relishes. Well, you know what I love, data entry into financial planning software, that's the gym. I actually do know one or two people that literally is their gym. But most of us, that's not why we got into the business. We got into the business to help people in and engage with clients. And so in that vein, I know it reminds me that the old, I always least thought it was, it was Jeff Bezos where they had asked him, "How did you have this amazing vision of, like what Amazon could become in all the ways that Amazon would change the world?" And his response was something the effect of, I didn't actually think about all the ways that Amazon would change the world. I tried to think about the few things that wouldn't change. I put all my bets there because I knew they would be constant. And there's some aspect of that to me that when I think about where does financial planning go in an AI era, like if there's one thing I'm willing to bet on, it's that our clients won't be happier in digital isolation. And so if that's the outcome, it starts with, this is really still a very human relationship. Now, what cool things can technology do to make that relationship better and more enriched? I don't want to be taken away from the relationship to enter data. I don't want to be taken away from the relationship to run analysis. But it's kind of cool to have an analysis on the screen because sometimes it creates a very rich conversation with the client when they see a possibility they didn't know they could do before. Absolutely, absolutely. But I keep coming back. I mean, you're talking from the advisor standpoint in a lot of ways and I keep coming back to what does the client want. And I think the client, it isn't even the numbers. The client wants to live a dream of freedom. They want to live as powerfully, as profoundly as richly as they possibly can. And we've failed, I think a lot because largely the media in focusing on finance largely picks up numbers and is supported hugely by the big industry, which are selling products. But in fact, people want to live extraordinary lives. And that's the gem of life planning is that we can deliver that using the financial planning tools that we have. And AI will only help us do that. But we can deliver it in a way where the client sees that we're as excited and we're as moved by who it is they want to be. And we're totally dedicated to making sure that happens. So now take me back to the life planning conversations themselves. And I'm realizing as we're having this conversation, you know, you joy does a number of years ago on episode 15, there are many folks who have either patiently listened with us all the way through or binged their way up to present. Bless their souls because that's a lot of hours of podcast now. But not everyone has necessarily gone back. So if you can, George, just take a few moments and just reframe for us, I'm going to ask you like the easy softball question. What is life planning? George, George, can their father of? Like what is life planning? How do you think about life planning? So I think that life planning is what it means to be a fiduciary and in financial advice because what life planning does is it puts the client first rather than the money. So what that means is that what we are passionate about, what I'm passionate about in life planning is who is it that the client wants to be? So what life planning is is a structured process, at least the way we train it. We call that structured process evoke where we listen in such a way to the client that they that trust forms very quickly. So that's a major piece of great listening. And then from that place of trust, the client moves toward who it is they really want to be. What would be the most purposeful, the most meaningful, the richest life? What if they've been holding themselves back from? That's basically who do they want to be and we use the three questions for that as one of the exercises. And then once you have that, I mean, we build a dream of freedom that is really powerful. There's a lot of studies talk about happiness. And I'm a big fan of all those studies I read them and look at them. But if you look at happiness like in the workplace, happiness in the workplace increases productivity in businesses by 13%. That's pretty good. I think about making your profit that much better by having a happy workforce. But an inspired workforce is 125%. I mean, that you're 125% more productive. What happens in life planning is the client comes alive with productivity and delivers quite quickly into the world who it is that they're meant to be. So we design a dream of freedom that is usually anywhere from a few months to three years looking out in the future. And we layer into that dream of freedom, not just this vision of happiness, but kind of a vision of happiness upon happiness upon happiness. So that what happens is that the client gets more and more excited about the world that we see quite clearly they can they can move into. And then so that the process is EVOKE, E is for exploration. That's where we're really just listening. Often that first meeting can be as much as 90% listening. V is the vision meeting where we inspire people and oh and light the torch, the dream of freedom. And oh, then is the obstacles meeting. So the next meeting the client comes in and we take that dream of freedom and we keep reminding the client of it and the client very, very quickly solves all of the problems that they had seen for many years that we're in the way of actually living that dream of freedom. So we often ask the client what is the obstacle to you're having this incredibly rich dream. And sometimes they come up with money. I mean that was probably what they thought all along. But now the most common response is well there's only me, it's only myself. And then we tackle what are all of the obstacles that might come in the way of doing any particular element of this dream of freedom. And you know we do that pretty much in a meeting and the meeting can be relatively brief because the client is so on fire that a lot of those obstacles they've already they've already eliminated. And once you've done that then you have something that you can plan with. I mean, you know before that obstacle's meeting I will have done you know the preliminary spreadsheet. But after after that meeting you know exactly where the clients go and you know how much time it's going to take. You know what they're going to be dedicating their life to. And so the knowledge piece the piece that is the financial plan itself is really simple. And frankly I don't know how advisors do financial planning without arriving at that that powerful a place for the client that inspiring a place for the client. The final E is execution EVO K E. So so take me back now to I guess the first phase or two of this. I mean, right. Ultimately you've kind of culminated in the K is the knowledge phase where I get to deliver a plan the E is the execute. I got that I do that in financial plan or world. We nominally we all have some kind of goals discovery process right. Right. Gather data and goals analyze them deliver plan implement. Like I've got a financial planning process. You see if people are gives me a financial planning process for that. Help us understand more what the difference is between the the way we all go out there and try to do goals and discovery with clients and what you're talking about in I think mostly the E and the V part of this process. So the the goals discovery I mean one of the things I think that the board has has wrong in a way is they say you've got to you've got to go to the numbers first. And and so we do that in our program just to be compliant. We look at the numbers very briefly it doesn't take long to look at a a network statement or a profit and loss statement a cash flow to see pretty much where the client is financially. You can do that. I mean if you're good at it you can probably do that in a matter of