Participants:
Julie Littlechild
Steve Wershing
Kathleen Burns Kingsbury
Julie Littlechild: Welcome to another episode of Becoming Referable, the podcast that helps you be the kind of advisor people can’t stop talking about. I’m Julie Littlechild and I’m the founder of AbsoluteEngagement.com. Steve Wershing: I’m Steve Wershing, President of The Client Driven Practice. Today we’re talking with Kathleen Burns Kingsbury who’s a wealth psychology expert, founder of KBK Wealth Connection, host of the Breaking Money Silence podcast, and author of several books including How to Give Financial Advice to Women and How to Give Financial Advice to Couples. She’s served on the CNBC Digital Financial Advisor Counsel, as a thought leader columnist for Investment News and is frequently quoted in publications like The Wall Street Journal and Reuters. She holds a master’s degree in psychology and an undergraduate degree in finance. For more information, you can find out more about her at www.kbkwealthconnection.com. Julie Littlechild: I loved a lot about what Kathleen had to share; she shared some incredible insights on working with couples and doing it in a way that engages both of them while really acknowledging some of the complex dynamics. In this episode she’ll look at picking up on verbal and non-verbal cues, at gender myths that can derail effective communication, and at using your own body language to engage couples. What was really exciting is how she tied all of that into referrals and shared some very simple strategies on how you can make being a couple-friendly advisor one of the best ways to attract new clients. Steve Wershing: With that, let’s go to our conversation with Kathleen. Kathleen, welcome to the show and thanks for joining us today. Kathleen Burns Kingsbury: Thank you, I’m excited to be here. Steve Wershing: You’re really known for teaching advisors how to advise women and how to advise couples, let’s focus on the couples aspect of it. What’s different about advising couples than advising individual clients? Kathleen Burns Kingsbury: I think the obvious thing is when you’re advising a couple or partners, there are two people in the room as opposed to one. That really kind of changes the dynamic because no longer is an advisor just asking a question and getting an answer, he or she is having to ask questions and notice what’s happening with each of the partners as well as what’s happening between them. It just becomes a little bit more complex. I think it’s more rewarding, but it also can be a little bit more challenging. Steve Wershing: I think in your book, if I remember correctly, you talk about actually having to advice three entities. You have to advise him and her and them and that there are actually three different things going on, not just two. Is that correct? Kathleen Burns Kingsbury: Right, so there’s something that I talk about in the book that I don’t always talk about when I’m presenting called balancing the triangle. Basically, if you picture the advisor at the top of the triangle, that person by the nature of seeing two people at once is in a triangular relationship. They need to be able to monitor, manage, and foster trust with partner one as well as partner two. If you think about the triangle image, the bottom of the triangle is kind of the couple’s dynamic, what’s happening between the two partners is also important and can be quite useful for an advisor. Steve Wershing: Can you give us some idea of what that might sound like when an advisor would be in a discussion with somebody and they realize that the advisor has to address the dynamic between the clients and how that might play out in a meeting? Kathleen Burns Kingsbury: Sure, I have the classic example. You have a husband and wife, they’re sitting there. Maybe the advisor is speaking to the husband, the husband says something that you notice upsets the wife or is off-putting to her. We’ll go with the obvious rolling of the eyes, not that I’ve ever done that in my own couple hood. You notice all of a sudden that you’re really connecting with that one partner, the male partner, and then you notice this kind of social cue from the female partner. It may be saying something along of you know what; let’s just hang on for a second. I noticed you had a reaction to that, I’m wondering if you can tell me a little bit about that reaction. It’s being able to attend to not only what’s going on verbally, but also what’s going on non-verbally. Even if the partner, in this case the woman, says oh no, nothing and kind of denies that she had a reaction, at least she knows you’re paying attention to me too, it’s not just about my husband; which is often kind of a mistake I think well intended advisors make, but they do. Just to tend to one partner versus both of them. Steve Wershing: Okay. I think that all of us who are married understand when she says fine, it’s not fine. Kathleen Burns Kingsbury: Vice versa, often we give stereotypical answers or examples in the field of advising. One of the things I’m trying to do is really highlight that the woman can be the financially dominant one in the relationship and have the closer relationship with the advisor, it’s not only the man. There are also situations where there’s the same gender in the room, but I think we’ve all been in relationships where we’ve had that experience of ‘I don’t agree’. When you say that overtly or when you indicate that with your body language is two different things. Steve Wershing: Do you talk at all about what those cues might look like and how to read them? I know I just said something extremely stereotypical, but are there also stereotypical things on the male side? Kathleen Burns Kingsbury: When you say on the male side, tell me a little bit more about what you mean. Steve Wershing: The joke is that if the wife says fine what the actual translation is it’s not fine, we should address this. Are there things that men