In this episode of Elementality, Jordan Haines, financial vitals expert at Elements, dives into his favorite part of the financial planning process—data gathering! Discover how simplifying your data collection and focusing on what’s “good enough” can supercharge your 30-minute consultations with clients and prospects. Jordan shares practical tips to make the data-gathering process less intimidating for clients, so you can both get the most out of every high-impact meeting. Tune in to learn how a streamlined approach can transform your client interactions and make financial planning feel effortless.

---

Transcript

Jordan Haines: Hello friends. And welcome to another episode of L mentality. I’m Jordan Haynes, financial vitals expert here at elements. And I want to talk today about something that I love. In fact, it is my favorite part. Of the financial planning process that I learned when went through, going through the CFP program, and that is data gathering. Now the reason I want to bring this up is the last [00:01:00] few weeks we’ve talked a lot about the 30 minute quick financial consultation. 

And if I were to summarize that. Uh, what we went over is how to deliver quick, but high impact meetings with clients and prospects. Now I had a question from many of you asking me. About data gathering for these. In those meetings, we do a little bit of a data review, but the question came up. How do I actually get the information? 

What information is actually needed to make this meeting work? And I think that’s a really fair question. And for the last three to four years here at elements, we’ve trained a lot of advisors on getting the right information. Now, obviously I’ll reference elements. I’m a little biased. I think it’s a fantastic system, but you can take this and apply it in lots of different areas of your process when you need to do quick. But high-impact meetings with people. So let’s get into it. To start. 

I want to bring us to the traditional financial planning process as it exists today. In fact in, uh, the Kitces research, which, you know, I love it’s my favorite research. Um, article from a while ago, uh, [00:02:00] I think this was 20, 22. Kids has found that, um, on average to create a financial plan. For climate took 10 hours of work from a financial advisor. Four hours of those work was in the financial planning software. In that planning software. 

That’s when we were doing data gathering and data entry and some aspect of data analysis. We don’t have four hours for a quick high-impact meeting. We only have 30 minutes or a few minutes before that meeting or at the beginning of that meeting. And so we need to have a really dialed in data gathering process. 

We don’t have the luxury of getting everything under the sun. We all know what it takes to deliver a financial plan. A truly holistic and comprehensive financial plan. There are thousands of different data points. Those are all meaningful and valuable and they’re helpful for us to have as a practitioner. But at the end of the day, when it comes to working with clients, oftentimes they’re not expecting us to look at every single bit and piece of their life. 

What they’re looking for is good enough. And that’s how I want us to think [00:03:00] about data gathering in this environment. What you’re looking for is not everything you’re looking for. Good enough. What that means is that you need to simplify, you need to shrink, you need to edit. You need to cut. All of those words are appropriate here. 

So go look at what you need traditionally for a financial plan and think. If I’m going to talk to someone really fast. What is the bare minimum? What can I not live without? That’s number one. Number two is though, I want you to think about this in terms of your client. What can they not live without? 

What are the things that they need to understand? Those are going to be how you shrink your dataset. Now, let me give you an example of a shrunken dataset. Now we use this at elements, and so obviously that’s the lens at which we’re viewing this, but you can take this any which way that it’s valuable for you, whether it’s a technology tool that you use or your own individual process. At elements. 

When I go through and do a 30 minute consultation, there are three to five items that I need from people. Number one is a simplified balance sheet. Note the word simplified. [00:04:00] I don’t need everything. I remember working with a, uh, high-performing orthodontist. He had multiple practice locations. He was very wealthy, very productive. Uh, very successful. 

And I remember onboarding him this was years ago. I think he had like 72 different bank accounts. 

That was all great. It’s good to see that level of detail, but in a simplified balance sheet, I just want a summary. What that naturally means though, is I’m looking at nice big round number. So what are the characteristics of a simplified balance sheet? I would say you want to divide this into categories. 

An example of some of those categories might be cash. So checking and saving, it might be after tax investments. You might have a category for pre-tax investments, maybe one for real estate, one for business, and one for everything else. Right. So keep it simple so that you can communicate really simply to that client. And then addition to that. You don’t need exact precise numbers on that balance sheet rather than $10,348, you might just need 10,000. Right. 

