The Power of Inquiry: How to Ask Better Questions in Finance

This is the untamed ethos podcast. Join us as investment pros, executives, and other experts talk business, personal growth, investing politics and the trending topics well rounded pros need to know about. Authentic, unfiltered, and fun. Joshua Wilson is the founder of United Ethos Wealth Partners, a registered investment adviser. Due to industry regulations, he will not discuss any of United ETH's advice on this podcast, and nothing you'll hear on this podcast should be taken as investment advice. All opinions expressed by Joshua and by participants are solely their own and do not reflect the opinions of United Ethos or its affiliates. Welcome back to the untamed ETH podcast. I'm Joshua Wilson, and with me as usual, my co host, Doctor Vicks Russell Rhodes. And today, we have a very special guest. I've been looking forward to having doctor Megan Lertz on the episode today, but interested in in in getting her on the episode because, not only is she an academic, but she's very practical. She provides specific, applicable advice on how to execute And this is, you know, one of the things that always comes up when we talk to academics is, is this just theory? And Meg does a great job. Of saying, okay. Here's how you apply it. Here's something you can do. Here's specific words, and phrases and not just the big picture strategy. So She is, a, professor of practice at Kansas State University. She has a background in industrial organizational psychology, which, you know, for those of you who, who who who are not familiar with that, it's basically, you know, we understand that humans have biases. We understand that, there's cognitive bias biases behavioral biases. And so, you know, Meg's background at industrial organizational. Psychology is basically saying, you know, how do, how how is psychology applied to organizations to improve their outcomes for the organization. And then she also got, you know, really gets this down into the individual relationship with client to customer and and custom a client to the firm, things like that. And then, of course, she did a PhD in, and believe in financial planning and financial therapy at Kansas state. So, you know, she's taking this psychology and then this kind of specific application to financial planning, and you know, the great thing about, I think, this, this stuff is it's broadly applicable. And ninety eight when I when I hear when I was talking to Megan, before, it's I've I kept thinking, you know, ninety nine percent of everything she's saying is applicable to everything else. It's just that she focuses in on on financial planning, which makes it of key interest to me, and especially in that in that in that applicable, applicable stuff. So, my pleasure to welcome Doctor. Megan Lertz to the show today. Oh, also, she is I forgot to mention she is a senior researcher, kiteseas dot com. And if you are from the financial planning world, you've heard of kiteseas dot com. I think it's It's not the most. It's definitely up there, one of the most read, financial websites out there, especially directed at financial planners. So great great honor to have you on the show today, Megan. Welcome. Thank you. I'm happy to be here. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Well, Megan, you know, I gave you the I I kinda gave your background here and kind of your interests, but Tell me a little bit about, in your research, what problems are you trying to solve? So I spend a lot of time talking to advisors, whether it's through the different universities that I teach at, and and even the different universities, a lot of the students at Columbia University are coming from larger broker dealers or wire houses, which are different from my case state students who all tend to be, small independent RAAs. So even the advisers differences between the two schools. I've obviously interact with a lot of financial advisors through the KIDS platform. And I interview advisors all the time. I'm always, like, every quarter. I have sort of a different research agenda if you want where I do, like, a standard interview with, anywhere between, like, fifteen and twenty advisors on a particular topic and the reason I do this is because I'm very curious about how advisors experience their work, experience their relationship with their clients, the problems that they see. And then, you know, I from a slightly different lens look at what it is that they're talking about and try to come up with different types of ways to solve for that, like, a recent article that I wrote that people seem to like quite a bit was, I was talking about the plan presentation meeting, and advisors were kinda telling me that these meetings are arduous. You know, they're really long. I have to get through a lot of stuff. I'm a fiduciary. I gotta say all these things. You know, and the client, well, client and or prospect depending on how your process works. No. Sometimes they just kinda glaze over. They're just like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so I was like, gosh, man, that all these advisors are describing this and they're talking about it. And I've had a very similar experience teaching like investments. You know, your in, like, the black scholes model or, I don't know, efficient market hypothesis, and students are like, yeah. Yeah. Doctor. Lyts, I get it. And, you know, there's kinda like, then you This is gonna be on the task too. Yeah. You're like, okay. You didn't get it. So, you know, and you go back. But so in in education, what I've done is it's called flipped classroom where I record my lectures, and then we actually go over problems in class. So that I can we can pick up faster what is it they're not understanding and make it more life applicable. Plan presentation meetings can also be like Like, you can record, you know, five minute videos about, you know, why would we do tax efficient, tax loss harvesting or What is it what does it mean to have diversification in your portfolio or lack thereof? Like, what what is, a Quadro, like, you know, just things like that that we know in financial planning, but maybe don't, you know, the client doesn't know or the client's less familiar with this. Well, if we could record a few short videos, could we get could we get greater engagement in the plan presentation? So moving from plan presentation meeting to a plan engagement meeting. But that whole idea for that entire article, you know, came from spending time with advisers hearing about what is working for hearing about what is not working for them. And then for me, to, you know, go back to the land of academia and, like, search for theories and try to make and, like, what's, you know, what's really going on here and be able to provide a a more useful framework. Sometimes it's a framework. Sometimes it's a set of questions, some times. It's just ideas that, like, a different way to look at the same issue. It's hard to know. I mean, advisors don't go to school to be a therapist. Advisors don't go to school to be psychologists. Advisors don't go to school to be efficient. They don't go to school to be Russell. You know? Like, they they go school a lot my students to be financial planners. And that's a different thing. It's a different skill set. And so if I can bring knowledge from my skill sets to them, without them having to spend another twelve years in school. Great. You know, that's that's what I see my job as is kinda being a pracademic you know, standing but standing on both sides of the line. Yeah. But but without staying in in the practitioner world, you you're gonna get disjointed from it very quickly. Know, I I think that's, you know, you're actually teaching people that are in it too. They know they want to become financial planners. This is relatively new. I mean, it's out. We hear the term financial planner all the time now. But this idea of being a financial planner as far as being widespread, and everybody knows what it is. Everybody still doesn't know what it is. First off, and most people that are coming, you know, into being an advisor, and I'm using the term planner and advisor interchangeably. That's not type that's not really correct. Right? Everybody advises. Doesn't necessarily plan. But most people, they're becoming advisors and then planners. They're really coming from they do finance. They do economics. They do something like this. And so, you know, I've I talked to my students and I say, you know, when you say you're going to be a financial buyser, what do you think you're what do you think you'll be doing all day? And it's usually they think that they're gonna be researching stocks and funds and things like this. I say, who you're gonna give advice to? Like, you're gonna have to figure out who you're gonna give advice to, and convince them that they should take your advice. So a lot of this comes down to, you know, the dirty word sales, But I I I think that that's kind of something that we have to get out of sales is a bad thing. Sales is nothing to me besides communicating with humans. That's what sales is. It's just practical strategies for communicating with humans. You know, you you're married and have two kids. You're selling all the all day long. You gotta you gotta learn how to sell them a four year old. You can have gummy bears afterwards. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. I mean, Daniel Pink's book, everybody sells or something like that. Yeah. I mean, that was a great book. And and to your point, Yeah. I mean, there's been some interesting evolutions within financial planning, you know, because financial planning There are many things that that we still do or the the financial plan financial planning community still does that are artifacts of being from a sales culture. And, and and being purely product sales, which those things still exist, but we also have financial planning now, and that's done in multiple ways. And I'm not at all. Like, I'm pretty agnostic on the different ways that it can be done. I think people need insurance and If all you're doing is selling a financial plan that people don't implement, I would argue that the insurance is far more useful than the plan that people don't implement. So I I every everybody sells and understanding how to do it. I also think there's a big difference between you know, selling a product, which, again, I have no issue with. But a lot of financial planners, they're trying to sell a relationship. I mean, we know from therapy, we know from the medical field. I've even done some research within financial planning, but it doesn't matter how great your plan is. If the relationship through which the plan is being delivered is a relation SHIT, not a relationship, you know, you're not gonna have you're not gonna have a great outcome on the other end. Just like if you have a jerky doctor that's like he can give you the best medical advice or can give you the best medical advice on the planet, but because the relationship is so bad, you're just like, I don't I don't wanna listen to that person. And so you don't you don't do what you're intending to do. Financial Planning is the same way. And that, you know, the the interest in financial psychology, and so that that's it. There's even an interesting difference there. So there's behavioral economics, which is like a big Russell shaking his head. Yes. Like, behavioral economics is just a behavior. It's just a decision making theory. This is how we make all decisions. All decisions. And then there are a bunch there's like a bunch of finance people came along, and they're like, oh, let's look at it. Like, let's, like, apply all the things that we know from behavioral economics just in finance, and we call that behavioral finance, or we call that, financial psychology. There's also, you know, moving beyond that. Like, most of that is research from the seventies and eighties. We are in twenty twenty three. More research now is being done on Okay. Yes. We know that these biases and heuristics exist. We know that people make decisions in a goofy way. The psychology of financial planning, you know, is kind of now a new discipline or financial therapy is a new discipline, And and our interests there, the research interests there are given these things, how how can we actually help people? Like, it's one thing to know what's wrong with someone. It's another thing to know how to support them through that. And so a lot of what my classes are about, like, what I write about on the platform, what I teach about what I what I do my own research on is are, you know, are those interventions getting beyond just a list of heuristics or biases But how do we actually support somebody? How like, it doesn't help to tell someone. Oh, you know, Joshua, you're just you're just overconfident. You know, good luck with that decision. You you're gonna get fired. And I mean, that one sounds really obvious, but But then how do you work with overconfidence? Well, there's there's research that says how to do that. And so I think that it's important to understand how research has evolved, to let, you know, more and more financial advisors be aware that that research that is can be more helpful for the way they run their practice and where they work with people. The CFP board in particular has put out there was first client psychology, which was kinda like the behavioral stuff. Now now they've put a big push for the psychology of financial planning. And it is this understanding that your relationship with your client is the most simistically significant important factor in whether or not this plan is actually implemented. Yeah. And and and this gets back to it's it's not about being correct. You know, traditional finance, traditional economics is about what is correct. You're trying to define it with numbers. And so when you come at this from a rational lens, which traditional economics does, this assumption of homo economicus, the rational person, right? Is that if you know the answer that you'll make the correct decision based on one plus, if you know one and you know plus and you know one, then you will always choose the correct answer too. And behavioral economics comes around and says, well, humans aren't always rational. And here's all these ways we've understood that humans aren't rational. And what you're really what you're all you're saying is, hey, we actually know now more about actually how to do behavioral interventions. And this happens a lot. Well, I noticed when I have conversations with advisors is when you bring up behavioral, or behavioral finance, it's, oh, I know. I know. I know. And because everyone's heard of, you know, of attribution bias. And everyone's got the introduction to behavioral behavioral finance now. And so we know that the errors that people make, but like you said, it's not, it it is in the execution, not in the knowledge. I often tell my students, that, you know, that the real world is very different than the academy, and we need to hear this. Because in the academy, it's you scored a hundred percent that you understood a hundred percent of these concepts. That doesn't tell me what you can apply. You know, I can, I can read a book? Like, I I don't golf. I can read a book on golf. And be taught how to swing a club and how to hold the club and all these things, and it's like, oh, yeah. I could pass a test. I'm I know everything about golf, pass every test on golf. And I can't hit the ball off the tee ten yards, right, because execution is very different than than knowledge. And I think that that what's interesting about where we're we're getting now is these practical application. Okay. Here's actually how you address this. Here's what you actually can, you know, can can can do their addresses. But that's not just client change. Right? Part of that part of that is is is requiring advisor change. Talk to me about that because, you know, there's there's this difference in how can I get the client to do what I want to help them get their better outcome, but it's probably gonna require some change for me too? Yeah. I tend to tell my students and or advisors that I meet, you know, you are a hundred percent responsible for your fifty percent of that relationship. And so, yeah, recognizing that we we are a part of what's happening So, like, a common example that I give, because markets are always bananas. You know, they're always doing something that people are nervous about. And, So it's very common for advisors to get phone calls from nervous clients. And normally, our reaction to that is from a good place. Hey, you're feeling nervous. Like, let's come in. Let's take a look at your portfolio. We can, you know, run seven thousand million versions of your monte carlo analysis, and we'll we'll make sure, you know, that you're still in, like, the ninety percent range or whatever. One way to do it. But oftentimes, what advisors say is that they'll come in, they'll have the client come in, they'll do that. And the client will be like, but what about that four percent or know, this is only looking at historical stuff assuming it's a very smart client. This is only looking at historical stuff. You know, this this time, it's different. You know, we're talking about this. We're talking about that, there's no way that that can predict this. You're right. So instead of doing that, because we know that when we give advice, to people that are in, like, fight, flight, fear mode, all they do is pushback. It's different this time. It's not like that. You're not understanding. You just don't get it. You can you can give the best advice in the world, and they will still be like, nope. So instead, Try this. You'll be scared the first time you do it, but I promise it works. The client calls, they're freaking out. You're like, man, thank you so much for calling. You know, I you can come in. We can we can go through your portfolio, but I wanna I wanna ask you something. It's a little bit it's a little bit weird, and they'll be like, okay. And you'd be like, is that alright if I ask? And they'll be like, yeah. Sure. So nobody ever says no. And then say, this is gonna sound strange, but what if your if your best friend called you, later today. And they they were expressing the same fear. They're not sure what's going on in the market, you know, what's going on. What would you say to them? And they'll typically, because they've been your client for a while, say things like, well, to turn off the T. V. You know, you do you shouldn't worry your your portfolio is well balanced or to you know, totally diversified. You should call your financial planner. The client will literally start listing off all of the things that you were about to tell them, because they've been your client for so long, then they get to the end of their list and you're like, wow. That's a great list. Like, I'm trying to think of other things. You know, knowing knowing that you know all that, what else can we talk about? And people will usually be like, you know, I don't know, or I feel a lot better. A lot of times they laugh because they realize that they've just talked themselves off the cliff. This is the recognition of knowing knowing what's happening that people are irrational and people freak out and, like, stuff is scary. And knowing that your fifty percent of their relationship is knowing how to hold that space, knowing how to take care of that client. The problem with the situation you're talking about right