say that sort of give the same kind of cue? Kathleen Burns Kingsbury: I think that there are gender myths that affect both men and women. One of the myths that’s out there in terms of men is all men are interested in investments or all men are interested in finance. What I think advisors need to be careful with all clients, but certainly working with couples is falling into the belief that women are going to react one way around money and a financial conversation and men are going to act another way. Certainly there are generalizations we can make about gender and I talk about those, but those are just the foundation. You really have to attend to, ask questions and really get to know those individual clients in your meetings along with the fact that they’re working together or hopefully working together as a team. A better way of putting it is maybe they’re working together. Steve Wershing: Okay, sure. That makes sense. What kinds of things do you do if you find that they’re not working well together? Do you have to pause the advisory relationship and work on the dynamic there or how would you address something like that? Kathleen Burns Kingsbury: I think it’s really up to the individual advisor. Ideally what I would recommend that advisors do is to at least notice it. They may notice it internally and not maybe do anything about it, but just kind of notice it for themselves or they can notice it in a very gentle way to help them help the couple be able to have the conversations they need to have about money. It might look like this where you are sitting with a couple and they are not arguing, but bickering back and forth. Maybe the question was how much do we want to put in our retirement fund this year? They’re kind of bickering a little bit back and forth and if you were to notice it, it would look something like ‘I realize that this isn’t always easy. It seems like an easy question, how much money do we want to put aside, but it seems like you have two different perspectives.’ Then turning, your body language, everything, to one of the partners–I often say start with the non-dominant financial partner–turning to them and then asking them specifically what their thoughts are. Then turning to partner two and asking them what their thoughts are and then letting them know that you aren’t necessarily the person that’s going to make the decision, but you’re going to help them figure out is there a compromise or is there a way in which we need to figure out the way to solve this problem by honoring both of you. It’s really giving voice to both partners and noticing when they’re not getting along and not making it wrong. Conflict is actually healthy, so it’s not necessarily wrong that they’re not getting along it actually is just part of having a money conversation and trying to figure out how can I meet my individual needs. At the same time how do I meet my needs in my partnership? Steve Wershing: Kathleen, how does that affect the advisor’s relationship with the couple when they can interpret some of those signs and address all three of those entities in the room? Kathleen Burns Kingsbury: My sense is that, as advisors, it’s really important to help clients with things that they need help with. One of the biggest things that I think clients need help with is being able to have these types of money conversations in a place that feels safe for lack of a better word, a place that feels like it’s not going to get out of control. I think if an advisor is willing to offer that client-centered approach of yes, I’m going to help you with the technical aspects. I’m going to help you plan for your financial future or whatever it is that you’re planning for, but I also am going to help you have dialogues and conversations that are going to help me understand where both of you are coming from as opposed to just defaulting to one. The most, I guess, startling statistic out there that shows if you’re not couple-friendly what can happen is that actually 70% of women fire their couple’s advisor within one year of the death of their spouse. Basically the part that’s in the advisor’s control is if I really have a good relationship with her as well as her partner, the chances of her actually going to the competition when her partner passes has been reduced. I say all the time to advisors, work at having that good relationship with both of them because you don’t know what types of family transitions are coming down the pike and clients are much more sticky if you attend to both of them and what they need. Also help them as a couple or as a family. Steve Wershing: I have heard that statistic before about how many widows choose a different advisor and that is amazing. We’re talking today about making you referable, but this is actually a client retention issue as well. Better than getting referred is keeping the clients that you have. Kathleen Burns Kingsbury: It’s both I think because a lot of people in the industry don’t actively practice being couple-friendly, meaning they try very hard to see both partners develop a relationship with both partners and really work with them on their partnership financial goals as well as if there’s any individual financial goals. Yes, it’s a huge thing when it comes to retention, but it’s also I think a really great way to be referable, marketable, and to stand out in a very crowded marketplace. Steve Wershing: Tell us a little bit more about that. How would an advisor describe themselves or how would their clients end up talking about them that would reflect how they’re different and make them more referable that way? Kathleen Burns Kingsbury: In my book How to Give Financial Advice to Couples I talk about three activities or three steps that I think every advisor should take ideally before seeing a couple, but everybody’s pretty experienced probably that’s listening to this podcast so at any point in your career. The first step is to identify