Jordan Haines and Abby Morton dive into the emerging field of financial coaching as a standalone service. Abby shares a compelling story of how a simple one-hour coaching session transformed her friend’s financial outlook without the need for ongoing planning or comprehensive wealth management.
Together, they explore the differences between financial coaching and traditional financial advising, discussing how coaching focuses on immediate client needs like cash flow management, debt reduction, and financial health, without delving into investments or insurance.
They address the industry’s need to define financial coaching clearly and consider how it can be integrated into existing practices or offered as a separate service. If you’re a financial advisor looking to expand your services, reach a broader audience, and provide value in new ways, this episode offers valuable insights into the potential of financial coaching.
Transcript
Jordan Haines: Hello friends. And welcome to another episode of L mentality today. We’re going to do something a little different. We’re picking up about midway through a conversation I had with Abby Morton recently, many of you know, Abby. She’s wonderful. She’s fantastic. And she is spending a lot of her time in this world of financial coaching. So today we explore what that is specifically what financial coaching looks like as a standalone and separate service.
We are learning a lot here at elements in exploring this world of financial coaching. So we will be sure to share our learnings along the way. In fact, this might be something we do regularly. Let’s say once a month, just to catch up and understand what’s going on. So if you have thoughts and questions, concerns pushback.
If you don’t agree with something that we’re talking about, please, please feel free to email us. It’s. Um, podcast@getelements.com that’s podcast to get elements.com or find me on LinkedIn. That’s Jordan Haynes, H a I N E S. And with that, let’s get onto our conversation with Abby Morton.
Abby Morton: So I had a very eye opening experience. This was actually while I worked at Dentist Advisors. [00:01:00] I had a friend who said, Hey Abby, I really actually need some help with my finances. Uh, we are selling our first home that we’ve been renting out for eight years. We’re now finally selling that home. And so we’re going to come into a decent amount of money.
We’re also making more money than we ever have. And we just, we don’t know what to do with this money. Can you help us? And so I honestly just sat down and we, I gave them a cashflow plan and I outlined what they should do and like, okay, put this much money into five 29s for your kids. And this is how much money you should try to be investing.
going to be posting on an ongoing basis to make sure that you’re taking care of yourself and your family and like, just gave them some really like high level, like tips is to kind of what they should be doing on an ongoing basis. They walked away from that, like, one hour session. I’ve never talked to them again about it and they feel so good about their situation.
And I still to this day feel like I gave them the right thing that they needed at the time. They don’t need an ongoing plan. They don’t need ongoing, like. Tax it like they’re just not that [00:02:00] complicated. They don’t need all the bells and whistles They just needed a one time coach. It was literally like a coaching session.
Tell me what to do with my money and Help me figure out the right plan and I always think back to that like I always think back to That’s all she needed. Like she had been approached by financial advisors before and they wanted to charge her, you know, 4, 000 a year. And she’s like, Abby, that just seems like so much money.
And I said, yes, like for the right client, that is the right thing because they do need that much help. Um, or they do need that handholding, right? There’s a number of different things that advisors really do provide value for, but there are so many people out there who don’t need everything. And so sometimes a little bit can be, um, Just enough and what they need and I feel like that is where We as advisor as the whole industry We need to be more well rounded in like our approach to helping people There should be a way for someone to get access and just get help a little bit one [00:03:00] time And, and not have this whole ongoing plan, like there has to be room for that as well as full service, right?
We’re not saying full service is bad. There’s a time and a place for that, but everybody should not have to fit into that mold. That’s why people say no, because they don’t want all of it. They just need a little bit of help. So, and I love how we’re thinking more about coaching and how coaching can kind of like work its way into a full advisory service.
offering and how you can do both and serve people where they want to be served and in the ways they want to be
Jordan Haines: yeah, that’s amazing. Let’s, let’s provide people context. Cause I think that’s a really good launching off point into a couple of questions that I had. Um, so you’re bringing up some really interesting points, um, that I have been talking about on this podcast. So last in the last episode, I talked a lot about, um, distractions in this thing that we call value ads.
Right? Like if you go to any one of the major publications and you go to like their practice management or wealth, any of those sections, they will talk about adding value and doing [00:04:00] more, right? Like there’s this weird feeling we have in our industry of like justifying fees. I don’t know where it comes from, but like we want to do more for people.
So therefore we charge more.
