February 24, 2025 • 40 mins
In this special episode of Ditch the Suits, Travis and Steve break down the results of a recent survey that asked 1,000 investors working with financial advisors: What matters more—trust or performance?
Should it be just one thing or a combination? Don’t you deserve to work with someone who you can both trust not to rip you off and expect performance from? Join us as we challenge the status quo and discuss why clients should raise their expectations.
Key takeaways from the survey:
🔹 Why 72% of investors prioritize trust over performance
🔹 How proactive communication and a clear financial strategy build confidence
🔹 The top reasons clients leave their advisors—and how to avoid the same mistakes
📢 We Want Your Input! Take our quick two-question survey here and tell us what’s most important to YOU when choosing a financial advisor.
🎧 Tune in now and start getting the most from your money and life!
____________________________________________________
We'd love your input. Take our quick survey at https://forms.office.com/r/837zquxdET
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Thanks to our sponsor, S.E.E.D. Planning Group! S.E.E.D. is a fee-only financial planning firm with a fiduciary obligation to put your best interest first. Schedule your free discovery meeting at www.seedpg.com
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About Your Co-Hosts:
Travis Maus has been in financial services for over fifteen years. He is a Senior Wealth Manager and Chief Executive Officer at S.E.E.D. Planning Group. Travis also hosts the Unleashing Leadership Podcast, where he dissects some of his favorite books on leadership and how you can apply it to your business or life.
Steve Campbell has over a decade of industry experience and is a Senior Marketing Director at S.E.E.D. Planning Group. Steve also hosts the One Big Thing Podcast, an interview-style show meant to inspire and encourage 30 and 40-year-olds going through difficult seasons of navigating marriage, raising kids, and growing personally.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Foreign.
Welcome to Ditch the Suitspodcast, where we share insights
nobody in the financialservices industry wants you to know
about.
We're here to help you get themost from your money in life.
So buckle up and welcome toDitch the Suits.
(00:20):
It's time.
This is the first time we'vebeen together in a room.
Hi.
Oh, here we are.
Yeah.
First recording in three, four years.
Four plus years.
How long ago was it?
Yeah, January 2021.
Recording the same room.
Welcome to our new studio.
This is exciting today.
Very exciting.
Yeah, it should be a littlebit more fun.
Normally we're yelling at eachother through a wall.
Yeah.
It's pretty hard tocommunicate with a co host when you
(00:42):
can't see them and, you know,there's like no visual.
I'm just going to jump in.
Are you going to jump in?
So we've survived this farfour years in, you know, getting
to this point, but now beingin the same room, we actually get
to interact.
Well, the other thing is nice too.
There's normally like a lag onour Internet.
So you're like over heretalking, I'm over there trying to
hear what say, and we can'treally figure out if we're talking.
It's like a bad dubbedEuropean movie.
(01:03):
But we figured it out now.
Yeah, just like that.
Just like that.
All right, well, I guess wegot to get started today.
So we're going to talk aboutthe state of the financial industry.
We've got a survey that wewere looking at online, and one of
the things that we want to dois bring perspective about how the
financial industry works.
What are other clientsthinking about or other people out
(01:24):
in the community who usefinancial advisors?
What are they thinking about?
Right.
And kind of what are sometakeaways from that and maybe even
from a perspective standpoint,what can our listeners take to say,
how do I better engage withfinancial advisors?
And maybe what should I belooking for?
Or what are the pitfalls?
So we've got this survey andit talks about trust and performance
(01:45):
as a top quality that peopleare looking for in a financial advisor.
And the question is, forpeople listening, is it trust, is
it performance, or is itsomething completely different?
Yep.
And we'll go through thesurvey kind of what it says.
We'll talk about where thesurvey comes from and everything.
But my question was too, goingthrough the survey was, does it just
(02:06):
have to be one thing?
Does it have to be a winner orloser here?
Or could there be likemultiple things that people are actually
looking at?
A financial advisor saying,this is really?
Why?
I want to work with afinancial advisor.
This is what's reallyimportant to me.
And like, for example, don'tyou think that you deserve to work
with somebody that you canboth trust and who performs well?
(02:27):
Like if you go to a doctor,let's say you're gonna go to a surgeon,
you're gonna have heartsurgery and you really trust a heart
surgeon, but they're reallynot a good surgeon.
Yeah, that's a little bit of a concern.
Or they're a really goodsurgeon, but you can't trust them
because sometimes they operateon like, you know, different parts
of you that you didn't likeactually ask them to operate on.
I know it's funny, but still,it's like, shouldn't you be able
(02:47):
to have trust and performance?
Have your cake and eat it too.
I don't know why we have to,you know, shortchange ourselves.
So I think through this we'regoing to talk about a paradigm shift
a little bit from, you know,you can, I think you can expect more
than just one or the other.
But we want to look at whatmaybe the general market is saying
and maybe what's trying toshape and drive the industry.
(03:10):
So welcome to our discussionand hopefully we're going to help
our listeners raise theirexpectations a little bit.
Yeah, and I always like, Imean, this is a brand new series
today, so welcome in to Ditchthe Suits.
I'm Steve Campbell, seniormarketing director at Seed Planning
Group.
And for the first time in thesame room we got Travis Moss, our
CEO at.
He's the one with the hair.
Yeah, the one with the hair.
In case this is your firsttime seeing us in four years, this
(03:31):
is the differentiation.
But for the other guy.
I think they just call me theother guy.
Yeah, that's what's in theshow credits.
But Seed is a fee onlyfinancial planning firm.
So we have a fiduciaryobligation to put our clients best
interests first.
And the show has been fouryears of us bringing our experiences
day to day what we're seeingday in, day out to help you as a
listener really get the mostfrom your money in life.
(03:52):
And this is going to be a funone because it's a brand new series.
So if you're brand new toditch the Suits, Travis does a really
nice job of coming up withtopics and we give you series one
episode at a time, really digestible.
And these are always fun onesbecause this is not necessarily our
own data.
This is what the Internet andindividuals are saying.
And we're just going to kindof extrapolate it a little bit.
Like, what does this actuallymean for you as a listener?
(04:12):
Does it apply to you?
And we got some cool stuffwe're going to put in the show notes.
So make sure you pay attentionto those, those links for where these
surveys are as well as maybeour own survey because we'd like
some information from you tooas well.
Yeah, we want some feedback.
Yeah, yeah.
And I think this is going tobe more fun.
I think it's a lot moreinteractive being able to sit next
to you and with this beautifulfake fern between us.
Like the visual is really good.
(04:35):
I think the energy is really good.
So we should have a little bitof fun today.
Yeah.
And this is just the beginning.
So let's go.
Let's pause and hear a wordfrom our sponsor.
This episode is brought to youby the One Big Thing podcast.
If you're in the thick of lifeas a parent or a spouse and just
trying to grow as a person,then you won't want to miss this
show.
Hosted by Steve Campbell, theOne Big Thing is an interview style
(04:57):
podcast where he brings youguests from all walks of life.
Picture professional athletes,influencers, business owners, and
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Each episode will bring you asa listener, a life hack or a way
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Listen to the One Big Thingpodcast and all major podcast platforms
(05:19):
today.
So Travis got this survey,trust her performance.
And you know, we get callersall the time who really don't understand
how our industry works.
And you've done a really nicejob of trying to address the industry,
help people understand that.
Unfortunately it is a hugemarketing machine.
You know, story based sellingis what keeps people in.
(05:40):
But now you got individuals,they're on podcasts because they
care about their money, theycare about their family, they want
to make good decisions.
And so to have a largerconversation around, really what's
more important to you?
Is it trust or performance?
And why do you have to giveaway one, maybe not to have the other?
So talk to us about theimportance of why this episode matters.
Well, it's hard work.
I think if you want goodresults in anything, it's hard work.
(06:03):
Right.
We were picking on doctors there.
If you want good results withyour medical, you need to go find
the right doctors.
If you go to the dentist or aneye doctor, if you go to an attorney,
if you go to an accountant, ifyou, I mean, how many people will
interview more than oneroofer, you know, and get more than
one quote, you know, or somebody.
They're gonna invite somebodyinto the house to babysit your kids.
You know, I think withfinancial planning and investments
(06:25):
and stuff, we just want it tobe easy.
Cause it's confusing and theindustry does everything I think
it can to make it even moreconfusing because like hey look,
if you can't figure it out,you have to hire us.
Right.
And I think people should hirepeople because maybe they can't figure
it out but also becausethere's a big time commitment for
it and they're like look, Icould properly figure it out.
I could probably make it mysecond job, but I don't want to.
(06:46):
I'll go like live my life andhave fun.
I want my money working for meand I don't want to have to run everything.
That's a better reason thanfeeling like oh, I'm just helpless
because they say I'm helplessand so I need to hire somebody.
And I think that that gets atthe whole thing between trust and
performance.
So we have this article thatwas written on wealthmanagement.com
so that's just somehow I goton that subscribe to that and I get
(07:10):
these articles every day fromwealth Management and this one happened
to be titled Investors ValueTrust in Advisors more than performance
and it's from January of thisyear so this is kind of cool.
Their conclusion from thesurvey is that trust is the most
important thing.
I think the survey says a lotmore than that but.
(07:30):
But it definitely kind of likethat's the end result.
I think it's maybe a littlebit of a guided survey but.
But it's certainly somethingto talk about because the financial
industry, if you Google leasttrusted industries, I think politicians
are probably first, weatherpeople probably second and financial
advisors might be thirdsomewhere on there.
You know what I think peopletrust car salesmen sometimes more
(07:53):
than they trust investment people.
Sad state of affairs.
Yeah.
You know used car sales, right?
Yeah.
So this survey was conductedby Cap and Tel I no idea what what
this company is.
