October 29, 2024 • 27 mins
In our society, where financial comfort doesn’t always translate to true well-being, your clients need more than just a numbers person.
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(00:00):
Welcome to the top advisor marketing podcast brought
to you by ProudMouth.
I'm your host, Matt Halloran.
Being your own loud is not new to
marketing, but the mindset, strategies, and resources to
help you get there are evolving faster than
this industry is keeping up. It is time
to find a new perspective on what works,
why,
(00:21):
and how to move your business forward.
Listen as I interview guests to help you
learn from them how to be your own
Loud. Let's
get to the show.
Hello, and welcome to another top advisor marketing
podcast. I'm your host, Matt Halloran. We have
a repeat guest here with a new book
coming out. Now if you don't know doctor
(00:41):
Crosby, I don't know where you've been living
because he speaks everywhere all the time at
all of the conferences at least that I
go to and then probably about 900 that
I don't. And he's got a new book
coming out called The Soul of Wealth. Now
this is not his first book. He's published
many books before this,
but this book is fundamentally
different.
Not only in my opinion is it just
(01:02):
the whole feeling of everything is different.
The way that it's been organized
fundamentally makes it easier to consume and easier
to implement. Is that a fair statement, doc?
It's a statement that brings me great joy.
I was very thoughtful. I got about 80
pages into writing this book in a more
traditional
format.
My my two previous books have been, whatever,
(01:24):
2250
pages,
20 chapter or excuse me, 12 chapters, 20
pages a piece.
And I wrote about 4 chapters in the
Soul of Wealth with that same format, and
it sucked. Like, I just crumbled it up
and started over
because I
knew it needed something else. And I wanted
to
I wanted to think critically and reexamine
(01:46):
the way that we write and the way
that we consume.
And at the same time, I read a
book by Rick Rubin who could be your
twin,
candidly. I read the book. I know what
book you're talking about. Yeah. And Rick Rubin's
book was a huge inspiration for me, the
creative act. It was I'm a I have
a big job. I have a wife and
3 kids. I try and read every day.
(02:07):
But at the end of the day, I
get to my chair and I'm ready to
read. And let's be honest, a lot of
falling asleep happens.
And I really love Rick Rubin's
just
quick hitters, and I tried to do the
same thing.
Fifty essays quickly distilled,
hit you between the eyes, give you something
to think about and meditate on through the
(02:28):
week. So I it means the world to
me that you enjoyed it.
Achieved, brother. And that's what's so interesting about
this. And we had talked about this previously,
but when I had gotten a copy of
the book, I had just finished The Creative
Back by Rick Rubin, and there was just
this wonderful
continuation
of the feeling. And so I would just
(02:49):
put full disclosure for everybody listening. I was
preparing for the show today because I knew
we're gonna talk about the book. And after
I got a copy of the book, I
finished it on the plane on the way
home.
And I was so excited to give this
to my kids because they really need some
connection,
right, between
what they're working for, how they're working, and
then really how that should help them feel
(03:09):
and how they should really look at their
souls and how they're interacting with
the money that they're making. Because my kids
are finally at 21 are starting to actually
make a little bit of money. And there's
so many things in the book that we're
gonna we're gonna address, but I gave the
book to my son
as God. I'm hoping he gave it to
somebody else because I think that's what all
books do. That's actually what I did with
(03:29):
my copy of The Creative Act. I finished
it. I immediately gave it to somebody. I'm
like, okay. You really need to read this.
Okay. Part of what I think we I
wanna do to level set our audience here
is I wanna talk about the why. Right?
So why did you write we understand why
you wrote it the way that you wrote
it. But
was there, like, a what was the antecedent
(03:51):
to you saying, man, I gotta do this
way? I have always been someone who thinks
a lot about meaning and purpose in life.
In
college, you're a therapist. It's just to shrinks
on here. So you'll be familiar with the
process of picking a theoretical orientation
as a mental health practitioner
and choosing the school of thought that underpins
(04:14):
the way you work with clients.
And for me, the one that always resonated
was Viktor Frankl's school of logotherapy,
which is really rooted in this idea that
rather than being pushed by our past the
way a Freudian might say, here's a combination
of all the bad crap that's happened to
you. Frankl would say, we can be pulled
by our future, and we could be pulled
(04:36):
by our goals and our meaning. And that
was always a very empowering concept to me.
I've been a huge Frankl and Kierkegaard
devotee for a very long time. I think
way more than is healthy about meaning and
purpose in my own life,
but I hadn't figured out how to make
it
work for me professionally.
So the 2 previous books that I had
(04:58):
written were very, candidly, very calculated.
I knew where I wanted to get in
my career.
I needed to put certain messages
out in the world to become well known
enough to get there. And those immensely proud
of both of those books. I stand by
what's in them.
But they were less a passion project
(05:18):
and more of a calculated career step.
This is a passion project.
This is the stuff that I eat, sleep,
and breathe.
And I finally
I think I finally
had enough money in the bank and enough
I had enough money in the bank and
enough of a reputation to say, hey, I'm
gonna I'm gonna do this. Even if it's
(05:40):
even if it's not gonna help me up
any sort of a corporate ladder. Sure.
Dude, you're on the top of that mountain
anyway, brother, which I just think is absolutely
fantastic. And it's you and I have spent
time when we've seen each other talking about
this, but I always make Fritz Perls
philosophy,
which was much more coachy and a little
bit more direct and forthright, which, by the
(06:01):
way, didn't bode well for me being a
therapist. But alright. So the soul of wealth,
there's a couple of things here that I
want to address
so that everybody understands.
1, there is an epidemic of people just
feeling incredibly disconnected and lonely.