there is those calls all tend to come in as in big clumps when when, you know, we're having a couple of bad days in the overall markets, and that's that's when the irrationality actually increases not just among the professionals but also the the clients and, you know, it I I the the closest I've ever come to being a financial advisor was a small hedge fund where we hired a guy who his job was to field those calls so we could do the rest. We could do our jobs, basically. And He'd sit around and do nothing for, you know, a couple of weeks sometimes when everything was going well, but we have a couple of bad days. And we ran a long short mutual fund, so people see the numbers from day to day even if they were in the hedge fund. Thank goodness. We had him, as that buffer because when I did my in my dissertation, some of the some of its behavioral finance oriented, and I remember that on average, the number of inbound calls goes up threefold on a bad day in the markets. And that's the day that you wanna be, you know, that's the day that you don't want to be it I I I'll use a sports analogy. When somebody's got a perfect game going, nobody talks to him on the bench. That's because they need to focus. And do you really think you're helping your adviser calling him when the market's down seven percent in a day? You can't say that to him, but you know, do you want me managing your money or or trying to make you feel better about yourself? Well I wouldn't say it that way, but that's what I have in the back of my mind. Yeah. The flip side of that is that once you get people to embrace some of their self efficacy, I mean, you have to think about agency's self efficacy. Are we teaching our advisors or our clients, like, a an aspect of almost like learned helplessness that they have to call us because they don't know the answer. But you have a couple of bad runs where you use the question that I just said and you teach people that they actually do know the answer and that they will be okay and you get them to say it with their own mouths, you will have less and less of those phone calls every time. And certainly, you'll have less and less of those people that actually still wanna come in and meet. So, yeah, if you want to, you know, be furblessly work, like, you know, working frantically on, like, tax laws harvesting and things like that when we have fun market dips, you know, I get it. But, like, you still have to deal with the behavior side too. And the more that we teach clients that they have agency that they are, you know, they have financial self efficacy, then the less scared they become. It's it's because they become so reliant on the adviser. That they are afraid. And it's not teaching them to think they can do it all by themselves. It's just letting them relax a little bit, you know, in the fact that they do know that they're gonna be okay. You know, I think that when we think about this, behavioral finance poorly applied, is basically telling people they're being emotional. That does that does it go everywhere well. Were irrational. What's that? For irrational. Right. Right. And, you know, with with the emotions thing, No one wants to say, here's what I'm feeling right now. They want they have a feeling And then they the feeling is in this, you know, reptilian, you know, ancient brain. We have a feeling. And then our speech is way closer to the prefrontal cortex. So we've gotta filter these feelings through the the the logical part of our brain and try to come up with a rationalization, not rational, but a rationalization of what we're feeling. And then behavioral finance poorly applied is basically saying, Hey, you understand you're being emotional, you're being irrational because, you know, those words irrational and emotional, they're not exactly the same, but they can be pretty, pretty, pretty beakly linked there. How do you what could you talk to me about about how one you understand the problem is emotional, and you understand that's where it's coming from point of emotion, but you can't just point it out as emotion. And a lot of times when someone is feeling something, they come at you with a very rational question, and and so you wanna answer it rationally. Whereas it's what you hear is in the, and I I think this happens a lot in relationships. In, in personal relationships, is one person says, why did you do x? And the other person answers a very rational, logical answer, but that doesn't meet the emotional need. The emotional need was I don't feel like you've paid a lot of attention to me today. I I'm I'm feeling kind of lonely. I'm feeling kind of undervalued. And it's, hey, why were why were you reading that book? Like, well, I was reading it because I'm interested in it. But that has nothing to do with the reason I really asked, you know. So what I'm getting at is is getting, kind of, getting past this. I know I'm answering I'm a long rambling question, but go for it. It's a very good question. And it happens all all all the time. Like, no nobody ever says something for no reason. We we don't just walk around just like saying words, you know. And so there's there's think of it like an iceberg. This is kinda the best way I've ever seen it described. There's what people say. That's the top. There's what they meant and how they feel. And so here here's like a twofer. This is where it gets kinda fun. So in We know so there was this great study by, like, some of these research nerds, which doesn't surprise me that they were studying speed dating, but that was the point. So they were studying speed dating, and they wanted to know who gets a second date. So they they have this, like, huge regression And the old the thing that was statistically significant was who asks good follow-up questions? That was what got people a second date. And it's important to differentiate between not just any follow-up question, but one that keeps it on them. Like, so here the difference between this. A client comes in and they say something like, Hey, I I finally booked that ticket to Rome. Or to to will say to Italy. And the advisor goes, oh my gosh, that's great. Are you gonna go to Rome? And the client's like, I don't know. And he goes, and the advisor says, well, I've been to Rome. You know, don't don't miss the coliseum. It's dope. Okay. Like, we do that all the time. You know, and it again, this is coming from a really good place. The adviser wants to make sure that they see the calls see them. Cool. The other way that this could have gone, and this is this is the follow-up question. Way, the way that gets you a second date, is that They come in and they say, I booked that re the the trip to Italy. And they buy just like, oh my god, Italy. Awesome. Where are you gonna go? And so then the client gets to be like, Rome, you know, I'm gonna see the coliseum, and then you just keep asking them questions about their experience. This same thing can be applied. This actually happened to me. I was having a really rough week. And my one of my friends call, she's got two kids. I have two kids. It's like noon. And I'm talking about how I'm ineffectively working and, like, my kids are sick and I'm getting sick. And she's like, dude, kids are hard. Just just have a glass of wine. I started drinking. It's And I'm like, cool. Thanks friend. Thanks friend. Later on, my friend, who is a marriage and family therapist, doctor Megan McCoy, who also teaches with me a state. She calls. I rattle off that, you know, this is just a crazy week. And she goes, wow, Meg. That sounds really hard. How are you coping? Imagine, like, feel the here are the difference between how people feel supported and the power of the follow-up question. Now to what you said, and the the, like, what people say, what they mean, and how they feel. When you ask so people say, like, I don't, like, I have four four zero one case. Great. You know, like, you know, why, you know, why was sharing that important? Well, I'm feeling really disorganized, you know, about the fact that I have four. Or I'm feeling wealthy. I've got four. You know, who knows? Why they said that? We're not sure what they meant. And you can also then they say, you know, I'm a little bit confused or it just feels like it there's like a lot going on, and I'm not quite sure, like, what's going on in one, like, are my investments the same in this one as in this one? Just I just have a lot of confusion about that. Okay. I I hear you saying that you're feeling confused. You know, would it be helpful if we look at all those together? Like, are you wanting to consolidate them? Asking them some more follow-up questions. You're now learning more about their problem because if you don't ask, Not only are you not as likable, but your brain, because our brains are awesome, we'll start to fill in stories. You'll be thinking they just wanted me to think they're cool because I have they have four four zero one k's, like, what a jerk? You know, like, maybe you'll who knows what weird thing would pop into your mind about what they meant and what they're feeling? If you take a step back and you say, every, everybody, everything that everybody says is an iceberg. And we see this in our private lives too. You know, this this happened to me this past weekend. I I I was outside reading a book, and I said to my husband who was inside, who's messing around the kitchen. And I said, do you wanna come outside with me? And he's like, no. I'm doing doing stuff in the kitchen. And I thought I thought what an A hole, you know, like, I'm clearly giving you a bid for attention and you're just like, no. And so I was mad. And I said, you know, I I, like, you're why are you ignoring me? And he goes, whoa. Not ignoring you. I'm working on stuff in the