Think three zeros on those thousands. That’s [00:05:00] what I’m looking for on a balance sheet. Think summarize data. I don’t need everything. I need a simplified balance sheet for that client. Why do I need a simplified balance sheet that gets me close to understanding what their net worth is from assets to liabilities. 

I know generally what they have going on. This will take a little bit of coaxing for people, a little bit of coaching to them. Most people can get, I’d found maybe 90% of the way there, but for a lot of people, I might need to do a little bit of work on that. But if I get a simplified balance sheet that gets me right towards that direction. The second thing that I would like from people is just total annual spending. Right. 

Just how much do you think you spent now for this one? It’s an estimate. Again, I don’t, I want to be really clear here. There is danger in going too deep, too early, right? So at this stage, we don’t need to track everything in Monarch money or any money or right. Capital or whatever tool you’re using to track transaction data for people. 

I just want total money, right? Total number that you think that you spend in a month. Now you might provide some prompts to help them get close to that. So, what are your fixed expenses, your debt payments, your insurance, maybe you have like just a [00:06:00] short worksheet to help you get close to what that is, but you need that total annual spending. The third item that I need from people is total annual gross income. 

I want to know total what they’re making for the year. And if that’s for a business owner or a W2 employee, it might depend on what, what that complexity might be. So for example, if I work with a dentist I’m often asking for what they think they make in a year, many times, they don’t actually know because I need to get a P and L or things like that. 

So depending on how easy it is for them to get a P and L I will request it or not. In most cases, I’m not going to request that it’s similar to asking for a tax return. A lot of people, either apprehensive to give that to me, or it’s. It’s just, they have to go to their accountant. They have to get their P and L they have to give it to me. That’s just one layer of complexity that I don’t want to introduce at this stage. So your idea is you go through at least these last three items is you want to be able to just ask someone in a conversation and get close enough. 

There. Okay. So that’s the first three. So balance sheet, total income, total spending. Those are really helpful. The other two that I’m going to list off are, I would say necessary in certain circumstances, depending on whether [00:07:00] you’re working with accumulators or pre-retiree, whatever it is, these can be really valuable. 

But the fourth thing that I want for people is savings, contributions by account and by frequency. Right? So how much are you saving and into what accounts and why most people can get close enough on this one? There might be some, uh, coaching on this, on what’s included in there. Um, things like I’ve had clients that will say, Hey, I’m contributing more than my max on this, like twice as much. 

Right. So I need to coach them on that. Or I’m considering my direct deposit as a savings contribution into account. We might coach them on that. But the thing that I’m looking for for savings is what are you particularly saving towards growing your net worth? Not necessarily what’s delayed spending, like for vacation that you’re going to have in six months. 

What are the things that you’re saving towards growing your net worth? And then the final area, the final data point that I’m looking to receive from people or just debt payments. Now I don’t need. Uh, interest rates. Uh, remainder on the loan, the, uh, if there’s prepayment penalties, right? All sorts of things that could go along with that, all I’m looking for [00:08:00] is just the payment amount. 

Okay. And that’s it. Those are the five things that I’m looking for. In my simplified dataset, I will call this our good enough dataset. So let me re let me reiterate that or summarize. We need a simplified balance sheet. Just think big round numbers, zero summarized categories. We don’t need a detailed. Number two is annual total gross income. 

Number three is total annual estimated spending. Number four is savings contributions by account and frequency. And then number five is debt payments for certain debts that they have. That’s it. Now if there’s one thing that I would take from this, when you think about. Your data set. You’re good enough data set that you need. I think the number one criteria you want to look at is. Can I get most of this information during a conversation without requiring the client to go somewhere. To download something to get that information to you. 

Let me say that again. In order for this dataset to be good enough, it should [00:09:00] be easy enough for a client to provide me the information I need without having to go somewhere else. And download something and send it to me. So think tax returns, P and L’s insurance policy documents, um, all of those things are things that just require another step that can make it really difficult. 

The reason I think this is an important criteria is when you get into your conversation with people, sometimes you just need to clarify things. And if you’re requiring them to go out, find that statement, contact the professional, download it, send it to you. That’s just one extra step that we can do in the actual financial planning process. But for most conversations, I just want to be able to clarify quickly. So that gives you a good idea of a good enough dataset. Okay. So that answers the question. 