I didn't, I didn't dig intothe behind the scenes on the survey.
Yep.
I just think that the talkingpoints from the survey are at least
(08:14):
worth discussing which is abusiness to business fintech company.
You and they use logica logicaI guess L I G I C a research to collect
a survey from August toSeptember last year.
So they reached out to athousand investors and they said
a thousand investors, give usyour opinions.
In order to qualify for thesurvey you had to have more than
(08:36):
$50,000 of investable assetsand also work with a financial advisor.
So they wanted to know peoplewho are actually engaged with a financial
advisor, not people who arehypothetical about it.
A couple of things that Iwould say there.
First and foremost, $50,000investable assets, probably not enough
(08:59):
assets unless you understandthe demographics of the underlying
group to really, you know, usethis as a, as an authority.
And what I mean by that is ifanybody's ever played like Texas
Hold'em on the weekend withtheir friends, and if it's a $20
buy in, people do wacky stuff, right?
They don't really care.
It's only 20, blah, blah, blah.
(09:21):
In the investing world,$50,000, although it's your money
and it's a lot of money to youin the investing world.
I mean, that doesn't even meetthe minimums for a lot of firms.
So those folks maybe arelimited in options or limited in
experience and maybe not as interested.
A lot of times we'll haveretirement investors that are a bit
(09:44):
older or a bit younger andthey've accumulated some retirement
monies in a 401 plan.
It's kind of like found moneyto them.
It's not that important yet.
So they don't really have likewhatever happens to it, happens to
it.
And So I think $50,000, if youdid a poll with investors that had
a million dollars performance,is probably gonna be a little bit
higher.
Right.
(10:05):
And they're gonna approach thetrust part a little bit differently.
I think when you have lessmoney and you're so reliant on it,
or you just, you don't wannahave to pay attention, maybe trust
is a little bit more of an issue.
Well, and I find that thethree factors are fascinating.
The thousand investors, Imean, that's a pretty roundabout
(10:27):
number, right?
It's not like you went out andinterviewed 50 people and got them,
but 50,000 like you said.
Okay, is that really avaluable number to start with?
And then even just you and Ihave talked about the word financial
advisor.
What does that mean to you?
Because we just had Jess Blakeon, she crushed four episodes talking
about a real financial advisor.
A real financial advisor, nota so.
Called a real one.
(10:47):
A real planner who hascredentials next to her name.
And we talked about you're acertified trust and fiduciary advisor.
To us, that's awesome.
But to you as a consumer,like, what does that mean to you?
And when you see cfp, when yousee some of these designations, does
that really mean that there'smore professionalism or did they
Just study really hard, cramfirst continuing ed and pass an exam
so they could use it.
(11:08):
You can be a CFP and be aninsurance agent.
Right.
And so when you say financialadvisor, you get insurance agents,
you got brokers, people atbanks, registered representative,
we've done episodes in the past.
Registered representatives,you've got investment advisor representatives,
you got captive people, you'vegot people can do whatever.
You got fee only, you got feebased, which is just a joke of a
term.
(11:29):
And then you got commission advisors.
So you've got like all theseso called financial advisors.
And a lot of them are justproduct or program salespeople.
And so when I go out and I askyou know, a thousand people with
$50,000 of assets who have afinancial advisor, I probably ought
to also categorize it and saythese are a thousand people that
(11:51):
work with insurance agen astheir primary advisor.
Or these are a thousand peoplethat work with, you know, brokers
as their primary advisor orfee only planners as their primary
primary advisor.
I think that you'd probablyget some, some more variation in
the answers here.
Yeah, I'd also be curious toobecause again, talking with people
for the first time.
Callers love connecting withyou guys.
(12:12):
Sometimes people even thinkthey're 401k providers.
They're financial advisor.
Like I got a guy and it's justthe guy everyone else has at your
job that gives you 15 minutesto sit down in the lunch cafeteria.
I got a guy we're going tobring on later.
This, I didn't tell you aboutthat yet, but I got a guy who's gonna,
who was one of those guys.
Breaking news.
He was one of those guys.
He used to go into thelunchrooms and work with people.
(12:32):
Now he's a full fledgedfinancial planner.
Oh, I, I know who you're.
Yeah, I'm drinking what you're saying.
Yeah, we signed him up today.
It was a big, it was a big deal.
He didn't have a choice.
He didn't have a choice.
No, he did, he did.
It wasn't much of a choice.
But, but even just we asked him.
What day, even just thatsurvey, it's great, the number, it's
cool to know you have abaseline figure.
(12:52):
So a thousand people gottahave $50,000 and then they claim
that they have a financial advisor.
And it's like even two, youget a call from a third party logica
and it's like, do you have afinancial advisor?
I wonder how many people arelike crap.
Yes I do.
And it's like, do you really.
So the term financial advisorto could be my kid.
So called in just, just as apoint, because we got new listeners.
(13:13):
I love the idea that you saidfee based.
What a, what a ridiculous word.
And I, I sometimes correctpeople when they say, yeah, seeds,
fee based.
And I say, no, we're not,we're not.
We're fee only.
And it's never to be demeaningto individuals, but I want them to
really understand that when wesay fee only, it means our people
are salaried, no sales.
The commissions, they aren't there.
Fee based means you canoperate in one of two ways.
(13:34):
Hybrid, flat fee.
And it's very confusing for individuals.
So I know we're picking up alot of new listeners today.
The words matter.
And I think that's reallyimportant because when it's overwhelming,
it's easy to go, yeah, yeah, Igot it.
But the words really, reallydo matter.
And we've recorded, we'vewritten blogs about it.
Understanding termin and whatyou're getting into is really the
(13:55):
baseline start for most people.
They got to understand.
So let's go back to the survey.
72% of people, their numberone thing with financial advisors,
they want somebody they can trust.
So 72%, it's like almost threeout of four.
I thought that wasinteresting, especially because of
some of the other answers.
39% said that to get trust,when I see a proven track record,
(14:20):
which is kind of funny.
So they want to make sure thatthere's performance there in order
to earn the trust.
39% are saying thatperformance is part of the trust
equation.
That means 61% of people arebasically saying, I'm not worried
(14:40):
about performance.
I just want to make sure youdon't steal my money from me.
That's like, as an industry,that's appalling.
It's absolutely appalling thatmore people are worried about being
robbed or ripped off than theyare about whether or not they actually
get any performance, which isjust another interesting thing.
Like, how do you gauge trust?
(15:02):
I trust you because I like you.
We go golfing together, we goto church together or something like
that.
And if I'm not performing butI'm kind of presenting myself as
though I'm performing, isn'tthat undermining trust?
So, like, this is where I'mgoing with this.
I really think that trust andperformance have to walk together,
not separate.
(15:22):
31% said that both equippingthem with knowledge to make informed
financial decisions andpersonalized advice could help them
develop trust.
So at Least a third of thepeople out there are saying, look,
if you could actually be afinancial planner and educate me
and army with knowledge sothat I better understand my financial
situation, I'm going to trustyou more.
(15:43):
So you've got 39% of peoplesay, if you have a track record,
I'm going to appreciate that.
And then 31% of people say, ifyou could educate me or help me understand
things better, I'm going totrust you more.
Why isn't that number higher?
Why aren't more people saying,I want to see performance and you
better educate me, you betterhelp me.
I'm hiring you to help me, notsell me stuff.
(16:06):
Yeah.
And you and I have talked about.
The word trust is fascinatingbecause there's layers to saying
the word trust.
If you come to me as yourfinancial advisor and say, hey, what
do I do with my taxes?
And you go, travis, sorry, Ican't give you tax advice.
Is trust being establishedthat I acknowledged I can't give
you tax advice?
You know what I mean?
Like with individuals, arethey being told by financial professionals
(16:29):
what they can and can't do?
So that's establishing trust.
But it may be that aprofessional is also not giving the
full value or getting into planning.
And so the word trust is fascinating.
Is it just that I know you'renot gonna steal my money?
Is that trust?
Okay, that's fine.
But what is also not being discussed?
Is it being forthright?
Is it communication that'sbuilding trust?
(16:50):
There's a lot of moving factors.
Well, how do you.
If you wanna trust somebody?
Is it, this person has a tonof confidence.
This person went to Ivy League.
This person has a cfp.
This person looks right, right?
They're wearing the right suitor the right clothes, are very clean
looking.
They look like they've gottheir stuff together.
How do you actually get trust?
We've talked about.
We did an episode years agowhere we gave out questions to ask
(17:13):
your financial advisor.
And people still call up andask for that.
You know, what was it?
The 13 questions ask yourfinancial advisor or ask somebody
when you're interviewing themto be your financial advisor.
Like, how do you establishthat you trust somebody outside of
the superficial?
Right?
Like, I want more than your credential.
I want to know more than your credential.
(17:34):
There's plenty of people outthere with credentials that suck
at what they do in real life.
They're book smart, they'restreet dumb, right?
And when you're doingfinancial planning, you actually
need street smart because yourlife doesn't happen the way the book
says your life happens by allthe chance and all those strange
turns that not only arehappening to you, but everybody in
(17:57):
your life.
And books can't cover all of that.
And so how do you apply it?
That's the art of financial planning.
So I want somebody who's.
I need to interview them andreally, really understand.
Is there death behind thesales pitch?
Right.
Is there death behind.
It's like, you can't judge abook by the COVID but it's very easy
(18:17):
to judge a book by a cover inthis space.
Well, and I could just.
Okay, so we're talking money.
Maybe it's overwhelming.
Like, what are you guystalking about?
I got four kids, right?
If I go hire a babysitter, ifbaseline trust is.
I trust when I come home,these kids are still gonna be here.
Like, is that the baselinethat I'm paying a babysitter?