kitchen. It, like, what is this about and I go, well, I wanted to spend time with you. You know, I was asking you to come outside to be with me because I don't wanna be outside. If you wanna want us to be together, you know, why don't you just sit in the kitchen? I'll make you a sandwich. Something. I was like, okay. You know, so did I say that? No. I said I said come outside. What what I meant? Spend time with me, how I was feeling alone. And that all got twisted up. You know, so we we do this constantly, and and we do this with our clients, whether we intend to do it or not. So ask follow-up questions that makes you more likable, then your likely to use your wacky brain, which we know all brains don't work because you have a human one. And, you know, but don't let your brain fill in the stories. Actually ask what they meant and how they feel about it at three time. So I'll make sure I'm defining what you mean by follow-up question. Yeah. What I'm what I mean by that is I mean, I think if I'm if I'm pushing through this fast, I'm like, well, I mean, of course, I ask follow-up question. I'll ask one question to stop every question is a follow-up question, but I'm sensing from you is not every question is a follow-up question. This reminds me of, so I I talk I was over the national sales training program at TD Ameritrade in my former life for a while. And one of the things I would talk about is be more curious. Stop making so many assumptions. You're taking big leaps between questions, and I think that you're missing a lot of things between these questions because you ask a question. And then from that one question, you get all these data points because you are calculating in your head that, hey, if if she says x, then y is true seventy percent of the time. And, you know, you just so you just jump right past that and you check the box that you know the answer to these these other things. So that's how I'm conceptualizing this is a follow-up question is a shorter step. That's how I'm thinking about it, but what what do you mean by follow-up questions? And Question one. What do you mean by that? Then number two, what makes a good follow-up question? So, yes, there are we can ask follow-up questions about situational things and continue to gather more data. And I'm I'm arguing that for every piece of data that you get, there's probably also a situation and probably also a feeling. And some and if you have the time and you want to create trustworthiness, if you want to create connection, asking what do you mean by that or share with more more about the situation around that? Like, why why did they choose to tell you that they have four four one k's? Why? You know, and and asking more about that. That that for me is a follow-up question. You can certainly ask all kinds of Another important aspect of the best type of follow-up questions. Again, if we're using follow-up questions to benefit the relationship is that it stays focused on the person that you're not asking a follow-up question to them be talking about yourself. Which we do all the time. Again, it's not you're not an evil person and it and for what it's worth, it doesn't statistically significantly ruin your relationship. You know, it just doesn't build it. And so thinking about, you know, where and how you're asking follow-up questions Like, if it's early in the relationship, maybe this is your first prospect meeting with them. Maybe it's the discovery meeting with them. You know, asking questions, that build that connection, you know, between the two of you, and not not trying to assume anything. And certainly, you know, you can ask, like, maybe they mentioned that, I don't know. They have restricted stock or something like that. And you need you need more information about that restricted stock option. Maybe not maybe necessarily related to the situation or how they feel about it. You just wanna know, like, what company it's from when it's gonna vest, like, you know, anything like that. These are also useful questions to ask, but they don't build the relationship. So there's data data questions, good data in, good data out, but all good data starts with a good question. Yeah. You know, I I think that you're also thinking about the future. If you're assuming that this is gonna be your my, right? And if someone is assuming they have the motivation to to solve this problem, and one of the things I do wanna get to here as we continue the conversation is when people get stuck. Right? But assuming they're moving forward, sometimes people can be logical in their hey, I know I need to do something. I'm gonna follow your process. I'm gonna answer your questions, and I'm gonna sign up because I know that something has happened or you know, people have these life moments, and a lot of financial planning comes from life moments. And so it's a retirement, a marriage, a divorce, you know, moving to a different place. These tend to things, and they people sit down with a planner and they sign up. And so it it can seem very logical. All these questions, these situational informational questions can see biological, but then six months later, when the relationship is moving, then you're gonna wish you to take in a little bit more time and documented some more of the emotion needs of these things because once the rational getting gotta get started, this is an item that I promised my spouse I would take care of. Six months later, we're invested in our feeling. It's these are these are gonna be useful to us later. It's kind of that that patience of saying, hey, I may not need this today, but I'm probably going to to need this at some point in the future. Yep. I I mean, our brains remember stories better than they do anything else. You know, so if you can have a more fully formed story, you know, about your client, you're gonna be just better able to serve them because you'll recall things, you know, that without, you know, like, nobody knows the year what you guys might know, but I don't know the year off the top of my head that Abraham Lincoln died. You know, but I know that he was killed in fourth theater. I know he shot in the back of the head. You know, I know that he was with his wife. Like, I remember so many, like, I can recall so many things about that moment, but I can't recall this, like, single piece of data. And it has to do with the difference between data and stories. And so it's certainly a mix between the two. As an adviser, you need data, but that doesn't mean it has to be absent a story. And if you're trying to build that relationship in connection, you're gonna want those stories. The other thing that can be really helpful, you know, and just thinking about using questions and follow-up questions know, this kinda gets back to where what we were talking about earlier, but relates to, you know, when clients get stuck, is that making changes hard. You know, even if you want to make a change, that doesn't necessarily imply that you're ready to do it right now. The other thing is that you mentioned it, you know, that people don't usually call a financial planner until there's like a problem. So it's not like people wake up on a Wednesday like, yeah, feeling rich today, get a call stranger. You know, nobody says that. Nobody feels that way. You know, and so they they wait until something is so painful that they think that it sounds like a better idea to talk to a complete stranger about something that probably represents more than just the dollars and cents in their bank. Like, this is about to get real intimate, real fast with somebody I don't know. That that you thought that was better. So recognize that that even though they're sitting across from you and they're telling you that they want your help, that does not mean that their emotions actually match that. And so instead of trying to fight against that, like people will tell you, I know I need help. I know you're saying I need to save more. I know you're saying I need to do something with restricted stock options, and yet they kinda just keep dragging their feet. You can always stop and say, hey. You know, you you told me that this is important to you. I'm down to help you. I see that it's not work. You know, we're not making progress. Can you list off for me, like, the ten reasons why it's still important? Getting them again, this this invokes their self efficacy because you're just gonna say, hey, remember you said that, and they're gonna be like, yeah, I remember. Hey, remember you said that, yeah, I remember. You know, like, you don't wanna be nagging them. Nobody likes that. But you can ask them to sort of stop and say, hey, tell me why this is still important to you. You know, now they're talking about all the reasons that it's important, you can invoke, you know, intrinsic motivation through the types of questions that you ask. That you're not the bad guy. Just reminding them of all the stuff they didn't do, which oftentimes you can even say, well, why haven't you done that? Now you're just gonna make them list off the things that kept them from doing it. And what's that gonna do? Just further solidify that they don't have time to do that. So What's more, like, like, how are you thinking about getting them to talk about what it is that they are or are not doing? The other thing is that if this is the beginning of the relationship, starting to work with a complete stranger figuring out, like, getting the relationship that is now my professional financial relationship for a lot of people. This is the biggest change that they're willing to make For about six months, regardless of how great your advice is. Just having to talk to you is a big change. And so just sitting sitting in that for a moment and recognizing then, is there a different