What do I actually need in data gathering? What’s going to set me up for success. When I get into this conversation with them. The second thing that I want to talk to you guys about is how do you get this information? What does a data gathering process actually look like when you are only gonna be talking to them for 30 minutes? 

Oftentimes this [00:10:00] means that the data that the. Data gathering process that you’re soliciting from clients shouldn’t take longer than the conversation you’re actually going to have with them. So I usually think somewhere between five to 10 minutes is how long I want this data gathering process to be. I want it to be easy. 

I want them to be able to do it without downloading information. So what is the best way to do this? And the way that I like to think about this as compare it to a traditional financial planning process, which again, let me disclaim. I am not disparaging that process. I think that process is incredibly valuable when someone is ready for it, but when they are not, we cannot have that process. 

And how I would like to distinguish the two of these is two words. One is binary and the other one is organic or sequential might be a bit a better word for that. And the way I want you to think about it is like an elevator versus stairs. An elevator, you go in, you press a button and all of a sudden you’re on the second floor, whereas stairs, you got to go step by step by step by step. 

You gotta exert a little bit of energy and eventually you’re on the next floor. You can see every step of the way, whereas a, uh, elevator you’re kind of trusting the [00:11:00] process that I click this button that goes up and I arrived there. Traditional financial planning is pretty binary in nature. Meaning most of the time we will send out a big, long list and precise FP or your intake survey or whatever you give to people. 

We ask for this big, long list. We say, give us this information. And only once I have this information, will I engage with you? Whereas the more organic sequential stair-step type process is saying, give me a little bit. Then, give me a little bit more than give me a little bit more and every step of the way we’re going to add value, we’re going to get a little bit more, add value, get a little bit more. 

That way the client can see and precision can be made over time. Now it’s important to note that in both of these options, you’re arriving at the same place. And I’m going to call that outcome precision. We’re arriving at a place of precision in the data that we have of accuracy in the data that we have. 

We are just getting there differently and more sequentially over time with this organic approach. So the way that I want you to think about how you get information from people initially, Especially when [00:12:00] you only have 30 minutes to drive a consultation. Is you can’t afford to be binary. You have to be organic. 

You cannot rely on precision. You have to be okay with precision over time. So that what that means to you is that you’re going to have to overcome your discomfort in showing up to a meeting where you don’t have everything. You’re only going to have a little bit. And your objective is to refine and provide value. 

Now, if you’ll think back to the, the, uh, episode, I think eight, a 180 2, where we talked about the perfect 30 minute consultation, I gave you that framework. You’ll remember that the first phase that we go to in that a consultation is. Data review. We refine the dataset. We are coming in with the assumption that we don’t have everything and that’s okay because we can always follow it up by asking for more. 

And the reason this matters and it makes sense is because people are going to get there. They’re going to receive a little bit value and you’re going to crest more and it’s going to feel very natural and. Feel very organic for them. Now it’s important to note too, that we don’t have everything. And so often I find myself telling clients, Hey, [00:13:00] based off the limited information you’ve given me, this is what I can say about that. These are the areas that I don’t want to touch because I don’t have enough information to give you advice on this. So, if I’m not asking for investment statements and people are asking me about their current equity allocation on their investment portfolio, I will very kindly say, well, thank you for bringing that up. 

I would love to respond to that, but I’m going to need just a little bit more information. The information I gave you today was just enough for us to just have this conversation. And most people are going to be okay with that. So you want to think organic, not binary. You want to think precision over time. 

Those are the main principles for how you’re going to get this information. But let’s talk about the actual process. What are you going to do? To get that information from people we’re going to follow three steps. Okay. It’s a what, why and how process? So step one. Explain what you need from people. 

Now you need to explain this to them. Remember that they’re not here to work with a robot or a questionnaire. They’re here to work with you, the human. So you need to be there from the beginning, setting expectations and explaining what you [00:14:00] actually need. So step one, explain what you need. Step two. 