seconds. I mean it's really very quick. So but our our purpose is to be fiduciary number one and fiduciary certainly has something to do with how we charge we know that going back to the investment advisors act in 1940. The it certainly has something to do with a holistic approach to to money and to finance for the client. But I think the number one thing and if you're going to really put the client first is knowing who they are and what they want more than anything in their life and knowing and having the passion and the understanding that you can deliver that with all the financial and all that you have. So you start with that frame of I'm here to listen to a client in such a way that I can actually help them get to where they really want to go. And if you do that in a goal's discovery, even if you have the client way elements and everything, I mean, you might as well give that to AI because that's kind of a process that is written down and it's something that can be learned artificially with artificial intelligence. What we do in those first two meetings and you can do all five of the meetings in one meeting. I love giving, I wasn't quite pro bono, but I would give my work to anyone who came in and if they were of really very, very limited means, I do all five phases in one meeting. We'd have one meeting a year, it would be inspiring for them and they'd move on with their life and come back a year later to revisit the whole question. But the two real kind of life planning meetings, the E is a meeting where you, you know, the client races to the meeting course now, it might be on Zoom, but they've been thinking a lot about why they want to meet with you. And we missed that a lot. And also they've been primed by maybe it's the Wall Street Journal of New York Times that USA Today, little personal finance columns on all the money pieces. And so they think that they're supposed to be asking you money questions. And what they're doing by asking you money questions is there, is the, I think the real planner then becomes them, not you, because they're kind of making the larger decisions of where it is that they want to go. So in that first meeting in the E for exploration meeting, rather than giving them, I mean, you'll still have a goals discovery, you'll still send out discovery pages for them to fill out. But the first meeting is just listening, it's asking them, so why are you here? Why have you come? And then just being quiet and listening and listening in such a way that if they just start off saying, hey, I wonder why I just inherited these, the stock and I don't know whether I should sell it. I don't know anything about it. And you go, well, we can figure that out and that's, I'm glad you come. This is one of my specialties. Let's park that to the end of the meeting. First thing I want to know is, why are you here? Why have you come to a financial planner? What would you like to come out of our relationship over time? What, why are you here? And then you just listen and you listen in such a way that you show that you are engaged, you're interested. So again, we go back to this empathy question. empathy goes in two directions, it goes both to the challenges, the worries, the anxieties the client has, but also to their excitements, their thrills. And so you listen in such a way that you're really there for them. You're living in a way their life, I curiously. And so when they share something that they're excited about, they just love to garden and you go, wow, that's so cool. Park it. You just be quiet after that. You share emotional kind of responses to keep them in the flow. You don't go, oh, what kind of flowers or what does your garden look like or something like that because now you're in your agenda. You're not in their agenda. So what we want in that first meeting is for the client to go everywhere, they feel called naturally to go. And it's a wildly creative process. Again, it's something that AI could not possibly imagine because we do these quantum leaps when we're talking. We might be talking about the weather and suddenly we leap to the, to our, the passing way of our dad. And what we're doing in the initial conversation with the clients doing in that initial piece is they're testing, they're testing you out as an advisor. Can you listen? Can you listen to what I care about most? Can you listen to what I'm most excited about? And so they'll leap to those places just out of the blue as a consequence of trusting you in that first meeting because of the quality of the listening that you're doing. That level of trust, gosh, you can't beat it. I mean, that's, that's for one thing, you've got to client for life. If you deepen that and work with that and strengthen that. But it also means that they are going to, when they have a crisis in their life, they're going to, you're going to be top of mind for them, both because of the financial element to that crisis, but also because they know you can listen. You can be there for them. So the first meeting is just listening in a very deep way. Let me understand further the, these are my judgment words, not yours. Like what, what the good follow up questions are and the bad follow up questions are. Because I was, I was totally on, I was totally on board with what you're saying. I'm like, I get it. I get it. And they're talking about their flogger and these are like, and don't ask them what kind of flowers because that's your agenda. And I'm sitting here thinking like, that's exactly what I was going to ask. And that's why I'll get my personal therapy later. But, that's right. I mean, you, you made the follow up comments like could because now you're potentially taking this conversation on your agenda not there. So like, I get it. But now like I, I know, I, so I need a little bit of my life in the moment training. So why, so what, what follow up questions should I be asking that's keeping it in their camp and not, and not taking it to my, my agenda, if they're saying they're into gardening and, you know, what, what kind of flowers do you, do you garden is, is not the right direction for that conversation. Right. It, I mean, it's really interesting because you, they could be caught talking about gardening and it could be a really superficial thing for them. And you've left in and taken them in that direction. And the only way you're going to know that you're in a way, Michael, you're asking the wrong question. Okay. Because you're, you're asking, what are the good follow up questions? And I think the right question is, how should I be listening? And so, and so naturally, and, and we're trained by this and, and financial advice, we're trained this a lot to, to know what the right questions are. And I think, I think we should be being trained in. How should we be listening? And so, if you're listening in a way that captures in that moment, the kind of the delight that the client has with that gardening. So they see that you're right there with them. They're going to go where they naturally want to go. And if that is toward what the quality of that garden is, the colors, the, the nature of the earth, the, the engagement that they have with it, the hours of the day, if that's where they really want to go, they'll go there. If you simply show that you're, oh, wow, that's so cool. That's it. If you ask them, then you're taking them intellectually someplace. And, and even, even better than, oh, well, so cool is to share, share a gesture, share a, a, a movement that shows that you are really connected with what they're saying. You're excited by it. And you're completely there to what, wherever they want to go next. Because what you, what you want out of this first meeting, you want them to feel so much trust, so safe with you that they take you to their most extraordinary highs. What is it that they most aspire to? And they also take you to their, their greatest concerns. They're, they're the things that they fear the most they worry at the most, the