Carl Richards coined the term “real” financial planning several years ago. Since then trying to define what it means has caused a great deal of discussion among industry influencers. Something feels right about the term, although a clear definition has been a point of debate.
So what is real financial planning? And are we, as advisors, getting any better at it? On this episode of Elementality, Reese and Carl talk about the factors that might help provide a definition—an element of trust, technical know-how, emotional IQ. They explain why they believe the emotional jobs of a planner are crucial to guiding a client to overall financial health—but why those skills must be backed by functional prowess for there to be real financial planning.
Podcast Transcript
Carl Richards:
Imagine a Venn diagram that… Actually, it’s just really just two circles. There’s no overlap. And this is actually my definition now of Real Financial Planning is in one circle you have use of capital and capital has an asterisk next to it. And the asterisk is time, attention, sorry, time, money, energy, and attention. So we’ve got these four sources of capital. So use of capital is in one circle and the other circle is what’s important to you. We could swap that out with values historically with Bill Backer’s x-worker or we could change it. My favorite is purpose. So we have one circle that’s like financial purpose, or what’s important to me. The other circle is use of capital. Like I think Real Financial Planning is the continual alignment of those things, ’cause it’s never-ending.
Jordan Haines:
Welcome to Elementality. I’m Jordan Haines, financial planning specialist at Elements, each episode Reese Harper and Carl Richards will explore the major challenges faced by financial advisors and the things they can do to manage the functional, emotional, and social jobs of delivering real financial advice to real clients. We hope you enjoy this episode.
Reese Harper:
Welcome to another episode of Elementality, everybody. Snow caps on the top of the mountains. It’s spring, green. Carl and I are here back in the studio. Carl, thanks for driving in man.
Carl Richards:
Yeah, of course.
Reese Harper:
Yeah. It’s just a hop, skip, and a jump.
Carl Richards:
Yeah. Yeah.
Reese Harper:
I’m planning on doing a cabin recording here. I’ve never had a co-host who I could like record on the deck, looking at moose. We’re gonna do that next time.
Carl Richards:
That’s closer to the house too, right?
Reese Harper:
Yes.
Carl Richards:
That’d be great.
Reese Harper:
You can drive over… For those of you who don’t know Carl and I, if you didn’t catch the last episodes, Carl’s inaugural episode, Carl lives in Park City. I live in Salt Lake and I’ve got an old day frame cabin up at the top of Guardsman Pass in between Park City and Salt Lake. So normally people travel through the actual highways to meet each other, but Carl and I are gonna like go a hike over the mountains. Next time be recording at the cabin I think, it was more interesting this morning when I woke up, I was like, dude, that’d be, that’ll be way cooler to record out there.
Carl Richards:
Oh, for sure, for sure.
Reese Harper:
Alright. So today’s episode, I’m super excited about because, it’s a coin, it’s a term that Carl has coined, Carl’s coined most terms of the industry for those of you who say things to clients, I’m pretty sure you’re using some of his words in the last 25 years. Wouldn’t you say it’s true?
Carl Richards:
I don’t know.
Reese Harper:
Do you hear people? [laughter] You hear people say that I’m always like, that’s a Carl term I think.
Carl Richards:
That’s really flatter. Thank you.
Reese Harper:
Yes. You do. You’ve coined almost everything. I think I didn’t even know. I didn’t really know you until like a year and a half ago. Maybe a year ago well, and a lot of the terminology that I’ve like used in my career, I’m realizing you had a book out on, at least like a decade ago. So you kinda.
Carl Richards:
Yeah. I think if you just stick around long enough, that tends to happen. So It’s fine.
Reese Harper:
I think people just align with your words. I think you just have a way of, and you’re nice. You’re not mean, so that tends to be…
Carl Richards:
That’s a goal of mine, like an actual written goal. Be nice.
Reese Harper:
You’re super nice. Yeah. No, I don’t know anyone who doesn’t like you.
Carl Richards:
Yeah.