And you talk about that. Do you mind
if we start there?
No. It's the perfect place to start, and
(06:22):
it's really a big reason why I wrote
this book. Going back to Frankl paraphrasing Frankl,
he said people today have the means to
live but no meaning to live for.
And that's very true of our world. If
you look back to when the US was
founded,
85%
of the world
(06:43):
was living in poverty
under what would be $2 a day inflation
adjusted for today. Absolutely
backbreaking poverty for most people most of the
time. 85% of the world.
Today, that number is 9%,
which is still 9% too high. That's still
a lot of that's still millions and millions
of people,
(07:04):
and we shouldn't give up on trying to
eradicate poverty and hunger and things. But in
200 years, to have gone from 85%
poverty to 9% poverty,
we now create enough
for everyone on Earth to eat 2,000 calories
a day.
I know look, we had a high profile
military
(07:24):
attack, Iran
on Israel just yesterday. I'm not saying that
there's no conflict or no violence in the
world.
The 20th century is one of the bloodiest
periods in human history, and we've been doing
much better lately.
Domestic
violence is way down
throughout much of the developed world over the
last couple hundred years. So we find ourselves
(07:46):
at this time of, like, incredible human flourishing.
We have enough to eat. We're safe. We're
safe. We're peaceful. We're well fed. We're well
compensated,
and we're absolutely miserable because what has happened
is we have moved up that hierarchy of
needs.
We've got for everyone listening to this podcast.
(08:06):
We've got sort of our safety and shelter
needs met.
So now we start worrying about
meaning,
purpose,
love,
relationship,
legacy.
And what we know is that gen x
and younger,
most people say they are lonely. Most people.
(08:27):
It's 51%
of gen x. It's, like, nearly 3 quarters
of gen z.
And the younger you are, the worse it
gets.
So we have this weird juxtaposition
of enormous
physical
wealth
and psychological
and spiritual impoverishment.
(08:47):
And that's really what the book is written
to address. Is there anything that we can
do to use the wealth to bridge that
gap or get a better understanding of what
true wealth might look like?
When it comes to
advisors. Right? Because this book has
broad applicability
to the world, not just our audience. Let's
(09:08):
bring this back to advisors because
this is what behavioral finance, some of it's
really about is.
And I love when you're talking in the
book
about
what
should be the desired outcome of the achievement
of being wealthy or the ability to retire.
(09:29):
Would you mind taking that and run with
it? Yeah. If you I think I know
where you're going. You tell me if I'm
wrong. But if you think about how we
prepare for retirement,
a lot of times we over index
on one piece of that.
And this will be very familiar to you,
but in the nineties and then through today,
Martin Seligman and others have pioneered this field
(09:51):
of positive psychology, which is less about how
your parents screwed you up and more about
what makes people great, what makes a great
leader, what makes you happy, what makes people
thrive and be joyful.
And he found that there's really these five
things.
And when we're planning for retirement, we basically
(10:12):
over index on 1. The one that we
really over index on is what he calls
positive experiences, which is basically leisure.
So we go, hey. I wanna live at
the beach. You ask the average person, what's
your what do you wanna do? What financially,
what's your retirement goal like?
Retire to a cabin in the mountains or
golf every day or whatever. Hey. Whatever. Sure.
(10:33):
That's one facet,
but there's 4 others. And the 4 others,
one what
one is engagement,
which is deep meaningful work.
K? So when your job is no more,
like, where are you gonna scratch that very
human itch to do meaningful
work?
Relationships
are another one. Meaning is the 4th one.
(10:55):
The working for something bigger than yourself,
spirituality,
religion,
teamwork,
charitable work.
And then the final one is advancement.
We don't want to stagnate. We want to
be getting better. We wanna be growing. We
wanna be learning.
And yet, again, when you go back to
how we prepare for retirement and the needs
(11:15):
that are met in the workplace,
almost every one of these except for leisure
is met in the workplace. You're working with
people. You're part of a team. You're getting
better. You're learning. You're growing.
And then when we retire, it's, oh, okay.
We look. We hit our number. We go
to the beach, and now
we're only ticking 1 of 5 boxes in
(11:36):
terms of joyful,
thriving living.
So we really we've really hyperfixated
on the leisure and the financial
sufficiency
parts of retirement,
and a lot of people die. We see
a spike we see a spike in deaths
after retirement because
4 fifths of people's happiness just falls away.
(11:58):
So it's time for a new it's time
for a new conversation about wealth
and retirement readiness.
I think a lot of advisors want to
get there, doc. I think that's huge. I
remember when I was working with Carson many
moons ago,
we created this thing based off of a
book that he and Steve Sandusky wrote called
Avalanche, which was about true wealth. Right? What
(12:20):
really does wealth mean? And I remember role
playing and helping advisors learn these conversation techniques
just to be able to ask the questions
to initiate the conversation. Dude, that was in
in 2009, 2010.
And now we're
quite a while later. Right? It's a tub's
ticket, brother. And I think there's more and
(12:41):
more advisers who wanna do this. How do
they begin? How do they start switching
their conversations that they're having with their clients,
which is gonna, of course, make them more
money, make them more referable, make have deeper
relationships, sticky relationships, all of the things that
they want from the world of marketing because
some people might be listening to this and
say, god, this is a freaking marketing podcast.
(13:02):
I've got there. It took me 14 minutes
to get there, but I'm there. I'm gonna
ping you on this. Because, again, I think
this is such a fundamental difference maker and
not just the relationship, but the communication
and what this sort of relationship that you're
teaching in this book can do.