Why do you need it? And step three, how are they going to give it to you? And. Well, let’s, let’s dive into these one by one. When you’re explaining what you need from people. Just. Give them a short checklist, make it seem easy and simple. If you over-complicate this and give extraordinary details to that. 

Right? So like take our balance sheet, our simplified balance sheet, for example. You can just put on there when you explain it to them. I need a simplified balance sheet. Here’s what that is. It’s just big round numbers categories. We can summarize some things they’re naturally going to have questions. 

Now, what is not helpful is if you had a slide deck up and you had simplified balance sheet as the title, and then you had 17 bullet points underneath that, to describe what a simplified balance sheet is. That feels too scary to me. We need to simplify this. We need to make it digestible and consumable to them. 

They need to feel like they understand what is actually happening. So you need to explain what you actually need from them in the simplest form possible. They’re not going to remember this either. I think that’s really important to remember. Your [00:15:00] clients, your prospects will not remember this. You need to give them something in the process so that they don’t have to remember this, but it’s important. 

Explain what you need. Um, And the type of information you need. So I often find myself disclaimer, at the beginning. Hey, these are the things I need. I need a simplified balance sheet and you didn’t come. I need this. You’re going to be sent through this process. I use elements to do that, but I always will say to them, I don’t need precision at this stage. Just try your best. We’re just starting out. 

Activation energy is low. All as well. If you don’t get me everything, that’s fine. We have conditioned people in this world of finance, personal finance in particular, that is overly complicated and there’s too many areas. And in order for them to work with a financial advisor, they need to give them everything. 

And for those of you who have clients who have worked with financial advisors in the past, they’re coming to you understanding what a traditional planning process looks like, which is I give them 60 pages of all my documents. Social security numbers. And then. They come to me with a financial plan and we’re being really clear right now. 

I don’t need everything. If you’re a user of elements, this works really nicely because I can just send them [00:16:00] a link. They’ll fill out some basic information and we’ll be okay, but I just explain what do I need? Now, this is the most overlooked part of the process. Most people when they explain why they need it. 

Right. So we’re moving on to step two. Why do I need this information? If I were to put this differently, what I would say is when you’re answering this question, why should your clients care to give you this information? Why should they care? Not why do I need this? Why should they care? And the reason this matters is because your clients are going to view this the same way you did you do, which is, this is a necessary evil for me to get a financial planner to talk to my advisor, right? 

Like it’s table stakes. It’s my payment to do this. Rather, we can say this gives us an opportunity to start to organize your financial life into one clean, simple place. That’s why that’s a really simple statement. Step three then is to just explain how they’re going to give this so set the right expectations. 

What I say with people in elements that I say, Hey, you’re going to get an invitation for me. I just want you to follow the instructions and fill out the information the best you can. We don’t need a lot of [00:17:00] precision right now. After you’ve added that information. I will reach out we’ll schedule a short conversation. 

We’ll talk about it. That’s it doesn’t need to be complicated. So let me show you what my process would look like. Let me summarize that here. The process can look like this. Remember what, why and how, what do I need? Why do I need it? Or why should you care to give it to me? And how are you going to provide that information to me? So, this is what I would say. Number one, what I need. Hey client. Uh, thanks for meeting today. 

Uh, what I need from you is just a few simple things. One is we call it a balance sheet. It’s just all the things that you own, all the debts that you have simplified the best that you can. We’re not looking for exact numbers. We’re just looking for close enough. So, um, I’ll work through with you. 

I have a short worksheet, all I need for users to put in like the, the total value of all your savings and checking accounts. Um, how much investments you have, uh, what your real estate, you think your real estate is worth or any businesses that you have and any other assets or things that you feel like. Is important for us to include here. As well, just list out all the loans that you have and if you know the outstanding [00:18:00] balance. 

Great. If you’re just going to guess that’s okay as well. I just need a simplified balance sheet there. If also I put two values in here for your annual income and also what you think you spend in a year. Again, don’t overthink this too much. If it’s taking you longer than five to 10 minutes, give me a call. 

I’ll help coach you through it, but we’re not looking for super precise information today. Now, the reason I need this from you though, is what this will start doing is yes, it’s going to give me information. I need to give you advice or to provide some observations to you, but I actually think more importantly, what this does for you is it gives you you an opportunity to start to organize an orient. Get yourself to where all these things are. 