way? Cause you're a fifty percent responsible a hundred percent of your part of this relate or a fifty hundred percent responsible for the fifty percent of your relationship. How how can you communicate better? What are the things that you can say that keep you from being the nagging person, but also try to get stuff done. You know, slowing down and thinking about that being more methodical, understanding, like, how I ecology works, understanding how people change. And and the role that we have, I've often said that we should just stop teaching algebra or at least trig. And we should teach people the trans theoretical model of change. Imagine how nice people would be to one another if they understood the process of change. And others involvement in others change. Changing is really hard, but we have lots of document and research on how people do it in how people need to be supported while doing it? The you you mentioned a word there that that I that I've had in the back of my mind as you've been talking. It's condescending. And trying not to sound condescending because there's so much information out in the world now. I mean, I've gotten a couple of dozen ridiculous questions on how do I invest in AI? Because that's what's been out in the news. There's no way to really invest in AI right now. There's no way it's ever gonna be really monetized. My, you know, my response is, and and this is this would be condescending if I were an adviser, but I'm just telling, usually, students this. There's no pure play in AI. Yeah. In fact, I personally, I think AI is about his as important as blockchain was. Everybody thinks it's gonna do something, and and it's like a cool technology that's that's looking for problems to solve. And if I were a financial advisor, and somebody said, I I wanna make sure I've got exposure to AI, that response would not go for very well at all. You know, in the least. But because, everybody, it's so easy to find out anything about anything, whether or not it's correct or not on the internet now, I can only imagine that, if if an advisor came out of a coma from twenty five years ago to today, they'd be shocked at the knowledge level that they have to deal with. Now, whether that's a good knowledge level or bad knowledge level, but it's definitely a different knowledge level. Yeah. I think it's, I mean, yeah, I do know that advice and and CFAs in particular, you know, do get those phone calls from clients. And, you know, instead of automatically responding with what your advice would be. I I tell my students that it's, the kid's basketball rule. You have to have three questions. After you ask three questions or no pass the ball three times before anybody can shoot before you can give advice. You have to ask three questions before you can give advice. And what this can do is, you know, they call and say, I wanna invest in AI. I'm like, wow. Cool. Alright. AI. Tell, you know, tell me a little bit more about what you've been reading. What are you thinking? And they say, yeah. You know, it's just, like, everybody's talking about it, and I feel like it's, like, the next big thing is, you could say, well, hey, do you remember when, like, blockchain? Came around. Like, you know, we were we were talking about that before, you know, and, like, we really thought that maybe like that would blow up. You know, like, tell me tell me a little bit about that. Right. I I yeah. I I was just gonna say blockchain was gonna solve everything. You'd hear about it on earnings calls and everything else. I was working in exchange at a time. Blockchain was gonna be our whole back office system, which, after about thirty six hours of of looking into it, they decided, no, it it actually won't work. But, yeah, that, you know, probably turning it around and and asking, how do you who do you think's gonna benefit the most from AI and try to invest invest in it in that from that standpoint? Right. Right. There's all different ways, but starting with a question, like, respecting the fact that you are talking to an adult who has probably done some sort of research, whether we agree that the research was good or not, you know, like, they've done something. They've called you. So there's what they're saying, what it means and how they feel about it. So if you can get to some of that deeper part of the iceberg with a few follow-up questions, they feel heard which is important for them if you're going to attempt to give advice. And it's a pretty easy formula, but you know, easier to or maybe easier said than done. I suppose. I think it's helpful for a lot of folks in in when you're in teaching these types of strategies to change the context because that little bit of a shock of changing the context can sometimes make concepts and frameworks a lot simpler because it's like when we know something really well, we get so deep into the minutiae. And so, for example, if it take an investment related question, I should I'm if I can switch this off to saying something very simple and, like, Let's say, Megan asked me, I'm looking to buy an automobile. What do you think I should buy? This is a very different context. Well, I'm not an automobile expert, but I would probably have a few questions. I was like, well, what are you gonna use it for? I wouldn't go go into Well, I think that you should buy, you know, a, a Mercedes Benz because of this, this, this, this, this is the model that I like. No. I would ask. You said an automobile. You're thinking like a car, you're thinking like a truck. What are you gonna use? What's that? Lambo. Yeah. There you go. Lambo, great great option. If you got the budget and you got the all these other things, right? Trying to get some more try to get to get flashy, try to get attention. If that's if that's what your response was, I wanna get as much attention as possible. And I wanna be able to go really fast. And these okay. Well, maybe you should be thinking about a Lambo, right? But you wouldn't start with giving advice. You wouldn't start with giving an opinion. I wouldn't just say, well, I drive a Ram pickup truck. And I really like it for these reasons, so I think you should buy one as well because no. I would ask some more questions. And I think that there's that that just that contextual change can kind of shake us and say, and make us realize, okay. I shouldn't be coming to so many assumptions with this, I really don't know enough about this. And so sometimes that becomes being more curious about you know, even when someone asks a specific question, it's, what ETF should I buy for Bitcoin? Why ETF? Why Bitcoin? Is it cryptocurrency engine? What's got you interested in in cryptocurrency? What got you to what got made you decide that EVTF was the best place to get it, you know. These types of things get us more into the details and away from the, the assumption of just Like you said, three more questions, pass the ball three more times. That's a great, great great advice there. Yeah. I also tend to find that in this I realize that this sounds kinda weird, but it clients don't always call you for advice. You know, and there's more than there's more and we talk to our spouses, you know, our partners or our kids, you know, and we we always kind of assume that if someone's coming to me with a question, advisors notoriously because you're literally in your job title that you would advise. But sometimes people just want to talk And so it you can ask that. You can say, hey. I I can't tell if you're directly asking me for advice right now. Or if this is just like you just wanna have a decision partner, you just wanna like talk through some stuff. Which which one are you going for? Just just knowing then that your job as the advisor is not to just spit out all the stuff that you were thinking, but to just maybe brainstorm with the client. You know, this can make a huge difference. I I think that, sometimes we overlook all the different ways that we can actually show up to a conversation. And the longer you have your client, there's more variations to the way that your relationship can actually be. And it's not always just about the advice. And I think that it's okay to ask. That's a great bullet point takeaway is define the expectation. Like, what are you really what do you need out of this conversation? Don't assume. That I know what you need that that I need to give you advice. Is are you really asking me What Bitcoin what Bitcoin ETF should I buy? Or are you, asking Did you already buy the Bitcoin ETF that you are calling for validation? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Or is it just that you're, you know, you had a friend talk about it and you're not interested in buying it? It's just that one of your friends talked about it and you're interested is always interesting to you because they made a big case about it, and so who's got you interested in it. Yeah, that's a, that's It's good. We talked about clients getting stuck. And what I'm I I guess I should probably say prospects, and this could happen with clients as well. But, prospects get stuck, you know, they come in. They do the interrogation meeting. I mean, I mean, the discovery meeting. I do the first meeting, and then it seems like things are going well. And then they kind of they kinda don't move. And it seemed like they we we had defined the needs and it seemed it seemed like we find why they've not hired in another advisor. They tell us. It's just why are clients getting stuck? And I know you've talked to and some of your work about, you know, about this. So talk to me about clients getting stuck. What are what are we missing? Well, there can be a lot of reasons that people get stuck. You know, so that that's something to think about. I I think it's, you know, you were making the joke about discovery versus interrogation. I actually think that this one happens maybe more often than what we recognize. As, you know, so the person called, and they were worried about their restricted stock options. You you say, okay, I can help you with that. No problem. So then they come in. They're in the discovery meeting, and you're asking them things about five twenty nine and you're asking them things about old four zero one k's, and you're asking them things about Roth conversions, and you're asking them things about, you know, all this stuff, and they reckon their insurance, and their whatever. They recognize crap. You know, like, I was worried about my restricted stock option, and now it just seems like my financial life is total freaking chaos. What this does to people's motivation is, like, we know, like, from sports, you know, that, like, a certain amount of stress is really good, too much stress, not good. And the same thing can happen in financial planning that, like, if you just keep stacking, which I think many financial planners think, oh, yeah. I'm showing my expertise. I'm showing all the different ways that I can help. All my value. No. All my value. But for some people, this is just like a list of all the things that they did wrong. And that feels really painful. Like, they will leave with less motivation than when they came in to get anything done. They just become overwhelmed and they can't do anything. So that can happen in a discovery meeting. Another thing that can happen in discovery meeting that kinda shuts people down is that I call it a vulnerability hangover. I forget, like, where I got that from, but let's say that, like, your talking, and maybe they talk about, I don't know, they have, like, some Walt Disney stock, and they have no intention of selling it. And you're like, okay. Cool. You know, you're thinking, like, legacy account. And so you just happen to ask, like, where'd you get that? And they say, oh, yeah, my grandpa. And you think, oh, okay. Tell me about your grandpa. So they start talking about maybe it's like kind of an emotional story. Maybe some weird stuff happened. Maybe, like, you know, like, it actually gets into some family drama. So in the moment, it feels like, wow, this person's really sharing. Like, they're really opening up. Then they go home. Then they think I hope I never see that person again for the rest of my life. We've been we've seen that, like, if you're ever on a plane and someone just decides to, like, spill their guts to you or you've been at a a bar and You've been the one that spilled all their guts, you know, and you think, god. I hope I never see that person again. We don't want this to happen. In, like, that sort of intense disclosure has to happen within a safe relationship. And a discovery meeting even though there's a lot of stuff being talked about and a lot of financial things, you know, relate back to, like, our morals and our family history and the things that we learn it's gonna dredge up stuff anyway, but to dig too far into that and and essentially leave the client with a vulnerability hangover, they're not gonna call you back. They don't wanna see you again. So you can you can list off too many things and make them feel bad. You know, you can get too deep too fast and then they don't wanna talk to you. You know, these can be total non starters, not that you necessarily did anything wrong, but, like, just the emotion and motivation was drained out of the client. Yeah. There's a certain amount of you know, in sales, you can call this selling past the close. That's taking a different angle of it. You know, this this psychological, angle is saying you can create emotional baggage for people and psychological cognitive baggage that that this this is now associated with this relationship. Yikes. Looking at that from the sales angle is selling past the close is if there's a reason for us to work together and use new keep, and I think you called it pain stack or something like that in one of your writings. You keep, and then there's this, and then there's this, and then there's this. It reminds me I would advise where I used to work with and I would get referrals from his firm. He'd sit down, and I would, I would talk to the clients he'd refer. And we had come to the what the client needed and ready to move forward. And as we start getting into talking about paperwork and why we need to move forward, then it was just, and then they'll do this and then they'll do this and they help people with the and it's just one thing after another and literally had the man, please, stop. Stop. We've got someone ready to move forward. They've got a problem we can solve right now. They don't really want you know, they they call it it's like this. You call I call you to my house because I had hail damage, and I'm gonna get I know I need a new roof stuff. You're like, we can do the we can do this. We can do this. We can also put some new things in your yard. I'm like, dude, stop. But now you just went all I hear is more money, more of my time. Right? And now you're just creating a bigger and bigger load. Like, I had wrapped my head around I'm gonna have to get a new roof and go through the hassle of this, but I wasn't mentally prepared for this to take two years. And you'll hear planners sometimes say that is, you know, we're not gonna we're gonna do this, and then we're gonna do this, and then we're gonna do this. Hey, you know, like, There's other services we offer. Other things are gonna are gonna come up. And, you know, maybe there may do you wanna hear a brief overview of these other things that we do for you over time. But, I mean, you can get so deep into build the value that you're actually just creating such a load. And that's that's the selling pass to close. When you sell pass to close, you're not doing anyone any favors. And I really like this spin you're putting on, not my spin, but this angle you're taking is the cognitive load and the, the emotional load. I hadn't I hadn't thought about that, but they're going home with exhaustion from your conversation. Now you're associated with exhaustion. Yeah. I don't wanna go back there. They're just gonna this stuff more things I didn't do. And I I feel my students and, you know, say on the articles and stuff like that that Like, if they've come in to talk to you about, I don't know, that they had a big tax bill or whatever, that's painful enough. That that got them in the door. You know, you can pour more salt in that wound if you want. You know, if you ask them some so, like, okay. So you have a tax problem. Is this the first year you've had this happen? No? Okay. You know, like, well, what have, you know, what happened in other years? How'd you deal with that? Okay. You didn't? Okay. You know, like, If you let them build up the pain for that one problem that they came in with, and at the end of the meeting, you say, Hey. Well, we we can work on tax things. You know, here's what our process is like. Let's get started. They're gonna be like, okay. You know, you you don't have to add more pain. You can just make the one thing that they were actually motivated to do something about more painful. And then go and get them to do something. You know, this is like the other thing, like, Brian Portnoy, a friend of mine with, shaping wealth. You know, he talks a lot about don't talk about goals, talk about pain, you know, and it calls our anti goals conversations. So people are like, okay. Yeah. Retirement. Like, retirement's out there. It's like way in the future. It sounds like a good idea, but it's not anything you can do right now. So what's the pain? Like, you hate your boss? You hate your commute? You know, if you're gonna get somebody to make change right now, related to this future retirement place? You have to find the pain of right now. And so, you know, try like, as the adviser, you have to understand that dance, you know, between the two, the connection between the here, but also the future. And I think that it can be really fun to do stuff like that and to think about it, like, to think about it in that way. But, you know, this this is the importance of psychology. You know, I it drives me crazy when people call them, like, soft skills, you know. They're like, no. These are, like, human skills. Like, you you will be a better human. You will have better human interactions if you understand the way people think. You're self included. You know, I love to ask advisors You say that having an adviser is so important. Do you have an adviser? They don't. So You know, there's something to think about. And this is not to be mean to advisors, but I wish that they had to sit in that seat, you know, like, when was the last time Russell or you, Joshua sat down and you had to talk about every financial decision that you made? Oh, gosh. Doesn't seem like a fun idea. And yet we, like, I don't understand why my client doesn't wanna talk to me about that. Really? Yep. Like, really you don't understand why they wouldn't wanna talk about that. Okay. That's fantastic. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that there's also the knowing versus versus doing. Right? And that's what we're trying to do is actually get behavioral action. And, know, I I've been thinking about this because I've been thinking, man, you know, maybe I need to get because I'm I'm into fitness and But I need to lose some weight. I've been focused on all these other things. I wanna get refocused something, and maybe I just need a coach or something like that to tell me what to do and hold me to it because Here's the thing. I know enough to do what I'm supposed to do to lose the weight. I wanna I know a lot in the gym. I know a lot of I've done this for many years. Why don't I do the things I'm supposed to do? I do some of them. I do all of them some of the time and some of them all the time, but I need something to kinda hold me to it. I need I I I I mean, that that coaching and that, presence in there of helping me, of of helping someone to get the actual things done. And that's where a lot of it is not always new advice. And I think that we forget that at times as there's always gotta be advice. No. A lot of it is keeping you from making mistakes and holding you accountable to the things you that that you said you were gonna do. The fear is is is a an issue that I think I wanna unpack with you, Sam, because you know, we we tend to think about selling the fear, and you just mentioned it, you know, you know, the pain. Right? Well, pain is associated with fear. And, you know, a lot of A lot of advisors kind of use this volatility in the market because, you know, I was literally hearing advisors say this every day in two thousand and seventeen when when volatility was ridiculously low is with all the volatility in the market. Now. I'm giving you a call so you know, try to get people and and and stir up some pain. Yeah. Loss the version is rough for There you go. Yeah. You start thinking about fear and about pain, but then you I'm also I I would have to think about this in the context of, okay, but you also just talked about I don't wanna overwhelm people and start painstaking and they never wanna see me again. So how should I think about pain if I'm trying to kind of balance this pain and fear of, you know, fear is really the anxiety or expectation of future pain. Right? It's either pain now or the expectation of pain, right, balancing that with, I don't wanna pain stack and do too much of this. What Sure. Where's how do I understand that center ground? I think I think one way to think about it, and I'm actually really glad that you use lord anxiety. So there's There's a difference between stress and anxiety. We use them interchangeably. A lot of times they show up core, you know, co comorbidity. You know, they'd show up together. But they're different. And here's how they're different. People usually see the stress in front of them. Like, some some outside thing will happen. You know, you now have these predicted stock options. They're, like, you know, six months for investing and you're kind of freaked out. You know, some people, this is why we see stress in others and and will stress in some and not in others. Is that more than one person can look at that same situation and say, I know what to do. And when you know what to do, stress doesn't arise, when you don't know what to do, stress does arise. The thing with stress is that if you can get people to the top of the curve but not push them over, they're very motivated to do We like to just take stress and like squash it. You give somebody some stress and give them a list of things to do, they will knock it out. If you create anxiety in someone, people shut down. Anxiety. People are like, I don't wanna talk about that. Don't wanna deal with that. I just wanna look away. You know, I don't feel safe. They're not they're not in due mode. People in with stress are in due mode. People in anxiety, not do mode. Totally shut down. And so if or if they have come to you and said, Hey, this thing is bothering me. They're in due mode. They've done something they've called you. And so it's you don't have to add more to that cake. You know, the cake is baked. Just put some icing on the top, talk about process, ask them like what they've been doing up to this point related to this thing that bothered them, and don't deviate. You know, get them to sign up. Once they're a client and you've worked through, you know, what it's like to whatever problem they came in with, you know, now you can revisit you know, some of the other things that they might wanna go through. And now within this trusted relationship where they know that they can get stuff done, They're more likely to do it, and the anxiety won't necessarily be invoked. So, you know, remember that people cannot kinda like only hold more than seven things in their brain at once. It's kinda like why are our social security numbers and phone numbers are kinda like a particular way? You know, you just can't you can't do that. So and people creating financial plans, I know this because of the research at the KIDS platform. Most financial advisors are creating financial plans with anywhere between twelve to, like, twenty five things in them. Well, I would say that's probably five things too many. You know, especially for that first financial plan. Well, like, don't don't overwhelm. People can only hold so many things in their brain at once. They're typically only really ready to attack a couple of those. And so let those be your focus. If people seem disinterested, if they're like, yeah, I hear you. This seems more important to me. Focus on that. Get something done. You as the advisor might be like, I'm really worried about this. And so do tit for tat. Like, okay. I hear you that this is the most important one for you, but I'm a fiduciary. This is the most important one for me. Can we just agree that we're gonna do these two first? Don't try to do all of them at once and don't show them, like, more than seven at one time. You know, it's just overwhelming for people. You know, this reminds me of a of a referral I got once, and the This is a I'm gonna call her the grandmother because she had three daughters and a granddaughter. And so the the her spouse had passed away several months before, but he had been a big options trader. And he had long dated options, short dated options, and all over. So he'd been pass a couple months. We had all these options before. And so they're looking to report fairly good. They don't understand the options. And, you know, they all think he was brilliant. And so, and, and maybe he was, but the last few months of life that he, you know, he wasn't quite there like he had been before. So you're at the one on the at the at the same time, you don't wanna call the baby ugly because this is his portfolio, and he was a very successful investor for many years. Right, in the last couple of months that he wasn't all there. Right? And so they had talked to someone. They introduced him to advisor several advisors there in a couple of days, and it was this is our process. Here's the thing. Get your financial plan, and it was just I can't sleep at night because they're I don't understand these things and I get online and read about options and I hear about leverage and I hear about this and I hear about that. I don't understand what's in the positions. And finally, I get pitched as the options expert, and I come in. And, yeah, we do all the other stuff, the planning, and all the other things. But it's here's a portfolio that it they feel like it's on fire. And it's, hey, first thing we need to do is I look at these positions, a third of these need to be unwound this week. Few other thing, you know, that that that's it. They're they're on fire. They're on fire. We need we need to fix this. And then, you know, it's, you know, basically just wait up. Hey, here's how we work. We'll fix these positions. You know, we have strategies. We we can talk about what we'll do next, but the the main thing right now is stop the bleeding, stop the problem, fix the positions, some of these positions will probably need to work out of over a couple of months because that's, but that's another story. Here's the paperwork. And set the next meeting and get the get the get the authority to fix these positions, tell them, brief, I'm gonna do it. Next meeting, I get three daughters show up as well. And it's he speaks it. And one of them signs up with me right then, the next month, the other two signed up with me, because as he fixed our problem, and then everything else was, okay, you can you fixed our biggest problem and else can you do? What else do we need? Well, you're gonna need a plan for the future. You're gonna need us to reinvest the money. You're gonna need all these things. They didn't care about any of that stuff. Once I fixed the problem, then it was I was the default I've earned trust. I got it done quickly. And I I honed in on what was most important to them. Right. Right. Yeah. And and I yeah. It's about what's most important to them. Not your process. You know, it's what's most important to them, not your fancy CFA. You know, it's not what's important notebooks. You know, it's what's important to them, not receiving PA, not not a CPA, or CFA, or see other things. You know, like, All that's good. They probably are there because they kinda know what that designation means. You know, they want to talk about problem. And there is a lot of relationship building happens. For when you listen, you know, to what's what's going on, hear their issue, and try to work together to build it. You know, and that doesn't mean at the risk of not being a fiduciary and, you know, looking at things holistically you can do that, but then thinking systematically about how am I gonna deliver this information? What is most impactful? How can I get them started? Is this a plan presentation meeting or am I trying to create a plan engagement meeting? You know, what what am I, like, am I trying to raise their intrinsic motivation to actually implement some of this stuff? Yeah. And, you know, he's navigating one head. Sorry. Oh, I was just saying it's it's it's part of relating this to my story is part of the story was, hey, once we fix this problem, we're gonna be able to slow down. I know this is the most important thing to you. We're gonna get this done. There's gonna be The next conversation is