Or is it like, if I come home,I'm gonna know you gave them a bath,
you fed them good stuff.
(18:37):
They didn't sit in front of a tv.
Like, we understand in thenatural sense when we hire individuals
what we're looking for.
But I think sometimes when itcomes to money and finance, it's
like, I don't understand it,so I want to avoid it.
Terminology is what it comesout to be.
You know, we were getting into a.
We're doing some consultingfor a foundation, and they have a
advisor that they work with.
(18:58):
We help them kind ofunderstand what that advisor is doing
for them.
And, you know, the otheradvisor's using these big words,
and they're just flat outtwisting things, and we're like,
that's not what that means.
This is what it actually means.
That's salesmanship.
There's some reason they'redoing that.
Don't know why, but there'ssome reason.
They're explaining it in acertain way, and the client's smart
(19:19):
enough to pick up on it.
They don't know how tonecessarily decipher it.
Or they're like, they do thisfor a living.
They must be right.
They're a big multibilliondollar firm, but at the end of the
day, they're just trying tocollect and retain assets, and they're
using all kinds of salesgimmicks to try to do it.
Playing with their verbiage.
So back to our survey, though.
50% said that investmentexperience is important.
(19:41):
So let me get this straight.
You're going for financialadvice to somebody which is going
to be heavily influenced byhow you invest your money.
And people do this all the time.
My financial advisors and do investments.
I, you know, I just go and getindex funds.
Because he says nobody can,you know, predict investments and
stuff.
Then he can't give you adviceon anything those investments are
(20:01):
going to touch.
So if he's trying to do aprojection and he projects you at
8 and a half percent and hedoesn't know anything about investments,
how did he know that?
8 and a half percent with theright percentage to use, based on
how you're investing.
It's a very interesting thing.
You're getting financialadvice now.
It doesn't mean you have tohave an investment guru.
I think there's a differencebetween somebody who's in the weeds
(20:23):
on portfolio management versussomebody who understands diversification,
correlation, stuff like that.
Not the candidates.
Modern portfolio theory.
You're supposed to have fivedifferent mutual funds.
Look at my pie chart stuff.
Actual correlation andunderstanding how things move based
on causation.
And when there's no causation,when it's just simply, completely
(20:47):
uncorrelated kind of eventsthat are happening or performance
based on the events that are happening.
You need people who understandinvestments better and aren't just
trying to sell you, becausethat was a wholesaler that took them
out to lunch or something,which is very, very common for the
industry.
So it struck me that 50% ofpeople are like, investment experience
is important.
Should be 100% or even justthe world you and I came from that
(21:09):
we were taught.
I manage the managers.
Right.
You remember that?
It was like, I'm yourrelationship person, and I get to
help and pick what mutualfunds we use and what managers.
And I know when we should getrid of them.
So when you say investmentperformance, if you're always saying
it's somebody else's fault,how are you also making decisions
in that?
So it's a pretty interesting.
Only 50% view investmentexperience as important.
(21:32):
Okay.
And I just butchered the wholecorrelation diversification part.
I trip over the.
It's fine.
We're four years in.
People are forgiving.
They're.
Yeah.
At this point, they're used to it.
For me, 46% said that theywanted the bill.
Their advisor to have theability to look at the whole financial
picture.
And what does that even mean?
So you.
So let's flip this over.
Because a lot of people areworking with an investment advisor,
(21:52):
not a financial planner.
Yeah, Right.
Or an insurance advisor.
So you got somebody who'sselling you investments or insurance
products.
Mm.
And 46% is saying, I'd reallylike Somebody who looks at the whole
picture.
You are buying investmentproducts or insurance products, and
then you're trying to figureout the financial plan that makes
them work.
(22:14):
You should have the financialplan first, and then you find the
investments that fit thefinancial plan.
The financial plan is yourlife, right?
So you're giving somebody elseyour money and then saying, tell
me how to live my life.
You should be figuring out howto live your life and then telling
somebody else, here's my money.
Make it happen.
We have a backwards.
It's the inverse.
(22:34):
What a novel idea.
Well, and even too, the wholefinancial picture, if your financial
planner or advisor, whoeveryou use, is just helping you aggregate
accounts onto one platform soyou can see your 401k and your IRA,
that's not looking at thewhole picture from a financial planning
standpoint, that's justpulling in data.
And so it's interesting.
(22:55):
When 46 or whatever the numberis, 46, say the whole financial picture,
like, what does that actuallymean in the realm of planning, you
know?
Well, we know what it meansbecause people come in, they're like,
yeah, I mean, we had a clientone time, they came in, they were
paying $50,000 a year to thisfinancial advisor, and they had CFPs
and attorneys and CPAs onstaff and an investment guru.
(23:17):
And they had never beenthrough financial planning.
I mean, like, we put togethera financial plan, they're like, yeah,
they kind of did this when wefirst started working with them years
ago, and they never revisited it.
It's like, you're not.
You're paying a lot of moneyfor somebody to basically run a generic
portfolio for you.
Or even just the stuff we justwent through with Jess for four episodes.
(23:39):
You say tax planning, people go.
People do that?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Financial planners do that, orestate planning.
So really interesting.
Go through some of these othernumbers because I think they're pretty
enlightening, too.
Yeah.
The other one, I think thatwas really important on this particular
list was 34% said that theywanted their advisor to have the
ability to explain theirapproach to managing client finances.
(24:01):
That's a must for everybody, right?
Like, you're going to watch my kids.
What's your approach if one ofthem swallows a penny?
Like, what do you do?
Right.
Or what's your approach if oneof them falls on, hits their head?
Like, you want to know these things.
You want to know that theperson's going to be competent, is
not going to panic and justleave them.
Right.
(24:21):
They're going to actually dealwith whatever the problem is.
But 34% said that they wouldlove it if their advisor could explain
their approach to managingclient finances.
You are hiring somebody tomanage your finances when you buy
investments from somebody.
So let's say you don't dofinancial planning, because a lot
of people, I don't needfinancial planning.
But you give your money intoan investment, you are turning your
(24:42):
money over to a company to runit for you.
You really owe it to yourselfto ask that company or that salesperson
or that person in charge.
I want to know what yourapproach is to handling my finances.
I want to know what I can holdyou accountable.
What are you specifically responsible?
I want a black and white in writing.
I want to understand what yousee your job is and where my job
(25:07):
is.
Where's this line crossedbetween it being my fault or your
fault?
You know, however this thingplays out, because you know what?
A good advisor should be goodwith that, hey, this is the line.
I think we're doing such agreat job, and if we do such a great
job, then I can come to youand say, hey, you want to do more
of this, right?
But if this is the line andwe're not doing a bad job, you don't
want them saying, oh, that'syour fault.
(25:28):
I had a client one time whohired us.
They said, well, I went to myadvisor and I asked them why we weren't
making more money.
And the advisor says, well,we'll make you more aggressive.
The underlying, they were inmutual funds.
The underlying funds were inthe bottom 10 percentile of the industry,
(25:48):
of the peer groups.
I mean, like, every single oneof them, it wasn't that they needed
to be more aggressive.
It's that they had some of theworst mutual funds out there that
you could possibly buy.
Pick better funds.
And I think this one is interesting.
Next, it says 23% saidproactive communication.
And again, I think if we goback to the original data, there's
1,000 people.
So just looking at thenumbers, you hear 23%, it's like,
(26:10):
oh, what does that mean?
That means 230 out of 1,000people said that they want their
advisor to be polite.
Hey, Travis, it's Steve.
I was thinking of you.
Hey, there's a couple of moveswe want to make before year end.
And it's like, oh, I findvalue in that.
What does the other group ofpeople want?
You go back to the investment number.
Only 500 people are asconcerned about investment experience.
Or 720 of a thousand said, Iwant someone I can trust.
(26:33):
So these numbers, when youtake 1,000 people, almost half the
group.
There's some big holes andit's like, what are we signing up
for?
But still, what is trust?
Trust to me is proactive communication.
Trust to me as you're lookingat the big picture.
Trust to me is that youactually know what you're doing.
All of these things are a partof trust.
You should not say, well, youknow, I trust them because so and
so told me I should trust them.
(26:54):
So it doesn't matter if you'renot getting performance or if you're
getting things that don't jivewith your life.
You can go to your planner andsay, we need to get these in line
or I have to fire you.
We have to make a change.
If you've been in charge ofanybody at work, or if you've had
a babysitter, or if you hiredsomebody to build your porch, you
(27:15):
can fire them if they do a bad job.
And it's the same thing withyour financial advisors.
Look, I expect to be able totrust you.
Don't do things that run thetrust bank down.
But at the same time, youstill gotta do your job, damn it.
Well, and we think about,right, if you have a million dollar
ira, we view that as ourretirement money.
But if your neighbor down thestreet, you gave them a million dollars,
(27:35):
wouldn't you expect they'dreport back what they were doing
with the money you gave themand communicating with you?
And we'd go, well, of coursethey would need to tell me what they
invested in and where we did.
But when it comes to our IRAin the financial world, we don't
hold those same kind ofaccountability standards too.
How many people we talk to go,yeah, I don't know when the next
time I'm speaking to myadvisor is or when I'm going to meet
(27:56):
you.
And you're paying themsignificant amounts of money for
investment management.
So it's just alarming.
Yeah, well, you know, thepremise of investing is you're buying
a company, right?
Or a portion of a company.
So if you break this down tolike the most basic nature of it,
I'm going to trust you with mymoney, but you better make me some
(28:21):
more money, right?
Like, you don't buy aninvestment and say, it's okay if
I lose all my money because Ireally trust the CEO.
No, you buy an investment andsay, look, I really trust you, but
you better perform.
And if you don't perform,we're going to have to make a change
at the top.