what is my couple’s philosophy? How do I want to work with couples? What are some of the guidelines I have? When you get a new client you can lay out the client expectations very clearly. When I talk about a client philosophy some advisors see couple clients, they see only one partner on a regular basis. That’s a couple’s philosophy. Other advisors see both partners all of the time, no exceptions. That’s a couple’s philosophy. I think most people fall somewhere in the middle. Just being really clear as to why do you do that? How does that serve you the advisor (because it’s okay that it serves you)? How, more importantly, does it serve your clients? Then once you decide on what your couple’s philosophy is, then it’s really important to think about who is that ideal couple client? Who do I really enjoy working with? Who’s that client that I look down at my day timer or on my smart phone and I think I can’t believe they’re coming in? You want more of the people you enjoy, that you click with, and hopefully they’ll fit with your couple’s philosophy. Then the last step that you need to do is to really write out a couple’s mission statement. It is not a huge, huge project. It’s two sheets and if somebody wants it, they certainly can reach out to me and I can send you this worksheet. Basically what the couple’s mission statement does is it summarizes these things as to who do I really want to work with? Who’s my ideal couple client? What is my philosophy? How do I communicate that not only to the couples that are walking in, but the prospects and maybe my current clients? You can also use it with your staff so they’re having a consistent method. If you very clearly define yourself as I’m a couple-friendly advisor, I’m somebody that really wants to help you with X, Y, and Z; maybe that’s breaking money silence, having better financial conversations; then you become more referable because they know you as somebody that does something specific, not an advisor that does retirement or investments. That doesn’t set you apart, but being couple-friendly and really helping people talk about money and work together as partners does set you apart. I think you become more referable not only to the end client, but also to your centers of influence. Obviously I’m passionate about it, I think it’s a great niche for someone to consider. Then just getting really clear about who in that segment of couple clients, which is a huge segment, what’s your niche within that niche? Steve Wershing: I was just going to ask you more about that. I was going to ask if being couple-friendly is a niche unto itself or if it is just an aspect, a part of your niche where you focus on solving certain kinds of problems or addressing certain kinds of things and you do it in a couple-friendly way. Can you talk a little about to what extent it can be a niche of its own or how it might affect the niche that you’re in? Kathleen Burns Kingsbury: Sure. I think unfortunately the way the industry is today, and hopefully it will be different soon, is that being couple-friendly given how people are typically working with partners now actually is a niche. There are a lot of people out there, for a variety of reasons that are not really working to help the couple communicate around financial issues. They’re not necessarily either making it mandatory or strongly encouraging partners to come in and talk on a regular basis about their financial lives. Because that’s not happening, just doing that makes you different. Hopefully that will eventually change. I’m of the belief that any time you are thinking about niching, if you can go deeper and wider, great. For instance, if you want to be couple-friendly that’s the initial thought. Then when you start to drill down into who’s my ideal client? What’s my couple’s philosophy? You’ll probably get to a more defined place of saying I really like working with couples that are from blended families when they’re thinking about legacy planning. Steve Wershing: Sure. Kathleen Burns Kingsbury: Right? That’s a complicated thing. The conversations are important. Then that isn’t necessarily going to be all that you do, but that’s what you’re going to be known for. If you’re known for that, that is a much easier referral than just saying I work with clients around legacy planning. No, I work with blended families around legacy planning and I’m very couple-friendly. Steve Wershing: That’s a very powerful way of saying it. I can see how describing yourself that way would also help your clients describe you in a different way. Kathleen Burns Kingsbury: Yes, and I think the fear is–and I certainly had this I’ve been an entrepreneur for over two decades and I’ve had this at various points in different businesses. The fear is always if I get that specific I’m going to lose people. Until you’re able to just trust that it actually will make you more referable and you actually will still get those other referrals, it’s not like all of a sudden you’re only going to get legacy referrals or blended family referrals. The truth is you’ll get a bunch of other referrals as well, but this will help you fine tune where do I market? Where do I network? Like you just said, Steve, how do I tell my clients the types of clients I want? I think the more specific we can get, the easier it becomes. Once you trust and you just cross your fingers and jump off that cliff, what you will find or at least certainly what I’ve found and the people I coach have found is that it takes off. It becomes much easier to do what you need to do in order to continue to grow your business. Steve Wershing: That’s a great point. First, it’s a great point that if you pick a good target market, you pick a niche, and you look at the numbers chances are if you can become the advisor in that niche in your area, chances are there are way more people than you would ever want in your business plan. Even if it’s a tiny, little sliver