Yeah. I'm 100% with you. So first of
all, we have to have eyes to see
(13:23):
it. And I wanna prove this with a
couple of data points.
Accenture did a study a few years ago,
and they asked people, what are you looking
for from your relationship with your financial adviser?
Number one thing is someone who understands
me personally.
Number 2 thing is someone who shares my
values.
And the number 3 thing was someone who
(13:44):
I can hang with socially.
And what is conspicuously
absent is any mention of creating a financial
plan or balancing a portfolio.
It's because that stuff is easy to vet.
There is an assumption that if someone has
letters behind their name or experience or good
reviews or comes to you referred from a
(14:06):
friend, that they can
do the blocking and tackling of their job.
The connection piece, though, is much harder to
find, and so that's what people are looking
for. K? So that's what clients are asking
for. Right? Now let's look at how do
we help clients.
Merrill Lynch did a meta analysis in 2016
(14:27):
of all the ways that advisers add value
to their clients' lives
and seeing, like, every part of an adviser's
value stack.
And the good news for your listeners is
that every pieces every piece of it was
truly additive.
Tax alpha,
product select product selection, asset allocation, all of
(14:48):
it. Like, all of it's additive, but it's
not all equally additive.
The technical stuff, like the 3 I just
mentioned,
they add about 30 to 60 basis points
of value per year.
Behavioral
stuff,
behavioral
coaching,
emotion management,
personality
assessment
(15:08):
was between 85244
basis points per year. When you think about
something like behavioral coaching being 8 times as
valuable dollars and cents as
as
balancing a portfolio,
that's incredible. Like, where should we be spending
our time? Oh, yeah. And what's AI good
(15:29):
at, and what is it not good at
too? Right? This stuff is
going away. And then the final thing is,
why do we get fired?
87%
of the time, it's for a bad relationship.
Only 13% of the time is it for
poor performance.
And, oh, yeah,
the 13% of people that would fire you
for poor performance
(15:50):
kind of stink to work with anyways.
It's what clients are looking for. It's what
benefits clients. It's why clients give referrals, and
it's why you get retained.
And yet
people are still nervous about it because it
feels off label.
It feels off label.
But I'll tell you, at Orion, we have
(16:11):
a tool for measuring wealth in this same
multipart
way that I just talked about, and it
takes 2 minutes. Right? And so it's look.
We're just gonna check-in on your wellness. We're
just gonna check-in on your wellness holistically.
And I think it's an easy conversation to
say,
money touches every part of our lives.
(16:32):
Right? There is no way to have a
conversation about money without having a conversation about
health,
relationships,
and everything else.
And
I think we just have to say that
to our clients in a discovery meeting. Hey.
Look. We're gonna get into a little bit
of personal stuff here. Not in any sort
of voyeuristic way, but simply because money touches
(16:55):
every part of our lives. And I promise
you, this is what people are asking for.
This is what helps people, and this is
what gets you referred.
But this is a huge paradigm shift for
advisors. Right? So all of the things that
they've been studying,
all of the things that they've been hanging
their hats on, my amazing financial planning process
(17:15):
and my rebalancing and all of the again,
the products and services and all of those
sorts of things.
And a lot of people who are drawn
to this industry are drawn to the industry
because of pie charts and bar graphs, Men,
you're telling them that, hey. Look. And I'm
not putting words in your mouth necessarily, but
that's table stakes. This is actually what's of
great value. And I know Orion has that
tool, and I'm sure they will have links
(17:37):
in places for people to go find out
more about how they can utilize that. But
let's do, Brass. If an adviser wants to
implement this, where do they go today to
get the education which in turn will give
them the confidence in order to really initiate
these conversations?
Yeah. It's a great question. So first of
all, not everyone
needs to do this. This is an unpopular
(17:59):
opinion.
But if your
dream in life if you're a CFA whose
greatest joy in life
is constructing the most beautifully crafted alts portfolio
that the world has ever seen, like, that's
fine. You there's a role for you in
an RIA somewhere doing that. So I
(18:20):
that's, like, maybe an unpopular opinion, but I
don't think this is for everyone.
Right? And certainly, you can teach these skills,
but there's a degree to which they're gonna
be more or less comfortable for different people.
So first of all, are you in that
10, 20% of people who really just needs
to be doing
primarily
technical work? Right? The second thing I would
(18:40):
say, assuming you're in that that remaining group,
you have to start with yourself.
Jason Zweig has this great article where he
talks about how we typically use behavioral finance
as a mirror onto excuse me, a window
onto others' behavior,
but it's better used as a mirror onto
our own behavior.
And as well as I do, as someone
(19:02):
who used to be in the trenches with
clients,
they can tell when you've done the work
and when you haven't.
Totally. Absolutely.
You really can only take your clients as
far as you have taken yourself.
And
clients' number one fear
of working with a financial professional is judgment
(19:24):
and derision.
And when you've done your own work and
you've seen how profoundly screwed up and goofy
your own attitudes around money are,
the derision and the judgment fall away
and
you begin to be a new creature. You
begin to be someone that's wholly
different to work with.
(19:45):
Now so that would be that's step 1.
Am I do I wanna do this work?
Step 2, now I need to do my
own work.
And then step 3, I would say, go
seek out a formal go seek out a
formal training program. Right? There's lots of there's
lots of great ones. We at Orion have
50 different courses
that are all free on our Orion Advisor
Academy. Many of them are behaviorally focused. And,
(20:08):
yeah, see free CE, but there's lots of
great ones. There's lots of great ones
out there. And, yeah, I I think you
gotta prepare the soil first though by
by doing your own work.
And in the book, I there's a chapter
where I talk about the power of just
working on yourself.
