Jordan Haines explores how comprehensive financial planning can sometimes distract from the core value proposition that clients truly seek.

Drawing from his recent prospecting experiences, Jordan discusses the importance of focusing on clients’ acute financial concerns rather than overwhelming them with a broad array of services.

Transcript

Jordan Haines: Hello friends and welcome to another episode of L mentality. My name is Jordan Haynes. I’m financial vitals expert here at elements. Your host for today’s show. Now I hope you all had a fantastic weekend. We did not publish last week because it was Thanksgiving and I was joining. Traveling all across the world with a three kids under seven, stuck in a car, [00:01:00] having a grand old time and getting back with, uh, our nine month old having hand foot and mouth. 

Now, many of you might be asking what that is. It’s a terrible thing that you don’t want any of your kids to get. Cause then you’re stuck at home all the time, but we’re not here to learn about, uh, my, uh, health woes and raising children. We’re here to learn a little bit more about what we are learning here at L mentality. 

So to get started though, I want to share what we are going to do next week. Next week, I’m going to have Abby Morton on. Many of, you know, Abby, she is amazing. She’s incredible. Um, Abby is Exploring this world of financial coaching. Or financial wellness, whatever you want to call it. Having financial conversations at scale and having a profitable business model to do that. 

So we’ve been piloting a lot of interesting programs running a lot of tests, and Abby is going to share what she is learning and things that are working. I know many of you listening to this work with 401ks work with employers are wanting and interested in exploring financial conversations at scale. 

This will be a fantastic episode for you, so tune in next week and you’re gonna get a lot there. This week though. I want to share some things that I’m learning actually. 

A few [00:02:00] weeks ago, I shared some thoughts in episode one 90. About how not all clients are not all prospects necessarily need. Financial planning. And over the last few weeks, I’ve been thinking about this a little bit more. It’s matured a little bit more than my thoughts. And I wanted to share some of this with you. I just got off. An office hour conversation with quite a few advisors and they were asking questions about prospecting. 

They’re asking questions about, uh, Um, talking to people for the first time. And, um, as many of you know, I spend a lot of my time right now in prospecting conversations. Uh, talking to potential clients of dentist advisers. And so I’m testing a lot of these things out for the first time. So just know as well that as I’m sharing these with you, a lot of them are subject to change. 

So, um, I’m deeply curious about a lot of things that I’m talking about, not strongly convicted to them. So if you have any pushback or thoughts to share, I’d love to hear it. Just find me@linkedinorsendanemailtopodcasttogetonthis.com. At any rate. Um, I shared with you all. How not everyone needs a financial plan. 

And I think as I’ve thought about this more. I think the reason I bring this up is because in my [00:03:00] mind, sometimes financial planning or this, this comprehensive. Uh, address of different topics and finance. Can often feel like a distraction from the core value proposition. And also many of you have heard me talk about conversations, being one of these really valuable interactions that we have with people. So let’s, let’s kind of start fresh. I’ll offer a refresher for many of you are coming into this for the first time. Um, as we have released elements to the world, and as we’ve had these conversations, both myself and through other advisors, I think what we’ve realized is that sometimes the financial conversation, the conversation about money with a professional, a real human being. Is often the thing that people are looking for. Go back to episode 1 91, uh, where we, uh, How air to conversation between recent Carl and they talked about the value of the conversation. 

What we’re finding is that sometimes that conversation is the thing that people want. And I equate this very similar to special sauce. You’ve heard me tell this story before. Sorry. If I’m repeating myself, I [00:04:00] will repeat myself many times here after. Special sauce. Uh, it refers to what a hot dog stand used to you. 

So I worked for a hot dog stand called J dogs in Utah growing up. Um, and they’re, they’re key thing. The thing that made them different from everyone else is that they were very simple, right? So they were kind of like in and out burger, they had one thing on the menu and that thing was hot dogs. And on those hot dogs, you can get a couple Fixin’s, but the really pinnacle of the whole experience was this sweet, barbecue sauce. 

They called it their special sauce because special sauce was the thing that made them unique. It was the valuable. Um, interaction that people came back for. It meant that other mix-ins things that might be good on a hot dog didn’t pair well with that special sauce. Well, so they did not add it to the menu. 

For example, cheese melted cheese is something that I think goes really well on hot dogs. I think it’s a delicious thing. I think it’s wonderful. I think in and of itself it’s valuable, but when you pair it with special sauce, It kind of distracts from that. It’s not very good. And when I think about financial services and what we do for our clients, we often talk about value, adds, like I need to add more value. 

And if you go to [00:05:00] a group of advisors and you say, what are the things that we could do for clients? We often start thinking of different. Topics in this frame of comprehensive advice. That we can address with them. Things from education planning, to tax planning, to student loan, planning, to, um, stock options and things like that. 

W there are a lot of different areas that we can address with people. And I think what we have a tendency to do in our business is when someone comes to us and asks a question, we tend to zoom out. Right. I do this all the time. You’re asking me about student loans. Well, let’s talk about your liquidity. 

Let’s talk about your retirement planning, your education planning and all of these things that are important. But maybe aren’t relevant to that situation. Now, the reason I’m sharing this all with you is because one of the. Hypothesis I have right now. Is that being comprehensive? I think in a lot of situations is a distraction from our core value proposition. 

If the core value proposition is. Conversations at scale, right? We want to have a financial conversation with you. Well, if I am, if I’m constantly trying to pull you and have you zoom [00:06:00] out. Well, it’s almost diminishing the thing. That’s top of mind for you right now. So, what does this apply? I think this applies in a lot of different places. For me personally, right now I’m engaged in a lot of prospecting. 

So in prospecting, I don’t have the luxury of spending hours and hours of time doing analysis outside of the calls. Most of my time is in conversations with people about their finances, about things, um, that are top of mind for them right now. And what I found is that when I, when I try to pull the client or the prospect. Um, out of their acute problems, meaning they have something right now that, that. That is, they’re just deeply curious about when I try to pull them out of that and say, well, zoom out, look at all the other problems that you have. 

Have you thought about this? Have you thought about this? It tends to diminish the value proposition of that conversation to begin with. Right, because now I’m trying to distract them with other things. Whereas if I lean into those things that they have in that conversation, right. I’m still diagnosing, I’m still looking at the whole picture, but if I lean into student loans or if I lean into college planning, if I lean into retirement planning, if I think about the thing that’s really acute to them, right. 

Then. Well, then I can start [00:07:00] to add value and I can start to really address that conversation. So, I guess this is my way of saying, I don’t think that comprehensive. Planning or, or addressing a wide layer of holistic planning topics is bad. In fact, I think it’s inherently good. But in applied in the wrong place. I think it can be a distraction from our special sauce, which in this case is financial conversations at scale. So I’d love to know what y’all think. Is this something that many of you have experienced in prospecting or talking to people and participants in 401ks? If it is, I’d love to hear what your experience is. 

If you’d pushed back on me, please, please share that with me. Um, next week, I’m going to talk to Abby. I want to ask her this question and talk about how that has worked for her. Um, when talking to participants or employees. Um, and in these conversational, uh, environments, So send me a message on LinkedIn, Jordan Haynes, H a I N E S. 

Or send us an email at podcast at Gettleman. helmets.com. I. I know that this is a short one this week. I’m excited to share with you all a conversation I had with Abby next week, and we’ll continue to explore a lot of these fascinating ideas. [00:08:00] About having financial conversations at scale. And with that hope you all have a wonderful week. 

We’ll catch you next time.