Reese Harper:
I know why people don’t like me.
Carl Richards:
Yeah.
Reese Harper:
That’s the challenge. You’re gonna have to help.
Carl Richards:
Yeah.
Reese Harper:
You know, soften the perspective.
Carl Richards:
There you go.
Reese Harper:
Alright. So Real Financial Planning is a term that you’ve coined and [laughter] it’s I mean, it got, I gotta say, like, I know there’s a lot of meaning behind that.
Carl Richards:
Yeah.
Reese Harper:
Real Financial Planning a lot of people could define that in their own way.
Carl Richards:
Sure.
Reese Harper:
How do you define Real Financial Planning? What does that mean?
Carl Richards:
Yeah, so that originally happened at… FPA holds these events. They’re not secret, but you don’t hear about them much. They’re called a retreat and it’s not the big annual big conference. It’s a much smaller conference. Yeah. And it’s always really cool because you could suggest topics and there’d be different places like under the trees, you could go talk about this. Or, and I was at the first one and I was on a panel and this was so long ago that it’s really funny to remember, but Tim Miller and Michael Kitsis and I on a panel. And I was writing the column for the New York Times at the time. So I was getting, I’d get lots and lots of questions from journalists and from the readership about how do I find a Financial Planner? How do I find like, do they even exist? And I remember saying during that panel, somebody asked me about it. And I said, for the first time I said, it’s like, there’s a secret society of Real Financial Planners. That was the first time I’d ever said that. And somebody…
Reese Harper:
Do you know what year roughly is it?
Carl Richards:
I don’t, I can’t.
Reese Harper:
Because that is like a couple of years ago.
Carl Richards:
No, no, this is like, it’s not 20, but 15.
Reese Harper:
More than a decade.
Carl Richards:
Well, I’ve been writing. So the call, so it’s like 12 or 13 years ago.
Reese Harper:
Okay.
Carl Richards:
And somebody on the board where you could, there was always a couple blocks in the schedule where they would just be suggested topics and people kind of vote on them. Somebody wrote Real Financial Planning as a topic. And I was like, “oh, that’s interesting. Let’s go see.” So I went and I remember we were sitting on a big table outside this really long table. And, there were like past presence of the FPA there, there were like CFP board members there. And I was so struck by because the whole conversation was whoever suggested it. I think I remember who it was said Real Financial Planning, what does this even mean? And we were at an FPA event with right. And I remember they actually turned and said, “Carl, you said it, what do you think it means?” And I remember just being struck by this idea that like, how crazy is it that we don’t necessarily know? I think we’ve gotten a little better maybe, but we don’t necessarily know. And my response back then was.
Carl Richards:
A lot, like the Supreme court’s definition of pornography. Like we don’t know how to define it, but we know it when we see it, and that my response was, “look, I just know that I would send my mother to that person.” And so there was an element of trust. And I think there’s also this element of technical being a technical rockstar like really knowing like you’re a pro you know what you’re doing, and you’ve got the emotional IQ, or emotional intelligence to be able to do the work on a deeper level. But now it’s really shifted to this idea of reality-based financial planning to me like real financial planning is reality-based planning. And we can certainly unpack that too.
Reese Harper:
Okay. So the first thing in your, there was three things there. I heard technical chops. I heard emotional IQ and I heard the first one, I didn’t catch the first one.
Carl Richards:
It was just being, sorry. There was a level of trust.
Reese Harper:
Oh, trust. Okay.
Carl Richards:
Right. But I think trust comes…
Reese Harper:
You did say, you did say that. I just meant…
Carl Richards:
Trust is earned through the quality of the experience that someone has with you. It’s not a function of the quantity of the time.
Reese Harper:
Yeah.
Carl Richards:
And largely, I think the quality of the experience is driven by the quality of the questions that you asked.
Reese Harper:
Okay. So if I asked you, like, you got three op… Rank those in terms of order of importance, in terms of perceived by the client, you’ve got trust, you have technical know-how, and you’ve got the emotional IQ. How would you rank, or how do you kind of order that?