Abby Morton: And it’s probably just with like the fact of, I’m a business owner. I always want to be doing more. I want to be making more money. I want to be making more revenue and to make more revenue. I therefore need to do more for my clients. Like the path makes perfect sense. I mean,
Jordan Haines: very organic.
Abby Morton: not shaming anyone for
Jordan Haines: Yeah. And there’s a place for it, right? Like I think, um, Matt Jarvis is, is, uh, famous for saying like, he’s Bill, he, he wants to build the Ritz Carlton, right. Of financial advice. That’s fantastic. What about the motel eight? Right. So there, there’s this been question, uh, swirling around in my mind for months at this point, which is this concept of, is, is there a service where I maybe do less, but it’s Still as value or more valuable than the service I’m offering to the people I’m offering to, if that makes sense.
And I think that’s what you’re kind of articulating the person that you were talking to, right? You didn’t have to do the full, you know, 12 point comprehensive financial plan that took multiple hours in your planning [00:05:00] software. That, that process is valuable for some people at certain times, but for this client, all they needed was a conversation with someone like you and a little bit of direction to make sure that they’re doing the right
Abby Morton: Yeah. Direction is exactly what they need. I feel like that’s what most people out there are just looking for is like, I know I should be doing something, but I don’t know what it is. Like, help me know what it is, right? And point
Jordan Haines: So let’s talk about that then and put some structure around it. So at elements, we’re exploring this idea of financial coaching as a standalone service, um, separate from financial advice. Um, we are testing and exploring some things, uh, with employers and with advisors and, and we’re having lots of fun conversations.
What I wanted to start us off today with Abby is to ask a question to help advisors listening to this, understand what In your mind is financial coaching, right? Like what, what is this thing we talk about financial advising, but what is financial coaching? And it I’ll, we’ll start there.
Abby Morton: it’s such a good question and I like that you started there because I feel like [00:06:00] in the, in the advisor realm, I feel like I feel like there’s a lot of, I’m going to call it jargon that gets thrown around, right? I do fee for service. I have a small family office. I have, I, I, um, I do coaching. I do full wealth management.
I like, there’s just lots of words I think that are thrown around and, I know I’m not the only one who didn’t like get a degree in financial planning and then decided to enter the industry, right? There’s a number of advisors out there who are career changers or come to it later in life, right? And so maybe you don’t have the background of all the jargon.
And so I find myself asking the same question. So it’s kind of funny because I onboarded an advisor to Elements recently and he came on, like, I do coaching. Like, I, that’s all we do is coaching. And I just started at this new RIA to like bring coaching to the new RIA and we want to use Elements and we’re really excited.
And I said, can I ask you maybe a funny question? Like, [00:07:00] I felt intimidated or scared or like, am I going to look like an idiot? Asking him like, what, what do you define as coaching? Like what does that mean to you? And so I’ve been, exploring this realm for a while because I feel like there is some area where they can converge.
And I think there’s some area where a lot of, um, I even think a lot of what I was taught to do at Dennis Advisors would be classified as coaching. Um, but yet we call it full wealth man, you know, management advising services, right? It’s, it’s the whole plan. So I just have to say, as I’m trying to define what coaching is, I have a very unfixed idea about what the actual definition is.
I’m still, I feel like, trying to figure out. And when I say coaching, what does Jordan hear and what does, John Doe here like what do all the other advisors here because I think we’re all hearing a different thing when I say coaching We’re thinking
Jordan Haines: that’s really interesting.
Abby Morton: I think that’s what we need is like some clarity some, you know Definitions around what [00:08:00] exactly this means because I think we all are thinking different things.
Oh, oh the other good example of this I’m sorry real quick is When we were launching Elements, we talked a lot about doing a subscription model, or a fee for service, or um, you know, ongoing, um, ongoing fees, right? Even the whole fee conversation is so confusing, and I think people, we talk over each other because we’re using these words that we all think mean the same thing, but I don’t know that we all really agree that they all mean the same
Jordan Haines: Yeah. I think it’s safe to, it’s safe to say that you and I elements and even people that we’ve had in the past probably all would define financial coaching different. And frankly, like part of this conversation is you and I are exploring this. Like we, we don’t fully understand exactly what this thing called financial coaching actually is.
And everyone’s going to have a different definition. I think case in point in two things that I’m pulling out, what you just said is, um, The world that we’re exploring right now, you and I is coaching as its own service, right? Like its own business, its own, uh, thing that people pay for, but [00:09:00] maybe historically a lot of advisors view coaching as a strategy for interacting with clients, right?