Finances are complicated. There’s a lot of different things in a lot of different places. This gives you an opportunity to start to sort that out. So, what we’re going to do from here is I’m going to send you an invitation or I’m going to send you this document. What I would love for you to do is just fill it out again. 

Don’t take any, any longer than five to 10 minutes. Precision is not needed at this point. And once you fill that information and send it back to me, I’ll reach out and we’ll just have our conversation. We’ll talk about it a little bit more. How does that sound? Any questions? [00:19:00] And that’s it, it doesn’t need to be more complicated to that. 

Make it seem simple, make it seem digestible. So there you go. We talked about what data you actually need from people we’ve talked about. Um, how you’re going to request and solicit that information. Let’s now turn our attention to some tips and tricks that I found to make this process seem less scary. 

And I think that’s important that we’re, we’re titling this as scary in my experience, working with clients, myself, working with advisors about their clients, data gathering is such a scary process. Right. Like, I’m going to give them everything and hope they don’t screw me over and hope they give me stupid advice or hope they’d question things that I’ve made, that I kind of feel guilty and shameful about. 

There’s a lot of shame and a lot of emotions and finance, as many of you are well aware. And so there are some things that we can do as financial advisors to make this process just feel a little less scary. There are four tips that I have here that will really help here. The first one we’ve already alluded to quite a few times, be clear with people that precision is not needed at this point. All you need is good enough [00:20:00] information to get started. And I cannot emphasize this enough if your clients don’t understand that if you are not explicit in that expectation from them, they will assume that they need to put everything in. 

It needs to be perfect and dialed in. I’ve seen this time and time again, for those of you who have used elements or have not, it’s a pretty simple system, but in so many experiences I’ve had with clients, myself and through advisors, they will send an invite without any expectation provided it’s not explicit at all. 

And the client tends to say, well, I need to connect every single account. They need to be super precise. I need. Every single data field filled out. And they just jumped ahead. And when you go and follow up with them and you say, Hey, actually I don’t need all this stuff. It’s almost like a sigh of relief. 

Oh, We just need like simple information. Yeah, just good enough. We don’t need precision. So that is the number one thing. If you take anything from this episode, It is that you need to be clear in this initial data gathering process. That good enough information is all you need. That doesn’t mean later on, you can’t have precision, we’re going for precision overtime. [00:21:00] So that’s tip number one, tip number two that I found really, really helpful. 

This is kind of what I stumbled upon when I did this with a client years ago. Record and send a short video. Showing people, what the process looks like. And what a completed situation is going to look like to them. What does this mean? What does this actually look like? So if I’m using something like elements, for example, And I’m going to send them an intake survey. 

I’m going to record myself on loom or on my phone going through in two minutes or less, just going through the questions. All right. So here’s this question. Here’s what I would answer to this question. Yada, yada yada check, check, check. That’s what I do. We’re just showing them. Now. I know for many of you, you’re gonna be like, well, it’s not that scary of a process. 

They get in here before they ever click that link, or before they ever download anything, your clients are questioning what you’re actually doing with this information. I can guarantee it. And so when you show this, it just clears the air. Oh, that’s what it’s going to look like. I’m not as scared getting into this. The second part is probably more important or equally as important is show them what you’re going to do with that information. 

What does a completed profile in your situation look like? So if I’m using [00:22:00] elements, I’m going to pull up their element scorecard. I’m going to pull up their one-page plan. I’m say, this is what your profile will look like once your information is in. Here’s what we will talk about when we do it. Right? 

So you’re just showing like what the end state is going to be. And that can be somewhat motivating because they can start to see what a completed profile. And I can’t emphasize enough here that the value they’re going to get from this experience is they’re starting to get organized. They’ve never been organized before most of your clients, I would. Um, suggest that probably many of them have never been actually oriented to their situation. 

And what you’re showing them is, Hey, once you get this information in here, we’ll start to orient you. That could even just be like a sample balance sheet or a sample. Um, Imani, right? Capitol money guide pro report or whatever you use in your software that can just show all of this information in one place. 