So then we have why clientsLeave an advisor.
And I think we got to kind ofhit this fast because we run up on
(28:43):
time today.
But 61% said that they no longer.
They would leave their advisorbecause they no longer trust them.
That's the top reason why theywould leave.
So I'm going to say thatsomething else happens in there.
I think trust is kind of likea cop out, like how and like we've
talked about.
Yeah.
So one of these other things happen.
They never hear from them.
They don't know theirfinancial planning, the investment
(29:04):
performance isn't there.
They don't have experience.
So they, they erodes trust outover time.
You want to do the next one?
Yeah.
So then we had.
We have 54.
54.
So 54.
They would look for a newadvisor if their investments perform
below their expectations.
Now only 50% of these peoplesaid that it was important to have
good investments, but now aregonna fire them if they don't do
(29:27):
it.
I don't understand.
I mean, I know how math works.
Because they're making ahiring decision based on trust and
not checking all the boxesbased on track record and those things.
And then they get into it andthey don't get the results and they're
like, what the heck's going on?
You gotta do more duediligence on the way in so that you
don't have to say, I'm gonnafire them over performance.
(29:49):
A good advisor, you shouldn'tbe firing them over performance.
Cause the market does what it does.
And you should have aninvestment thesis that's being followed.
You should be firing them whenthey're not following through with
things that they say they'regonna do that they should be doing.
Or when they're not adjustingthe plan to your life situation and
they're constantly behind theeight ball.
That's when you should befiring them.
The performance thing, a goodadvisor, that's a bad reason to fire
(30:12):
them.
Unless there's somethingchronic related to it, which there
can be.
Right.
But again, it comes down toinvestment thesis.
How many people have everasked their advisor, what's your
investment thesis?
And didn't get somethinggeneric that looks like they got
it from Wikipedia.
Yeah.
All right, so then we had 46%said that they would look for a replacement
(30:32):
if their advisor didn'tcommunicate clearly.
However, back to the other question.
Only 34% said or 23% said theyneeded proactive communication.
So half of that number saidthat they valued proactive communication.
And now almost 50% want toreplace them if they don't communicate.
Clearly.
Which means you're notthinking about that when you're hiring
(30:54):
somebody.
But once you're in therelationship, you're like, oh, buyer's
remorse.
So as you go into therelationship, ask them, what's your
communication?
How often should I hear fromyou if I want to get a hold of you,
how do I get a hold of you?
How often?
Like if you hire a soloplanner, it's just one planner all
by himself.
How often do they go onvacation or get sick?
Because who are you going totalk to when they're on vacation?
(31:15):
They're in the Grand Caymanson the money that you're paying them.
And yet you need something andyou have to wait for them to get
back in town.
That's not a good situation.
That's good if you don't havea lot and you can get a good deal
on the planning or somethinglike that, and you're trying to stretch
dollars and you're willing todeal with the fact that you have
kind of like blackout periods.
But it's not good if you'rerunning a money business.
(31:36):
You know what I mean?
If you got million plusdollars, you're running a money business.
You need your executives thatyou've hired on the job, or if they're
not there, they're numbertwo's on the job.
You kind of need that type ofthing going on.
You want to hit the last one.
Yeah.
So 45% of the thousand peoplesurveyed, so 450 people, said they
would leave if the overallclient experience was not good.
(32:00):
And how do you even judge whatclient experiences?
Beauty in the eye of the beholder?
You know, it's just like somepeople like a lot of calls.
Some people don't like phone calls.
Some people like emails.
Some people, you know what I mean?
Like, it's just some peoplelike in person, some people.
So I think that that's areally subjective thing.
I think you should choose afirm that fits the way that you want
(32:23):
to operate.
You know, you should be askingthe firm, can I have in person meetings?
Do we do virtual?
You know, I really thinkpeople should spend a little bit
more time.
You're hiring somebody who youare going to be telling very intimate
things to.
You're going to be tellingthem all about your life, all about
your relationship with yourkids, all about these things, all
(32:45):
about your hopes and yourdreams and where things came from
and where things are going.
You really ought to be lookingat when I walk into this office or
when I talk to their staff,you know, how Do I feel, do I feel
like I belong here?
We talked about this inepisodes when we moved to Tennessee
about, you know, relocating.
(33:06):
You need to.
People who are thinking aboutrelocating, retirement need to relocate
to a community that when theygo out and they meet people they're
not going to be fighting withall the time.
Right.
If you're really politicallycharged, don't move to the opposite
kind of political community.
You know what I mean?
If there's certain things thatare triggering to you or important
(33:27):
to you, don't go to somebodyelse's house and tell them they have
to change their house.
Just, just find a place whereyou belong and go there.
And I think a good plannerwill tell you that if you don't belong
with a good planner, they'regoing to say, look, this doesn't
work.
Can we get you a new home?
Can we find someplace whereyou're going to get better value
out of this?
And we're not going to feelthe stress that we feel because you're
(33:51):
expecting something and wecan't deliver on that.
Yeah.
And at the end of the day, Imean, everyone prices their business
differently.
But working with a financialprofessional is not the cheapest
endeavor ever.
And so if you just had a lineitem on your budget that said, we
spent 40 grand every year onX, someone would look at that and
go, we spent 40.
Which is, by the way, we charge.
No, not clients paying.
(34:11):
See a lot of clients that arepaying a so called financial advisor,
they.
Come in and they meet with usfor the first time.
They're like, I'm paying 40grand, 40 grand.
And that's like, what are yougetting if you had to write a check
every year for 40 year?
But we don't because it comesout of investments and other things.
So when you talk about theoverall experience, if that proactive
communication isn't there ontax planning and things you can do,
then, you know, this raisesthe alarm.
(34:31):
And why don't you then for thelast talk about these two questions
and I'll tell them about thesurvey in the show notes.
Yeah.
I'm also thinking, you know,40 grand a client, that's pretty
good.
Imagine like we could have ayacht if we charge 40 grand.
We just got into the same roomfor the first time in four years.
So this is good.
I guess we're not doing it yet.
We'll take donations though.
We'll let other people come onthe yacht.
(34:52):
That'd be fun.
Yeah.
And just no yacht.
It's too much.
So you got these two questionsand we created a survey.
Oh, yeah.
So we have a survey.
What we were asking for our listeners.
You can explain the survey.
Okay.
Because I don't actually knowwhere it lives.
Okay.
So there was two questionsthat we posed.
It's a very short survey.
We'll have it in the shownotes that you guys can fill out.
It's kind of open answer, butthere's two questions that we're
(35:15):
thinking of.
What do you think as a listener?
Ditch the suits.
What do you think is the mostimportant thing when selecting a
financial advisor?
That's question one.
And then as we talked about inthis survey, there was reasons you
would leave.
Question two is, why would youconsider leaving your current financial
advisor?
So you don't have to put yourname or anything with this, but we'll.
Have no name, no email, no nothing.
Just give us some info.
Travis and I are interestedfrom you guys as listeners as ditch
(35:38):
the suits.
Right.
We just said what thesethousand people said was important
to them.
But we want to know from youas our listener base, what's important
to you.
So we'll have this link in ourshow notes.
If you need it, get in contactwith Travis or myself.
You can head toditchthesuits.com, we'll personally
send you the link.
Because at the end of the day,I think is what people forget.
You and I are real humanbeings that interact with people
(35:58):
every day.
And so it's always funny to mewhen people call in from the show
and I'm like, yes, Steve from Seed.
And they're like, it's the guyfrom the podcast.
We're real people.
So if you guys want to get intouch with ushoots.com no, we have
a screening system to justkeep him at bay.
Too many rings.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The experience is really important.
But at the end of the day,very quick survey you guys can take
(36:20):
and just do it, because we'dlove to hear from you in terms of.
What's that for people, too?
Because I think when you hearit like this, when we talk about
it, if you're trying to make adecision to hire somebody, or maybe
you've been working withsomebody for a while and it's maybe
not working out or you havesecond thoughts, this is a really
good way to think about this,and it'll give you a little bit of
shape to that kind of thatnext discussion that you probably
(36:41):
need to have and that nextdecision that you need to make.
And more importantly, if youcan share with us other perspectives,
we can share that with theListeners as well.
And I think that that helpsother people make better decisions.
So we have some thoughts justto close this out.
Trust and performance.
So here's our big takeaway, right?
(37:03):
We try to do like one takeaway every.
Every you could.
Our listeners get to takesomething home with them.
Basically.
Trust requires vetting, andthat includes establishing expectations
on performance.
Right?
So when you say that you trustsomebody, you haven't really fully
committed to that unlessyou've established expectations on
(37:26):
the performance.
Performance is not just investment.
Performance says, you saidthat we would have meetings every
six months or every three months.
You said that this, this, andthis would happen on these times.
You said that the investmentthesis is xyz.
Are we performing to theinvestment thesis?
Right?
I can't control if the marketgoes up or down, but I can control
(37:49):
if we're staying on track.
So you need to establish thatahead of time.
If you can establish, if youhave trust for them and you establish
the expectations and youmanage your advisor to the expectations,
or if you have a good advisor,they manage themselves to your expectations
and they say, see, these wereyour expectations.
Look, we beat theexpectations, right?
(38:11):
Or we're lagging a little bit.
This is what we're gonna do tofix that.
You know, we do that.
We revamped our newsletter tohelp clients participate with that
interaction with expectations.
How do we do a better job on that?
To me, that's where the trust lives.
Because then you clearly willknow, maybe this is smoke and mirrors
(38:31):
trust or this is real trust.
I'm really getting what I'mpaying for.
Yep.
And then my final thought is,don't wait for something to go wrong
to realize it's time for a change.
Right.