Carl Richards:
Yeah. I mean, I think the problem is, as an industry, we’ve been putting the technical piece at the top. We’ve always thought this is a math job. It’s really, I mean, I’m talking to like this audience, right? Like real, most as an industry, we’ve just been salespeople.
Reese Harper:
Yeah.
Carl Richards:
But as this core group of real financial planners, these are people who I think have really emphasized technical ability. And I’ve gotten in trouble over the years because sometimes I’ve been, I’ve miscommunicated. I haven’t been misinterpreted I’ve miscommunicated that that technical ability doesn’t matter because I’ve so overemphasized that deep empathy.
Reese Harper:
Yeah. Good authors tend to do that. Good writers tend to do that. You tend to give voice to the thing that has the least voice.
Carl Richards:
Yeah. But what I’ve discovered is it’s an and.
Reese Harper:
It’s a both.
Carl Richards:
It’s an and right. Like you have to be able to do that.
Reese Harper:
We talk about that with elements, like in terms of there’s functional jobs and emotional jobs, I think you’ve heard us talk about that.
Carl Richards:
Yeah. Yeah.
Reese Harper:
And functional jobs are the technical know-how, you know, I just usually think of a functional job as like something that it’s pragmatic, it’s practical, it’s a Roth conversion. It’s setting up a 401k. It’s a functional job. You don’t have this, with, well, the second, the other side of it’s the emotional jobs, which it’s helping the client feel something, they want to feel confidence. They wanna feel centered. They want to feel present. They want to feel trust. But if you take away one of those two, but if you take away the functional, then you end up with a little bit weaker value proposition.
Carl Richards:
A lot weaker.
Reese Harper:
Your value proposition’s quite a bit weaker.
Carl Richards:
Yeah.
Reese Harper:
But you, if you only have that functional job side, then you still have a pretty commodity looking you’re… You have a rub advisor. You’re a commodity, you’re, the client doesn’t… Without the emotional component, the value proposition is weak too. They’re both important. That’s why financial planners get paid better than average when they really succeed. ‘Cause you’re, it’s a really tough package, I think, to get in one human being…
Carl Richards:
I totally agree.
Reese Harper:
To have a, I mean, I would say just like I’m being vulnerable like my technical chops are not as strong as my emotional IQ. Like I have a stronger emotional IQ than I do a passion for technical know-how. I think that’s why I relate to you super well, I wouldn’t say that we’re like weak. We just, I mean, I’ve helped architect produce substantial piece of software that’s focused on financial planning. But I would say there are people with, that I have had to rely on with deep, deep, deep technical know-how. But a lot of times those people don’t bring an emotional, a really strong emotional IQ they don’t service emotional jobs well with a client. And I just think it’s a really tough blend, a tough balance to have in because there’s like different parts of your brain.
Carl Richards:
No, I totally agree. I totally, and I think like one way to frame this would be if you would imagine, I’ve done a lot of art on the radio, so you can just, we can just imagine, even though I can draw for the video, but imagine a Venn diagram that actually it’s just really just two circles. There’s no overlap. And this is actually my definition now of real financial planning is in one circle you have use of capital and capital has an asterisk next to it.
Reese Harper:
Yeah.
Carl Richards:
And the asterisk is time, attention, sorry, time, money, energy, and attention. So we’ve got these four sources of capital. So use of capital is in one circle and the other circle is what’s important to you. Or we could swap that out with values historically with Bill Backer’s X-worker or we could change it. My favorite word is purpose. Like so we have one circle that’s like financial purpose or what’s important to me. And the other circle is use of capital. Like I think that real financial planning is the continual alignment of those things. ‘Cause, it’s never-ending. It’s not like, I remember one night Christmas Eve when those circles were perfectly overlapped, for most of us, most of the time there’s a gap between there, there’s no overlap. Like I say one thing’s important to me, but I actually spend my time, money, energy, and attention in another way.