self doubts, whatever they're there. And if in that meeting, they feel comfortable, they're, they're not going to feel comfortable taking you to those places by you asking them questions. They're going to feel comfortable going to those places because you respond to what they've shared in a way that shows you are emotionally intelligent and, and connected with them as they wander in their conversation. So that's, that's great listening and that listening will actually lead them to trust in the second meeting, the next meeting when you go to the, these questions of like the three questions or we do things called the heart score or, or the ideal year, year, week and month. They'll go to them naturally and they'll share honestly what they, what they care about and not share things that they think you want to know or that you are specialist in. And that's what we want. We want them to go where they really want to go. So the, when you ask about the question, the, the right question is one that you would ask after you've done a lot of these kind of showing, showing emotional intelligence without particularly asking a question, showing it through guttorals or movements or just a brief phrase. The best follow up question is after they've gone a long way, it's just simply anything else. And the best question after that is anything else? And it's, it's just giving them an open space to go and framing those responses, those questions in such a way that it shows that you are really interested in who they are and where they've gone so far. And you could even, you could even frame that question. This is really incredible. Is there anything else? So, so if I'm trying to take it back to, you know, your gardening is the same. I'm just trying to keep this concrete. If I'm, so if I'm hearing you well, if I've got this prospect and suddenly we're into, they've got this gardening hobby, I'm listening for things like, okay, if they're talking excitedly and happily about their gardening hobby, then my fault might be wow. It sounds like you really get a lot of joy and delight from your gardening, anything else. And I'm trying to keep that thread open. If I'm hearing, well, you know, I do a lot of gardening because it's a wonderful distraction from all my stress at work, then I'm going down a different thread of, well, it sounds like you have a lot of stress at work. And see if that's a thread that they want to pursue and go down if I'm just acknowledging or reflecting back what I'm hearing because those are very different ways that they could bring up what nominally is about garden. Right. So I'm beautiful, well done and well said. I mean, the, so one of the way, one of the things you're doing there that's very, is really a great expertise is that rather than asking a further question, you're making a comment and allowing them to go further with that. And that's, that's very skillful. And I use that toward the end of the e-meeting. Okay. I'll use it in a particular way. But in the early phase, they've got to this excitement around gardening. But I don't know whether what is really going on with them is that they have a child who is really in trouble and they have real difficulty talking about it. Okay. And I want them to be able to get there. And if I use this, so it sounds like you have, you know, a lot of, a lot of joy in that you really enjoy gardening. That's a lot of words to put together. So they have to go up to their brain. They're wondering as you're carrying those words out, where are you going with the sentence? Okay. And so, you know, again, think of this thing, 100 million, 100 million mind moments, 100 million times as fast, listening is as thinking. If instead, you were just going, "Wow, we're cool." And show, open your eyes, show that you're, you're alerting, you're there. And then settle back so that you're not kind of demanding from them that they tell you more about that. You're just showing that you really get it. Then they might go to that child. That might be the next thing that they're going to. You just, you just don't know. And if you put a bunch of words out there and you direct them in a particular way, they're going to start to follow your lead. If you do it twice, if you do it twice, you've lost them. If you ask a couple of questions of them, they go, "Oh, I guess this is, this is Michael's meeting. It's not mine." And they're going to give up on the things that are most extraordinary for them. And we don't know what they are. They may want to change the world in a really profound way and feel embarrassed about it. They may, I think you're, I love your question about having a lot of stress at work. Again, that's something that people might not necessarily share the first time, or they might not share that they're, you know, things about the trust that their dad is set up. But so, at the end of that first meeting, before I do, I mean, I do do a little bit of what I call bells and whistles at the end, where I show them what we do. You know, what the, why we're so good at financial planning, why we're so good at investment management. Portfolio construction and all of those things. And I'll have a, typically a half hour of a two hour meeting designed to share with them at the end of that meeting. And to address that first question that they asked about the stocks that they inherited. But the, as we're coming to the end of kind of the place where they are willing to go with who they are and who they want to be, why they're here. And when they really come to that end, I'll go back to those two things. Let's say they are the two things you mentioned about stress at work and about loving, loving gardening. I brought up the gardening, of course, but they, they, let's say there are those two things. And then I go to, I will, I will consciously go to the thing they were most excited about. And I'll make a simple statement like you made it. And then after they, and letting them roll with that. So now they see, oh, they're really here for what I'm most excited about. And then I'll go to the place where they were most concerned. And I'll do a simple sentence there as well about what they were most concerned about. Just the, it seems like you really stressed at that. And I will, I will do that depending on where their mood was. At the end of the meeting, if they're on a real high note, I will take them down to the sorrowful place first. Just a balance. If they're on a low note, I'll take them up first to the thing that inspired the most. Hope that's helpful or clear. It's helpful. I think maybe the, I don't know, the struggle I'm trying to process through. As I'm, I'm just like I'm, you know, I'm visiting lots of prospect meetings over the years. I get there, there's a certain subset of clients of prospects where. Yeah, I, I really just need to give like literally a supportive word or two every now and then when they pause in their conversation. And they're going to keep chugging right along and they're just kind of free association. I thought I'm not flowing and we're going to go where we go and I'm going to learn what I learned. And that's great. Others are not so sharing or communicative or, or open. Some clients, it's like our, our, are just naturally a little less talkative. Sometimes people come to us in situations or circumstances where there's already challenges or shame or other things going on. So they're just ahead. It feels like we got to do some work just to get them to start opening up and say much of, and say much of anything. So I guess I'm, I'm just trying to visualize like if I'm, if I'm trying to be really careful not to. Not to turn this meeting into my agenda and leave it their agenda, but some clients are not so forthcoming with their, with their agenda and talking through it. Like how, how should I be keeping this conversation going and keeping them open. Right, right, right. So what I heard and let me know if there's more than this, what I heard were two in particular. Kind of