If we say proactivecommunication and trust is important
and they didn't send you moneywhen they said they would, or your
investments went way down andyou don't know why, that raises the
alarm that, okay, what's goingon with this practice?
(38:53):
As you, as a listener, though,think about the value.
Are you getting questionsanswered proactively about your taxes
or your estate or the otherparts of your life that are important
to you, your kids, and how tomake all those things come together?
Don't wait for something to gowrong to say, maybe it's time for
a change.
Just think about, in a perfectworld, what would bring you greatest
(39:13):
peace of mind?
Knowing every year what to dowith your taxes, knowing to make
sure your kids are taken care of.
If you're getting thosethings, then I think trust is a good
baseline.
But again, humor us take the survey.
Thanks for bearing with us inour first in real room time.
We try to keep episodes toabout 30 minutes.
So for the first time beingtogether, we weren't too chatty today.
But we got another episodecoming up after this.
(39:35):
Thank you for being our gueston Ditch the Suits.
And until next time, here's togetting the most of your money in
life.
Foreign.
Welcome to Ditch the Suitspodcast, where we share insights
nobody in the financialservices industry wants you to know
about.
We're here to help you get themost from your money in life.
So buckle up and welcome toDitch the Suits.
(00:20):
It's time.
This is the first time we'vebeen together in a room.
Hi.
Oh, here we are.
Yeah.
First recording in three, four years.
Four plus years.
How long ago was it?
Yeah, January 2021.
Recording the same room.
Welcome to our new studio.
This is exciting today.
Very exciting.
Yeah, it should be a littlebit more fun.
Normally we're yelling at eachother through a wall.
Yeah.
It's pretty hard tocommunicate with a co host when you
(00:42):
can't see them and, you know,there's like no visual.
I'm just going to jump in.
Are you going to jump in?
So we've survived this farfour years in, you know, getting
to this point, but now beingin the same room, we actually get
to interact.
Well, the other thing is nice too.
There's normally like a lag onour Internet.
So you're like over heretalking, I'm over there trying to
hear what say, and we can'treally figure out if we're talking.
It's like a bad dubbedEuropean movie.
(01:03):
But we figured it out now.
Yeah, just like that.
Just like that.
All right, well, I guess wegot to get started today.
So we're going to talk aboutthe state of the financial industry.
We've got a survey that wewere looking at online, and one of
the things that we want to dois bring perspective about how the
financial industry works.
What are other clientsthinking about or other people out
(01:24):
in the community who usefinancial advisors?
What are they thinking about?
Right.
And kind of what are sometakeaways from that and maybe even
from a perspective standpoint,what can our listeners take to say,
how do I better engage withfinancial advisors?
And maybe what should I belooking for?
Or what are the pitfalls?
So we've got this survey andit talks about trust and performance
(01:45):
as a top quality that peopleare looking for in a financial advisor.
And the question is, forpeople listening, is it trust, is
it performance, or is itsomething completely different?
Yep.
And we'll go through thesurvey kind of what it says.
We'll talk about where thesurvey comes from and everything.
But my question was too, goingthrough the survey was, does it just
(02:06):
have to be one thing?
Does it have to be a winner orloser here?
Or could there be likemultiple things that people are actually
looking at?
A financial advisor saying,this is really?
Why?
I want to work with afinancial advisor.
This is what's reallyimportant to me.
And like, for example, don'tyou think that you deserve to work
with somebody that you canboth trust and who performs well?
(02:27):
Like if you go to a doctor,let's say you're gonna go to a surgeon,
you're gonna have heartsurgery and you really trust a heart
surgeon, but they're reallynot a good surgeon.
Yeah, that's a little bit of a concern.
Or they're a really goodsurgeon, but you can't trust them
because sometimes they operateon like, you know, different parts
of you that you didn't likeactually ask them to operate on.
I know it's funny, but still,it's like, shouldn't you be able
(02:47):
to have trust and performance?
Have your cake and eat it too.
I don't know why we have to,you know, shortchange ourselves.
So I think through this we'regoing to talk about a paradigm shift
a little bit from, you know,you can, I think you can expect more
than just one or the other.
But we want to look at whatmaybe the general market is saying
and maybe what's trying toshape and drive the industry.
(03:10):
So welcome to our discussionand hopefully we're going to help
our listeners raise theirexpectations a little bit.
Yeah, and I always like, Imean, this is a brand new series
today, so welcome in to Ditchthe Suits.
I'm Steve Campbell, seniormarketing director at Seed Planning
Group.
And for the first time in thesame room we got Travis Moss, our
CEO at.
He's the one with the hair.
Yeah, the one with the hair.
In case this is your firsttime seeing us in four years, this
(03:31):
is the differentiation.
But for the other guy.
I think they just call me theother guy.
Yeah, that's what's in theshow credits.
But Seed is a fee onlyfinancial planning firm.
So we have a fiduciaryobligation to put our clients best
interests first.
And the show has been fouryears of us bringing our experiences
day to day what we're seeingday in, day out to help you as a
listener really get the mostfrom your money in life.
(03:52):
And this is going to be a funone because it's a brand new series.
So if you're brand new toditch the Suits, Travis does a really
nice job of coming up withtopics and we give you series one
episode at a time, really digestible.
And these are always fun onesbecause this is not necessarily our
own data.
This is what the Internet andindividuals are saying.
And we're just going to kindof extrapolate it a little bit.
Like, what does this actuallymean for you as a listener?
(04:12):
Does it apply to you?
And we got some cool stuffwe're going to put in the show notes.
So make sure you pay attentionto those, those links for where these
surveys are as well as maybeour own survey because we'd like
some information from you tooas well.
Yeah, we want some feedback.
Yeah, yeah.
And I think this is going tobe more fun.
I think it's a lot moreinteractive being able to sit next
to you and with this beautifulfake fern between us.
Like the visual is really good.
(04:35):
I think the energy is really good.
So we should have a little bitof fun today.
Yeah.
And this is just the beginning.
So let's go.
Let's pause and hear a wordfrom our sponsor.
This episode is brought to youby the One Big Thing podcast.
If you're in the thick of lifeas a parent or a spouse and just
trying to grow as a person,then you won't want to miss this
show.
Hosted by Steve Campbell, theOne Big Thing is an interview style
(04:57):
podcast where he brings youguests from all walks of life.
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(05:19):
today.
So Travis got this survey,trust her performance.
And you know, we get callersall the time who really don't understand
how our industry works.
And you've done a really nicejob of trying to address the industry,
help people understand that.
Unfortunately it is a hugemarketing machine.
You know, story based sellingis what keeps people in.
(05:40):
But now you got individuals,they're on podcasts because they
care about their money, theycare about their family, they want
to make good decisions.
And so to have a largerconversation around, really what's
more important to you?
Is it trust or performance?
And why do you have to giveaway one, maybe not to have the other?
So talk to us about theimportance of why this episode matters.
Well, it's hard work.
I think if you want goodresults in anything, it's hard work.
(06:03):
Right.
We were picking on doctors there.
If you want good results withyour medical, you need to go find
the right doctors.
If you go to the dentist or aneye doctor, if you go to an attorney,
if you go to an accountant, ifyou, I mean, how many people will
interview more than oneroofer, you know, and get more than
one quote, you know, or somebody.
They're gonna invite somebodyinto the house to babysit your kids.
You know, I think withfinancial planning and investments
(06:25):
and stuff, we just want it tobe easy.
Cause it's confusing and theindustry does everything I think
it can to make it even moreconfusing because like hey look,
if you can't figure it out,you have to hire us.
Right.
And I think people should hirepeople because maybe they can't figure
it out but also becausethere's a big time commitment for
it and they're like look, Icould properly figure it out.
I could probably make it mysecond job, but I don't want to.
(06:46):
I'll go like live my life andhave fun.
I want my money working for meand I don't want to have to run everything.
That's a better reason thanfeeling like oh, I'm just helpless
because they say I'm helplessand so I need to hire somebody.
And I think that that gets atthe whole thing between trust and
performance.
So we have this article thatwas written on wealthmanagement.com
so that's just somehow I goton that subscribe to that and I get
(07:10):
these articles every day fromwealth Management and this one happened
to be titled Investors ValueTrust in Advisors more than performance
and it's from January of thisyear so this is kind of cool.
Their conclusion from thesurvey is that trust is the most
important thing.
I think the survey says a lotmore than that but.
(07:30):
But it definitely kind of likethat's the end result.
I think it's maybe a littlebit of a guided survey but.
But it's certainly somethingto talk about because the financial
industry, if you Google leasttrusted industries, I think politicians
are probably first, weatherpeople probably second and financial
advisors might be thirdsomewhere on there.
You know what I think peopletrust car salesmen sometimes more
(07:53):
than they trust investment people.
Sad state of affairs.
Yeah.
You know used car sales, right?
Yeah.
So this survey was conductedby Cap and Tel I no idea what what
this company is.
I didn't, I didn't dig intothe behind the scenes on the survey.
Yep.
I just think that the talkingpoints from the survey are at least
(08:14):
worth discussing which is abusiness to business fintech company.
You and they use logica logicaI guess L I G I C a research to collect
a survey from August toSeptember last year.
So they reached out to athousand investors and they said
a thousand investors, give usyour opinions.
In order to qualify for thesurvey you had to have more than
(08:36):
$50,000 of investable assetsand also work with a financial advisor.
So they wanted to know peoplewho are actually engaged with a financial
advisor, not people who arehypothetical about it.
A couple of things that Iwould say there.
First and foremost, $50,000investable assets, probably not enough
(08:59):
assets unless you understandthe demographics of the underlying
group to really, you know, usethis as a, as an authority.
And what I mean by that is ifanybody's ever played like Texas
Hold'em on the weekend withtheir friends, and if it's a $20
buy in, people do wacky stuff, right?