Reese Harper:
Yeah.
Carl Richards:
And so I think the technical piece falls in this, like in both like this use of capital, how am I doing these things? And if you are really, really good at helping people optimize their use of capital, but you’ve never answered the, for what, question?
Reese Harper:
Yeah.
Carl Richards:
What’s the point?
Reese Harper:
Yeah.
Carl Richards:
I mean, one example of this would be like, pretend like, just to take the investment example, pretend let’s just assume that a world existed where you could outperform an index every quarter of your life. You outperformed a benchmark every quarter of your life.
Reese Harper:
How much are we talking? [laughter]
Carl Richards:
Yeah. Just you outperform a benchmark by every quarter of your life, in every quarter of your life, you outperform a benchmark. So you get a performance report that says you’re but… And is it possible like that the question of whether or not that’s possible is a whole another discussion, but let’s pretend like you did do that? The question is, is it possible to also not meet your goals, of course, right? Like it’s totally possible to outperform, to get performance, and never because you’ve never took the time to even talk about it. Would I be happy if I outperformed a benchmark every quarter of my life, but I didn’t meet any of my goals or at least my most important goal? No, I wouldn’t be happy. Let’s flip it on its head. Is it possible to never beat a benchmark and meet my goals? Of course, it is. Would I be happy as a client? Yes.
Carl Richards:
Right. So if I’m really good with technical know-how and I deliver all that technical know-how, but it’s not aligned with what’s important to me. What’s the point? And I, and the same thing over here. Like, I can be all soft, I can make people cry in the office. I can be California woo woo. But if I keep…
Reese Harper:
Shout out to California though.
Carl Richards:
Yeah, exactly. I love making fun of California Woo woo. If I keep making mistakes with how I technically do the things, or I don’t even know about a tax opportunity that was missed, or I had a conversation with a financial planner at a conference recently I was just totally blown away by the technical competence that he knows for his niche market. Nobody else knows that stuff. So if I don’t know that I’ve missed so, I think you have to have both it’s an and right?
Reese Harper:
RH: Yeah. Yeah. And it’s, I think that’s a that’s one of the challenges that we have as an industry. You’re, if you… And for this audience, in particular, this audience is what I would call an entre-professional audience. They’re more like a, they’re a business owner that also has to develop like an unusually large amount of skill, most good entre-professionals take dentists, take doctors, engineers, financial advisors, architects, interior designers they have both functional and emotional components to their job that allow them to excel like really excel. I don’t feel like you can, you can totally survive on the functional jobs. I mean, there’s good CPAs out there that can, they know how to get lessert populated properly and they can take advantage of tax deductions and get the tax return filed, but to thrive like really a thriving firm, a thriving advisor, someone who’s creating a lot of demand generation for their time and their skill. I feel like that’s the emotional part is usually the differentiator there. And to the point where I see plenty of jobs that are or even entre-professionals who aren’t technically competent, but they have like a super strong emotional IQ and they’re like really good coaches and really good kind of therapeutically gifted. That could be kind of dangerous in financial planning right?
Carl Richards:
Oh, well, there’s like the other version of those too, that are like really emotionally good. And they’re hucksters.
Reese Harper:
Yeah. They’re sociopaths.
Carl Richards:
Yeah. Yeah.
Reese Harper:
Like I…
Carl Richards:
So I, that’s why I…
Reese Harper:
It’s both.
Carl Richards:
Think it’s really hard to figure it out and it is both.
Reese Harper:
Yeah. And that’s why, like, when I was started with, when I started with elements, I had, I was kinda struggling with this decision, like, what is it? It’s both of these sides, these emotional and functional jobs and reading Anthony Ulwick’s book, Jobs to be Done. And just seeing that he was defining these across all industries, like these common emotional jobs and functional jobs, and seeing that, wow, this is happening in every space in every industry. And it’s like what are we gonna, what, are we gonna pick? Is this financial planning framework that I wanna work on? Is it, do I emphasize the emotional side? Do you emphasize the functional side? And I just couldn’t pick, it just had to be both, you know?