And we talk about how people who are
(20:29):
in shape make more money. People who go
to therapy make more money. Like, even compared
to
people with similar educational backgrounds, people who go
to therapy make
dramatically more money. It's 10 or 11% more
than people who don't.
And this isn't a high class problem. Like,
this is solid
(20:50):
practical advice
even though maybe it feels a little woo.
I don't think this is, I think this
is the future. And if the future has
a little bit of woo, then, listen, you're
either gonna get on board with it or
you're not. And in my experience and having
so many wonderful discussions with you just hanging
out, you're gonna be left behind.
Right? Because, again, this is what research is
(21:11):
showing that this is and this is why
it's so cool. You really balance something I've
always respected about you. You balance the hardcore
research component of how your brain works, and
then you show the practical aspects of what
this research is really telling us, and then
also giving them actionable items, which I think
the Soul of Wealth just is
just the book for people to go ahead
(21:32):
and find out more about how they can
plug into this. As we wrap up, the
other thing that I wanted to talk about
is so we've talked about the advisor side
of this. Let's talk about the client side
of this. So, yes, we have those three
phases. Right? You have to figure out if
this is who you wanna do, that what
do you wanna do, then you have to
do the work, right, and then you have
to go for training. Now let's talk about
(21:53):
the client component of this. How do we
know are there any
signals that you have found in your research
that will say, oh my god. This is
a client who wants to have this real
relationship with me, or is it honestly what
90%
of people really are looking for? Because you
talk about the basis points component, but I
wonder if there's some research behind how many
(22:16):
clients who are in retirement or approaching retirement
really wanna have this conversation.
So it's interesting because
when you look at morning Morningstar has done
some interesting research on this,
and they ask people what they value in
their advisory
relationships.
And the
very
last,
(22:36):
the least endorsed response
is the behavioral finance one.
It's helps me stay out of my own
way and keeps me from making stupid decisions.
I'm if anyone from Morningstar is listening, I'm
sorry, but I did your research.
So it's interesting to think that the thing
the place where they derive the most benefit
(22:58):
is in some ways the thing that is
least valued.
But there's actually a reason that makes sense.
Right? There's a reason that makes sense because
no one moves to the world thinking of
themselves as helpless and broken and prone to
gas and financially stupid,
even though that's true of all of us
to a greater or lesser extent.
(23:19):
That's not our self-concept.
But if you look at the things that
they value most,
helps me articulate and reach my goals, like,
listens to me. That's behavioral finance too.
So
I analogize this to how I used to
my kids are too old for these shenanigans
now. But when they were little, I used
(23:40):
to hide vegetables
in their
food. It's like you bake some beans into
the brownies. You hide the cover the broccoli
with cheese or whatever you need to do.
And I feel like that's what we have
to do here sometimes. There are certain
firms
who take an overtly
psychological
approach,
(24:00):
and weirdly, I don't love that. Because it's
look. Here comes medicine.
Look. Everyone needs this. People are not asking
for this.
But when people have experienced
someone who listens deeply,
when they've experienced
someone who goes beyond just the sort of
surface y answer you give about your goals
(24:22):
and ambitions,
When they experience what I think is this
true
behavioral
finance next generation,
it feels different and they want it. So
I don't think we need to
begin our discovery meetings with lectures about bias
and be talking to people about how fallible
and broken they are. I think we need
(24:44):
to incorporate
deep empathy,
deep respect, having done our own work into
the process, and I think that is a
process that feels different.
That is a process that's referable.
And I think that's we need to bed
behavioral finance into the fabric of what we're
doing
and not just make this great sort of
obvious show of it. Love it. Alright, brother.
(25:07):
If first off, where can people go get
a copy of the book? Go put some
money in Jeff Bezos pocket at Amazon dot
com. That guy,
hopefully, he can catch a break if you
buy a copy of the soul of no.
Anywhere fine books are sold. Listen, brother. 1,
I wanna thank you very much for giving
me the opportunity to read it. Really is
there I don't think there has been a
book like this in financial services. I'm so
(25:28):
glad that you gave yourself the gift of
writing this, and you then gave that gift
to all of our listeners. And if people
wanna know more about the behavioral tools at
Orion, where do they go there?
Yeah. You can follow me at doctor Daniel
Crosby on LinkedIn. I'm always sharing about it
there. But if you go to orion.com/befi,
(25:48):
b e f I, that will get you
there.
Or the Orion
Advisor Academy
is our CE arm. Free courses on behavioral
finance whether or not you're a client of
ours, so go get some free stuff. And,
of course, everybody will make sure that we
have links. But BeFi, that's the keyword that
you need to remember. If you go ahead
and Google that with doctor Crosby's name, all
sorts of good stuff will happen. Doc, man,
(26:10):
it's always a pleasure. I can't wait to
see you at another conference, but thanks for
being on the show, man. My pleasure. Thank
you. Alright, everybody. Listen. Heart of Education is
a huge component of what we do at
ProudMouth 2. Now we don't have CE academies,
but we have a marketing academy. Right? It's
called the Proudmouth Influence PodRocket Academy. So listen.
Go to the PodRocket Academy if you wanna
know how to do compliant marketing and maybe
infuse some of these behavioral ideas into your
(26:32):
communication so that it does fundamentally show how
different you are than the adviser down the
street, you can do it at podrocketacademy.com.
So for doctor Crosby and all of us
here at Proudmouth, this is Matt Halloran. We'll
see you on the other side of the
light very soon.
Thanks for listening to the Top Advisor Marketing
Podcast brought to you by Proudmouth.
If you wanna know more about how you
can be your own loud, visit us at
(26:53):
proudmouth.com
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Welcome to the top advisor marketing podcast brought
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I'm your host, Matt Halloran.