So like I can do a, a, my services, financial, comprehensive, financial advice. But I, uh, implement coaching strategies and how I interact with clients. I think case in point on this one for me, for example, I went through the certified financial planning program, got my CFP all fine and dandy. And then I followed that up with getting my accredited financial counselor, which is very much in this realm of like financial coaching type tactics that you can implement within a financial advice model.
So I guess that’s my way of, um, articulating what you’re saying to me, which is they’re, they’re coaching is different in different contexts. What I would be really curious about, and this is the thing that we’re exploring right now, is the service of financial coaching. So if we lean into that realm of things, what, how do you, how do you think about financial coaching as a service or as you’re kind of developing it today?
I know you’re starting to have very specifically financial coaching conversations in a financial coaching service. [00:10:00] What does that mean to you right now? I know this will
Abby Morton: I think the biggest. Yeah. Totally. I’ll come back and listen to this in three months and be like, Oh wow, I totally changed my mind now. Anyway. So I think the biggest thing in terms of offering coaching as a service. I think is just the legality that that follows you, right? To be a registered investment advisor, right?
There are certain things, right? You can talk about insurance. You can talk about investments. And if you’re coaching, you are not allowed to talk about investments. and insurance, right? And so there’s kind of, I think the legal issues as to what you can and can’t say. What I legally can give advice on as a coach because I’m not legally registered versus what I can’t.
So I think that is obviously probably the easiest thing because it’s written down, right? You can say the, I mean, Maybe there’s even a little bit of gray area there as to what you can and can’t say, but there definitely is out there as to the differences, um, [00:11:00] as to what you can get paid to say versus not, you know, so I think that in my mind right now, when I think of like coaching as a service, that’s the first thing that jumps to my mind is I’m not giving specific investment advice.
You know, I’m not telling them, I’m probably not doing a risk tolerance questionnaire because I’m not really supposed to be talking about investments, especially not at a very specific level. And I’m definitely not like going into the details as to what insurance policies they should or shouldn’t have.
And so therefore I need to refer out to advisors who can do that for that person or platforms that help them to be able to figure that out for them. I think that’s like the biggest thing in
Jordan Haines: so the, the CFP brain side of me is hearing what you’re saying and I’m hearing a lot of like the theme is restriction, right? I’m thinking like, well, I’m restricted in what I can say. Is it fair for me to assume that coaching as a separate service is like financial planning light?
Abby Morton: See, and that’s, [00:12:00] I know people want to say that, but I’m sorry, I struggle with that. Because When I think about so I’ve started doing a couple coaches coaching sessions, and I’m like literally the same questions I’m having I would have done as a full advisor at Dennis advisors now Yes, I’m not going into specifics about their investments, or I guess our company is not I didn’t even do that at Dennis advisors right we had A CFA hired on staff and I would go mostly talk to him about the specifics of the investments and what the strategy was for that particular client.
And so I’m still talking about, what’s your cashflow like? Let me help you figure out where that money needs to go. You know, people have talked about, I want to buy a home and I’ve given them guidance as to how much debt they should have, you know, after their home purchase, right? What percentage of their income should be going to paying for that mortgage payment?
Because a mortgage lender will give you 45%. Loan right like 45 percent of your income could go to that and that’s too we all know as advisors That’s too high you can have almost half of your income going to [00:13:00] just your mortgage payment You’re going to be so house poor and so I think it’s like rules of thumb like that Like here’s how you can manage your debt levels Um back to what I said earlier of like I have all of this credit card debt But then I know I need to prioritize saving so I’m doing all the saving into my 401k into an HSA Um, but I still yet have 10, 000 of credit card debt.
Like, those to me are very important things to talk about that I think live in the realm of coaching, but I hope advisors as well are getting into those details with their clients because it’s important, right? It’s more than just how do I manage my money, it’s, it’s making for sure my whole entire financial picture is healthy.
And I guess I, I obviously know that and everyone listening to this episode or the show knows we’re all going to come with like a lens from like Elements, right? We work for Elements, we obviously believe in the Elements philosophy, and so I’m definitely going to talk through that lens of like, I need to see their whole picture, I need to understand where they’re at, [00:14:00] and I can do that in an easy way with Elements and these coaching clients to then give them good advice about, How to manage their debt, how to manage their spending, how much should they be saving?
