Marie, the floor is yours. Thank you, Heidi. Welcome, everybody. I'm Marie Swift, and I have the pleasure of serving as the emcee and the moderator of today's panel discussion, and it's going to be a lovely, fluid discussion, and I hope that there are a few surprises, and I know that there will be great insights because we have George Kinder and Meg Bartelt and also Bob Veras with us, and Eddie Kramer is on the way. I think he's having a technical difficulty, but we're going to deepen the conversation. We started it last month, and we started talking about conversational selling skills, and of course, this time, we want to dig into that and think about presence, personal presence, and how that can create a better relationship, especially during that engagement or selling process, and then we'll go for about an hour today, and then next time, we'll have 75 minutes to actually hear from you and to dialogue, and we hope you'll all look at the homework, which this time, by the way, there's our illustrious panel, and you all know them because of their reputation preceding them, but I hope that you'll take some time to look at the homework options. There are four of them. I'm not going to read them because I think it would be better if you just read them on your own and reflect, and then pick one or two, and then come next time prepared to talk about what did you learn, what did you see for yourself, is anything occurring for you as you consider your own journey of being a better communicator and a better, I'll call it a salesperson, so we have some resources that have been evolving. We had some that we presented last time where they were at the back of the slide deck, but we've added to it, and we may add to the resources, again, based on what our panelists say today, but these top two bullets, Eddie Kramer had brought those to us and talked about them last time, so I put them on the slide in case you'd like to look at them, but someone that I've been studying is this third bullet, Dan Solon, and I'm reading his book called The Smartest Sales Book You'll Ever Read, and he also has a podcast that I'm going to show you on the next slide, which might be something worth listening to. I was also Googling around on Amazon, and I found these persuasion skills cards with 33 prompts for you to engage with people and to get your own way, so so far, the ones that I've picked out of the deck just at random seem to be ethical and kind of helpful if you're new on the journey of being persuasive. Maybe we sometimes all need a crutch, depending on the day or where we are in life, but I'll report back next time if there's time about how my persuasion card deck is going. I'm actually planning to give them to my daughter's fiancé because I think he's going to need them as they go through their marriage. Julie's the more dominant one in the relationship, so we presented these resources last time, and we hope that you'll dig in and, again, bring back what you're seeing next time. Some of Eddie's key takeaways, which were not in a slide last time, I've memorialized for us here, and he hinged most of his comments on books written by Jay Conger and Robert Cialdini, so they're here for you, as well as Cialdini's Six Psychological Principles of Influence, and I think that these feel pretty familiar to most all of us. I think today we want to dig into more of that presence and that authenticity. We were just talking before we started the recording about sometimes being vulnerable. For me, being vulnerable opens up the opportunity for others to be more vulnerable, and it's not always comfortable to do, but I'm feeling pretty vulnerable these days because I've been going through some elder care for about eight or nine months with some people who really need that support, so I've been telling people, hey, I'm tired today, forgive me if I flop up a few things, and I find that it just creates a deeper engagement, a deeper, richer conversation. Maybe our panelists will talk about vulnerability and scarcity and authority and liking some of these things we see on the slide. The last thing I'm going to say, and then I'm going to throw this over to you, Bob, to kick us off, but Dan Solon has a podcast that he did as a guest, and the link here is on Wired Planning, but he talked about this idea of being helpful during that engagement conversation, that sales conversation, whatever you want to call it, and he's thought that saying his thoughts are basically tell what it is, what are you sharing, and then why is it important, so that's the so what, so why is that important to the listener, and then now what, what would be the next step, how much does it cost, just being clear about that, the what, the so what, and the now what, and I think, Meg, as I think back to what you shared last time, it's kind of how you shared that you engage people when you have a prospective client, so Bob, I know we have some questions that we thought about when you and I were brainstorming, you know, how do we get our arms around this big topic, but is there something that you brought that you'd like to kick off the conversation and the rest of the panelists just jump in? Okay, fair enough. Yeah, I'm still wondering about my appropriateness for this panel because I'm totally lacking in charisma, but oddly enough, so was Dan Solon, and so, you know, yet he has processes that I think can kind of manufacture charisma out of thin air for those of us who are somewhat challenged in that area. I want to start off with a quote from Plato, you said we should surprise the audience, so why not surprise them with, you know, something from an ancient philosopher that might make sense here. He said, in politics, we presume that everyone who knows how to get votes knows how to administer a city or a state, and then he says, when we're ill, we do not ask for the handsomest physician or the most eloquent one. That, I think, most of the people on this call are like the physician. They're competent, they're good at what they do, and they're swimming in a sea of people who are very good marketers, but perhaps not as good as they are at creating good outcomes for clients, and so, unfortunately, we are not, there really isn't any way for consumers to judge the quality of your advice beforehand, so we actually do have to go through this exercise of creating and manufacturing charisma, and it's too bad because I think in a better world, charisma would not be an issue. It would not be something that we need to create, so very quickly, I think