How the Deli Counter Taught Me To Build Trust and (Finally) Win Over Clients

Being the Awkward New Guy
One of the hardest and most frustrating aspects of starting your career as a Support Advisor (or Associate) is the fact that everyone else has relationships with clients except for you.  While we’re glad we aren’t in sales roles and don’t have to build our own ‘books’ from scratch, the downside is that we have to begin at the bottom of the food chain and work our way up.
 
These frustrations only increase when you first get introduced to the firm’s clients and they make it abundantly clear they don’t know or trust you.
 
Here’s a common occurrence in the early days as a Support Advisor:
Alongside the Senior Advisor, you walk into your first client meeting to get started – what a rush!  The Senior Advisor makes small talk and tells a couple jokes about a current event - the client is loving it!  Then, you (the newbie), seize the opportunity to crack a couple jokes and build some quick, chummy rapport while the mood is ripe – crickets…
 
Not only did you completely misread social cues, you may have also just highlighted your youth and immaturity to the most important people.  This is officially awkward.
 
In the digital age, the early jabs come in via email too.
 
In my very first month on the job, my Senior received an email from one of our clients that read: “who is Bryan and why is he on our emails about my finances?”  Then, I had another client tell my Senior, “I’m so glad to hear you hired someone!  I’m sure he’s great.  But just for the record, YOU are my advisor, not him.”
 
Ouch.  Strike 1 and I haven’t even stepped up to the plate yet.
 
This is all too common for many of us.  We come in with our strong educational backgrounds, high enthusiasm, and intention to become experts and help our new clients, only to be shot down immediately before we can show our stuff.
 
How to Get Over It
Getting over that hump was tough, and even though I have a little tenure now, it’s something I still deal with.  But the question remains, how did I work passed it and how can new associates work to overcome this?
 
I’ve had trouble articulating this concept for a long time now.  But that all changed this morning after the most insightful trip to the grocery store I’ve ever had.
 
Inspiration at the Deli Counter
Like anyone in their 20’s without kids, I like to take advantage of the occasional lazy Sunday.  Every once in a while, though, I wake up early on a weekend and think, “wow, I feel great.  I should get some stuff done!”  Alas, my morning coffee and errands routine began early this Sunday.
 
After my coffee run, I headed to the grocery store to beat the crowds and decided that I was going to have simple sandwiches for lunch this week. 
 
I approached the deli counter and browsed the over-complicated meats section, trying to determine my price point.  $12.99 for a pound of turkey meat?  What is this!?
 
With an honest look on my face, I innocently asked the sweet lady behind the counter if she had any deals running this week.  She briefly glanced over her shoulder, then turned to me and said, “you don’t want me to cut slices of this processed junk. You can get a better deal if you buy the full turkey in the cold section for half the price.”  Then, she walked out from behind the deli counter and led me to a refrigerated section with full turkeys in there that were a much better deal than what I was initially asking for.  “This is what you want right here,” she said.
 
Wow.  In a matter of seconds, this woman sized up my situation and concerns, then saved me a ton of money.  It may seem like a small gesture and a ‘just doing my job’ moment, but to me, the thoughtfulness and care really went a long way.
 
In my opinion, I now consider this person an Expert in the deli meat selection process and she has my forever trust.  Regardless of whether it was the best deal or not, I felt truly taken care of, which is valuable enough in itself.

She had one, seemingly small opportunity to earn my trust, and she earned it in under 1 minute.
 
Growing into a Captain, One Small Task at a time
After my deli counter experience, I reflected on my own client relationships and how I slowly built client trust over time.
 
If I really think back, all the trust I built early on with clients came from identifying seemingly small opportunities where I could help, then following through to let them know they could count on me.

Like many others in the Support Advisor role, I had tons of opportunities to summarize confusing paperwork, explain what the overall goal was, then show clients where to sign when they were ready.  Paperwork is often considered grunt work in our field, mainly because it has nothing to do with financial planning, but paperwork and operations always seemed to be an easy opportunity to show I could be detail-oriented, while letting me practice explain technical jargon.