Because I think ultimately, those are the questions people have.
Jordan Haines: I think, um, hearing that I, you could say, I mean, enough advice from the context where financial advisors are coming from, right? Like if, if like where you and I came from, we were engaging in what we would call holistic and comprehensive financial advice, not leaning too heavily in one area or the other, but helping people solve their problems.
If it’s a cash flow issue, we help them with that. If it’s a debt issue, we talk about that. So you and I were already doing a lot of coaching. So the frame of reference we’re coming from. You could, in a sense, say that like, yeah, that kind of is planning light because we’re just taking all of the extra stuff off that like.
We’re not going to do right. So it is restrictive, but we’re focusing on that. The other side of me though, is saying, and this is kind of, I don’t know if you’ve listened to the last episode that we did, but this is that whole conversation around like special sauce at a hotdog place, right? Like, are we [00:15:00] just eliminating the distractions?
That come into this and focusing on the thing that matters the most for that person at that point in time. And that might be why it’s more valuable. So I guess on one hand, you could say that financial coaching as a separate service is planning light. On the other hand, you could say that that is good because it’s eliminating distraction so that you’re focusing on the thing that actually matters to that person.
And for people in financial coaching, those are the things that probably matter more. Then their investment portfolio or their estate plan and a lot of the things that you would get into as a financial advisor, which react to that one?
Abby Morton: Tell, tell me why, like, why do you want to put a label like, it’s planning light? Like why can’t it just be financial planning? Like a way to manage, like I’m having a conversation about my finances and making sure I’m healthy. Tell me why you’re wanting to put a label of like, it’s planning light, like why does that
Jordan Haines: yeah, we got a really, I want to have, um, Michael Reynolds on here sometime, uh, because there’s the reason I’m wanting to put a label on this [00:16:00] is because there’s enough advisors that I’ve worked with over the years where they have their financial planning service model. They charge whatever they charge, it’s their premium service.
It’s what, you know, the CFP process is going to look like. They might use planning software. Um, it’s going to look pretty typical to what you would find from anyone who Kitsis is interviewing on his podcast. At the same time, many of these advisors are creating different lines of service that are entirely separate from that traditional model to do, and maybe they’re not labeling it financial coaching, but some variation of that.
And so part of me is feeling like, okay, well, there’s something different about those two. Why else would I justify having a separate service for that? Why, like, why are we engaging in this world of doing financial coaching and not just doing financial advice and offering financial coaching as part of that, does that make sense?
Abby Morton: Yeah, I think so. I think maybe let me reflect what I heard you say is And I, and I respect and totally understand this where I [00:17:00] have this method and this process and I need to put everybody through the same thing. They all get, they all pay me the same amount of money because I do the same thing for them.
And I 100 percent understand like having that, right? Like having a consistent process that you can put everyone through and feeling like it’s comprehensive. We talk about investments. We talk about a state. We talk about insurance. Debt, like whatever it is, like we talk about all of it, and we call that full planning.
And then I understand that an advisor might need to like, if they are gonna go and answer like a one time question for a client, then I, I started to realize like, it does get complex into, So I’m gonna charge a lot less because I’m only answering one question. And I’m not doing as much for them, but what if the other clients find out and be like, Oh, well I could have just paid a hundred dollars instead of 6, 000.
Like where’s the line between what you’re doing for full clients versus like what you’re going to do for a one time plan. And I think that’s where I was a little naive, um, probably a couple of months ago. And I’ve, I’ve started, as I’ve [00:18:00] talking to, been talking to more advisors about coaching and how can you just have a one time conversation with someone and like keep it easy and simple.
I’ve started to realize. The conflicts that the advisor have that I don’t think I kind of realized going into those types of conversations. So maybe that’s like why we need to put a label on it or I think another term We all know very well is like one time plans, right? Like i’m gonna just do a one time plan for you Maybe it’s, you know, three grand.
So it’s still a higher price point than just a hundred dollars for a 30 minute conversation. But that one time plan is going to consist of abc and it needs to always consist of like abc Because that’s it all kind of comes back probably to fees and making it easier for the advisor to then scale this over time So maybe that’s why you need the labels.
That’s why you need to kind of be a little bit more rigid Um, I understand that but I think there there’s some other ways And I think that we, we need to be open minded to [00:19:00] like thinking that there can be other ways to do it. I guess is what I’m saying. Like I understand that. It makes sense. And let’s be open minded to there being some new ways to do things.