there are three layers to that journey to yes that I want to lay out, and we can discuss any and all of them together, and they correspond to the three points of contact that advisors have with individuals and clients. First, there's the outreach phase, and Maria and I have talked about this a number of times. I wrote a white paper about this, but the old way of attracting prospects was to be credible, and that means having your website show the founding advisor dressed up looking like a walking bank, staring confidently out at the screen, and the website emphasizes the impressive credentials, and I think that's often, and we'll get into this in the second point of contact, where you talk about all your impressive credentials, and that's not necessarily helpful nowadays. The new way of being charismatic to prospects is to be relatable, and that means being personal. Maria talked about being vulnerable, being open. The most successful outreach in that early stage, that pre-meeting stage, is to put on your website casual photos, something about your personal interests, your outside passions, a strong statement about your why, and why you do, because people, when they say that you're an advisor, particularly if you're a successful advisor, they're going to assume that you know your stuff. They just want to know whether they can relate to you or not, and that also relates to your team. Everybody would have that casual photo on their website and something about, so that consumers have more points of contact, and the second layer of that to getting to guess is that initial client meeting, and that's where I think that interest is charisma, and Dan Sullivan has written a book about this, and so I wasn't really prepared to comment on Dan Sullivan, but I happen to know what he does, and basically what he does is he strives to be the most, not the most interesting person, but the most interested person. I think most of us have experienced that situation where we listen to somebody, they talked, we listened, we do that a lot as journalists, and after the meeting, the other person says, man, that was by far the best conversation I've ever had on this, and you've hardly talked. That's the experience that I think creates that charisma, even if you're not naturally charismatic, and I'm pointing at myself here. By the way, I recommend that everybody in the evaluations write up an embarrassingly glowing positive evaluation of my part of the presentation. I think that would be appropriate for everybody here, and then, you know, and if you're leading with your credentials and talking about your service model, you know, that's not exactly the best way to bond with someone. I did a consulting arrangement years ago with somebody, and I talked to their clients, and I said, what was your first impression of this advisor? And they said, well, he walked in in a business suit, and he talked a lot of jargon, and I didn't understand what the hell he said, but he did impress me. He impressed me by, I thought, my first thought was that here's somebody who could laugh at how badly I've handled my finances, and then here's somebody who could steal all my money, and I would never know it, and I'm not sure that's the impression you want to leave with your clients. If you do, then that's a great way to do it, but I'm not sure that's the perfect one, and in that same meeting, I think a lot of advisors make a mistake of selling something rather than simply listening, and what I mean by selling, I think most people on this call are, you know, somebody comes in, and they say, you know, I've got a tax problem, and I need you to solve it, and the advisor immediately moves into, well, we offer a comprehensive financial planning engagement that involves tax and estate planning and retirement planning, and we'll manage your investments, turn over your money to us, and we'll also manage your life with something called life planning, and all of a sudden, the client is being confronted with a scope of engagement that they didn't expect or sign up for. I think a much better process is you sit, and you listen to someone, you say, tell me your story, and then tell me what brought you here, and then whatever they bring up, if it's appropriate, you say, we're going to focus on that. We happen to do that particular thing. We do tax planning, and we can help you, and so what I'm concerned about about the profession is that the profession is not really focusing on the client so much as they're focusing on themselves, and I think focusing on the client is a way to gain that charisma factor, and enjoying clients is obviously obviously much more effective, and finally, if there's one fourth layer I'd add to this, and then I'll get off the line, and you can write that glowing evaluation of my presentation here. I think a lot of clients, I mean, a lot of advisors think that marketing is too much in their self-interest, and this whole conversation is too much in their self-interest for a fiduciary to indulge in. Sales and marketing are kind of cheap degrading activities. I look at the marketplace, and we talk about wolves in sheep's clothing, and the impression you get is that there's a big herd of sheep and a couple of wolves stalking around in the middle of them, but the actual truth is in the advisor marketplace, there's a whole bunch of wolves dressed up as sheep, and a very small number of sheep. Finding you, you're the sheep in this case, that might not be ideal as an analogy, but you're the person on their side, if that makes sense, among a bunch of predators, and to the extent that you can differentiate yourself from the herd of predators, you're doing a great service to the marketplace at large, and you being one of those few non-predators, I think you owe it to the world at large to be astute at marketing, to create that charisma factor in your business, and I think most advisors, even if they're not shirking the duty, might be getting it wrong. Really good thoughts, Bob. That gave me a lot to think about, and I especially like the wolf and the sheep, and who wants to jump in? Meg? Yep. All right, jump in. Bob started out with this quote from Plato about, it involves something about when you need a surgery, you don't want the most handsome doctor, you want someone who's actually going to know their craft, and in my world, I have always run a virtual practice from day one, so I never have the opportunity, even if I were capable of taking advantage of it, of meeting someone at the country club, or the coffee