They don't really care.
It's only 20, blah, blah, blah.
(09:21):
In the investing world,$50,000, although it's your money
and it's a lot of money to youin the investing world.
I mean, that doesn't even meetthe minimums for a lot of firms.
So those folks maybe arelimited in options or limited in
experience and maybe not as interested.
A lot of times we'll haveretirement investors that are a bit
(09:44):
older or a bit younger andthey've accumulated some retirement
monies in a 401 plan.
It's kind of like found moneyto them.
It's not that important yet.
So they don't really have likewhatever happens to it, happens to
it.
And So I think $50,000, if youdid a poll with investors that had
a million dollars performance,is probably gonna be a little bit
higher.
Right.
(10:05):
And they're gonna approach thetrust part a little bit differently.
I think when you have lessmoney and you're so reliant on it,
or you just, you don't wannahave to pay attention, maybe trust
is a little bit more of an issue.
Well, and I find that thethree factors are fascinating.
The thousand investors, Imean, that's a pretty roundabout
(10:27):
number, right?
It's not like you went out andinterviewed 50 people and got them,
but 50,000 like you said.
Okay, is that really avaluable number to start with?
And then even just you and Ihave talked about the word financial
advisor.
What does that mean to you?
Because we just had Jess Blakeon, she crushed four episodes talking
about a real financial advisor.
A real financial advisor, nota so.
Called a real one.
(10:47):
A real planner who hascredentials next to her name.
And we talked about you're acertified trust and fiduciary advisor.
To us, that's awesome.
But to you as a consumer,like, what does that mean to you?
And when you see cfp, when yousee some of these designations, does
that really mean that there'smore professionalism or did they
Just study really hard, cramfirst continuing ed and pass an exam
so they could use it.
(11:08):
You can be a CFP and be aninsurance agent.
Right.
And so when you say financialadvisor, you get insurance agents,
you got brokers, people atbanks, registered representative,
we've done episodes in the past.
Registered representatives,you've got investment advisor representatives,
you got captive people, you'vegot people can do whatever.
You got fee only, you got feebased, which is just a joke of a
term.
(11:29):
And then you got commission advisors.
So you've got like all theseso called financial advisors.
And a lot of them are justproduct or program salespeople.
And so when I go out and I askyou know, a thousand people with
$50,000 of assets who have afinancial advisor, I probably ought
to also categorize it and saythese are a thousand people that
(11:51):
work with insurance agen astheir primary advisor.
Or these are a thousand peoplethat work with, you know, brokers
as their primary advisor orfee only planners as their primary
primary advisor.
I think that you'd probablyget some, some more variation in
the answers here.
Yeah, I'd also be curious toobecause again, talking with people
for the first time.
Callers love connecting withyou guys.
(12:12):
Sometimes people even thinkthey're 401k providers.
They're financial advisor.
Like I got a guy and it's justthe guy everyone else has at your
job that gives you 15 minutesto sit down in the lunch cafeteria.
I got a guy we're going tobring on later.
This, I didn't tell you aboutthat yet, but I got a guy who's gonna,
who was one of those guys.
Breaking news.
He was one of those guys.
He used to go into thelunchrooms and work with people.
(12:32):
Now he's a full fledgedfinancial planner.
Oh, I, I know who you're.
Yeah, I'm drinking what you're saying.
Yeah, we signed him up today.
It was a big, it was a big deal.
He didn't have a choice.
He didn't have a choice.
No, he did, he did.
It wasn't much of a choice.
But, but even just we asked him.
What day, even just thatsurvey, it's great, the number, it's
cool to know you have abaseline figure.
(12:52):
So a thousand people gottahave $50,000 and then they claim
that they have a financial advisor.
And it's like even two, youget a call from a third party logica
and it's like, do you have afinancial advisor?
I wonder how many people arelike crap.
Yes I do.
And it's like, do you really.
So the term financial advisorto could be my kid.
So called in just, just as apoint, because we got new listeners.
(13:13):
I love the idea that you saidfee based.
What a, what a ridiculous word.
And I, I sometimes correctpeople when they say, yeah, seeds,
fee based.
And I say, no, we're not,we're not.
We're fee only.
And it's never to be demeaningto individuals, but I want them to
really understand that when wesay fee only, it means our people
are salaried, no sales.
The commissions, they aren't there.
Fee based means you canoperate in one of two ways.
(13:34):
Hybrid, flat fee.
And it's very confusing for individuals.
So I know we're picking up alot of new listeners today.
The words matter.
And I think that's reallyimportant because when it's overwhelming,
it's easy to go, yeah, yeah, Igot it.
But the words really, reallydo matter.
And we've recorded, we'vewritten blogs about it.
Understanding termin and whatyou're getting into is really the
(13:55):
baseline start for most people.
They got to understand.
So let's go back to the survey.
72% of people, their numberone thing with financial advisors,
they want somebody they can trust.
So 72%, it's like almost threeout of four.
I thought that wasinteresting, especially because of
some of the other answers.
39% said that to get trust,when I see a proven track record,
(14:20):
which is kind of funny.
So they want to make sure thatthere's performance there in order
to earn the trust.
39% are saying thatperformance is part of the trust
equation.
That means 61% of people arebasically saying, I'm not worried
(14:40):
about performance.
I just want to make sure youdon't steal my money from me.
That's like, as an industry,that's appalling.
It's absolutely appalling thatmore people are worried about being
robbed or ripped off than theyare about whether or not they actually
get any performance, which isjust another interesting thing.
Like, how do you gauge trust?
(15:02):
I trust you because I like you.
We go golfing together, we goto church together or something like
that.
And if I'm not performing butI'm kind of presenting myself as
though I'm performing, isn'tthat undermining trust?
So, like, this is where I'mgoing with this.
I really think that trust andperformance have to walk together,
not separate.
(15:22):
31% said that both equippingthem with knowledge to make informed
financial decisions andpersonalized advice could help them
develop trust.
So at Least a third of thepeople out there are saying, look,
if you could actually be afinancial planner and educate me
and army with knowledge sothat I better understand my financial
situation, I'm going to trustyou more.
(15:43):
So you've got 39% of peoplesay, if you have a track record,
I'm going to appreciate that.
And then 31% of people say, ifyou could educate me or help me understand
things better, I'm going totrust you more.
Why isn't that number higher?
Why aren't more people saying,I want to see performance and you
better educate me, you betterhelp me.
I'm hiring you to help me, notsell me stuff.
(16:06):
Yeah.
And you and I have talked about.
The word trust is fascinatingbecause there's layers to saying
the word trust.
If you come to me as yourfinancial advisor and say, hey, what
do I do with my taxes?
And you go, travis, sorry, Ican't give you tax advice.
Is trust being establishedthat I acknowledged I can't give
you tax advice?
You know what I mean?
Like with individuals, arethey being told by financial professionals
(16:29):
what they can and can't do?
So that's establishing trust.
But it may be that aprofessional is also not giving the
full value or getting into planning.
And so the word trust is fascinating.
Is it just that I know you'renot gonna steal my money?
Is that trust?
Okay, that's fine.
But what is also not being discussed?
Is it being forthright?
Is it communication that'sbuilding trust?
(16:50):
There's a lot of moving factors.
Well, how do you.
If you wanna trust somebody?
Is it, this person has a tonof confidence.
This person went to Ivy League.
This person has a cfp.
This person looks right, right?
They're wearing the right suitor the right clothes, are very clean
looking.
They look like they've gottheir stuff together.
How do you actually get trust?
We've talked about.
We did an episode years agowhere we gave out questions to ask
(17:13):
your financial advisor.
And people still call up andask for that.
You know, what was it?
The 13 questions ask yourfinancial advisor or ask somebody
when you're interviewing themto be your financial advisor.
Like, how do you establishthat you trust somebody outside of
the superficial?
Right?
Like, I want more than your credential.
I want to know more than your credential.
(17:34):
There's plenty of people outthere with credentials that suck
at what they do in real life.
They're book smart, they'restreet dumb, right?
And when you're doingfinancial planning, you actually
need street smart because yourlife doesn't happen the way the book
says your life happens by allthe chance and all those strange
turns that not only arehappening to you, but everybody in
(17:57):
your life.
And books can't cover all of that.
And so how do you apply it?
That's the art of financial planning.
So I want somebody who's.
I need to interview them andreally, really understand.
Is there death behind thesales pitch?
Right.
Is there death behind.
It's like, you can't judge abook by the COVID but it's very easy
(18:17):
to judge a book by a cover inthis space.
Well, and I could just.
Okay, so we're talking money.
Maybe it's overwhelming.
Like, what are you guystalking about?
I got four kids, right?
If I go hire a babysitter, ifbaseline trust is.
I trust when I come home,these kids are still gonna be here.
Like, is that the baselinethat I'm paying a babysitter?
Or is it like, if I come home,I'm gonna know you gave them a bath,
you fed them good stuff.
(18:37):
They didn't sit in front of a tv.
Like, we understand in thenatural sense when we hire individuals
what we're looking for.
But I think sometimes when itcomes to money and finance, it's
like, I don't understand it,so I want to avoid it.
Terminology is what it comesout to be.
You know, we were getting into a.
We're doing some consultingfor a foundation, and they have a
advisor that they work with.
(18:58):
We help them kind ofunderstand what that advisor is doing
for them.
And, you know, the otheradvisor's using these big words,
and they're just flat outtwisting things, and we're like,
that's not what that means.
This is what it actually means.
That's salesmanship.
There's some reason they'redoing that.
Don't know why, but there'ssome reason.
They're explaining it in acertain way, and the client's smart
(19:19):
enough to pick up on it.
They don't know how tonecessarily decipher it.
Or they're like, they do thisfor a living.
They must be right.