clients that would come in where maybe it seems like maybe a different approach or understanding what follow up questions might other follow follow up questions might be useful. And those were a client that's not so open or forthcoming or communicative. And then another one who where there are already concerns and, and challenges and difficulties. And, and if I take those individually, just, just looking at each of them. So if you have the client that comes in that they're not so open, forthcoming or communicative. Usually, I mean, always they've come to the meeting for a purpose. They've, they've, you know, clearly they've set up the meeting, right? They've got a reason for coming there. And so, and so they're going to start off with that reason. And, and you've already got them talking, which is a great thing. And so if you can keep them going from that space. Then that's, that's wonderful because they're already energized by what it is that they've just shared with you. So the why are you here and the anything else and, and particularly as I say, this learning to just really be with them in a way where they really get that you're emotionally there for them. So they see that you're excited, interested, engaged, empathic. And if they are again, not so open and not so forthcoming and they, they stop pretty quickly after sharing one or two things. What, what we do usually that kind of client, usually they're coming in and what they mention is again coming from, you know, the Wall Street Journal or USA, they mentioned the financial thing. And that's, and they think of you as a financial person like all those other financial people in the world. So that's what they're sharing. And, and you go, yeah, yeah, yeah, I get that. And you've come to the right place. You can reassure them about that. And I'm excited about this. And I, I want to get to that area. And I love to get as much to that areas we can toward the end of this meeting. But it also may take, you know, a few meetings of really getting to know each other to really know how to address that. So you do that in the way you would do, I think with probably any client. But then I'd back up and I'd say, you know, what will really help me and, and, and really help our work together so that I'm really on target with the financial planning work that I'm going to do for you. And what I really want to do is if I really know what you would like to have as an outcome of our meeting together. Let's say we take, take me on as your advisor for a number of years. What would you like to happen? Where would you like to go? How would you, you know, how would you like to be, be living, you know, but really open ended. What would you like to have accomplished or experienced as a consequence of having these meetings? So you might have a question like that, something that opens it up quite a bit, but it's not not so. It's not so limiting. You want to keep it pretty, pretty broad because you want to make sure that they can share with you from that. that invitation both their highs and their lows and their practicalities. And so and then you go back to anything else. And I would you know I mean honestly you know I had many clients over my my career and I would certainly have clients occasionally that would come in where that exploration meeting would last 10 minutes. But more often than not it lasted somewhere between an hour and an hour and a half. So then what comes in the next meeting before we go there the already concerned client. So so they've already got their concerns and all and and these are these are clients where they're going to really respond to your empathic presence. So I think you could also ask them that follow up question but I think just really showing that you are empathically connected with them is going to open them up to what it is they really need to talk about. So I don't that's for those two and yeah should I go to the next meeting. Yeah if I am oh excuse me I'm getting an understanding now of the right the E of the exploration. So I guess I so now I'm trying to vision no pun intended. So now I'm trying to vision the vision meeting and what I I'm kind of reading by inference like this is this is where a fresh set of questions start coming in right that that the the exploration meeting was a lot more of them flowing the conversation where they wanted to go or where they they feel compelled to take it but in the vision meeting I've got some more questions I'm going to be asking or exercising going to take them through because now I'm trying to take them through a particular visioning process. Right and and just a just on that edge of moving from exploration to vision at the end of that first meeting very typically that the the trust level is so high and you share as I say in that last bit of that meeting you know why they've come to the right place from a financial planning standpoint. So they know that you're you're in the game of financial planning that is your profession that is what your specialty is and you really know your business and when you show them that you can really listen to their human concerns who it is that they really want to be and then that you are really on top of what it is to be a great financial planner. My experience was that they bring up the contract and they want to sign with you right away that that happens in the first meeting and it would be rare in my engagements with clients that it would take to the second meeting and if it did they'd come in with the contract in hand and ready to go at the beginning of that meeting. So so it's a very very powerful and effective meeting just simply from a business standpoint as well because you've connected with them and then you've shown them the financial planning strengths that you have and then that last half hour or so not only will you will you have your set piece of who you are and how you do your work but you will have heard them for an hour and hour and a half and what their concerns are and you will be able to tap into those concerns that they have with the financial planning knowledge that you have about how you will address those particular questions that they've brought up. So there's a huge amount of confidence and trust that is delivered in that first meeting extraordinary amount. So then in the second meeting and and we train our advisors to do it slightly different ways they're they're different approaches by different trainers different teachers that we have in the in the evoke program but the way that I would do it is I would hand them and I think most of the time I would give them the three questions as homework and along with a number of other goal exercises so that they would come into the vision meeting with all of those goal exercises done and and then that meeting is much less listening and much more about the elements that they've added it's like you've got the goals discovery work that you've done and here in in each of these goal exercises there's a prioritization that we have them do and I'm sure you have something like that in the goal discovery work that you do and in that prioritization depending on the amount of time we have we clearly want to get at the things that are most important but if we're doing the three questions and that's the main thing often we will read the responses to question number one and pause with each one and then read the responses to question number two and pause with each one and read the responses to question number three and pause with each one and just again it's like your your piece with so I can see that you you love to garden or it sounds like you have a lot of stress at work it's just reading it and pausing and and being open showing through your body language you might be a gesture, love to hear more but without saying that and seeing where they want to go and it's it's question number three usually that has I mean it's the the most intense life and death question it's a question of profound meaning for