shop, and being like, hey, let me sell you a vacuum cleaner, or the financial planning equivalent of it. It's always been a matter of content marketing for me, and content marketing, for me, it's primarily a blog that I've maintained for seven and a half years now, and it has a lot of different benefits, both internally and externally, but one of the things it does is it can establish your credibility in your technical chops before anyone ever reaches out to you, so by the time they reach out to you and you actually get that precious face-to-face time, you have to spend way less time thinking, oh my gosh, I have to prove myself to this potential client, I have to demonstrate, look at my credentials, look at my designations, let me talk about this technical mumbo-jumbo that will impress you. You've already done that, if they have paid any attention to your online presence. Works really well for the target audience I'm going after, they're all young and very online, et cetera, et cetera, so I can't really speak to people targeting other communities of people, but that to me is one of the joys of content marketing is that you can establish before you ever get a call with anyone, you can establish your expertise, you can establish your voice, your personality, all of that, and I think that just helps tremendously in the sales process because getting that face-to-face time is so precious that you really want to do everything you can not to waste it. Yeah, so, yeah, I mean, so much has been said and there's so many different ways we can go in this, and thanks for starting it, Bob, and thanks for sharing one of the ways that it makes it so easy for people to see you and know who you are, Meg. Bob's talking about kind of the selflessness of our presence reminded me of a friend, you might know Charlie Green, who's, I think he's in the Trusted Advisor Network, and he has a formula, and we all like formulas because we're in, you know, kind of numbers kind of things, that talks about what trustworthiness is, not trust, but trustworthiness, and of course, that's really what we want, and trustworthiness equals credibility plus, which we've just been talking about, plus reliability, right, got to be reliable, plus intimacy, and that's the piece that Bob is alluding to around the vulnerability piece and all of that, divided by your self-orientation, meaning the larger your marquee, for here I am, the kind of lower the trustworthiness goes, so it's good to have kind of an understated approach as Meg does, although she's quite opinionated in wonderful ways with her blog, but there's just kind of an offering, just kind of an offering, and I love Bob's reference to Plato, I also studied a little Greek coming into this meeting today, because I was trying to figure out what charisma means, you know, and I mean, charisma, the way we think it, and the way Bob was referring to it, is, you know, we got some kind of, we're really cool, and we're showing it, we're dramatic, you know, we're on the stage, and we make things happen, and all that, that's not charisma at all, that's not where the root of the word comes from, it's really a beautiful root, and the two, the two frames that are mostly given when you look at the definition, at the derivation of it, is that charisma is the gift of grace, that's definition number one, definition number two is that it's a favor freely given, it's a wonderful blog, it's advice without any expectation of anything coming back to us, and I think that's a wonderful way to start our engagements with clients, is to have that kind of flavor to it. I've got a lot more to say, maybe I'll just say one more thing here, because we're talking about marketing, we're talking about websites, but the main, the main theme we want to get at is, in a way, what sales is, and the website certainly helped tremendously in terms of that selling quality, and Bob again was talking about not, not saying much, and we talked about that last time, and that comment about best conversation I've ever had happened many times in my career, largely because I didn't say much, and was a really good listener. I think I'd like to talk in a moment about this difference between facilitating and presenting, and I might tease our way in, just because Marie started this off with what is presence. That presence, you know, we can think of presence as again being that marquee that we put out there. I, I think of presence very much in here, that when I think of presence, I think of sitting on my stoop out there, I've got a little platform, right, a little porch, and I sit on my stoop and just experience nature around me. And at first, I'm kind of all out there looking out there, but when I really feel presence, I've brought it all in here. And it's kind of like how I remember, I don't know if you felt this way about your grandparents at all, but sitting by the fire with my granddad, and he was just so comfortable. And I really didn't know what that was, but I loved being in his presence. And I loved kind of feeling my way into that. And I think that's really what we wanna bring. That's the quality that I think Bob was talking about when he talked about listening mostly. So I got a lot more to say, but there we go for a few initial comments, Marie. I'll add on a little bit, and then Meg, was that you raising your hand? George, one of the things that I appreciate about our relationship is when we are together, especially in person, I feel like I'm the only person on the planet because you're listening so intently to me. And there are a few other people in my life where I feel like that's the gift that is needed for whatever we're wanting to do that's meaningful in life. So thank you for being that person for me. And Eddie, by the way, is still trying to get in to join us. Heidi, if you're listening to my voice, he said he's calling in, he can hear us, but I'm not sure that you can bring him in as a panelist. So that's the quick. All right, very good. So I wanted to go back to Meg, and let you jump in and add to, what would you layer in? I believe maybe it was Bob who effectively said, in order to be interesting, you have to be interested. And that is something that my husband and I have actually discussed over the years. And then when I went through the Kinder Evoke training, that was actually one of the most influential bits that I took away from that training, which was prior to that, I had tried to establish a rapport with clients by finding commonalities. Oh, you practice yoga too? Oh, you