Carl Richards:
Yeah.
Reese Harper:
It just really had to be a nice hybrid. I do think though that we have some room to grow in both avenues and but I think it’s just really difficult for clients to really connect and change behavior when someone doesn’t have that emotional component to their practice. When a financial advisor is void of those emotional jobs, failing those emotional jobs, I don’t feel like the client can engage with that planner as much to change behavior, because that is part of the value prop. I mean, it’s like, you’re telling, you tell me what to do. You do the jobs you’re functional. But I don’t, if we want to change human behavior, it’s really tough to do that. Without the usual [0:16:54.6] ____.
Carl Richards:
Well, the fundamental problem is money is emotional.
Reese Harper:
Totally. Yeah.
Carl Richards:
Money is. So you can’t, I mean, and we’ve all had this experience of like, and how many times you hear, I mean, there’s a thing it’s called a midlife crisis for a reason that you wake up at some point and you say, is this really all there is. Is this what it’s for? And I’ve been, I think with the most recent couple of years, we’re just coming out of hopefully pandemic wise and the movement to remote work and people having thought, we’ve been, we now have a really unique opportunity to help engage in questions that nobody had permission to ask before. Like, you can ask questions. You didn’t, you weren’t allowed to ask before. And if we’re not, if we’re, I don’t even understand how you do the job of a financial planner or advisor, I don’t even know how you do the job without understanding that piece of it, because what’s the point of the portfolio. If it’s not there to meet these goals, what’s the reason you’re buying insurance? What’s the, there’s gotta be a reason. Now, the dilemma is no one walks into the office saying, can I cry on your couch?
Reese Harper:
0:18:11.8 RH: No.
Carl Richards:
Help me define my purpose. They come in with an acute problem, often around investments or a portfolio blew up, or the markets are scary, or I just sold a business or I need insurance, an acute problem. And I think the art of this business is meeting them without acute problem sort of empathetically like performance is important to me too. Ensures like, and then pulling what I like to call righteous tricks to help them understand. “I gotta understand why you’re doing that.” Now, some people lead with that and they may even call it like sometimes we call that life planning or something. But I think to me, it’s easier to meet people at that acute problem call, call myself whatever word everybody accepts. Like this is called finance planning, come in. Yeah. Portfolio. Okay. Awesome. Cool. And then slowly take them down the path to help them understand the only way I can do my job is if I understand what this means to you, what’s the purpose.
Reese Harper:
So, and I love that, man. It’s really rewarding to have a conversation with somebody who’s got organically so many at buts feeling and thinking about all this.
Reese Harper:
I want to emphasize one part what you’re saying, or maybe shine a different light on this. You said I think I heard, we’ve established that you need both. We’ve established that sometimes people come in with an acute need or an acute pain, and you gotta solve that pain in order to then pivot and sort of help do the emotional jobs that they are more enduring. That’s what I was hearing. And I didn’t really realize this, I don’t think until this year, which is even when the people are reaching out for an acute functional need, I think it’s a… For most people that are willing to hire a financial advisor or are looking to hire someone, most people that call you. Right. I think the reason, even though they’re talking about this acute functional need, I think they had an emotional job that they were… And That showed up and that caused them to reach out, it wasn’t the functional job showed up. The functional job showed up, who knows a couple months ago or a week ago, or a day ago. They thought of different ways to service it.
Reese Harper:
They went online, they did some Google searching. They saw that there’s a Robo advisor here, there’s a Roth conversion website. There’s a… They found an article about the captive insurance they were questioning or whatever. But then, they got to this place where there’s another emotional job came up, which was like, “I don’t know if I trust myself. I don’t know if I feel confident to make this choice. I don’t know if I have the experience to really confidently make this decision. I’m gonna go talk to a plan… Someone about that.” Well, are they coming to you because they didn’t know the answer to the technical question? Are or they are coming to you because they lacked the confidence? The emotional job was, I want to feel confident about the choices I’m making.