Jordan Haines: I think the way that I see it is this distinct service of financial coaching. While yes, there’s been plenty of, I mean, there’s, there’s whole networks of people out there that are doing financial coaching. It’s very much a, a budgeting oriented, you know, cashflow oriented type service. And I think that’s fair, but I think what we are stumbling upon at elements and that you’re engaging with right now, Abby is this separate service that’s distinct and separate from like a traditional wealth management type service.
But that is still valuable in and of itself. And, um, it just makes me think of like the whole, like there are so many services and markets out there where there’s the premium service and then there’s the just kind of like mass market. It’s there, right? Like I love going to the middle of the road hotel. I would probably feel uncomfortable in a Ritz Carlton because they don’t have hotel waffles, Abby.
I love hotel [00:20:00] waffles. I need my hotel waffles and I’m comfortable in a place like that. Um, but the value I’m getting from somewhere that’s middle of the road versus somewhere that’s like super premium are different. And I don’t know if we know what that value is yet. And you and I have had conversations even this week about like, okay, well, what is, how is this distinctly different than financial advice?
And anyway, so I think this is probably going to be a recurring conversation you and I have because over the next couple of months, you’re going to talk to a lot more people. And I’m going to talk to a lot more people in this format, and it will be really interesting to find out. Yeah.
Abby Morton: agree. I think it’s something that our industry is still really new and is figuring out. I think some advisors are ready to go that direction. And I think some are just like, I have this thing that’s working and I do the same thing for everyone all the time. And it’s nice. And I just want to keep that going.
And I, I don’t think there’s any problem with that at all. But I did, as I was talking to you is I’ve been working with, um, Brett Makowski. He’s one, he’s an elements advisor through kind of like, [00:21:00] Hey Brett, like, what if you tried coaching? Like, what if you did try, I’ve been trying to put together kind of a little outline that our elements users could try to like, open their minds as to how they could do coaching, like do just like a one question type conversation, a 30 minute convo with someone and, and get paid for it.
I’m not saying to do it for free. Um, but how can you kind of do that without having all these extra strings attached? And so I approached him with the idea and I gave it to him. And at first he was a little skeptical, but he was like, I don’t know, it could be interesting. And he started going into all these, how would I market this?
And how do I bring people into it? And this feels like a lot. And what about. Charging. What about all my other clients? And anyway, very good conversations we had, but literally the day after we talked about that, someone found him on the CFP board website, reached out and said, basically, I’ve come from a family that was always very poor and I have a lot of issues.
I’ve started making a good income and I’m ready to do something more. And I just [00:22:00] need a little bit of help to like, make sure I’m going in the right direction. And he’s like, Abby, it took, like, I ended up having her sign an agreement. We had just a 30 minute call. It, I took, you know, 15 minutes after the call to kind of wrap up the conversation and send her our notes.
He’s like, that was so rewarding to be able to help someone like that with this one time question. And so it’s so cool to me that. There are advisors out there that I think that can be open to this idea of helping people in a different way. And I think you need to be there in your business, right? You need to be open to the idea.
And if you’re not, that’s fine. But those that are is just like, no, there’s tools out there that can help you. I think, no, that you can provide a lot of value in 30 minutes and get paid, whatever you may want it to be, right? We’ve talked about fees internally, like 250 bucks, 500 bucks for this 30 minute conversation with a deliverable after, right?
And, and there’s a lot of, you know, do they even do anything, and do, you know, you really need the accountability partner, like, you need someone to [00:23:00] really help them do it. I agree. I, I 100 percent agree with all of that. But I also think some people aren’t ready to pay for that. And so it was so cool to me that, like, Brett was able to, like, kind of put himself out there, give it a try.
He’s now had two people kind of go through this process right after we had that conversation. And he was just like, this is cool that like, there is this other way to do planning and it is working. And so Brett and I are going to keep working together. We hope to like bring you maybe a podcast episode or some, some additional information about his experience with, kind of trying this coaching or this like one time question type service.
I don’t know what we want to call it or everyone I’m sure could call it something different, but it’s, it’s cool that it’s working. And an advisor who’s like a full RA was able to do it and had a great
Jordan Haines: I think this is interesting. And this was the last point that I wanted to talk about and I think you lead this in nicely. Um, there, I think what you and I are experiencing right now is there’s value in financial coaching as a standalone service. Because we’ve seen it and maybe we can’t [00:24:00] put words to exactly what it is.