Being your own loud is not new to
marketing, but the mindset, strategies, and resources to
help you get there are evolving faster than
this industry is keeping up. It is time
to find a new perspective on what works,
why,
(00:21):
and how to move your business forward.
Listen as I interview guests to help you
learn from them how to be your own
Loud. Let's
get to the show.
Hello, and welcome to another top advisor marketing
podcast. I'm your host, Matt Halloran. We have
a repeat guest here with a new book
coming out. Now if you don't know doctor
(00:41):
Crosby, I don't know where you've been living
because he speaks everywhere all the time at
all of the conferences at least that I
go to and then probably about 900 that
I don't. And he's got a new book
coming out called The Soul of Wealth. Now
this is not his first book. He's published
many books before this,
but this book is fundamentally
different.
Not only in my opinion is it just
(01:02):
the whole feeling of everything is different.
The way that it's been organized
fundamentally makes it easier to consume and easier
to implement. Is that a fair statement, doc?
It's a statement that brings me great joy.
I was very thoughtful. I got about 80
pages into writing this book in a more
traditional
format.
My my two previous books have been, whatever,
(01:24):
2250
pages,
20 chapter or excuse me, 12 chapters, 20
pages a piece.
And I wrote about 4 chapters in the
Soul of Wealth with that same format, and
it sucked. Like, I just crumbled it up
and started over
because I
knew it needed something else. And I wanted
to
I wanted to think critically and reexamine
(01:46):
the way that we write and the way
that we consume.
And at the same time, I read a
book by Rick Rubin who could be your
twin,
candidly. I read the book. I know what
book you're talking about. Yeah. And Rick Rubin's
book was a huge inspiration for me, the
creative act. It was I'm a I have
a big job. I have a wife and
3 kids. I try and read every day.
(02:07):
But at the end of the day, I
get to my chair and I'm ready to
read. And let's be honest, a lot of
falling asleep happens.
And I really love Rick Rubin's
just
quick hitters, and I tried to do the
same thing.
Fifty essays quickly distilled,
hit you between the eyes, give you something
to think about and meditate on through the
(02:28):
week. So I it means the world to
me that you enjoyed it.
Achieved, brother. And that's what's so interesting about
this. And we had talked about this previously,
but when I had gotten a copy of
the book, I had just finished The Creative
Back by Rick Rubin, and there was just
this wonderful
continuation
of the feeling. And so I would just
(02:49):
put full disclosure for everybody listening. I was
preparing for the show today because I knew
we're gonna talk about the book. And after
I got a copy of the book, I
finished it on the plane on the way
home.
And I was so excited to give this
to my kids because they really need some
connection,
right, between
what they're working for, how they're working, and
then really how that should help them feel
(03:09):
and how they should really look at their
souls and how they're interacting with
the money that they're making. Because my kids
are finally at 21 are starting to actually
make a little bit of money. And there's
so many things in the book that we're
gonna we're gonna address, but I gave the
book to my son
as God. I'm hoping he gave it to
somebody else because I think that's what all
books do. That's actually what I did with
(03:29):
my copy of The Creative Act. I finished
it. I immediately gave it to somebody. I'm
like, okay. You really need to read this.
Okay. Part of what I think we I
wanna do to level set our audience here
is I wanna talk about the why. Right?
So why did you write we understand why
you wrote it the way that you wrote
it. But
was there, like, a what was the antecedent
(03:51):
to you saying, man, I gotta do this
way? I have always been someone who thinks
a lot about meaning and purpose in life.
In
college, you're a therapist. It's just to shrinks
on here. So you'll be familiar with the
process of picking a theoretical orientation
as a mental health practitioner
and choosing the school of thought that underpins
(04:14):
the way you work with clients.
And for me, the one that always resonated
was Viktor Frankl's school of logotherapy,
which is really rooted in this idea that
rather than being pushed by our past the
way a Freudian might say, here's a combination
of all the bad crap that's happened to
you. Frankl would say, we can be pulled
by our future, and we could be pulled
(04:36):
by our goals and our meaning. And that
was always a very empowering concept to me.
I've been a huge Frankl and Kierkegaard
devotee for a very long time. I think
way more than is healthy about meaning and
purpose in my own life,
but I hadn't figured out how to make
it
work for me professionally.
So the 2 previous books that I had
(04:58):
written were very, candidly, very calculated.
I knew where I wanted to get in
my career.
I needed to put certain messages
out in the world to become well known
enough to get there. And those immensely proud
of both of those books. I stand by
what's in them.
But they were less a passion project
(05:18):
and more of a calculated career step.
This is a passion project.
This is the stuff that I eat, sleep,
and breathe.
And I finally
I think I finally
had enough money in the bank and enough
I had enough money in the bank and
enough of a reputation to say, hey, I'm
gonna I'm gonna do this. Even if it's
(05:40):
even if it's not gonna help me up
any sort of a corporate ladder. Sure.
Dude, you're on the top of that mountain
anyway, brother, which I just think is absolutely
fantastic. And it's you and I have spent
time when we've seen each other talking about
this, but I always make Fritz Perls
philosophy,
which was much more coachy and a little
bit more direct and forthright, which, by the
(06:01):
way, didn't bode well for me being a
therapist. But alright. So the soul of wealth,
there's a couple of things here that I
want to address
so that everybody understands.
1, there is an epidemic of people just
feeling incredibly disconnected and lonely.
And you talk about that. Do you mind
if we start there?
No. It's the perfect place to start, and
(06:22):
it's really a big reason why I wrote
this book. Going back to Frankl paraphrasing Frankl,
he said people today have the means to
live but no meaning to live for.