went to that college too? It's fun, it's like a cocktail party conversation. It's sort of exhausting though, and what if you struggle and can't actually find those shared elements of your lives? And during the training, it was really brought home to us that where that strong rapport, or even relationship comes from, is not shared experiences, but your deep empathy and interest in the client's life. And one of the nice things in practice about that is in a way it's so much easier, right? I don't have to hope that I've got some hobby that's in common with this person in front of me. I just have to be and show genuine interest in their hobby and their passion for their hobby or their family or their story or whatever it is. And then you get those comments about, oh, I feel like I'm the only person in the room, or this feels like therapy, or any of those comments that make it obvious that this person feels so deeply listened to in a way that they're not accustomed to be listened to. That's fabulous. Now, Eddie, I see you on the phone visually, and you have a red X as if you're muted. So if you wanna speak, your visual cue will be to unmute your phone, and I'll know you'd like to add into the conversation. Bob, back to you, what would you add in at this point? I got from George the idea that we should not be empty hucksters when we interact with the world at large. And I think that's an important insight. But to be serious about what George was saying, he mentioned the spirit of generosity. And I've talked about that in general in your marketing. When an advisor is most effective at marketing is when they give up their own agenda and simply share their willingness to help educate the public. And that especially works with us journalists. And Marie can tell you that the best and most effective public relations is you sit down, you talk to a journalist and say, look, I don't have a particular agenda. You don't have to quote me, but I wanna help you craft a good story on this topic so that the public is educated, if you will. And the same thing with Meg was talking about blogs. You're sharing your information. You're giving away something that is valuable because you want the world at large to be helped in some way. And that always comes back to you. That's the best attitude you can have for general marketing. And I think it also is helpful when you're speaking with clients. How can I help? And you brought to me a particular kind of problem. Let me help you with that instead of trying to sell a broader agenda. I think it all fits together in a nice way. I think we can also become, when we talk about charisma, George was talking about the idea of having more presence. I think the more confident you are in what you know, the more presence you have. And it's wisdom, it's knowledge, it's the ability to be able, it's kind of like an osmotic pressure. The one who has more wisdom and knowledge can move it across the barrier to the other side, if that makes sense. And I know a lot of advisors, nobody in this audience I'm willing to bet, but I know a lot of advisors that are just kind of faking it. And the more you're not faking it, and particularly the more confident you have in yourself, the more I think this elusive thing called charisma is available. And I think Eddie's unmuted now, is he not? Yeah, Eddie, are you there? I am here. Thank you all for your patience. It was hard to get on, but that happens sometimes. Not very often anymore, but thank you for your patience. I've enjoyed listening to everybody and I'll continue to listen until I feel like I have a good thing to say. Be patient with me. Well, let's go back to this idea of charisma and the it factor. Bob, when you and I were brainstorming the other day, you said something about the it factor. Well. What is it? What is that it factor? I keep going back to the fit. Does a client feel comfortable with who you are and what you are? And of course, they can't know that until you know what it is that they're wanting to fit. There's an equation. In the Q&A, there's some interesting equations being offered. I'm not sure if this is an equation kind of a thing. We're not doing algebra, we're doing something different. But I'll add an equation to it. The credibility and, what's the word? The client satisfaction equation is expectations minus whatever it is you do. And so what it is, is if you exceed their expectations, then you are creating an experience that they will like and enjoy. And that, it helps because you can make those expectations. You can create those expectations on the front end, and that makes it a lot easier to exceed them, if that makes sense. Is that what we talked about, the it factor? I'm trying to remember what the it factor was. I've never had the it factor, so I'm not sure I can speak on it. If I remember what you said, I think you said something like, if you have the it factor, then you ought to be doing main stage motivational speakers, speaking engagements or something like that. But I don't think all of us want to do that or cut out to do that. And how many times do we need to hear Magic Johnson speak anyway, right? So that's what I recall. I think part of that conversation, I was saying the very best advisors, the advisors who provide the most value are seldom the best at that Huckster factor. They're seldom the best. And everybody knows that office down the street that's getting a whole bunch of clients, and you wonder why, because when a client leaves them and comes to you, their portfolio was a mess, the recommendations were sloppy, but they were much better marketers than you were. I think we need to be better at getting the word out that credibility and skill and knowledge matter a lot more than I think most people realize and help them recognize that factor. It's less a net factor than it is a capability factor that I think, to be the sheep among the wolves. George, do you have another topic to throw out or to kick off another line? Well, I'd like to build on all this. It's so cool what's being discussed and everybody's sharing. And I mentioned a minute ago, facilitating versus presenting. And I think there's a bit, I was challenged, Marie, you gave us a little hint, you were gonna talk about the it factor. And I was scratching my head and wondering what the heck is that it factor? What is it? So I'm glad to hear Bob's definition and I'm right there with him. But it made me think, well, maybe there is some it factor that we should be thinking about in terms of the sale that goes along