And so we’re going to continue exploring that. But what’s interesting though, is the advisors that we worked with. So Brett, shout out to you, Brett. Awesome. Michael Reynolds, shout out to you. Brandon Galisi has been on here. Shout out to you, Brandon. There’s so many advisors that we know that are using elements in particular to create some sort of a, uh, standalone service.
In this financial coaching capacity. And I just want to make an observation on there. Like, what is the incentive? Like, why would someone want to do this? And I ask advisors that a lot, like, why do you want to do this? And for the last two years where we’ve had this idea floating out there and using elements of this capacity, a lot of advisors have come to us and said, Hey, I want to create some sort of a coaching or membership or name it, whatever you want, something that’s not my traditional planning process that maybe is less intensive, less hands on, I can handle more people in it.
And I always ask them, why do you want to do this? And I usually get one of three answers. One is altruism, but that, I mean, it’s like people are just like, I got in this industry to help. I want to help people. I’m not planning for this to like be [00:25:00] profitable to me or to make a lot of money from this. I just want to help people.
And so I’m going to do this thing to help people. I think the other one is, um, we see this potentially as a way to feed people into our traditional service. So I think Brett is a good example of that, right? Seeing it as, you know, Well, this person has one question and maybe they’re not ready for this full service, wealth management type of service that we have.
So I’m just going to answer that one question. And now I’ve established some rapport with that client and I can nurture them. And I have a little bit more information and they’ll probably come back to me in the future when they have another question and then another question. And then maybe they might be qualified and ready to work with me.
I’d probably guess that most of the advisors doing this are viewing it from that. Perspective. I think that’s kind of how I see it as well. That’s probably how you see it a little bit, but then there’s the third area that I think that, and that’s, this is what we’re exploring at elements, which is like, is there a entirely separate service?
Where we don’t push people into wealth management necessarily that is valuable in and of itself and that’s profitable, right? As its own standalone service and I think that that’s still, I think that’s the big [00:26:00] question for me. Is that viable? Is that rational? All those things that come along with it. So those are kind of the three areas.
Are you noticing anything as you’ve talked to advisors or yourself is like rational rationale for wanting to do something like a standalone financial coaching service?
Abby Morton: no, I think you really capture it well, something maybe to add to the all true altruism bit is I think we often think like pro bono or have to do it for free or write like it’s not really going to be in a moneymaker. But I mean, I’d like to venture to say that if I, If I was an advisor that had a traditional service model, AUM and was serving making money, but I did have this bit of like, I do want to be able to help more people that just like aren’t ready for full service.
They just have a question. They want the one question answered. I mean, If I set up a model charging 250 to 500, I mean, that feels worth my, I mean, when I talk to most advisors, when they say my hourly rate, like what is my time worth, they would [00:27:00] probably land somewhere between the 200 and 300 per hour mark, I would, would you, would you agree with that?
Maybe I’m way off base there. But I feel like that’s like where most people are kind of landing. So, okay, if I can charge 300, that’s my hourly rate, like, why would I not feel good about helping that person still knowing I’m making money? I’m not just doing it because I want to be altruistic, but because, like, this I actually think could be a good service model.
It could be a way that I help people and, like, feel good about it from a business owner perspective. Like, I don’t, I think there’s this idea out there that, like, it has to be a free, a freebie, um, and I don’t know that it has to be. So I think that’s the only thing I’d add
Jordan Haines: Yeah. The motivations are not mutually exclusive. The last thought I had here as, as we’re talking about this distinction, I think historically many financial advisors are industry at large, at least when I talk to advisors, I think we kind of see the value of financial advice, comprehensive financial advice as this like All or nothing proposition, [00:28:00] right?
Like you either pay for the whole thing or you’re not getting any of it and it’s not worth it to you. And I think what you and I are finding is that actually to a lot of people, it’s not that way. And sure, maybe the whole comprehensive financial plan is incredibly valuable for everyone, even those who can’t afford it.
But for those people who can’t afford it, or maybe are not ready for it. Maybe we just need to answer one question. Maybe we need to give them direction around one thing and make it as simple
Abby Morton: Yeah, but I think that’s just the way the world is going, right? Like, the world is going, which, we could debate if this is good or bad, right? But we, especially in America, have millions of options for every, right? You walk down the cereal aisle, it’s not like 10
Jordan Haines: the best aisle in the store.