Carl Richards:
Yeah.
Reese Harper:
Well, I really feel like it was emotional most of the time, it was emotional most of the time. However, if you just give them therapy there’s a huge gap there, a huge gap. I’m not saying it’s not…
Carl Richards:
Yeah.
Reese Harper:
But I’m saying it, I think it might be 60, 40. I’m not saying it’s 90, 10.
Carl Richards:
Yeah.
Reese Harper:
But I really feel like most of the time when people are talking like functional jobs, that they came to you for, some acute pain, some acute need, they didn’t come to you for that acute need. They came to you because they lacked the confidence to do that thing in the other five or six outlets that were clearly available to them through any number of searches they were doing. You weren’t the most efficient place for them to get that job functionally completed. But you were the most efficient place for them to get the confidence that it was gonna be done properly.
Carl Richards:
Yeah.
Reese Harper:
And that’s an important nuance. If we… Don’t cheapen yourself, financial advisor thinking that you’re just another place to get the functional jobs completed, you’re way more important than that. And they came to you for that acute pain, but I don’t think it was really about that. It was about the confidence to execute upon that, that they came to you for, which is different than saying, “Well, they wanted a Roth conversion.”
Carl Richards:
Yeah.
Reese Harper:
They had a plenty of options… They could have called Vanguard, they could have called Fidelity, they could have went online, they could have bought the downloadable PDF and guide, there’s YouTube videos on it. There’s all kinds of ways they could have serviced that functional job. They picked you for some reason. And it was about some emotional need you were meeting for them. It could have just been confidence, but, I think we misinterpret sometimes the squishiness of emotional jobs. Emotional jobs are often backed by functional strength, by competence by…
Carl Richards:
Yeah.
Reese Harper:
Experience. But it doesn’t… But we characterize ourselves like, we’re these execute executors of functional jobs. And I just don’t see us… We talk about that… We cheapen our value, I feel like, so.
Carl Richards:
No, I think that’s important to understand, but I think the point that might be really also important is I don’t think the client knew
that.
Reese Harper:
They didn’t. You’re right. You’re totally right.
Carl Richards:
So, they’re not coming to you saying,” I have an emotional job for you. Will you please help me have confidence?” They’re saying, “My portfolio blew up, I don’t know what to do.” And I… They may not even say, “I don’t know what to do,” but so we, I think to me, clearly there’s a bunch of emotional work to do. Clearly, we can’t… What does it even mean to have an optimal financial plan or a plan for retirement, or I wanna save for the kids education? There’s a whole bunch of questions around, what does that look like? And why like… Is that even a good idea? And of course, we’ve gotta do that. And I’m just saying, when clients come in, they’re not normally saying, “Hey, I know I could have fixed this online, but I just want you to hold my hand.” But… And so, I think we can feel really confident that the value we’re actually offering is alignment with the decisions we’re making, with what’s really important, confidence, right? That I’m gonna take this plate from you. You don’t need to worry about this anymore sort of thing, but we don’t use those words at least up front, because nobody’s really asking for that. Now what they’ll know, soon in a relationship is they’ll look back and go, “Oh, that’s what I really value.” And I’ve had this happen so many times with the past clients.
Reese Harper:
Yeah.
Carl Richards:
Where they’re I was like, “What about the portfolio design? ‘Cause I thought I was so good at that,” and they would be like, “I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
Reese Harper:
Yeah.
Carl Richards:
Right, I don’t know… I do know that, you know my son got in trouble the other day and got a speeding ticket. And I do know that if I died, my wife would feel really confident with you. And I do know that my husband, is a joker and it’s really nice to know that I can call you directly. Those are the kind of statements that you get about your value. You don’t get optimal portfolio design party.