They're a big multibilliondollar firm, but at the end of the
day, they're just trying tocollect and retain assets, and they're
using all kinds of salesgimmicks to try to do it.
Playing with their verbiage.
So back to our survey, though.
50% said that investmentexperience is important.
(19:41):
So let me get this straight.
You're going for financialadvice to somebody which is going
to be heavily influenced byhow you invest your money.
And people do this all the time.
My financial advisors and do investments.
I, you know, I just go and getindex funds.
Because he says nobody can,you know, predict investments and
stuff.
Then he can't give you adviceon anything those investments are
(20:01):
going to touch.
So if he's trying to do aprojection and he projects you at
8 and a half percent and hedoesn't know anything about investments,
how did he know that?
8 and a half percent with theright percentage to use, based on
how you're investing.
It's a very interesting thing.
You're getting financialadvice now.
It doesn't mean you have tohave an investment guru.
I think there's a differencebetween somebody who's in the weeds
(20:23):
on portfolio management versussomebody who understands diversification,
correlation, stuff like that.
Not the candidates.
Modern portfolio theory.
You're supposed to have fivedifferent mutual funds.
Look at my pie chart stuff.
Actual correlation andunderstanding how things move based
on causation.
And when there's no causation,when it's just simply, completely
(20:47):
uncorrelated kind of eventsthat are happening or performance
based on the events that are happening.
You need people who understandinvestments better and aren't just
trying to sell you, becausethat was a wholesaler that took them
out to lunch or something,which is very, very common for the
industry.
So it struck me that 50% ofpeople are like, investment experience
is important.
Should be 100% or even justthe world you and I came from that
(21:09):
we were taught.
I manage the managers.
Right.
You remember that?
It was like, I'm yourrelationship person, and I get to
help and pick what mutualfunds we use and what managers.
And I know when we should getrid of them.
So when you say investmentperformance, if you're always saying
it's somebody else's fault,how are you also making decisions
in that?
So it's a pretty interesting.
Only 50% view investmentexperience as important.
(21:32):
Okay.
And I just butchered the wholecorrelation diversification part.
I trip over the.
It's fine.
We're four years in.
People are forgiving.
They're.
Yeah.
At this point, they're used to it.
For me, 46% said that theywanted the bill.
Their advisor to have theability to look at the whole financial
picture.
And what does that even mean?
So you.
So let's flip this over.
Because a lot of people areworking with an investment advisor,
(21:52):
not a financial planner.
Yeah, Right.
Or an insurance advisor.
So you got somebody who'sselling you investments or insurance
products.
Mm.
And 46% is saying, I'd reallylike Somebody who looks at the whole
picture.
You are buying investmentproducts or insurance products, and
then you're trying to figureout the financial plan that makes
them work.
(22:14):
You should have the financialplan first, and then you find the
investments that fit thefinancial plan.
The financial plan is yourlife, right?
So you're giving somebody elseyour money and then saying, tell
me how to live my life.
You should be figuring out howto live your life and then telling
somebody else, here's my money.
Make it happen.
We have a backwards.
It's the inverse.
(22:34):
What a novel idea.
Well, and even too, the wholefinancial picture, if your financial
planner or advisor, whoeveryou use, is just helping you aggregate
accounts onto one platform soyou can see your 401k and your IRA,
that's not looking at thewhole picture from a financial planning
standpoint, that's justpulling in data.
And so it's interesting.
(22:55):
When 46 or whatever the numberis, 46, say the whole financial picture,
like, what does that actuallymean in the realm of planning, you
know?
Well, we know what it meansbecause people come in, they're like,
yeah, I mean, we had a clientone time, they came in, they were
paying $50,000 a year to thisfinancial advisor, and they had CFPs
and attorneys and CPAs onstaff and an investment guru.
(23:17):
And they had never beenthrough financial planning.
I mean, like, we put togethera financial plan, they're like, yeah,
they kind of did this when wefirst started working with them years
ago, and they never revisited it.
It's like, you're not.
You're paying a lot of moneyfor somebody to basically run a generic
portfolio for you.
Or even just the stuff we justwent through with Jess for four episodes.
(23:39):
You say tax planning, people go.
People do that?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Financial planners do that, orestate planning.
So really interesting.
Go through some of these othernumbers because I think they're pretty
enlightening, too.
Yeah.
The other one, I think thatwas really important on this particular
list was 34% said that theywanted their advisor to have the
ability to explain theirapproach to managing client finances.
(24:01):
That's a must for everybody, right?
Like, you're going to watch my kids.
What's your approach if one ofthem swallows a penny?
Like, what do you do?
Right.
Or what's your approach if oneof them falls on, hits their head?
Like, you want to know these things.
You want to know that theperson's going to be competent, is
not going to panic and justleave them.
Right.
(24:21):
They're going to actually dealwith whatever the problem is.
But 34% said that they wouldlove it if their advisor could explain
their approach to managingclient finances.
You are hiring somebody tomanage your finances when you buy
investments from somebody.
So let's say you don't dofinancial planning, because a lot
of people, I don't needfinancial planning.
But you give your money intoan investment, you are turning your
(24:42):
money over to a company to runit for you.
You really owe it to yourselfto ask that company or that salesperson
or that person in charge.
I want to know what yourapproach is to handling my finances.
I want to know what I can holdyou accountable.
What are you specifically responsible?
I want a black and white in writing.
I want to understand what yousee your job is and where my job
(25:07):
is.
Where's this line crossedbetween it being my fault or your
fault?
You know, however this thingplays out, because you know what?
A good advisor should be goodwith that, hey, this is the line.
I think we're doing such agreat job, and if we do such a great
job, then I can come to youand say, hey, you want to do more
of this, right?
But if this is the line andwe're not doing a bad job, you don't
want them saying, oh, that'syour fault.
(25:28):
I had a client one time whohired us.
They said, well, I went to myadvisor and I asked them why we weren't
making more money.
And the advisor says, well,we'll make you more aggressive.
The underlying, they were inmutual funds.
The underlying funds were inthe bottom 10 percentile of the industry,
(25:48):
of the peer groups.
I mean, like, every single oneof them, it wasn't that they needed
to be more aggressive.
It's that they had some of theworst mutual funds out there that
you could possibly buy.
Pick better funds.
And I think this one is interesting.
Next, it says 23% saidproactive communication.
And again, I think if we goback to the original data, there's
1,000 people.
So just looking at thenumbers, you hear 23%, it's like,
(26:10):
oh, what does that mean?
That means 230 out of 1,000people said that they want their
advisor to be polite.
Hey, Travis, it's Steve.
I was thinking of you.
Hey, there's a couple of moveswe want to make before year end.
And it's like, oh, I findvalue in that.
What does the other group ofpeople want?
You go back to the investment number.
Only 500 people are asconcerned about investment experience.
Or 720 of a thousand said, Iwant someone I can trust.
(26:33):
So these numbers, when youtake 1,000 people, almost half the
group.
There's some big holes andit's like, what are we signing up
for?
But still, what is trust?
Trust to me is proactive communication.
Trust to me as you're lookingat the big picture.
Trust to me is that youactually know what you're doing.
All of these things are a partof trust.
You should not say, well, youknow, I trust them because so and
so told me I should trust them.
(26:54):
So it doesn't matter if you'renot getting performance or if you're
getting things that don't jivewith your life.
You can go to your planner andsay, we need to get these in line
or I have to fire you.
We have to make a change.
If you've been in charge ofanybody at work, or if you've had
a babysitter, or if you hiredsomebody to build your porch, you
(27:15):
can fire them if they do a bad job.
And it's the same thing withyour financial advisors.
Look, I expect to be able totrust you.
Don't do things that run thetrust bank down.
But at the same time, youstill gotta do your job, damn it.
Well, and we think about,right, if you have a million dollar
ira, we view that as ourretirement money.
But if your neighbor down thestreet, you gave them a million dollars,
(27:35):
wouldn't you expect they'dreport back what they were doing
with the money you gave themand communicating with you?
And we'd go, well, of coursethey would need to tell me what they
invested in and where we did.
But when it comes to our IRAin the financial world, we don't
hold those same kind ofaccountability standards too.
How many people we talk to go,yeah, I don't know when the next
time I'm speaking to myadvisor is or when I'm going to meet
(27:56):
you.
And you're paying themsignificant amounts of money for
investment management.
So it's just alarming.
Yeah, well, you know, thepremise of investing is you're buying
a company, right?
Or a portion of a company.
So if you break this down tolike the most basic nature of it,
I'm going to trust you with mymoney, but you better make me some
(28:21):
more money, right?
Like, you don't buy aninvestment and say, it's okay if
I lose all my money because Ireally trust the CEO.
No, you buy an investment andsay, look, I really trust you, but
you better perform.
And if you don't perform,we're going to have to make a change
at the top.
So then we have why clientsLeave an advisor.
And I think we got to kind ofhit this fast because we run up on
(28:43):
time today.
But 61% said that they no longer.
They would leave their advisorbecause they no longer trust them.
That's the top reason why theywould leave.
So I'm going to say thatsomething else happens in there.
I think trust is kind of likea cop out, like how and like we've
talked about.
Yeah.
So one of these other things happen.
They never hear from them.
They don't know theirfinancial planning, the investment
(29:04):
performance isn't there.
They don't have experience.
So they, they erodes trust outover time.
You want to do the next one?
Yeah.
So then we had.
We have 54.
54.
So 54.
They would look for a newadvisor if their investments perform
below their expectations.
Now only 50% of these peoplesaid that it was important to have
good investments, but now aregonna fire them if they don't do
(29:27):
it.
I don't understand.
I mean, I know how math works.
Because they're making ahiring decision based on trust and
not checking all the boxesbased on track record and those things.