Abby Morton: options, right?
Cereal. I brought up cereal because I know
Jordan Haines: I went to the cereal aisle with my,
Abby Morton: was my special little,
Jordan Haines: we got some new stuff yesterday with my daughter. It’s our, it’s our bonding activity. We go to the cereal aisle. We buy all the crap garbage that we eat eventually. So yeah.
Abby Morton: you got, you got to do it. But I mean, but think about when you get a [00:29:00] carwash, when you go to the nail salon, when you, when you buy sporting tickets, right? There’s different tiers of seats. There’s different, there’s always different tiers, right? And so how can we have that in the advising world? Like different tiers for us to access people, right?
where they’re at and still feel like I can be a good profitable business owner doing so. Like, I think that is just, I think that’s what people need out there, is just more options as a way to access a financial professional. That’s not going to sell them a commit, like a commissioned product, because that’s right now actually the only way that I think Most people can access someone with just a quick question is because they’re selling them a product, right?
And so we need some more of us good intentioned advisors who honestly just want to do good We are not trying to make a buck off of you by selling you a product We genuinely care and we want to answer the question that you have like let’s just the subscription economy Let’s just allow more ways for us to
Jordan Haines: yeah. We want the right incentives there. And that’s not to say that people like, I think you and I have talked to enough [00:30:00] advisors that are in that product environment that are trying their best to do well, but the incentive structure is tough, right? Like it’s hard to operate in that environment.
And so if we can do one more thing to have people just receive advice for what they’re paying for, I think that’d be awesome. Well, we have a lot more to explore. I am realizing that this is, um, opening a canning up can of worms. Um,
Abby Morton: Yes. We do have to cut it off at some point Let
Jordan Haines: well, well, I think this is a good stopping point, but I think what I’m really curious is, is of those listening to this, have you considered creating a separate service offering for your clients that is separate from your traditional planning process?
I’d be really curious what your thoughts are out there. Have you done anything about it? Have you not? Have you considered it? Um, Abby and I are exploring both in different organizations. Abby’s really pushing in elements. I’m working with our A’s and helping them explore this as well. So I’m sure we’re gonna learn a lot over the next couple weeks.
Like you’re having conversations all the time in financial coaching. I’m having conversations. So. Maybe like we should do a check in like once a month. Just let people know what we’re finding, what we’re learning. Um, any,[00:31:00]
Abby Morton: Well, and I think, too, we’re all going to grow and learn better as a group. So, if you are, like, interested in doing this in your RAA, like, reach out to Jordan and me and let’s have a conversation and let’s, like, let’s keep this going because I think when we all learn, like, we become better at it.
Like, there’s enough people out there for us all to serve and there’s enough people
Jordan Haines: yeah, yeah. And why are we even talking about this? Right? Like, okay. All of you should know what elements is at this point. If not shame on you, go schedule a demo.
Abby Morton: Oh, oh!
Jordan Haines: shame the audience.
Abby Morton: Jordan’s shaming.
Jordan Haines: by elements. So I got to, I got to plug it in. Right. I, it’s interesting though, but like when we, when we first, let’s just, I’ll, we’ll finish off on this.
When we first started. Working with financial advisors, you and I and Reese, we both came from being financial advisors. So the intent was, Hey, let’s use elements to find out how to be better advisors and to do coaching within your traditional planning process. And what we’ve naturally and organically fallen upon is this idea of doing less for people and having it still be valuable.
And so we’re just like, it’s just fallen into that world. And people that reach out to us all the time are [00:32:00] using elements for that format. And so it’s, it’s been interesting when you create something like and realize maybe there’s a different use for this thing. And that use might actually be more valuable than what it was originally intended for.
Um, and so we’re just, we’re exploring that. So reach out to us if you have questions. Um, we’re excited to talk to you more and Abby, any parting thoughts?
Abby Morton: I love it. No, I’m just excited to see where things go the next several years in this, in this realm and see more people get good help. Like I, I know that’s why all of us became advisors. So share your thoughts, share, uh, what you guys are doing and let’s learn from each other. And thanks for like letting me on and the show today to share my thoughts.
Jordan Haines: Love it.
Abby Morton: appreciate
Jordan Haines: Abby. See y’all next week.
Abby Morton: Bye.