And that's very true of our world. If
you look back to when the US was
founded,
85%
of the world
(06:43):
was living in poverty
under what would be $2 a day inflation
adjusted for today. Absolutely
backbreaking poverty for most people most of the
time. 85% of the world.
Today, that number is 9%,
which is still 9% too high. That's still
a lot of that's still millions and millions
of people,
(07:04):
and we shouldn't give up on trying to
eradicate poverty and hunger and things. But in
200 years, to have gone from 85%
poverty to 9% poverty,
we now create enough
for everyone on Earth to eat 2,000 calories
a day.
I know look, we had a high profile
military
(07:24):
attack, Iran
on Israel just yesterday. I'm not saying that
there's no conflict or no violence in the
world.
The 20th century is one of the bloodiest
periods in human history, and we've been doing
much better lately.
Domestic
violence is way down
throughout much of the developed world over the
last couple hundred years. So we find ourselves
(07:46):
at this time of, like, incredible human flourishing.
We have enough to eat. We're safe. We're
safe. We're peaceful. We're well fed. We're well
compensated,
and we're absolutely miserable because what has happened
is we have moved up that hierarchy of
needs.
We've got for everyone listening to this podcast.
(08:06):
We've got sort of our safety and shelter
needs met.
So now we start worrying about
meaning,
purpose,
love,
relationship,
legacy.
And what we know is that gen x
and younger,
most people say they are lonely. Most people.
(08:27):
It's 51%
of gen x. It's, like, nearly 3 quarters
of gen z.
And the younger you are, the worse it
gets.
So we have this weird juxtaposition
of enormous
physical
wealth
and psychological
and spiritual impoverishment.
(08:47):
And that's really what the book is written
to address. Is there anything that we can
do to use the wealth to bridge that
gap or get a better understanding of what
true wealth might look like?
When it comes to
advisors. Right? Because this book has
broad applicability
to the world, not just our audience. Let's
(09:08):
bring this back to advisors because
this is what behavioral finance, some of it's
really about is.
And I love when you're talking in the
book
about
what
should be the desired outcome of the achievement
of being wealthy or the ability to retire.
(09:29):
Would you mind taking that and run with
it? Yeah. If you I think I know
where you're going. You tell me if I'm
wrong. But if you think about how we
prepare for retirement,
a lot of times we over index
on one piece of that.
And this will be very familiar to you,
but in the nineties and then through today,
Martin Seligman and others have pioneered this field
(09:51):
of positive psychology, which is less about how
your parents screwed you up and more about
what makes people great, what makes a great
leader, what makes you happy, what makes people
thrive and be joyful.
And he found that there's really these five
things.
And when we're planning for retirement, we basically
(10:12):
over index on 1. The one that we
really over index on is what he calls
positive experiences, which is basically leisure.
So we go, hey. I wanna live at
the beach. You ask the average person, what's
your what do you wanna do? What financially,
what's your retirement goal like?
Retire to a cabin in the mountains or
golf every day or whatever. Hey. Whatever. Sure.
(10:33):
That's one facet,
but there's 4 others. And the 4 others,
one what
one is engagement,
which is deep meaningful work.
K? So when your job is no more,
like, where are you gonna scratch that very
human itch to do meaningful
work?
Relationships
are another one. Meaning is the 4th one.
(10:55):
The working for something bigger than yourself,
spirituality,
religion,
teamwork,
charitable work.
And then the final one is advancement.
We don't want to stagnate. We want to
be getting better. We wanna be growing. We
wanna be learning.
And yet, again, when you go back to
how we prepare for retirement and the needs
(11:15):
that are met in the workplace,
almost every one of these except for leisure
is met in the workplace. You're working with
people. You're part of a team. You're getting
better. You're learning. You're growing.
And then when we retire, it's, oh, okay.
We look. We hit our number. We go
to the beach, and now
we're only ticking 1 of 5 boxes in
(11:36):
terms of joyful,
thriving living.
So we really we've really hyperfixated
on the leisure and the financial
sufficiency
parts of retirement,
and a lot of people die. We see
a spike we see a spike in deaths
after retirement because
4 fifths of people's happiness just falls away.
(11:58):
So it's time for a new it's time
for a new conversation about wealth
and retirement readiness.
I think a lot of advisors want to
get there, doc. I think that's huge. I
remember when I was working with Carson many
moons ago,
we created this thing based off of a
book that he and Steve Sandusky wrote called
Avalanche, which was about true wealth. Right? What
(12:20):
really does wealth mean? And I remember role
playing and helping advisors learn these conversation techniques
just to be able to ask the questions
to initiate the conversation. Dude, that was in
in 2009, 2010.
And now we're
quite a while later. Right? It's a tub's
ticket, brother. And I think there's more and
(12:41):
more advisers who wanna do this. How do
they begin? How do they start switching
their conversations that they're having with their clients,
which is gonna, of course, make them more
money, make them more referable, make have deeper
relationships, sticky relationships, all of the things that
they want from the world of marketing because
some people might be listening to this and
say, god, this is a freaking marketing podcast.
(13:02):
I've got there. It took me 14 minutes
to get there, but I'm there. I'm gonna
ping you on this. Because, again, I think
this is such a fundamental difference maker and
not just the relationship, but the communication
and what this sort of relationship that you're
teaching in this book can do.
Yeah. I'm 100% with you. So first of
all, we have to have eyes to see
(13:23):
it. And I wanna prove this with a
couple of data points.
Accenture did a study a few years ago,
and they asked people, what are you looking
for from your relationship with your financial adviser?