Reese Harper:
Yes. Well, dude, I mean, look let’s just brass tax. How many… I know some coaches and, I know coaches, not financial coaches, just business coaches, life coaches that charge 50, 60, a hundred grand a year, million dollars a year, just for providing the…
Reese Harper:
We’ll say functional advice and emotional support… Both functional and emotional jobs being serviced here, usually. Coaches aren’t just strictly emotional, talking is not… Talking is not just an emotional job.
Carl Richards:
Right.
Reese Harper:
What if I give you information that’s technical? What if I share information about capital market?
Carl Richards:
The skill of how to have a conversation, how to ask questions, it’s not just emotional.
Reese Harper:
Yeah, that’s not just emotional. Totally. When the client comes in is like, my portfolio blew up, they walk in front door, and there… You gave that example of a client, find you of an acute pain portfolio, we’ll say they’re frustrated about fees or they’re frustrated about performance or something. Well, you can either attack, you can go after, and show how your portfolio is better than the portfolio they have. You can go down that road and the client will still be stuck with the question, can I trust this person, and do I… Am I confident? Or you can pause, really uncover what’s the emotional job. Are they lacking confidence in the construction of the portfolio? Are they lacking confidence in the communication of the previous advisor? Are they lacking confidence in their long-term goals being understood? Lacking confidence in values being shared with their planner? There’s some emotional reason that they’re at your doorstep and it wasn’t functional, but if you just attack the functional reason that they’re coming in with and say, here’s how we do it better, I don’t think you end up with an immediate quick conversion rate on your sales effort. It’s just still… I don’t know. Is he really better? Is she really better?
Carl Richards:
Yeah, there was this great survey that Russ Allen Prince did in his book. I think it was called Private Client Attorney.
Reese Harper:
Okay.
Carl Richards:
So it was about attorneys. They surveyed high net worth, as I recall, and I’m sure I’m not gonna get this perfect, but they surveyed high net worth families, and here was the population… You’re a high-net-worth family… I can’t remember what they define that as. You valued and we were willing to pay for professional advice. You had hired an attorney and paid for an estate plan to be done, and then you didn’t implement it. So that was the population. And that we all see this all the time, right, so you paid for the plan, but you didn’t do anything with it. And the question they asked was, Why not? Why haven’t you done anything with this? I can’t remember the exact number, but it was 90% plus said, this plan doesn’t reflect what I wanted.
Reese Harper:
Yeah, I agree, yeah.
Carl Richards:
And so we paid for the plan, we’ve hired at somebody do the functional job, we didn’t do it because we’re still sitting here going, I don’t know. Right? Yep. The diagnosis wasn’t correct. Yeah, the prescription looks fine, yeah, but I don’t know if it’s for me. So, I think that’s…
Reese Harper:
That’s so hard, man. We’re gonna talk about that in a future episode. I love that. I’ve got an episode around this in my head around really uncovering that, what is it that really lets them go… Yeah, this is my plan. I know you spent a ton of time on this side of chat about it. You’re an easy guy to talk to. These are fun. The most fun time of my week, probably, it’s getting to talk to Carl, so I appreciate you carving now a few minutes for us. Look forward to catching up with you next week.
Carl Richards:
Yeah. Amen Reese.
Reese Harper:
Have a good one.
Jordan Haines:
Next time on Elementality.
Reese Harper:
We went through that process for several years of figuring out what are the real key indicators that we’re going to use that measure someone’s overall financial health. Now, we had several versions of visuals and charts and graphs that would measure these things, and it wasn’t for a few years that until it finally came together where we had this idea of a periodic table… And I think there’s a lot of different visuals that could have gone with. I think a lot of it had to do with wanting to see a lot of information in a small area.
Jordan Haines:
You can learn more about the Elements Financial Monitoring System at getelements.com/demo, and schedule a time to talk with one of our friendly financial planning experts. Elementality executive creators are Reese Harper and Carl Richards. Elementality is produced by Abby Martin and directed by Jordan Haines. Have a good one.