with this quality of selflessness, of real presence of great listening. And I thought there are a couple of things, just one from the therapy world. One of the great therapists that I took material from was a man named Carl Rogers. And his most famous, I think, phrase was unconditional positive regard. When I meet with a client, that's what I give them. That's what my kids and my wife would like from me too. And I do my best there, it's always harder when you're closer, but that's really what a client wants and that's what I wanna give them. And the other piece of that is this fiduciary notion. Marie, you know, I've taken this fiduciary term and I'm trying to make it much larger than what we normally think of, which is usually just about fees. And I think that what fiduciary really means is that we put the client's interests ahead of our own. Always. And what that means to me is that it's not just about fees, but it's about who is it that the client wants to become? What is it that the client wants to do with their life? And is there a way that I can help the client reveal that in a conversation, break through that trust barrier that, you know, all of them are suspicious of those sheep, the wolves in sheep's clothing that Bob was talking about, and they think I'm gonna be that way too. So how do I break through that? And there is this, you know, real listening quality, but how do we listen has a little bit of an it factor to it in that, and a little bit of the charisma, the way we think of it in there as well, in that when I'm listening and I'm really quiet, I'm still very engaged. I'm engaged with my eyes. You just saw me move forward with my body. I might gesture just a bit with my hands. I might go like this, you know, holding my hands open wide. I might touch my chest like this. I might, you know, sit up. I might go, oh, oh gosh. And we call them gutturals and body language and gestures. And what we train, what we're interested in is, this is, we're not there yet with what Bob's talking about, about our skills of delivering the great feel-only planning that we do. Where we are right now is delivering that trustworthiness so that the client goes, boy, I wanna be with this person. They get me. And so I, what we're actually doing with all of those gutturals, those gestures and all of that is that we're following the feelings. We're intuiting where the person is excited, where they're disturbed. And we show just by our gesture and by our not saying something, but showing that we're engaged, that we get it. And so we're getting them on a deep level. And it's a level that they respond to. And it's the reason that we can go to that next level of what's your dream of freedom? You know, what does it really look like? So we build that repertoire there. And I wanna talk presence, which is more of the it factor, that marquee, in a few minutes. But I just wanted to add that. So there is a little bit of, and it's something you can all practice. It's not something that comes intuitively necessarily. It can be practiced. Eddie, I see you're on. George. Go ahead, Eddie. Yes, George, what you just shared, I see that as setting the mood, setting the tone, creating the environment for building trust. And when that's done, I see that as a base layer. It must be done in order for that trust to start to grow. And I mentioned during the last call that we are salespeople and we are selling something. And one of the things I said that we were selling is synthesis. And when you use everything that George just said with gutturals and contact, and your body language is saying that we're connected, and you don't just listen, but then you feed back to them what you heard, not parroting what they said, but synthesize what they said. What you've done is created enough space for that person to just begin to talk and share things and have things come out of them that they might not have said in a really long time or maybe never said in that way. But when you are able to feed that back to them, and I heard you say these three things and you feed that back to them, it is amazing. You see it in their eyes. You see it in their body language. It just changes. Like, you get me, you just heard what I said, and now you know me. And when that happens and that light happens in their eyes, there's a connection. It's like an energy field between you and that client or that inquiry at that point. And at that point, you're there. You got it. Because that person felt heard and people just don't do that with them. Their spouse probably doesn't listen to them in that way. Their friends don't listen to them in that way, but you did. You cared. And that is, those two things together is, if we're doing formulas, I'm gonna say George Kinder's comment plus synthesis equals signed client advisory agreement in a great start to a relationship. IR squared times the square root of sine theta. Can anybody write this down? We see a lot of comments of formulas in the Q&A over here. I think it's interesting. Bobby, do you wanna add anything more or shall I toss out another idea? Well, Meg had her hand up, so I'm gonna defer to her. Yes, I wanted to take this a slightly different direction. When I hear terms like the it factor or charisma, what I fear is that people, advisors might feel as if they need to have these superhuman abilities that they see on stage or like the best online marketers whose names you're always seeing highlighted on podcasts and top advisor lists, yada, yada, yada. The bar is so freaking low in this industry for the average advisor. Don't anchor on just the 10 people at the top who at least seem to have these superhuman abilities. Literally the easiest thing to do, it's not falling off a log as it turns out, it actually takes some practice, but the easiest thing to do is to simply be yourself, talk the way you normally talk, talk about things you would normally talk about, express your opinions, blah, blah, blah. Now we've been in many ways trained not to do that, so that's why it takes some work to get comfort talking, being who you are in a public way, but it is the most sustainable way to market and to sell yourself. It's the most effective way to end up with clients who are actually gonna be clients you wanna work with. Yeah, because sure, I am absolutely gonna repel a lot of people, but there are gonna be people out there who like the very idiosyncratic Meg Bartelt and they have become very good clients and it's so much easier to just be Meg from day to day as opposed to trying to be the