of the market, it’s a lot of potential clients. Kathleen Burns Kingsbury: Exactly. I think about my specialty in women in wealth, that’s a huge market to be in, but there’s tons of work to be had in that market. I’m following my own advice and I’m moving towards how do we work better with female bread winners and getting a little bit more specific. I think it’s really important and that scarcity model of there’s not going to be enough to go around, I find generalists have trouble building their practice; but those who get really clear about who they work best with, who they enjoy working with and if there’s something above and beyond what the person next to you does and that can be the couple-friendly piece, then it really takes off. Steve Wershing: I think that’s such a critical thought because it’s really hard for a generalist to become referable because there’s just nothing to hold onto there. There’s nothing to grab onto. One of the points that you just made I think is really important as well is the way I put it to people is there’s a difference between what you go out fishing for and what jumps in the boat on its own. Kathleen Burns Kingsbury: I love that analogy, but it’s totally true. I’ve had great things come my way that haven’t necessarily fit perfectly into my niche. Then, and this is kind of the pleasure of doing this, you get to decide is that’s something that’s going to be fun that I feel qualified and credible to do, then I’ll do it. If not, then I’ll refer it to somebody else. That always comes back eventually. Steve Wershing: Sure, and the great part about it is and one thing that we emphasize when we talk about a niche is even if you staked out a claim on a niche it doesn’t mean that you have to turn everybody else away. Kathleen Burns Kingsbury: Right, right. It just means that life becomes a little bit easier in terms of your business life, in terms of what am I going to say yes to? What am I going to say no to? Once again, there’s just so much we can do online and in person to market and go out and prospect. It really helps that become much, much more manageable. Steve Wershing: Right. This is a little bit of jumping topics, but I wanted to make sure that we had time to get this in while we were talking today. Your new project addresses breaking money silence which sounds fascinating. Can you tell us a little more about that whole project? Kathleen Burns Kingsbury: Sure, and thank you for asking. I’m really excited. I’m working on, and I have for maybe about a year, breaking money silence which basically means helping advisors and clients be able to effectively talk about the human side of finance. In other words, to be able to talk about not only the numbers, but what do these numbers mean to me? What does money mean to me? What purpose does it have in my life? How can we have better conversations about money? I don’t have the statistic right in front of me, but there was a recent survey, I believe it was done by Fidelity, and they asked do you know how much your partner makes? A large percentage, it was over 50% of people, did not know what their partner made for a living. It’s hard to financially plan if you’re not having these conversations. I think advisors are really positioned beautifully to be able to help partners, couples, families have these difficult money conversations and learn these skills. Here’s my lofty goal writing a book, in having a podcast on it, and doing a lot of different work around it. My lofty goal is I think if we all break that money taboo in our lives individually it will have a trickle-down effect where the next generation will be more financially literate. I think advisors will be more client-centric and more comfortable having conversations that I think can really add value to their clients and their business. Ultimately I think it would be a healthier society, so I’m really excited to be exploring that. That certainly fits with women and wealth and couples and money, it’s just the next niche within a niche. Steve Wershing: Right, there you go. The niche squared. Kathleen Burns Kingsbury: Yes, exactly. Steve Wershing: Nichey-niche. Having the goal of better educating the next generation down, that’s something that we really need and you can see all kinds of initiatives. If an advisor can address that within a household, boy is that going to be so much more effective than these school programs that they have out there all of which are good, necessary and important. Just like any other kind of learning, doing it at home as to how you learn it or it reinforces what you’re getting in school is so critically important. Kathleen Burns Kingsbury: I feel like if we look at say my generation, I’m the oldest Generation X person you can be so I’m a Generation X-er. I had traditional parents, so my parents were a little bit older. They didn’t have a roadmap for how to talk about feelings let alone feelings around money. I did get more financial literacy training than a lot of people that are in a similar situation, but we didn’t really talk about goals, values, why we spent the money the way that we did. They didn’t have a roadmap, so part of me says let’s just create a roadmap to help people have these conversations. Because what I find is when you start to have them they’re no longer as scary, overwhelming, dare I say they can be fun? In my marriage I’ve made a point of trying to do this. With my nieces and nephews I’m trying to have these money conversations. I know a big one that’s out there actually is the money conversation with our parents. When our parents start to get older, how do we broach that conversation of are you financially going to be okay? Do you have something set up so if you become sick you know what the process is or what you want? Those are all really difficult conversations, so I think it works generationally going forward with young people. I also think it works for the people like myself