Also in Support Advisor role, we typically do a majority of the meeting preparation.  Again, this is widely considered grunt work, but it allowed me to draw up the plays before we were even on the field.  While preparing for meetings, I’d identify areas that I wanted to present on, then I’d explicitly ask to run that small part of the meeting.  If I got the green light from my Senior, I’d rehearse and run through the role plays in my head before the meeting, so I’d deliver my lines with ease and show the client I really knew what I was talking about.  Actually, I still do this today.

Whether it was purely an operational conversation or explaining seemingly elementary concepts, those were my early opportunities to show I was more than just a helper; I was their advisor.

The path to building trust has not always been smooth, but it feels great to know some of our most important clients lean on me when they need help the most.  Ultimately though, it was the small, consistent wins that helped me grow from less of an unproven sailor to more of a reliable captain. 
 
It’s Human Nature to Trust Slowly
Remember that client I mentioned who wrote me off from the beginning because I was new?  I eventually did enough of the little things right to where not only do we have a strong working relationship, I’d consider him a friend.  Ironically, he texted me yesterday (a Saturday) when he was in a quick bind and I was glad to help.

The moral of the story is: even your most prized relationships began at Ground Zero.  At one point in your life, you and your best friend (or spouse) were complete and total strangers.  The things you confide in each other today are completely different than the things you discussed on Day 1.
 
In the workplace, when you’re hired in your 20’s to be a Support Advisor on someone else’s client, you have to try extra hard to find small areas where you can shine and add value.  And when you identify those opportunities, you have to absolutely knock them out of the park.
 
Although it might hurt our feelings in the early days, it’s important to remember that we’re only human and Mother Nature has taught us to trust slowly. 
 
At first, you may feel like your contributions are minuscule and aren’t getting you anywhere.  But if you’re consistently showing you can be counted on by others, you’ll be well on your way to being the one who cracks jokes in meetings and proving that Ground Zero is just the foundation for your exciting, new career.

The Magic Elixir of Financial Planning Firms & Why Your Employees Quit

Happy Employees Will Make Their Bosses Even Happier
As cliché as it sounds, at the end of the day, we all just want to be happy.  How we find that happiness is, usually, up to us to decide and measure.  And if you're not happy, well, that's when break-ups tend to happen (metaphorically speaking, of course).

Some people find happiness through their work, some find it through sports or healthy competition, and some find it by being a dog dad (*cough* Regan Smith).

Alas, this blog is written for aspiring financial planners in today's world, so I'll focus on the "work lens" for now.  After a handful of years navigating this emerging industry, I've had dozens of conversations with young planners across the country and have started to learn what keeps them happy at work and what makes them want to leave to find something new.  

Consider this post to be an open letter to anyone interested in growing (or continuing to grow) a team of aspiring planners from the perspective of the people who matter most - your employees.

The Magic Elixir and Why The Problem Exists (note: bold claim in this section)
Surprisingly, no matter which young planner I talk to or where they are located, the same topics always emerge whenever we discuss work happiness.  To add to that, these recurring themes of satisfaction (or dissatisfaction) are not specifically tied to financial planning at all, but basically any line of work. 

If my amateur research and data sampling is accurate at all, it feels like there are a few main ingredients that every organization can sprinkle into their own recipe to keep their employees happy and motivated at work - all without paying for nap rooms, catering free daily lunches, or giving away free company gear (although all those things are very cool).  

To jump straight to the punchline, it's all about how you manage your people and their emotions.  This premise alone doesn't sound complicated, but I believe that it is the magic elixir that makes or breaks a firm's growth when they might need it most.  Framed in another way, if a single advisor does not know how to bring on and manage new employees, their business might not ever scale up or reach its fullest potential.  Not to mention, I imagine family vacations out of the country are a lot more stressful when you don't have a team to cover for you while you're out of town for two weeks with no cell service.