Number one thing is someone who understands
me personally.
Number 2 thing is someone who shares my
values.
And the number 3 thing was someone who
(13:44):
I can hang with socially.
And what is conspicuously
absent is any mention of creating a financial
plan or balancing a portfolio.
It's because that stuff is easy to vet.
There is an assumption that if someone has
letters behind their name or experience or good
reviews or comes to you referred from a
(14:06):
friend, that they can
do the blocking and tackling of their job.
The connection piece, though, is much harder to
find, and so that's what people are looking
for. K? So that's what clients are asking
for. Right? Now let's look at how do
we help clients.
Merrill Lynch did a meta analysis in 2016
(14:27):
of all the ways that advisers add value
to their clients' lives
and seeing, like, every part of an adviser's
value stack.
And the good news for your listeners is
that every pieces every piece of it was
truly additive.
Tax alpha,
product select product selection, asset allocation, all of
(14:48):
it. Like, all of it's additive, but it's
not all equally additive.
The technical stuff, like the 3 I just
mentioned,
they add about 30 to 60 basis points
of value per year.
Behavioral
stuff,
behavioral
coaching,
emotion management,
personality
assessment
(15:08):
was between 85244
basis points per year. When you think about
something like behavioral coaching being 8 times as
valuable dollars and cents as
as
balancing a portfolio,
that's incredible. Like, where should we be spending
our time? Oh, yeah. And what's AI good
(15:29):
at, and what is it not good at
too? Right? This stuff is
going away. And then the final thing is,
why do we get fired?
87%
of the time, it's for a bad relationship.
Only 13% of the time is it for
poor performance.
And, oh, yeah,
the 13% of people that would fire you
for poor performance
(15:50):
kind of stink to work with anyways.
It's what clients are looking for. It's what
benefits clients. It's why clients give referrals, and
it's why you get retained.
And yet
people are still nervous about it because it
feels off label.
It feels off label.
But I'll tell you, at Orion, we have
(16:11):
a tool for measuring wealth in this same
multipart
way that I just talked about, and it
takes 2 minutes. Right? And so it's look.
We're just gonna check-in on your wellness. We're
just gonna check-in on your wellness holistically.
And I think it's an easy conversation to
say,
money touches every part of our lives.
(16:32):
Right? There is no way to have a
conversation about money without having a conversation about
health,
relationships,
and everything else.
And
I think we just have to say that
to our clients in a discovery meeting. Hey.
Look. We're gonna get into a little bit
of personal stuff here. Not in any sort
of voyeuristic way, but simply because money touches
(16:55):
every part of our lives. And I promise
you, this is what people are asking for.
This is what helps people, and this is
what gets you referred.
But this is a huge paradigm shift for
advisors. Right? So all of the things that
they've been studying,
all of the things that they've been hanging
their hats on, my amazing financial planning process
(17:15):
and my rebalancing and all of the again,
the products and services and all of those
sorts of things.
And a lot of people who are drawn
to this industry are drawn to the industry
because of pie charts and bar graphs, Men,
you're telling them that, hey. Look. And I'm
not putting words in your mouth necessarily, but
that's table stakes. This is actually what's of
great value. And I know Orion has that
tool, and I'm sure they will have links
(17:37):
in places for people to go find out
more about how they can utilize that. But
let's do, Brass. If an adviser wants to
implement this, where do they go today to
get the education which in turn will give
them the confidence in order to really initiate
these conversations?
Yeah. It's a great question. So first of
all, not everyone
needs to do this. This is an unpopular
(17:59):
opinion.
But if your
dream in life if you're a CFA whose
greatest joy in life
is constructing the most beautifully crafted alts portfolio
that the world has ever seen, like, that's
fine. You there's a role for you in
an RIA somewhere doing that. So I
(18:20):
that's, like, maybe an unpopular opinion, but I
don't think this is for everyone.
Right? And certainly, you can teach these skills,
but there's a degree to which they're gonna
be more or less comfortable for different people.
So first of all, are you in that
10, 20% of people who really just needs
to be doing
primarily
technical work? Right? The second thing I would
(18:40):
say, assuming you're in that that remaining group,
you have to start with yourself.
Jason Zweig has this great article where he
talks about how we typically use behavioral finance
as a mirror onto excuse me, a window
onto others' behavior,
but it's better used as a mirror onto
our own behavior.
And as well as I do, as someone
(19:02):
who used to be in the trenches with
clients,
they can tell when you've done the work
and when you haven't.
Totally. Absolutely.
You really can only take your clients as
far as you have taken yourself.
And
clients' number one fear
of working with a financial professional is judgment
(19:24):
and derision.
And when you've done your own work and
you've seen how profoundly screwed up and goofy
your own attitudes around money are,
the derision and the judgment fall away
and
you begin to be a new creature. You
begin to be someone that's wholly
different to work with.
(19:45):
Now so that would be that's step 1.
Am I do I wanna do this work?
Step 2, now I need to do my
own work.
And then step 3, I would say, go
seek out a formal go seek out a
formal training program. Right? There's lots of there's
lots of great ones. We at Orion have
50 different courses
that are all free on our Orion Advisor
Academy. Many of them are behaviorally focused. And,
(20:08):
yeah, see free CE, but there's lots of
great ones. There's lots of great ones
out there. And, yeah, I I think you
gotta prepare the soil first though by
by doing your own work.
And in the book, I there's a chapter
where I talk about the power of just
working on yourself.
And we talk about how people who are
(20:29):
in shape make more money. People who go
to therapy make more money. Like, even compared
to
people with similar educational backgrounds, people who go
to therapy make
dramatically more money. It's 10 or 11% more
than people who don't.