that are kind of caught in the middle between the two generations or three generations. Steve Wershing: Related to that one of the things you’re working on as part of that project is your new podcast where you’re talking about breaking money myths which, beyond being really hard to say, is really interesting. Do you want to tell us a little bit more about that? Kathleen Burns Kingsbury: Yes. I designed this podcast to be something that would be fun and easy to listen to. It’s for advisors, but it’s also for clients. It’s for anybody who has a relationship with money, so that’s all of us. Basically what I do each session is I bring somebody on and they identify their favorite money myths. In other words, what’s a statement about money that may have gotten you into trouble or you’ve seen clients get into trouble? Then together we work over the course of just 20 minutes to bust it wide open. I had the honor, Steve, of having you on the other day. Your money myth was higher fees will make it harder to get clients, so it was really fun to bust that myth open. Steve Wershing: It was a lot of fun to talk about that. It’s a really fascinating project and I hope that you have a lot of success with it. I certainly think that it’s something that people need to hear more about. What other kinds of things are you working on now that advisors should know about? Kathleen Burns Kingsbury: I have a couple of different things going on, I’m currently working on my next book so stay tuned for that. That takes a while as you know, Steve, so that isn’t immediate for advisors. Steve Wershing: That will be about what? Kathleen Burns Kingsbury: It’s called Breaking Money Silence, Helping Clients Shatter Money Taboos and Talk About Finance. That book is a major focus right now, but in between that I’m doing what I’m usually doing which is I’m out keynoting at thought producer conferences or retirement conferences and being able to really talk to advisors about how do you put these skills into place? It’s one thing to say you’re couple-friendly or you’re female friendly, but I really try to focus each and every time I’m connecting with an advisor or an advisor audience. What are the tactics? What do you actually do with this information? We all know it’s a problem, but beyond that how do you start to incorporate some specific strategies in your business? I absolutely love doing that. In between doing that, I count down the days to ski season so I get to actually enjoy some snow. Steve Wershing: How do you work your speaking schedule around all of that skiing? Kathleen Burns Kingsbury: Spring skiing is the best, so I find often I’m very busy in January, February, and March. Then April I am known to take the morning off to go for a ski. Steve Wershing: That’s awesome. Your secret is certainly safe with us, nobody’s going to hear this. Kathleen Burns Kingsbury: Nobody’s going to hear this, right. This is going to be great. If there’s anybody who wants to join me when I’m in Vermont. Steve Wershing: There you go, at the end we’ll ask you about your… Kathleen Burns Kingsbury: I’d be more than happy. Steve Wershing: We’ll put your address in the show notes. One thing we want to ask all of our guests before we let you go is, and this can relate to things you’ve talked about, it can relate to things that you advise clients on, or it can be just something totally different, but what three things would you recommend that advisors can do that will get people talking about them more? Kathleen Burns Kingsbury: I think the first is what we’ve already talked about today, whether it’s being couple-friendly or whether it’s identifying what your specific niche is. I really think that that is such an important piece to determine to help you become more referable. I think the second thing is really to be as client-centric as you can be with everything that’s going on, both legislatively and also just how clients are feeling, to really work at developing–and this sounds easy, but it’s not–skills around active listening, around really trying to get into how your clients are thinking and feeling about money and being able to really do less talking and more listening in order to help them. I think, lastly, if advisors can figure out how they can be thought leaders within that particular niche that can make a difference. Thought leaders could be I’m going to stand up at a conference. I’m going to share what I have to share about this topic. To be a thought leader you don’t always have to be the best, but you have to be thinking about it and you’ve got to take that risk to put yourself out there. I think that makes a big difference as well. There are a lot of clients out there that need help around managing money, retirement, and all of the different things that advisors do. I really think niche, be client-centric, and then don’t be afraid to put yourself out there as a thought leader. Steve Wershing: That is awesome advice. As it always does in these things and whenever you and I talk, Kathleen, time has flown by. We thank you so much for joining us today. Where can people find you? Kathleen Burns Kingsbury: They can go to my website at kbkwealthconnection.com. I’m also on Twitter @kbkspeaks and I’m on LinkedIn underneath my name, Kathleen Burns Kingsbury. Steve Wershing: That’s great. Kathleen, thank you for joining us today. We wish you lots of luck on your Breaking Money Myths project and look forward to talking with you again soon. Kathleen Burns Kingsbury: Thank you. Steve Wershing: Hey, folks. Steve again. Thanks for joining us on Becoming Referable. If you like what you’ve been hearing, please do us a favor and rate us on iTunes, it really helps. You can get all of the links, show notes, and other tidbits from these episodes at becomingreferrable.com. You can also get our free report Three Referral Myths That Limit Your Growth and connect with our blogs and other resources. Until next time, so long.