And then they get into it andthey don't get the results and they're
like, what the heck's going on?
You gotta do more duediligence on the way in so that you
don't have to say, I'm gonnafire them over performance.
(29:49):
A good advisor, you shouldn'tbe firing them over performance.
Cause the market does what it does.
And you should have aninvestment thesis that's being followed.
You should be firing them whenthey're not following through with
things that they say they'regonna do that they should be doing.
Or when they're not adjustingthe plan to your life situation and
they're constantly behind theeight ball.
That's when you should befiring them.
The performance thing, a goodadvisor, that's a bad reason to fire
(30:12):
them.
Unless there's somethingchronic related to it, which there
can be.
Right.
But again, it comes down toinvestment thesis.
How many people have everasked their advisor, what's your
investment thesis?
And didn't get somethinggeneric that looks like they got
it from Wikipedia.
Yeah.
All right, so then we had 46%said that they would look for a replacement
(30:32):
if their advisor didn'tcommunicate clearly.
However, back to the other question.
Only 34% said or 23% said theyneeded proactive communication.
So half of that number saidthat they valued proactive communication.
And now almost 50% want toreplace them if they don't communicate.
Clearly.
Which means you're notthinking about that when you're hiring
(30:54):
somebody.
But once you're in therelationship, you're like, oh, buyer's
remorse.
So as you go into therelationship, ask them, what's your
communication?
How often should I hear fromyou if I want to get a hold of you,
how do I get a hold of you?
How often?
Like if you hire a soloplanner, it's just one planner all
by himself.
How often do they go onvacation or get sick?
Because who are you going totalk to when they're on vacation?
(31:15):
They're in the Grand Caymanson the money that you're paying them.
And yet you need something andyou have to wait for them to get
back in town.
That's not a good situation.
That's good if you don't havea lot and you can get a good deal
on the planning or somethinglike that, and you're trying to stretch
dollars and you're willing todeal with the fact that you have
kind of like blackout periods.
But it's not good if you'rerunning a money business.
(31:36):
You know what I mean?
If you got million plusdollars, you're running a money business.
You need your executives thatyou've hired on the job, or if they're
not there, they're numbertwo's on the job.
You kind of need that type ofthing going on.
You want to hit the last one.
Yeah.
So 45% of the thousand peoplesurveyed, so 450 people, said they
would leave if the overallclient experience was not good.
(32:00):
And how do you even judge whatclient experiences?
Beauty in the eye of the beholder?
You know, it's just like somepeople like a lot of calls.
Some people don't like phone calls.
Some people like emails.
Some people, you know what I mean?
Like, it's just some peoplelike in person, some people.
So I think that that's areally subjective thing.
I think you should choose afirm that fits the way that you want
(32:23):
to operate.
You know, you should be askingthe firm, can I have in person meetings?
Do we do virtual?
You know, I really thinkpeople should spend a little bit
more time.
You're hiring somebody who youare going to be telling very intimate
things to.
You're going to be tellingthem all about your life, all about
your relationship with yourkids, all about these things, all
(32:45):
about your hopes and yourdreams and where things came from
and where things are going.
You really ought to be lookingat when I walk into this office or
when I talk to their staff,you know, how Do I feel, do I feel
like I belong here?
We talked about this inepisodes when we moved to Tennessee
about, you know, relocating.
(33:06):
You need to.
People who are thinking aboutrelocating, retirement need to relocate
to a community that when theygo out and they meet people they're
not going to be fighting withall the time.
Right.
If you're really politicallycharged, don't move to the opposite
kind of political community.
You know what I mean?
If there's certain things thatare triggering to you or important
(33:27):
to you, don't go to somebodyelse's house and tell them they have
to change their house.
Just, just find a place whereyou belong and go there.
And I think a good plannerwill tell you that if you don't belong
with a good planner, they'regoing to say, look, this doesn't
work.
Can we get you a new home?
Can we find someplace whereyou're going to get better value
out of this?
And we're not going to feelthe stress that we feel because you're
(33:51):
expecting something and wecan't deliver on that.
Yeah.
And at the end of the day, Imean, everyone prices their business
differently.
But working with a financialprofessional is not the cheapest
endeavor ever.
And so if you just had a lineitem on your budget that said, we
spent 40 grand every year onX, someone would look at that and
go, we spent 40.
Which is, by the way, we charge.
No, not clients paying.
(34:11):
See a lot of clients that arepaying a so called financial advisor,
they.
Come in and they meet with usfor the first time.
They're like, I'm paying 40grand, 40 grand.
And that's like, what are yougetting if you had to write a check
every year for 40 year?
But we don't because it comesout of investments and other things.
So when you talk about theoverall experience, if that proactive
communication isn't there ontax planning and things you can do,
then, you know, this raisesthe alarm.
(34:31):
And why don't you then for thelast talk about these two questions
and I'll tell them about thesurvey in the show notes.
Yeah.
I'm also thinking, you know,40 grand a client, that's pretty
good.
Imagine like we could have ayacht if we charge 40 grand.
We just got into the same roomfor the first time in four years.
So this is good.
I guess we're not doing it yet.
We'll take donations though.
We'll let other people come onthe yacht.
(34:52):
That'd be fun.
Yeah.
And just no yacht.
It's too much.
So you got these two questionsand we created a survey.
Oh, yeah.
So we have a survey.
What we were asking for our listeners.
You can explain the survey.
Okay.
Because I don't actually knowwhere it lives.
Okay.
So there was two questionsthat we posed.
It's a very short survey.
We'll have it in the shownotes that you guys can fill out.
It's kind of open answer, butthere's two questions that we're
(35:15):
thinking of.
What do you think as a listener?
Ditch the suits.
What do you think is the mostimportant thing when selecting a
financial advisor?
That's question one.
And then as we talked about inthis survey, there was reasons you
would leave.
Question two is, why would youconsider leaving your current financial
advisor?
So you don't have to put yourname or anything with this, but we'll.
Have no name, no email, no nothing.
Just give us some info.
Travis and I are interestedfrom you guys as listeners as ditch
(35:38):
the suits.
Right.
We just said what thesethousand people said was important
to them.
But we want to know from youas our listener base, what's important
to you.
So we'll have this link in ourshow notes.
If you need it, get in contactwith Travis or myself.
You can head toditchthesuits.com, we'll personally
send you the link.
Because at the end of the day,I think is what people forget.
You and I are real humanbeings that interact with people
(35:58):
every day.
And so it's always funny to mewhen people call in from the show
and I'm like, yes, Steve from Seed.
And they're like, it's the guyfrom the podcast.
We're real people.
So if you guys want to get intouch with ushoots.com no, we have
a screening system to justkeep him at bay.
Too many rings.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The experience is really important.
But at the end of the day,very quick survey you guys can take
(36:20):
and just do it, because we'dlove to hear from you in terms of.
What's that for people, too?
Because I think when you hearit like this, when we talk about
it, if you're trying to make adecision to hire somebody, or maybe
you've been working withsomebody for a while and it's maybe
not working out or you havesecond thoughts, this is a really
good way to think about this,and it'll give you a little bit of
shape to that kind of thatnext discussion that you probably
(36:41):
need to have and that nextdecision that you need to make.
And more importantly, if youcan share with us other perspectives,
we can share that with theListeners as well.
And I think that that helpsother people make better decisions.
So we have some thoughts justto close this out.
Trust and performance.
So here's our big takeaway, right?
(37:03):
We try to do like one takeaway every.
Every you could.
Our listeners get to takesomething home with them.
Basically.
Trust requires vetting, andthat includes establishing expectations
on performance.
Right?
So when you say that you trustsomebody, you haven't really fully
committed to that unlessyou've established expectations on
(37:26):
the performance.
Performance is not just investment.
Performance says, you saidthat we would have meetings every
six months or every three months.
You said that this, this, andthis would happen on these times.
You said that the investmentthesis is xyz.
Are we performing to theinvestment thesis?
Right?
I can't control if the marketgoes up or down, but I can control
(37:49):
if we're staying on track.
So you need to establish thatahead of time.
If you can establish, if youhave trust for them and you establish
the expectations and youmanage your advisor to the expectations,
or if you have a good advisor,they manage themselves to your expectations
and they say, see, these wereyour expectations.
Look, we beat theexpectations, right?
(38:11):
Or we're lagging a little bit.
This is what we're gonna do tofix that.
You know, we do that.
We revamped our newsletter tohelp clients participate with that
interaction with expectations.
How do we do a better job on that?
To me, that's where the trust lives.
Because then you clearly willknow, maybe this is smoke and mirrors
(38:31):
trust or this is real trust.
I'm really getting what I'mpaying for.
Yep.
And then my final thought is,don't wait for something to go wrong
to realize it's time for a change.
Right.
If we say proactivecommunication and trust is important
and they didn't send you moneywhen they said they would, or your
investments went way down andyou don't know why, that raises the
alarm that, okay, what's goingon with this practice?
(38:53):
As you, as a listener, though,think about the value.
Are you getting questionsanswered proactively about your taxes
or your estate or the otherparts of your life that are important
to you, your kids, and how tomake all those things come together?
Don't wait for something to gowrong to say, maybe it's time for
a change.
Just think about, in a perfectworld, what would bring you greatest
(39:13):
peace of mind?
Knowing every year what to dowith your taxes, knowing to make
sure your kids are taken care of.
If you're getting thosethings, then I think trust is a good
baseline.
But again, humor us take the survey.
Thanks for bearing with us inour first in real room time.
We try to keep episodes toabout 30 minutes.
So for the first time beingtogether, we weren't too chatty today.
But we got another episodecoming up after this.
(39:35):
Thank you for being our gueston Ditch the Suits.
And until next time, here's togetting the most of your money in
life.
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