In my (semi-unwarranted) opinion, I think the problem is partly derived from our education systems.  I went to a highly-rated financial planning program and was given incredible training which led to a great job, but the school’s training ended there.  For those who are familiar with Michael Gerber's 'The E-Myth,' I was trained to become a Technician (in financial planning).  Similar to the medical profession, students receive training from rigorous programs to be Technicians of the human body - doctors.  But while they might be trained to conduct a flawless open heart surgery, they are typically not ready to run the hospital itself or manage teams of other doctors yet.  

So there lies a major gap in our industry that I believe we are still coming to terms with - managing and growing strong teams.  Once a company is ready to scale up and add new members, they run into the issue of training those people, which requires a certain subset of human skills (like empathy and leadership). 

Also in Gerber's book, the next level above the Technician is the Manager.  This is the person that takes care of the people and ensures that the Entrepreneur's vision comes to fruition, while keeping everyone happy.  Not only is the Manager's job to develop amazing Technicians, but they are also primarily responsible for keeping new talent happy and satisfied in the workplace. 

Bluntly stated, our entire industry is comprised of great Technicians (perhaps, solo practitioners), but not enough Managers.  This is not the rule though, as there are some great firms out there that are successfully running and growing financial planning teams.  I hope those management teams continue to more pioneer awards, but the rest of the industry is seriously lagging behind and needs help catching up.

Cries for Help and Data Gathering
My first year working in the financial planning world was a bit of a whirlwind (thank you, CFP Exam) and also a little bizarre.  I graduated from a good program with an entire cohort of aspiring, and very smart, financial planners.  The top students got the 'best' jobs (or so we perceived) and mostly everyone got placed somewhere.

Not so long after our journeys began though, some people were already having career doubts and I started getting phone calls asking for advice.  I expected that some of my friends' jobs weren't going to work out, but I did not expect for them all to call me.  I felt like I was getting career advice phone calls almost once a month.

Thus, when those phone calls came in, I listened deeply and my data gathering began.  From that data, I found some common pitfalls that firms make.  Using those mistakes, here are two simple ingredients for a happy, healthy new hire.

Key Ingredient #1 - Fair Expectations (and then meeting them)
The first common theme I found was that expectations weren't being met.  Said differently, some of the top students in my class were recruited to firms that sold them on a particular dream, then immediately failed to deliver on those dreams.  Imagine graduating at the top of your class and getting recruited to work at a prestigious firm as an Associate.  The only catch is, you have to work in the middle of nowhere (5 hours from a major city), your boss doesn't enjoy communicating with you or coaching you, and you will commonly be referred to as an office 'secretary.'  This happened to a friend of mine who is much smarter than me.  Not surprisingly, she left as soon as she could.

It seems that some firms are more concerned with "winning" the top talent, and forgetting to follow through on early promises that were made.  If you're dealing with 23 year-olds, not only are they trying to learn their new roles and responsibilities, but they are often still learning how to be a professional for the first time; shoot, I still have trouble waking up before 7:00am sometimes.  Even the top tier recruits still need to learn with their training wheels on at first.

As far as setting expectations go, you've got to be honest from the beginning or your best talent will leave you.  Taking it further, you need to be honest with yourself on what you have to offer.  So if you require your new hires to file paperwork for a full year before they can progress, you should make that crystal clear before the offer is made.  And if you really haven't thought about what you want your new hire to do, maybe you're not ready to hire in the first place.  It's a delicate dance, but you should be honest to yourself and anyone involved.

Key Ingredient #2 - A Manager who wants the best for you
Nobody wants to work for a bad manager.  "Bad" is a relative term, but someone is typically "bad" when you feel like your career success is not a priority to your superior.

Imagine landing your "dream job" in your dream city, living in your dream apartment, dating a dreamy attractive person - that life sounds great!  Now imagine that, in addition to those great things, your manager makes your life a living hell for 10 hours a day and doesn't seem to notice that they're slowly crushing your soul.  Then on a pensive Sunday afternoon over mimosas, you suddenly realize that you're giving away 5 days out of your week to please someone who doesn't really care about you.