people and well question number one is if you had all the money you had you need for the rest of your life what would you do question number two is if you suddenly discovered you only had five to ten years left to live what would you do so there gets more meaningful and often relationships come up but question number three is reflecting on suddenly discovering that you only have 24 hours left to live and you're totally shocked by it and the question is what would you do it's the question is what do you miss um who did you not get to be what did you not get to do and I would say that 90% of what we call the torch of the meaningful stuff um uh in that we're aiming at in a financial plan is going to be contained in that question certainly 90% of the of the strength of it of the um emotional impact of it will be there will layer in things from question one and question two and from the other goal exercises but we absolutely want to make sure that everything uh is uh that's in question three is addressed because that's that's where their serious concern is so number one is if you had all the money you need for us your life what would you do so that's a an exploring freedom question right that that now you start to get at you know what what would you like to be doing that you're holding yourself back from because of money right and and and starting a real hopes and dreams and goals and wishes and values right so number two you find out you have five to ten years left i guess and and and still all the money from number one so what would you do now this is the like narrowing down to what really what really matters usually we don't we don't give them all the money they had okay we don't carry over the money we we reset back to certain current circumstances but we're constraining the time window exactly exactly so it gets much more poignant for them you know and so that's getting at what's really meaningful what's really important that's like that's like uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh eliciting priorities question five to ten years left i mean that really that really touches us and we go oh boy i better i better get done what's most important to me and uh so it does it gets and and usually as i say relationships are probably the strongest thing that come up there but legacy the various legacy things that might come up as well and then you only have 24 hours left to live what did you miss who did you not get to be sick i mean that's uh that's a regrets kind of question yeah and and it's funny it it um we don't emphasize the regret but you're absolutely right the regret is there and um but what we're what we're capturing there is what is the what are the things that they would be our most passionate about that they missed that they didn't get to do or be and those are things there's so much energy there that when we this is why when we craft a torch from the the vision meeting a torch that is um you know the dream of freedom this is why those elements are the strongest in there and it's why as well that um that torch is executed almost immediately by the client the client the client's productivity is soar so it's not 125 percent it's like a thousand percent of where it was before because they they'd held off from doing these things um but they clearly are the most important things in their life and so by the end of this meeting now i'm getting to a version of you know tell me about your goals i can play a minute of financial play software do fun i'm sorry i got we're we're getting to some articulation of of goals and where we want to be we're but we're doing it from a different pathway then you know here here's a here's a list of goals circle the ones that are important to you uh it kinds of like worksheet exercises that are out there for some financial plays right rather than worksheet exercises and and uh prioritization in that way we give them a really strong image so it uh this process we call lighting the torch and it's uh it's a question at the end of this toward the end of this meeting could be halfway through the meeting we go if as a consequence of our time together i or we were to deliver to you and then we name a moment in time might be a year from now might be three years from now a year and a half is fairly typical um where you are doing this and uh and then we layer in one really extraordinary development in their life after another that they have identified in the three questions and in their ideals and in the hearts core grid so we put those all in there in such a way this is where we're layering layering happiness happiness upon happiness upon happiness. And in such a way, that the client is absolutely thrilled, stunned, excited, profoundly moved, and inspired to make it happen. And so we say, if it's a consequence of our work together, we were to deliver this to you, how would that be? And they're stunned, and they go, wow, incredible. And they want to move on it right away. So, no, tell us more about the obstacles meeting. Because again, gather data and goals, do plan, present, plan, implement plan. Like we've got that in our financial planning process. And so you've got a different way that you get to the goals conversation. I feel like in the E and the V part of a Voke, you've got the plan delivery and implementation and the K and the E part of a Voke. But you've got this whole extra meeting that we don't usually have in, so I think it was, as traditional financial planning process. So tell us more about where this came from. Well, first of all, what we've got from the vision meeting, from the two meetings together, we've got an extraordinary understanding of who the client is and what they want to do with their life. And we're also aware that they haven't done this, that this is something that we've unraveled for them by really listening, by great, great empathic listening, and then by following them through the three questions and the other exercises. So we know perhaps, perhaps there are three things that are really quite extraordinary for them. One has to do with their career and their work. One I'm asked to do with their family. And the third one has to do with something, say, profoundly creative or spiritual, let's say. And so we take those three elements and each of those things has an aspiration. So the aspiration in the career might be, you know, just real success. They've written books. They've, they're on YouTube. They've got a real following on TikTok or Instagram. They, or, or they've just moved up the ladder in the organization that they're in, but there's something that's happening there that they're excited about. We're going to, we're going to move with them on that in the family. You know, there, there'll be something where they haven't been as close to their partner, their spouse or their kids as they would have liked or they're, or their parents. And we're going to take them right there and make that happen. So we're going to make, we're going to make the career happen. We're going to make the family thing happen. And then in terms of the creative piece or the spiritual piece or that maybe also maybe a place where the environment comes in where they live in the city, but they'd like to live in the country. And we facilitate something like that. So we're going to make that happen as well. So suddenly these three things that we've discovered through this process of working together are the three major things in their life that would really bring them alive. And in the obstacles meeting, we're delivering them. You know, it's like, you know, okay, so what, what, what is it that you would like it? That's kind of like the why and then how can you, how can you act on this? How can you deliver this to yourself? We, we facilitate them. Obviously we've got have our financial skills and that's going to come in enormously in the next meeting. We also have that awareness in the back of our mind as to what the financial consequences of each of these