next Carl Richards or whoever. So I do sometimes chafe or get a little worried when we toss around terms like it factor, although it sounds like it was being tossed around in sort of a critical way, it factor or these highfalutin words that make it seem as if the bar is so high for what we need to do. Yeah, thank you for that. George, you were talking about body language and face and leaning in and just showing in that active engagement, those little things make such a difference. I remember back to the article that Marian Estes and I wrote way back before COVID and we were talking about mirroring and that that could be a way to create rapport and how good people just tend to do that without trying to manipulate. Good communicators tend to like lean in together and kind of almost like a dance together. I wonder if there's something there we can be practicing without being too overt or manipulative, not mimicking people or parroting people, but with our voice, our eyes, our eyebrows, I call it an up face when we're doing presentation training, having an up face instead of a resting which face. So can I throw that to George? You wanna jump in on body language? Well, I saw Bob had his hand up. I don't know if he wants to share first. Well, go ahead, George. Um, so I was gonna go further with this. Yeah, I think this is a, Marie has this in one of the practice things. She lists what's homework. And I was gonna share this as my final comment, but I'll share it now. And that is, gosh, just practice being with whoever you're with, your kids, your spouse, your partner in business, your client, your staff, someone you meet in the grocery store at a cocktail party, and practice just not saying anything, but really trying to connect. As Maria is saying, connect with your eyes, with your eyebrows, connect with your smile, connect with your frown, just really connect. And the thing that I would be connecting with, again, the thing that's gonna land most is if you're connecting with the feelings that they seem to be going through. So they love golf, but you don't play golf, but you can celebrate that enthusiasm they have with a big smile and a gesture of some sort in some way. And when they share something that's difficult for them, that's where the gravitas comes in. Just be more sober and somber, quieter, and connect with a more serious kind of glance at them. But it's not artificial. Practice it coming from, like what Meg was saying, being yourself. Who is it that you would, how is it that you would naturally be if you could be that effusive or that connected with gestures and your feelings? Practice helps. So I'm doing this George's body language thing now. I think this is an excellent time for us to pause so that everybody can give that glowing evaluation of my part of the presentation. And I think we could do that. There's two things I can add to that. One is then this is something that I practice as a journalist that I don't think is very different from what advisors do. Almost always in my daily life with almost everybody I interact with, including the people that I do interviews with, I try and have a little bit of fun with them. And it helps, the more you know about somebody, the more you can connect with something that's interesting or funny. But even when at the hardware store, you get people smiling, if you kind of enjoy the interactions you have with people, that's charisma too. And I think that's something you don't really have to force. I think it's something that can make your whole life more pleasant. It certainly has mine. Now, the other thing is Angie Herber has just released some research and I'm writing about it now in my newsletter. And one of the more interesting things that she came up with was, and this is something George, I hope will comment on. She said that introducing the whole concept of life planning at the beginning of the relationship, in other words, the close, if you will, and close is not my favorite term, but that's where you're having that meeting and you're hoping that this person will sign on as a client. If you introduce life planning, that tends to turn them off. That tends to be something that people are not really, that expands the scope of the relationship to an uncomfortable level. And then she said that introducing life planning gradually as your trust with the client builds, as they begin to trust you more, becomes a very powerful attractant and deepens the client relationship. And I'm not sure how that research was conducted. I do know how research was conducted, but I'm not sure that you're getting a full picture there, but that's what she published and that's what I'm writing about now. Well, that's fascinating. I'd love to see how the study was constructed because I think exactly the opposite. And so I think what, it must be how she is framing life planning and how the people that she interviewed are framing life planning. We, you know, life planning starts with listening. It's basically listening. And if you work with the money piece first, what happens is you're putting the horse before the, you're putting the cart before the horse. You're putting the money first and you're saying, this is what's most important as opposed to what a- No, I think where it's coming from, I think where it's coming from is instead of saying, tell me your story, tell me what brings you here, you say in the first meeting, tell me all your cherished goals and dreams and desires. Here's our three questions. And that introduces an element of discomfort that would be inappropriate. And that's, I think, where the mistake lies. Of course, that's not life planning the way I understand it, Bob. I mean, that's, and clearly that's what I, that seems like that's what she's saying. And I don't really do that kind of life planning. Tell me your hopes and your fears and all this kind of stuff. We go with the client and we listen to the client and we listen from our place of authenticity and helping the client feel enough trust that they then share their authenticity. Life planning is built from that engagement. So, and that comes first because that's because your relationship comes first. Who the client is comes first, we're fiduciaries. And so that's, and so it's very different from what she's saying. So I'd love to see what she said and please share with me, you know, the details, but we don't do it that way. That's not my- I'll send you the write-up when you see it. It's too bad we're virtual so we can't have an actual fist fight online here because