Most people in this situation would consider leaving that 'dream job' as soon as they could, regardless of the prestige or resume padding.  Why?  Because your supervisor is directly responsible for your happiness and satisfaction in the workplace, which makes up roughly 5 / 7 of your entire life (Monday - Friday).  Smart and capable people will opt to work for someone who makes them feel appreciated.

The best managers I've ever had did two things for me: Firstly, they made me do stuff that I sucked at, but needed to work on to grow in my career.  Secondly, they had high emotional intelligence and were comfortable discussing my attitudes towards my work; at the very least, they were able to close the office door for a few minutes to let me know I was heard.  More recently, the most effective meeting times for me feel more like counseling sessions than anything.  Similar to personal relationships, sometimes you need to share your feelings and feel validated in order to make those relationships stronger.

I'm sure there are some good managers out there who don't fit the mold I've just described, and that's fine, but I don't know any of them personally so I can't discuss them.  All I can say is that when I know that when my boss has my back at any cost, you better believe that I will do anything for them.

The Smartest Management Move I've Experienced
I think some people are innately good at management and keeping people happy, but I believe most people are not.  That said, I think anyone can instantly improve their management skills if they focus on the ingredients listed above.

During my first year at my current firm, my manager and I had monthly meetings to discuss my progress and how I was feeling; quite simply, we called them “Monthly Development Meetings.”  Imagine an in-depth Annual Review, except this meeting happens every 30 days.  In this meeting, I was able to share what I was liking, disliking, and what I wanted to do next.  It was on the calendar as a recurring calendar item (which means it's definitely going to happen).  This was a brilliant move and a huge factor in my early development.

Extra Time for the Newbies
In the first year, we can't forget that a young person is still "trying to figure it out," especially if they’ve relocated for the job.  Any extra touches to let your employees know that you are there and that you actually care about them will pay off in spades, much quicker than you might think.  

Managing employees takes an extreme amount of patience and a huge investment of your time.  On top of that, not everyone even wants to help mold the next generation of financial planners.  But if you can find someone who is passionate about managing people and taking care of their people, you should seek to hire those people, or work for them yourself.

Providing Financial Advice in an Unknowable Future

We often discuss developing emotional intelligence on this blog, as it is less structured than developing technical intelligence. It’s the skill set you develop through hundreds of interactions with a variety of human temperaments and personalities. Knowing when to listen and when to speak, when to be forward and when to be subtle, when to laugh and when to be serious. There’s no crash course in emotional intelligence. Like getting fit, the goal is reached through unbroken repetition, and can thus never be fully attained. No matter how many client meetings you conduct you’ll still come across people that fall on unfamiliar parts of the spectrum.

Observation of my more experienced 35-70+ year old counterparts has been my primary source material for developing this sort of intelligence. The best golden nuggets I’ve gleaned from my most senior coworker are these: 1) Always be curious, 2) Nobody was born boring, and 3) You can’t understand someone without understanding his motivations. These things resonated with me, and I don’t see a future where their meaning isn’t relevant to my career and life. It doesn’t matter that for decades this coworker’s career didn’t involve him utilizing the internet, the advice still fits. In pondering that very thought, I considered the looming certainty that some of the recommendations and mantras of these older counterparts might be outdated. The more I thought about it, the more obvious it seemed. At 25, I’m right around the youngest age of people who remember what it was like to yell at your big sister to get off the phone while you were trying to friggin’ log on to AOL Instant Messenger. I grew up with the internet, so I’ve always understood technology better than most of my older coworkers.