actions will be and we'll ask them, how are you going to do this and when and we will go toe to toe on them. So they'll say, well, you know, next month and no, no, when, when next month, you know, I mean, we'll get them down to absolute details. Is there someone will ask for an accountability partners or someone who actually could be there and help make sure that this happens. So we'll layer tasks that are actually delivering them into their dream of freedom. And now we're even more confident of who they are and where they're going and what they're going to do and now their financial plan has really powerful meaning for them and for us, we know that it's not, it's not just delivering numbers. This is delivering a person into into the person they want to be. So can you help us set, I guess set up this meeting, right, like I, how am I explaining to the clients that like this, this next meeting after the vision meeting, how am I setting up the conversation when they come into the obstacles meeting. Great. Yeah. And Michael, after each of these meetings, the client is typically so moved or inspired that in between the two meetings, they're doing a lot of work already. So a lot of the stuff they've held back for many years, or they anticipated doing in retirement, they're going for, but the particular setup between the vision meeting and the obstacles meeting is, you know, at the end of the vision meeting, you've lit the torch. And you've asked them at the end of that meeting, once that torch is lit, you ask them, is there anything that could possibly get in the way of this. And so you're already beginning obstacles there, is there anything that's possibly get in the way of this. And they may share one or two things and you go, okay, you know, we were going to address that we're going to address each of those things next next week or two in two weeks. Typically, it's a two week break between, but what I'd like you to do between now and then is to park all of those obstacles, just trust that we'll take care of them when you come in. What I want you to do between this meeting and the next meeting is really live into the dream. This is such a stunning dream of freedom. We call it, we call it in our jargon, we call it the torch. And it's such a stunning dream of freedom for you. It's moved you so much. I want you to live into it to paint the picture more specifically the details of it as if you were living in it. What would it really look like over the next two weeks. So if you have that kind of specificity and you have that kind of inner kind of life where you've visioned it and you're living there, then the obstacles are going to be much clearer for us when we go out at in the next meeting. And we're going to be working on your financial, we're going to actually do a mock up of the financial plan that will have available in that in that next meeting, but it will clarify the financial issues tremendously for us. So live into the dream come in and we'll see in two weeks. And then when they come in, well, you first to ask him if any's changed. Sometimes, I mean, you'll be astonished. Everything changed, you know, not the way to think about all these things, we realized all these other things that we were holding back on that we have talked about and now we want a new new different plan. Yeah, because you've given them permission. They didn't realize they had permission to actually live that live that with that much freedom in their life. And so sometimes things have really changed a lot. And dramatically different visions. Sometimes it's just a tweak or two that you're doing. Sometimes they say, well, I've already done that piece. And now there are these things. But you so you you, you have to do the relighting of the torch so that it's convincing and compelling and then you ask the question again, what could possibly get in the way. And and you begin to outline that for each of the major elements within the torch. But first you ask it in a general way, what could possibly get in the way and usually people as I say that in the in the old days, they say money. And so they're more likely to say myself and the third most likely thing they are to say as well, nothing, nothing's going to get in the way. And and that is a powerful statement when they say that because you know that you've really landed this nonetheless, you go into the obstacles and you go say, that's really exciting. But let's go at each of these elements and let's just let's just move forward on them because that's what this meeting is about. And then you take them into each of the elements, the career of the family, the creative or spiritual piece and you go, okay, what what are the obstacles here and what could you do about them and how could you do that and when could you do that and do you need some help. But you get you get kind of early numbers, but these are numbers about time and and accomplishments. But they're informing the financial plan, you'll know much more about the financial plan, particularly if that if that third piece has something like I want to live in the country and I'm living in the city and you're moving them on that in some way, well, that's incredibly valuable there. The career stuff is going to be really helpful. I'm curious whether or how this has evolved for you like that this process has evolved over the over the years. I mean, I think we're we're almost 20 years out from when you publish lighting the torch originally. And you are many years into teaching and doing life planning since that at that point. So is it like is it still the same process. It was then because it it's worked so well and continues to have you made changes or adjustments or have other other learnings on the process now from where it was originally. Now, I think the most exciting thing is really in the teaching of it. How do you how do you convey this in such a way that the advisor themselves going through the program is both experiencing their life plan come alive and also experiencing their ability to bring their partner, you know, they they come in and you partner with someone you didn't didn't know before. So the person that they partnered up with in the in the training. So they're bringing them alive into their life plan. So I think it's mostly the changes that have occurred have occurred in the training. The evoke process is very much the same as it was. I think one of the probably the most significant difference that was I don't think was in lighting the torch is that we now do the torch often almost like a video clip of placing them a few months forward from now or a couple of years years forward from now and then layering these things into a scenario that is one thing after another about each of the things that they have long for most to accomplish or to be or to have. And so it's it's got almost some cinematography to it that is very alive, very dynamic as opposed to in the old days we would just list that these things would have happened. Now we give them the kind of the feel the touch of it, sensations of it. So I think that's probably the most significant thing there are certainly small things that have happened for years whenever and still when I when I do a I mean mostly the evoke trainings are given by trainers that I've trained, but I do a few a year and and when I do those trainings there's usually something that I'm I'm tweaking a bet that I'm making a little bit more dynamic a little bit more alive a little bit more. Tone in the training itself and and for those unfamiliar just how what is the training process like how does it how does it work what do I what do I do what does it cost or do I go yeah yeah so the the it's the first it used to be in the old days I'd recommend taking the two day training first that was that was the first book I wrote the seven stages of money maturity and what we realized after doing that for many years people loved it. We great response but there was a tendency to think they got they