And this isn't a high class problem. Like,
this is solid
(20:50):
practical advice
even though maybe it feels a little woo.
I don't think this is, I think this
is the future. And if the future has
a little bit of woo, then, listen, you're
either gonna get on board with it or
you're not. And in my experience and having
so many wonderful discussions with you just hanging
out, you're gonna be left behind.
Right? Because, again, this is what research is
(21:11):
showing that this is and this is why
it's so cool. You really balance something I've
always respected about you. You balance the hardcore
research component of how your brain works, and
then you show the practical aspects of what
this research is really telling us, and then
also giving them actionable items, which I think
the Soul of Wealth just is
just the book for people to go ahead
(21:32):
and find out more about how they can
plug into this. As we wrap up, the
other thing that I wanted to talk about
is so we've talked about the advisor side
of this. Let's talk about the client side
of this. So, yes, we have those three
phases. Right? You have to figure out if
this is who you wanna do, that what
do you wanna do, then you have to
do the work, right, and then you have
to go for training. Now let's talk about
(21:53):
the client component of this. How do we
know are there any
signals that you have found in your research
that will say, oh my god. This is
a client who wants to have this real
relationship with me, or is it honestly what
90%
of people really are looking for? Because you
talk about the basis points component, but I
wonder if there's some research behind how many
(22:16):
clients who are in retirement or approaching retirement
really wanna have this conversation.
So it's interesting because
when you look at morning Morningstar has done
some interesting research on this,
and they ask people what they value in
their advisory
relationships.
And the
very
last,
(22:36):
the least endorsed response
is the behavioral finance one.
It's helps me stay out of my own
way and keeps me from making stupid decisions.
I'm if anyone from Morningstar is listening, I'm
sorry, but I did your research.
So it's interesting to think that the thing
the place where they derive the most benefit
(22:58):
is in some ways the thing that is
least valued.
But there's actually a reason that makes sense.
Right? There's a reason that makes sense because
no one moves to the world thinking of
themselves as helpless and broken and prone to
gas and financially stupid,
even though that's true of all of us
to a greater or lesser extent.
(23:19):
That's not our self-concept.
But if you look at the things that
they value most,
helps me articulate and reach my goals, like,
listens to me. That's behavioral finance too.
So
I analogize this to how I used to
my kids are too old for these shenanigans
now. But when they were little, I used
(23:40):
to hide vegetables
in their
food. It's like you bake some beans into
the brownies. You hide the cover the broccoli
with cheese or whatever you need to do.
And I feel like that's what we have
to do here sometimes. There are certain
firms
who take an overtly
psychological
approach,
(24:00):
and weirdly, I don't love that. Because it's
look. Here comes medicine.
Look. Everyone needs this. People are not asking
for this.
But when people have experienced
someone who listens deeply,
when they've experienced
someone who goes beyond just the sort of
surface y answer you give about your goals
(24:22):
and ambitions,
When they experience what I think is this
true
behavioral
finance next generation,
it feels different and they want it. So
I don't think we need to
begin our discovery meetings with lectures about bias
and be talking to people about how fallible
and broken they are. I think we need
(24:44):
to incorporate
deep empathy,
deep respect, having done our own work into
the process, and I think that is a
process that feels different.
That is a process that's referable.
And I think that's we need to bed
behavioral finance into the fabric of what we're
doing
and not just make this great sort of
obvious show of it. Love it. Alright, brother.
(25:07):
If first off, where can people go get
a copy of the book? Go put some
money in Jeff Bezos pocket at Amazon dot
com. That guy,
hopefully, he can catch a break if you
buy a copy of the soul of no.
Anywhere fine books are sold. Listen, brother. 1,
I wanna thank you very much for giving
me the opportunity to read it. Really is
there I don't think there has been a
book like this in financial services. I'm so
(25:28):
glad that you gave yourself the gift of
writing this, and you then gave that gift
to all of our listeners. And if people
wanna know more about the behavioral tools at
Orion, where do they go there?
Yeah. You can follow me at doctor Daniel
Crosby on LinkedIn. I'm always sharing about it
there. But if you go to orion.com/befi,
(25:48):
b e f I, that will get you
there.
Or the Orion
Advisor Academy
is our CE arm. Free courses on behavioral
finance whether or not you're a client of
ours, so go get some free stuff. And,
of course, everybody will make sure that we
have links. But BeFi, that's the keyword that
you need to remember. If you go ahead
and Google that with doctor Crosby's name, all
sorts of good stuff will happen. Doc, man,
(26:10):
it's always a pleasure. I can't wait to
see you at another conference, but thanks for
being on the show, man. My pleasure. Thank
you. Alright, everybody. Listen. Heart of Education is
a huge component of what we do at
ProudMouth 2. Now we don't have CE academies,
but we have a marketing academy. Right? It's
called the Proudmouth Influence PodRocket Academy. So listen.
Go to the PodRocket Academy if you wanna
know how to do compliant marketing and maybe
infuse some of these behavioral ideas into your
(26:32):
communication so that it does fundamentally show how
different you are than the adviser down the
street, you can do it at podrocketacademy.com.
So for doctor Crosby and all of us
here at Proudmouth, this is Matt Halloran. We'll
see you on the other side of the
light very soon.
Thanks for listening to the Top Advisor Marketing
Podcast brought to you by Proudmouth.
If you wanna know more about how you
can be your own loud, visit us at
(26:53):
proudmouth.com
and sign up for the PodRocket Academy.
Through courses and office hours led by a
professional podcast producers and digital marketers, you will
learn everything you need to know to become
the trusted subject matter expert you were meant
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