I think that would be very exciting for the audience. Eddie, did I see you come off mute? Do you want to jump in here? I guess not. You know, one of the questions that we had on the slides for discussion is selling as a noble cause. And I know, Bob, you've said sell actually is a four letter word, it's four letters, but let's talk about selling as a noble cause because I think that fiduciary advisors are too humble, too mild-mannered, they shrink away from the limelight, too many of them, not all of them, but I think of marketing as everything you do to attract and retain business. So that's attracting and retaining. And then that selling part is just, is so effortless when you've got the right fit and you've been authentic. And I actually think it is a noble cause because if we're not out there with the fiduciary community, you know, letting people know about this and being our authentic self, and as Meg, you said, getting the right people that are attracted to you because you attract the right people and repel the wrong people, then we're actually doing a disservice to the public. So anybody want to jump in on selling as a noble cause, selling as a fiduciary? Well, my comments were in that vein. I said that, you know, you owe it to the marketplace to identify the people who are not creditors and raise your hand as Meg just did and say that I'm not one of them and you can trust me a lot more than you can trust them. I think that that is necessary in the marketplace. And I think it's something that fiduciary advisors owe us all is to become more visible to the public. Meg? Yes. This is something that I've thought about a lot over the years, simply because of my own professional evolution, my first two jobs in this industry were working for small fee-only RIAs whose clientele were basically all retirees. And I remember for the three or so years I worked for these firms, I wondered sort of in a depressed state of mind, oh my gosh, how am I ever going to make it in this profession? I have no idea how to sell to these people because to me, selling, sales, whatever you want to call it, it was like selling a vacuum cleaner, some sort of door-to-door process where you're trying to convince people to buy something regardless of whether they would benefit from it or not. That's my definition of selling. Okay, right. So I think, I mean, we can play word games, right? And there's good selling, there's bad selling, but if we could just focus on sort of the thing that we want to do is as soon as you know that you have something of real value that has the potential to improve someone's life, A, yes, we sort of have this moral obligation to get that information out there, but B, for me, it made it so much easier. I no longer felt so exquisitely incapable and uncomfortable at the idea of sales because now I was talking with people whom I know I could help. And in fact, help better than almost any advisor out there because when I started, I was targeting early to mid-career women in tech, and in 2016, there were not a lot of advisors targeting that particular demographic. So I think, and I think George was talking earlier about this idea of confidence. Once you know, which is to say, once you are confident in your ability to actually genuinely help other people, not just get the fee or the commission for yourself, selling is beautiful in that context. It can be something that you might feel moral obligation to do. It also gets a heck of a lot emotionally more comfortable for those of us for whom the idea of traditional selling, of going door-to-door, glad-handing, or networking events kind of makes us go, no, selling is way different from that, or it can be, right? Meg, I have a printout of this article that I sent to you and Eddie, and I don't know if you want to comment on this. Ellen Roth wrote about being the world's worst salesperson and why he's proud of it. What occurred to you when you read this? Yeah, I mean, it's a cute, catchy title, concept, and certainly if we go with Bob Barris's definition of selling, which is convincing people to buy stuff regardless of whether they'll benefit from it, great, I don't want you to be a salesperson, but if we have different conceptions of what to sell means or being a salesperson or selling means, obviously Ellen Roth, I mean, what he described in that article is what I would define as selling, but he's saying he's not a salesperson because he's contrasting what he does to the sort of grosser definition of sales. You know, I've known Ellen for years, and Ellen is very, very good at distinguishing himself from the pack, and what he's doing here is he says, I don't appeal to emotions, I appeal to logic, and people find that refreshing. That is a really good way to market yourself in the close, if that makes sense. The close process where he says, you know, I'm not gonna let you sign on with me until you've had a day to think it over, and I want your brain to be engaged rather than your emotions to be engaged, and I want this to be an impulsive decision. That's probably a higher close rate process than somebody who says, you know, oh, you better sign right now, otherwise you'll be destitute in 10 years, you know? And so really what he's doing is he's just distinguishing himself. He's doing a good job of it. He's very good at that. Right, I mean, I would absolutely call that, like, I want you to go away and think about it. That's absolutely a sales technique. Give me a break. It's not the same sales technique that someone else might use, but again, it's going to attract a certain type of person and repel other people. That's just the way it works. Every sales technique is going to attract and repel. Depends on whom you want to attract and repel what technique you use. And I think the lesson there is that the ideal close process, if you will, doesn't have an agenda. If you don't have an agenda when you're talking to that person, you're just saying, let me see if I can help you. I wanna check and see if I can help you. Tell me your story. Tell me what brought you here. And maybe I can't help you, in which case I'll try and find someone who can. Maybe I can help you. I'll tell you how. Rather than saying, I want to get this person to sign this contract and I'm gonna overcome their objections. It's letting go of the agenda that I think means you're not selling anymore. Yes, and one thing I explicitly do in sales calls is over the course of the meeting, and I've looked at their information ahead of time, I am determining whether or