gonna be we're gonna take a deep breath, and we're gonna start our process. We have a process that if you hadn't come to us with the portfolio on fire. We'd have done this a little different. We're gonna take a deep breath and start from the top, and setting those expectations is is very helpful as well. Yeah. They're in do mode. Don't stop the momentum, you know. Yeah. Keep it going. So I I hope that that's I think that that's really important. And it's so it's so hard to think about all these things. Like, I just wanna point put that out there that, like, I've been doing this for a really long time. You know, and I, like, have a job where I get to constantly talk to advisors about what's happening. So, like, if you're listening to this and you're like, I don't know half the crap that lady's talking about. And, like, I'm not very good at asking follow-up questions. And that, you know, that just seems like really intense. Like, it's okay. You know, we can you can start slow. Don't feel overwhelmed. I did not mean to pain stack. Like, there's I I have led you into the very, the very thing you wanted me about. He told you I not the that's not the point of this. Like, I will say that, like, my articles, I really do try to do just, like, one thing. You know, so that it's not painstaking or talk about one client issue, you know, so that it doesn't feel so overwhelming. You know, things like communication skills can be developed in all kinds of ways. And this is the other fun thing about communication skills that, you know, we've kind of alluded to throughout this is that being a good communicator with your clients, you know, bleeds over into being a great communicator with your partner, your friends, your teenage daughters, you know, like, it's it's very, very helpful in life to be a good communicator. And I think that, you know, where you can kinda only, like, flex your tax knowledge, you know, when you're talking to people about tax, like, you can flex communication knowledge anytime you want. I have a good friend of my one of my favorite communication skills is mirroring because it's super easy. Just repeat back what people say. Typically, like, last three words. And you might think this doesn't work. But a friend of mine, her I'm closer to the wife, but her husband is a psychologist, and her husband is a clever dude. And he thinks he's very clever. So he she's going to a party. It's a work party. And he says, you know, I'm just gonna repeat the last three words everybody says tonight. And she's like, please god. Don't do that. Don't don't mind trick people. You know, like, I'm not into it, and he's like, I'm doing it. So he goes to this party. Friend calls me later in the week and she goes, do you know what happened? He he constantly just repeated what people said. Three different people came up to me and told me what a great conversationalist my husband. Love it. People would be like, oh, yeah. I'm going, you know, to Italy and be like, oh my god. Going to Italy. I'm gonna I'm gonna go to Rome and do some stuff. Like, oh my god. Rome, and you're gonna do stuff. Like, people love it, and they don't note it. That you're only saying the last three things. So, like, when you are in a conversation with a client and you're trying to figure out, like, do I say? Like, what was those clever, you know, what was Megan talking about in that? You know, like, what people mean, what people feel? Okay. I'm not gonna be able to do that. Just repeat their last three words. You know, okay. You've got four four zero one case. Okay. Four four zero one case. Tell me about that. Well, you know, I'm feeling kinda confused. Confused. Okay. You know, more about that. Well, you know, I just want, like, more organization in my financial life. Okay. More organization in your financial life. I like that. More about that. What would that feel like? If you don't have to even think, just repeat what they say. People love it because they I might use I might use this for the rest of my life. For the rest of your life after after a bunch of awkward conversations at the fourth of July barbecue, man, I wish we had done this last week. Totally works. People love it. Yeah. I I'm I'm totally trying this. This is great because I'm I'm the absolute worst. It there's a reason I'm not I've never been in sales and I have no problem with sales and never really been, like a customer contact person and and if I had known this little trick, I could have had a completely different career. Yeah. Completely different career. I I can't wait. Yeah. There you go. You just did it. I caught that's the problem now is Yeah. Once you guys watch this. Yeah. Now knows that so now I've now if I try that and somebody's seen this going, I know what you're doing, Russell. And then I I I don't know where to go with that. We need to go back to anything even. Out of the podcast. We're not having out. Yeah. Well Yeah. There there's a certain amount of, you know, I think it it's easy to say art versus science, but I think that a lot of science is sorry. A lot of what we call art is simply science that we poorly understand, that there is something about this that is manageable, understandable, systematic, you know, a framework that we can we can use to go to to to do those Now, I would really enjoyed this conversation. I wanna kind of, summarize a few of the things that we've, we've talked about today and maybe you may have a few final remarks on it. Yeah. I really liked what you kinda talked about with the, you know, understanding how someone's coping with something, not just facts of it, but also the coping. You know, kind of under also the understanding what someone is expecting you in the moment. Don't assume what value you can add to a conversation. That could be, are we brainstorming? Are we just talking through this? Are we actually asking for advice? Right? Is this is this a change for now? I think that that interesting point you made about, you know, I think it was anxiety versus stress. I would have thought of that as anxiety is is the anticipation of future pain while stress is current pain. And I think of that, you know, with my weight lifting background, I've I've I've talked as I I thought when I trained a nephew with this, I said, Hey, this is you feel oh, I'm not afraid. Yes, you are. Say it. I'm afraid. This is what it is. This is what fear feels like. Feel it, accept it, call it what it is. Now we're gonna go get under the bar and do it anyway. We're gonna feel the fear and call it fear. Once you're under there, now you're super you're you're more focused. And when you're just thinking about it, you're not focused. You're scattered because it's anxiety. Anxiety is scattering. That's another thing I think you can do. What you can think is someone in anxiety mode, are they in due mode, like you're calling due mode? To me, due mode is stress. Right? Do and and when you're on you feel like you're under the bar. I'm under the bar. I'm talking about squats. I've got the bar on my back. I'm under stress right now, and that stress is very focusing. And so I wanna get it done. If I'm not at the point where I'm thinking about the future, it's not actually under the stress. It's gonna be hard for me to wanna move forward and get under the bar because you're actually saying the next choice is to actually get under stress. Right now, it's anxiety. Now you're actually pushing me in the in distress. Anxiety is inside. Stress happens from the outside. And so it's like that is why we do get anticipation anxiety for sure. But it it manifests inside. There's nothing that happened out here in the world. It's it's coming from inside of me. And it kinda makes people not wanna do stuff. Awesome. Well, this has been a fantastic conversation. Doctor. Megan Lertz, you can find her on kiteseas dot com. Anything else you wanna promote while you're on the show today, Megan, any of your writings or anything like that? I mean, most, like, almost ninety percent of the things that I write, probably ninety nine percent of the things that I write are on the kitsys dot com platform, and I do webinars and speaking events and like that through through the kitsets dot com platform as well. I mean, you're welcome to come take a class with me at Kansas State or Columbia. It's a lot of fun. Are you on Twitter? Any any such I am on Twitter. It's my name, but my name is spelled kinda weird. It's m e g h a a n l. That's my Twitter. And I'm on LinkedIn. Also, if you it sounds very weird, but literally if you Google me, I'm the only me that comes up there. I've not there's no other Megan lurches with my odd spelling. So you're pretty Nice. That's wonderful. This is I I Are you what about threads? Did you get on threads? It's been around for a day and a half. Well, something that I have a lot of anxiety about in social media. Like, it totally freaks me out. I can't imagine that there are that many people in the world that want to hear what I have to say. Like, I I get that there's a small number, like, maybe, you know, you and Joshua, that, like, are interested in what I have to say, but weirds me out that, like, hundreds of people. If not thousands of people are curious, and I'm like, that's weird. So I it just my introvert ness, like, really to use out strong when it comes to social media. So I feel the same way all the time about social media. And then every so often, I'll see someone and be like, why is anyone care what that person has to say, and they got a million followers. So Right. Yeah. It's very I don't understand. A a lot of that. But I appreciate you for for for being here today, doctor Lertz. Those are tuning in. Like us, follow us, share this. We appreciate your your attendance today. Thanks for being here. Bye everyone.