In this episode of Elementality, Jordan Haines, CFP®, and Abby Morton dig into the growing field of financial coaching as a standalone service.

Abby shares an inspiring story of how a simple one-hour coaching session transformed her friend’s financial situation—without the need for complex wealth management.

You’ll learn:

• The key differences between financial coaching and traditional advice
• How coaching delivers value by focusing on immediate needs
• Why financial coaching could be a powerful addition to your services

As the industry evolves, Jordan and Abby explore how financial coaching can be a stand alone service or integrated into your existing practice.

If you’re looking to reach more clients and offer new value, this episode is packed with insights you don’t want to miss!

Transcript

Jordan Haines: [00:00:00] Hello, friends and welcome to another episode of element tality. In 2017 was the first year I started my university courses on financial planning in 2018. I pass the CFP exam. And in that same year, I started working for financial advisors. Um, over the proceeding years, I started out as a paraplanner service advisor, associate advisor, whatever you want to call them. And then eventually landed a role at dentist advisors at a, as a lead financial advisor. 

And ever since I’ve been kind of in a hybrid strapping, uh, straddling the fence a little bit between being an advisor and helping other advisors implement, um, elements now. Needless to say, I’m young guys, and I hope this isn’t news to everyone. I’m not an expert by any means. I am curious, which is why I’m interested in love doing this podcast because I like exploring these ideas. 

But my point here. When I was in school, I learned how to create a financial plan. Almost everything in the CFP program, the coursework, all of it, the capstone, it was basically all catered towards looking at all these understanding, all that [00:01:00] intricacies and the nuances of the financial system and creating a financial plan. 

That’s customized to the person I was working with. When I started working for advisors, I essentially was doing the same thing, except I was matching the style of that advisor and maybe tweaking a few things within the financial plan to meet the needs of the client that we were working with at the time. And then when I became a lead adviser, I essentially was still creating the financial plan and delivering that to people except I was doing it in my own style. 

And I had a little bit more flexibility to explore there as I want. And when I worked with dentists, Um, I had to meet the needs of a specific dentist, but nonetheless, I was still doing a financial plan and it worked well for those clients. Now the story. A side story here. I actually got in touch with dentists advisors. 

The reason I’m at where I’m at today is I married into a family. My wife’s family. She has three uncles who are all dentists. And one day I got a text from one of my uncles. Uh, one of her uncles who said, Hey, have you heard of this firm called dentist advisors? I listened to their podcasts. And I like what they’re saying. 

I’m wondering if you could vet them for me. So I went to Dennis visor, look at the website. I loved how they leaned into content. Um, I love the elements framework that they had created. And so [00:02:00] I reached out to the team, saw that there was an opening and. That’s how I got associated here. Um, I went to a family reunion and probably six months after working with Dennis advisers as a lead advisor. And, uh, one of the uncles said to me, listen, I’ve been, I’ve been listening to the podcast for a long time. And I like a lot of the things that, uh, your firm talks about. 

Why do I need a financial advisor? Why does anyone need a financial advisor? Why does my brother need a financial advisor who was not a dentist? Do we actually need to work with an adviser? And guys I’ll be honest. I was completely stumped. Because frankly, I knew enough about this person to know that maybe they probably didn’t need to hire someone. 

And we were a premium service, right? Like this wasn’t gonna be cheap for them to hire a financial advisor. But guys, I had no idea what to say to him. Because I had been conditioned for so long that I had a solution in hand and that solution was the comprehensive financial advice delivered to this person in a customized manner. To help it meet the needs of their life. But when this person came to me, my uncle. I didn’t have a good answer for him. And I didn’t have any alternatives to [00:03:00] say, oh, you, you have a job or something that you need to do. Here’s an alternative to you, right? 

He still had financial questions. He had things that he probably needed help with, but it didn’t need. He didn’t need a comprehensive or a traditional financial advisor. 

This has led me to think that in many situations, Finding a comprehensive financial plan to many advisors. It’s like a hammer to a nail. Right when you were a hammer. Everything looks like a nail. When you were an advisor, everyone looks like they need a financial plan. And when maybe they don’t need a financial plan, we tend to dismiss. Now, I know I’m preaching to the choir a little bit with this, and many of you are probably fantastic, wonderful financial advisors. 

And in fact, the advisors that, um, believe this way, I don’t think that’s bad. The point I’m making here is. Is there a world? In which a comprehensive financial plan is not. The solution that we need to offer to people at that point in time. 

Now the reason this comes up right now. Last week, many of you listened to the episode between Abby Morton and myself. We talked [00:04:00] about the case for financial coaching, specifically as a standalone service. And the comment was made there. And I think we explored this a little bit where we talked about maybe not everyone needs this full blown service that we offer. 

Maybe some people just need a one-time conversation or a check in every so often. And maybe they’re willing to do things on their own. Maybe they just need direction and they don’t need prescriptive advice. And I’ve talked to enough advisors over the last few years. Thousands of advisors, in fact, Where. Any indication that their clients or someone doesn’t need a financial plan means that we shouldn’t serve them at all. 