not I want to work with that person, whether I think I'd be a good fit and vice versa. And if I decide yes, during the call, I absolutely make explicit at the end, Bob, I would love to work with you. I really think that would be a good fit and I'll be able to help you with issues A, B, and C. Where could I sign? Yeah. I'm ready. Yeah, thank you. You fill out the survey for me too, saying how great my presentation was. Yes, but I do think, I mean, it's one thing I got from my business coach is people, and I've seen it in action, people want to feel wanted. Like I have a lot of prospective clients like, am I the kind of person you work with? So I've learned that saying, I want to work with you, I think we're a good fit for reasons A, B, and C, that actually reassures the client in some ways. I work with people who have almost never worked with advisors before, so all of this is very new for them. That's very reassuring for these prospective clients and I think helps to close them, whatever, however we want to describe that. Ray, do you want to go to the Q&A? They're having a much better discussion over there than we're having here. Yeah, let's see what's happening over here. Well, I think we've got, everybody can see the Q&A, but there's, Thomas Duffy has got a link to the trustedadvisor.com, why trust matters. And then Michelle put in her credibility formula and then Thomas has his formula. And Thomas, you can bring this and talk with us next time when we take everybody off mute as they'd like to come off mute, but the self-orientation is the denominator. I don't see anything else here, Bob, that we want to call out right now, but I would like to talk about something that I refer to for as kind of a crutch. It's called the three L's, looks, language, and leadership. So we've talked about looks today, which is, you know, that body language and the facial expression and, you know, mirroring and being in tune with one another. And last time we talked about language, which is the words that we say and the tone of our voice. And we've carried through some of that today. But then leadership, I think, is that demonstration that you're one of the good guys, right? That you're working with the press, that you don't expect to be getting clients out of some of this good advice, fiduciary advice that you're willing to give your time to present in the industry or serve on a board. Eddie, I see you've come off mute. Do you want to ask something about looks, language, leadership or something else? Well, thank you, Marie. I actually wanted to talk a little bit about looks and not with what we were saying with body language, but physically, you know, what you're wearing, how you physically present yourself. And I can't imagine that the four of us are going to agree completely or the five of us are going to agree on this topic, but I would love to hear what the panel thinks. And I'd be happy to share with you my thoughts as well. But in terms of how you dress, I come from, when I was in South Carolina, anytime that I met with a client, I was in a full suit or at least a tie. I noticed that when I came to Texas and I would meet somebody in a full suit, and granted I'm in Central Texas, not in Dallas, but when I would meet someone in a full suit, it was quite off-putting to them. They did not want to see me in a tie. They did not want to see me in a suit. And I'm curious what you're seeing, Meg, and what Bob and George are seeing in terms of dress and how that's evolving for both males and females in this environment of working with inquiries and prospects. Is that you, George? Did you want to jump in? Yeah, and I'm aware that we're near the end of time too, Marie, I don't know how much time you're carrying this on for, but in terms of dress, my approach is always to be thoughtful about who the people are that I'm meeting with, but also at the same time to be completely comfortable myself. Those two things are really very important, but I wanted to go to a different, I wanted to go back to something that Marie was saying and that Bob and Meg were alluding to. Meg, I love your clothes or your non-clothes at the end. Really beautiful, beautifully done. And at the end of, I would have a two-hour initial meeting, typically. Sometimes it was an hour and a half, sometimes it was a half hour, but three quarters of that was just listening. Apparently this isn't what Angie Habers thinks is life planning, but it's what we think of as the essence of life planning. And it's just really listening and putting the client first and really supporting them around who they are, but almost no questions are asked then. And when the client, it feels like they're finished and they feel like you can really see that the trust has been won and they're really interested in working with you. I never did a clothes. The client would initiate the clothes. But I would take the last half hour of that meeting, typically, and think about these three fiduciary elements. There's the life planning element, which is primarily listening and putting the client first and who they wanna be first. There's the CFP element, which is having this mastery of finance in all these different ways that, again, can connect with any client in any different way that they wanna go. And then there's the fee-only element that NAPFA is famous for and started with. And I would be thinking about which of those three things is the client feeling the most vulnerable around. Often for me, I would go back and I'd talk about the Great Depression because they were worried about the crash that occurred. So I would find from one of those places, what is it that I felt the client really needed to hear about my putting them and their concerns and their needs first? And I just share that at the end and we'd set up the next meeting. Yeah. Thank you, George. We are out of time. So I do wanna conclude the homework and the reminders are on the slides. It's also on the NAPFA Learning Center and the website. So we'll pick up again in one month's time and we'll have 75 minutes to have this richer dialogue with all of you involved. So please do something, embrace the homework, practice something and come back next time prepared to dialogue with all of us. See you then. Thank you, panelists. Appreciate your comments. Bye-bye.

selling as a fiduciary

importance of presence

importance of authenticity

building relationships with clients

relatable and personal approach

establishing trust

making clients feel comfortable

active listening

showing empathy