Whenever we purchased a new technology at my previous firm I would be the beta tester, learning the system so I could be a resource when my coworkers were forced to switch from the outdated program. Learning new commercialized products and platforms is easy for me, which makes sense given the platform designer’s primary goal for a widespread audience is usually intuitive functionality.  Growing up with the internet has made it hard for me to see from the perspective of someone who just doesn’t get how to learn new platforms, but a conversation with my roommates at dinner last night provided me with a healthy dose of empathy. My roommates work for two of the most notable “disrupter” companies in the Bay Area, constantly trying to push the limits of technological development, so I like to think they have some authority on the matters of automation and the imminent transformation of our workforce as we know it. One of my roommates postulated, “We’re probably the last generation that won’t grow up coding as a necessity. It will be a required high school class for our kids, because it’ll be crucial to function in the workforce.” I had always thought it would be cool that when I’m 90 people will be baffled that I once lived without the internet, that is until I realized how far behind I could be not knowing a lick of coding. If you enjoy this kind of thinking, I recommend reading Chuck Klosterman’s “But What If We’re Wrong?: Thinking about the Present as If It Were the Past,” which will challenge your perception and thought processes about the present day and our unknowable future. Computers have become ever-present in our lives (you probably have one in your pocket right now), so theorizing that the human workforce will need to know coding more intimately seems like a reasonable prediction. Klosterman’s book points out though, that we’re often incredibly wrong about predicting the future:

“Irrational trajectories happen all the time. Here’s an excerpt from a 1948 issues of Science Digest: “Landing and moving around the moon offers so many serious problems for human beings that it may take science another 200 years to lick them.” The prediction was off by only 179 years. But the reason Science Digest was so wrong was not technological; it was motivational… when the Soviets launched the Sputnik satellite in 1957, the meaning of the enterprise changed… By the summer of ’69 we were planting flags and collecting moon rocks.”

Our biases prevent us from accurately projecting the future because we see the possibilities through the lens of what we value today. Using Klosterman’s framework in regards to providing financial advice, it’s not whether coding will be essential to function in the workforce, but how will a future with different values affect the “old” way of doing things. We may assume that technology will replace the traditional model of providing financial advice, but it’s likely emotional intelligence will be an even more highly desired skill in such a high-tech world. When 3D printing and coding begin to show up as elementary school classes, the skills children develop in English and at recess will become more scarce, and consequently more valuable. After all, a person’s repertoire of skills is limited by the things they have time to experience. When dealing with money, the gatekeeper to so many of our life goals, emotional intelligence and communication skills will be even more crucial.

Although I believe emotional intelligence will always be valued in providing financial advice, we must recognize the likelihood of a period where no one has authority on the best way to provide said advice, and we must always critically analyze anyone who claims such authority. Much of a financial advisor’s career involves providing answers, which requires a certain level of confidence in the way you operate. Regardless of how sound your advice is, if you don’t deliver it with conviction then clients may begin to second guess your judgement. As such, it's important that we consider the advice and critiques our mentors provide through the lens of someone who's been successful advising to a particular generation, and that the values of future generations are subject to change. In other words, just because advisors have been successful with certain methods doesn't mean those methods will bring continued success in dealing with delivering financial advice in a world that’s sprinting in terms of technological development. As we improve upon our emotional intelligence, we may need to resist certain techniques our mentors implore us to use. This post is a call to attention, we need to consider that many people who have had success with their methods will be hesitant to change. Although Mark Manson was not writing in this context, an excerpt from his book “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life” can be applied to this situation:

“Our mind’s biggest priority when processing experiences is to interpret them in such a way that they will cohere with all of our previous experiences, feelings, and beliefs.”

All you have to do is compare our collective technological strides year over year since the turn of the century and there should be little doubt we’re heading into the future with our foot on the accelerator. Given this exponential growth, we need to take particular care during the inevitable development of the delivery of financial advice. You may have been hoping for specific examples to glean from this post, but I don’t have them. It’s not exactly the smartest career move to publicize the specific ways you disagree with your superiors! Also, I consider myself fortunate to be a part of a firm that is driven to provide the best solutions for our clients. That drive is embedded in our work culture and there’s a conscious resistance to bending to pride or seniority. You should be critically reevaluating your company if superiors respond to your inquiries with “because we’ve always done it that way.”

I welcome you to comment if you have a specific examples where you disagreed with your superiors on these types of matters (perhaps anonymously would be best). Since we’re all subject to present-moment biases, sharing your experience could help other readers to realize their own environments aren’t ideal for adapting to the times.