Right. That I found is really helpful. So tip number two, record and send a short video, showing what the process looks like and what a completed profile would look like to them. Tip number three. And this one’s a fun one. Um, I call this the righteous trick here. Uh, as Carl Richards would call it. It’s kinda like the Trojan horse of, uh, um, Financial advice and [00:23:00] data gathering. You’re going to manually add some basic information to their profile or to their file that they have with you. 

And then you’re going to create a short recording, navigating that and emphasize the need for more information. So what does this look like? If I have a client that’s just like, not moving forward or a prospect that I’m like, I know they want to talk to me, but they haven’t given me any information. One of the best ways I’ve found to get them to move along. Is I’ll record a short video. And I will add a few things. I might be guessing I might know a little bit. 

Right. So, uh, I’m, I’m talking to a young engineer. And that engineer lives in Texas. So I’m just going to throw a home value on there. I’m gonna look at average home values in, uh, Austin, Texas. I’m gonna throw that as a balance sheet item, and I’m just gonna make an assumption that they own home. 

I’m gonna throw a savings account on there. I’m going to say it’s worth $30,000. I might throw a 401k on there. I might say it’s worth a hundred thousand dollars. Maybe I’ll throw a debt on there to represent the mortgage. And I’ll just guess and say it’s $300,000 outstanding balance. It’s all wrong. Let me be clear. I send that to the client anyway. 

And then I say, Hey. This is what I’m [00:24:00] assuming for you. You have, now this works really well. If you’re using a system like elements, asset map. Uh, right. Capital Imani money guide pro things where you’re plugging information in that they might have access to later and have some sort of a client facing a place. 

The reason that this works really well, and this is something I learned at dentist advisors is when you send someone an incomplete profile, there is such a natural human tendency for us to want to correct the record. So when I get this information, I’m just like, man, I want to correct this. So I reached out to my advisor. 

I say, that’s wrong, that’s wrong, that’s wrong. That’s okay. As long as I come out beforehand as a financial advisor and say, Hey, I’m just guessing on all these things. Can you just correct the record for me? Send me your clarified data. There’s something about that that just gets people to respond. 

Now I have proof of this, um, way back in the day. I’ll tell a quick story on this one and we’ll move on way back in the day at dentist advisors, uh, the original version of elements was not in an app, right? It was PDFs. It was Salesforce. It was InDesign. It was these beautiful things. And so we would take all the data. 

All of our associate advisors would take that information. [00:25:00] We’d plug it into our Salesforce instance and then it would spit out these reports for people. And on a monthly basis, we would send out a new report. So our service calendar was every month. We would address a different element. So for example, in January, all of our clients, we would review their liquid term score. 

And in February we would review their savings rate score. Now in those situations in order. Let’s let’s take savings rate. For example, what do I need to make the savings rate report look good? Well, I need to know what their income is and that it’s updated and I need to know what their savings contributions are. 

And so for a lot of those, we would send out a couple of weeks early before the month began and we’d say, Hey, next month in February, we’re going to review your savings information, your savings profile. Can you provide us an update, any data that you have on our system. And so, and frankly, [00:26:00] I’d be surprised if we got 25% that would act and proactively go with the data that they need. Didn’t matter to us. We would always be out and say the data we’re going to send at the end of the month, they would roll it into their savings rate report. We don’t have, we haven’t information for. We would send the same, always fascinating how the emails would just add where I would say inaccurate report respond and be like, Hey, they know I’m supposed to provide you that I didn’t wreck the record, their completed profile. 

That rules wheels turning. Okay. Problems, giddy. I find, make stuff up the record. And then for your short tip, the Lear of the day drink only limited data’s here for them. [00:27:00] Right. So that’s for savings, contributions, and infer balance sheet. Start there. Remember when precision overtime. Make the activation a smaller, because of things actually. So there you have gathering at a high level principles that we trained to do here. Elements have questions for me, or please feel free to, um, Jordan Haney. I don’t even know what tat or a handler or a podcast.com and to talk about this. It’s user. I’m happy to tell. Hopefully, this is helpful. And when you’re thinking about data gathering, this is going to make the most interaction with people, their finances, that shouldn’t, or that we’re having with those clients. If you have any questions. We’ll see.