That the financial plan is the highest value product that we can offer people. So therefore, why would we offer anything else? And what I’m learning from normal, regular people that might be willing and able to pay for financial adviser. They don’t want it. They don’t want to work with a financial advisor. 

They don’t want the comprehensive financial plan. And frankly, when I look at them objectively, they don’t need it either. They need a conversation with someone they need direction. They need to be oriented to their financial [00:05:00] situation. So guys, as we’re thinking about, and I guess the final thing I’ll reference to two episodes, two episodes ago, episode 180 8. 

Um, About value ads, specifically distracting from our core value proposition. Someone made a comment to me in between there. They said, I think this is a great model. I like this idea of, um, having a special sauce that, that is at the core of my business, but how do I know what my special sauce is? And I think what I’m getting at here is, as you’re thinking about your service, Do your clients start there, start with your clients that you serve right now. Do your clients actually want. And need. If financial plan. 

Is there something else that we can offer them? And one of the best ways that we can find that out is to go to them and asking that question. Last story also. Uh, anecdote I’ll share here. Um, about a year and a half ago at elements. Um, we had, so I made this comment last week with Abby. We had created this thing within Dennis advisers to do something specific for [00:06:00] us. Um, specifically, it was a way for us to talk to young dentists about their finances without having to go and do that comprehensive financial plan that we needed. 

It gave us a way to orient them to their financial situation. And when we sold it, started selling to advisors and offering it to them. Um, we got pulled in a lot of different directions and frankly, we didn’t really know what our special sauce was. We didn’t know what problem we were solving for advisors. 

Right. Was it a client portal? Was it a one-page plan? Um, was it account aggregation? Was it asset discovery? Was it prospecting? And many of you have followed us long enough to see that we’ve gone in a lot of different directions. And so about 18 months ago. Um, this was at the end of the summer last year. I remember sitting down and having talked to quite a few advisors that were canceling their subscriptions with the elements. And wondering what are we. What are we to the people that actually care. And so I reached out to our top 50 advisors. 

Those who have been with us for an extended period of time who loved us. And in many services or many tech industries, they [00:07:00] call them your power user. So I reached out to them and I said, Hey, can we have 15 minutes? I want to understand why this is valuable to you. And I, and I talked to them, candidly, I gave him 15 minutes and I, and I basically just asked them one question. If I were to take elements and cut your feet down and buy a quarter and only have one feature, one feature. What would that feature be? The overwhelming response. 

I mean, I think maybe one person didn’t suits out of the 50, every single person I went to said, I need that scorecard. I need your elements scores. I need that framework. That’s the thing that I need. And he said. I followed that up with. Okay. Well then what is it about that feature? What does that feature do for you? And almost everyone said, well, it helps me have better conversations with people. 

It helps me not have to dig for information. It helps me be able to just show up and have a conversation with folks. And so from those conversations, I learned two things. One is I was able to filter out all of these features, all these different things that I do for people. And, and narrow it down to one [00:08:00] thing that was truly valuable to every single person that we had talked to. And number two, I was able to understand what it actually did for them, what problem it was solving for them in their life. So in this world of comprehensive financial advice, there are so many things that we can do for people, and it can get really confusing. 

It can get really noisy. It’s hard for us to identify. What’s actually valuable to people. And if we can’t value understand one or two value propositions that matter for the vast majority of our clients, it’s going to be really difficult for us to sell that thing. To talk to other people about it. To to say, Hey, this is when it’s valuable for you, or this is when it’s not valuable for you. Right. 

So if we can’t identify that one thing, it’s gonna get really difficult cell. And if we can, I understand what that thing is actually doing for people. It’s going to be even more. More difficult to do this. So. 

The question that I have for you all today. To encourage, this is the thought experiment. Not a thought experiment. Just a question to ponder and I want to hear your answers to this. Please feel free to reach out to me. 

If you did not. Have a comprehensive financial [00:09:00] plan. Let’s just remove it altogether. This is the thought experiment. If you were to get rid of your comprehensive financial plan today. What could you do for your clients? That you believe would be valuable to them? 

Let me ask that again. If you got rid of your comprehensive financial planning process today. What would you do for your clients to still offer value to them? The second thing that I’m encouraged all you to do is reach out to your clients. Ask them those two questions that I went through earlier. Number one. 

If I were to get rid of everything that I do, except for one thing for you. What is the most valuable thing that I do for you? And number two, why? Why is that valuable to you? What problem is that solving in your life? And if we can, if you can diagnose and understand those two things, guys, that clarity that’s going to come to you and your business. I can guarantee it’s going to be life-changing. 

It has been for me at elements it’s been for me and my personal practice has been wonderful there. So, um, if you don’t agree with me, Let me know. Jordan Hanes. Uh, as my name, find me on LinkedIn. You can email us [00:10:00] podcast to get on this.com. And, uh, if you want us to talk or explore other ideas in the future, please feel free to reach out to us. 

Otherwise guys, good luck. And we’ll see you next week.