got it all. And then when we came back and checked with them a few years later they were not implementing the evoke process so what we and so what we did and the two days more of a psychology or philosophy of money so a lot of the people for instance in the financial therapy movement have done the two day and many of the leaders came came through the two day and the early early days of that movement and so we've we've now realized that we want implementation so that people are actually delivering their clients into the dream of freedom and the clients are living coming out and living their life plan and moreover also the advisors are living their life plan at the end of the of the five day training so we we designed a four to five day training and now we recommend that people take that training first and take the two day afterwards as a follow up and then also there's a six month mentorship after that so that you're really embedding it in your practice with usually it's the team of people that you've come through the five day with so five days occasionally a four day now that we've had COVID and have a zoom zoom program so you can do it and four days and it's less expensive that way it is one of the more expensive processes the programs that you'll pay for because we typically have two to five trainers for anywhere from seven or eight to 16 participants so high you know we really have a high trainer to student ratio and it's their residential courses and what happens is you go into the course and you pair up with someone there after after meeting them you know if I'm spending a few hours getting to know people on the course and you pair up with someone and then that person becomes your life planning client and they also become your life planner for the next four or five days right it's quite something so so at the end of that time you have delivered that person into their life plan and you can ask anybody that you can ask anybody that comes as comes through the program I mean I don't know if anyone who hasn't come into their life plan as a consequence of doing this this program so there's that much not only to the to this your plan or do it for you which you also have the trainers pitching in so you do demos in front of the group practicing these skills of emotional listening emotional intelligence of what we call the pause just really being quiet and but being engaged of how do you ask the three questions how do you deliver the obstacles meeting so we practice those three meetings in particular in in really in great depth so that you're learning from practicing you're learning from experiencing inside this is this is experience based as opposed to evidence based this is an experience based program which I think is more powerful and then on top of that you have great trainers who have been practicing this for years that are also coaching you on your skills as well as on your life plan and and just to help set expectations for folks what is what is typical cost the cost is around five grand okay for the for the evoke evoke training and that can be it can be a bit more it can be a bit less if you get an early there's an early discount that will keep sure keep it under that that kind of thing so what are you working on now but you like George working on now where's your focus well it's interesting I you know I was reflected I did not go back and listen to the old the tape that we did eight years ago Michael but I did reflect on what have what have I done in the last seven eight years and what's what's amazing to me is that I've been more prolific during these eight years than I ever have in the past and they were years when I caught in at the end of 2019 just as just before it was beginning I was one of the first two years beginning I was one of the first cases of covid and I caught long covid so I got I got a pretty pretty bad case of it and the fatigue lasted for a long time in spite of that and perhaps because of that visiting these three questions reminded me of what my legacy was what I really wanted to do so I produced during that time see five six seven seven books and and an album on Spotify during that during that time period so I've been extremely busy and then just in this last year what's the what's the subject of the books and what is the album on Spotify. So the subject of the books so my my third question forever was it wasn't career and it wasn't life planning it was I want to live in the weather number one and number two I want to create illuminated manuscripts. So those are and perhaps the third thing might have been a spiritual living a deeply spiritual life in some way so I had been collecting for 30 years I've been collecting I've been spending my mornings out out on a out in a cabin on this pawn that we live on it's an 88 or lake and the mornings would be filled with my passion was to understand what the nature of the present moment is you know back to this question of listening being so much faster than thinking what you're doing. What is that all about what is that nature so I would be practicing mindfulness I'd be and I wrote poetry for every day of the year and captured photographs for every day of the year on this pawned so I put together a series of five books including poems for every day poems for every week photographs for every day photographs for every week so I've got a season you know spring summer fall and winter I've got a weekly version so five of the books are that you know living in nature what is the experience I think the greatest teacher of mindfulness is probably mother nature because we step out of our you know house and you know she's alive you feel her skin we smell everything we're just alive so I wanted to capture that and inspire people to live with more of that in their life partly is you know as an environmentalist wanting that but really just loving that from childhood just knowing that that was something extraordinary and so it's a thrill to finish that work I might not have you know I might have died and that work not have been done if it weren't for long COVID and be realizing that I might have a sentence on my life so those were five of the books I wrote two books then on civilization and that's really where my passion is right now and bringing life planning and mindfulness and fiduciary into businesses is where I've gone but I wrote a book called a golden civilization in the map of mindfulness in another book called the three domains of freedom each moment is yours your life is yours and civilization is yours and so right now so I did an album and it was a protest album have happening it was the long COVID summer and I had two teenage daughters and I was trying to figure out what on earth I'm going to do with them though I can do it with them they're living at home and they both had creative spirits to them and one of them was profoundly musical and I said this is my chance you know I've been wanting to do this since I was a kid let's make an album together her name is London and so she and I she wrote most of the music and I wrote most of the lyrics and we went out to the cabins and we recorded the seven songs and it was just wonderful to do that was 16 year old daughter imagine being able to spend that time with her so that was very very special. Very cool yeah so so now I'm in London and I came to London because I wanted to do I wanted to carry my work further that particularly the work of fiduciary I wanted to carry it further and my notion has been as I wrote these two books on civilization that I mean and you and I've reflected on this at at various points Michael that this is a great deal. This how is it that we you and I and the great advisors that we know that we are passionate about being fiduciaries and we are passionate about putting our clients first and yet pretty good. much every corporation that we engage with, the product providers, the mutual fund companies, the brokerage firms, pretty much none of them are really, really, truly fiduciary. And part of my thought was, well, as I've been thinking about civilization and thinking about the dark stuff that's happening in the world and the negative externalities that have risen very much from the great stuff of capitalism. These negative externalities seem to have gone to scale as much as the positives have. So we have earth dangers, we have democracy challenges, we have threats of AI, the threats to truth and media. And my thought was this has to be systemic. That this must, because, again, what we grew up with, the notion that as entrepreneurs, we are creating something that is extraordinary, because of our entrepreneurial competitiveness, we are creating the very best things that humanity can create. And my thought was, why, why on earth have we not then created over these 250 years of phenomenal growth? Why have we not created the very best of humanity, our wisdom and compassion at the top of every hierarchy of power? And I went on a world tour and I asked people what a golden civilization would look like, and then I put together in a single sentence something that I call fiduciary and all things, which is a piece of legislation that I'm just kind of promoting, but also I'm beginning to bring into business as a mission driven, like a B corporation ideal. The requirement that, I mean, if we lived in a fiduciary society, what an incredible difference that would be. I ask audiences wherever I go, I say, and I ask kids this when I talk with the younger generation, how would you feel if every institution you encountered was trustworthy and humane and everything they did? How would your life change? And my thought is that given what's been happening in the world about, again, this scaling of the negative externalities, this global scaling, that humanity has scaled too. This is the first time we've come together historically as a species. And so we ought to be focusing on how do we bring the best of us into the world? And the capitalism with purely shareholder fiduciary obligation is clearly failing us with, you know, three billionaires owning as much as 180 million people. That's not the people by the people and for the people that Abraham Lincoln spoke of in terms of fiduciary responsibility. So I am bringing those notions, both as just as a total pro bono, I've got a movement called fiduciary and all things, totally pro bono, and that I'm promoting to consumers everywhere and just doing whatever I can for it. And then I want an innovator founder visa over to the UK to launch a startup to bring fiduciary notions into businesses as a way to boost productivity dramatically. And it's, you know, you might wonder how that works, but one of the things that you realize that if you look at all the different models we've had of fiduciary from shareholder to what we love fiduciary to our clients to be corporations to this movement I do, which is called fiat or fiduciary and all things, including truth and democracy. If we were to shift to a fiduciary model in all things, we would need far less regulations. The regulatory apparatus would diminish dramatically because the leadership in our corporate life and our government life and our nonprofit life, our kids would be able to look at those leaders and go, boy, they're heroes. And right now our kids don't have any heroes. So I'm excited about this and studies have shown that the kind of work we're doing can boost productivity enormously because of the inspiration factor that we'll bring into into corporate life into businesses. So there's a long-winded answer to your question. So as you reflect on this journey overall, I guess what surprised you the most about growth and evolution of life planning over the decades now? I can say that. Growth in what surprised me and I think what I'm mostly touched, I think my heart has opened over the years and as you move from numbers to perhaps greater wisdom and I'm mostly profoundly touched that we're in 42 states that were registered lifelineers. You can find them in 42 states in 15 countries and in pretty much every continent of the world. And I think that I never really imagined a community of people that care about each other and get excited about the work. So I think that was probably what took me by the greatest surprise. What was the low point on this journey? I think the low point came at the very beginning of my career because in the early days I split work and what I wanted to do with my life. I'm in my life plan back in those days. When I first started work, I didn't want to do work. I didn't want to work for living. I mean, I'm sorry, but I wanted to be an artist and I wanted to live a deeply spiritual life and clearly the world did not have a path for me to do that easily. I was not naturally gifted at those things and to be able to make an economic effort at it. So I felt this kind of profound split and and it was hard work then to kind of establish and learn the skills. And don't we, you know, from all of us in some way, the things that we struggle with most don't we end up becoming the best teachers of. And I think that's what happened was that I came to financial planning because I wanted to deliver myself into a life of freedom. And I figured that this new skill, this was back in the early 80s, that's new profession that was just arising, was a profession meant to deliver people into their dream of freedom. And I thought, wow, I want to learn how to do it for myself and then I want to bring that to my tax clients. So what advice would you give younger, newer advisors coming into the profession today in this, you know, emergent AI era? Yeah. That they would be coming in today. I think the, the first thing I would do if I were coming into this today is even before I would get a certified financial planner designation, which would be a really high up on my list, I would, I would take the evoke course. So I knew, I knew exactly what I was doing in terms of delivering clients into their dream of freedom. I knew exactly how I could do it. And then all the stuff that I would learn in the financial planning profession would immediately be of benefit to the people I was working with. So as we wrap up, this is a podcast about success. And just one of the themes that comes up is that word success means very different things to different people. Right, sometimes it changes for us throughout our own lives. I would imagine you've had clients where their responses to the three questions actually changed over the over the years. So you've had this wonderful path of building successful businesses, building a whole movement around life planning. And so the, the, the business boxes of success as it were seem, seem well checked. How do you define success personally for yourself at this point? I think, um, you know, if I were to define it and still define it as an aspiration, Michael, um, I would say that I would love to live so, I mean, in the three domains of freedom, the first domain is each moment is yours. And I would love to live so much, so present in the moment that when I met someone, whether they're an old friend or brand new, that I would be present enough to bring a kind of kindness to them that might change their life, that might make them either on that day or in their life a better person. That would be extraordinary to be able to be that present. To be able to be that present that's an interesting way to frame it. Well, thank you, George, for joining us on the Financial Advisory Success podcast again. Thank you, Michael. One even more ideas, tools and resources on how to break through to the next level of success as a financial advisor. Check out the leading financial planning industry blog NerdsiveView at www.kittsys.com where Michael covers the latest practice management trends and financial planning strategies. And by joining the member section, you can earn MCA and CFP continuing education credits along with exclusive member content. Get it all now at www.kittsys.com.