Delivering facts and figures is comfortable. But many financial professionals feel out over their skis when they enter into the emotional side of planning discussions. Jeremy Keil shares a helpful acronym to approach those conversations with ease.

You know, Julie, many times when I speak to financial professionals, they’re somewhat concerned when the conversations go beyond just the financial right, because they’re not really sure where the conversation can go when they wrap it up, when they’re kind of over their skis, if you will. I don’t know. Do you have similar conversations?

Yes. I think oftentimes they would prefer if the outcome was merely entering some numbers into the financial plan and delivering the facts and figures, as opposed to the emotional side of the conversation, or maybe helping a client make a big life decision.

That’s right. I thought it was great that we recently had a conversation with Jeremy Kyle. Jeremy is a, financial professional himself, but he uses structures in terms of having conversations that actually come from other areas of counseling. And we often talk about how financial professionals are. Oftentimes, I always joke and say half counselor or half financial planner, but most, most folks will tell me, no, it’s like 90% counselors. So Jeremy uses this technique called motivational interviewing, and I was never that familiar with it. But, I thought he had some pretty unique insight.

I agree. I’m excited to hear what he has to say.

Say, without further ado, let’s let our audience listen to the conversation we recently had with Jeremy Kyle.

Jeremy Kyle, CFP and CFA, is a retirement focused financial advisor with Kyle Financial Partners. You can visit him at Kyle fp.com. He is also the host of both The Retirement Revealed podcast and the Mr. Retirement YouTube channel.

Hi, I’m John.

And I’m Julie.

We’re the hosts of the Hartford Funds Human Centric Investing podcast.

Every other week, we’re talking with inspiring thought leaders to hear their best ideas for how you can transform your relationships with your clients.

Let’s go.

Jeremy. Welcome to the Human Centric Investing podcast. We’re so excited to have you here with us today.

Thanks for having me on.

So, Jeremy, today’s podcast is about advisor interaction with clients. And there’s a there’s a mode or a method that you describe which you call motivational interviewing. What do you mean by motivational interviewing?

Motivational interviewing is a framework for how do you have a discussion about change? It was created, perhaps about 40 years ago in the world of alcohol and drug, counseling, where the theory is, back in the day was if I could just get

you to admit you have a problem, then all’s good in the world. Well, they realize that didn’t work out well. And so they figured out kind of a different way to approach talking with someone about it. That’s a huge deal. Right. Do you have, chemical addiction? How do you actually get someone to change that? And of course, it needs to be internal as opposed to external. And so walking you through, how do you make some different changes? Is how the, the world of psychology has, has to figure things out with a framework called motivational interviewing.

That’s interesting. So we’ll call it change discussion then. Yeah. How do we begin that change discussion conversation with clients? Or maybe how do we help them start to recognize that they’re in a state of change? And maybe I’ll even back up further. Are we thinking about change into retirement or is it a life change? Maybe. Is it could it be divorce? Or maybe just tell us a little bit about this change or give us some examples because I’m very curious.

Well, there’s all kinds of changes related to finance. One change might just be taking a financial advisor. They’re making some sort of change there where they have a current advisor or they don’t have one at all, and they’re trying to make a change. But certainly there’s all kinds of changes, just even starting to invest or, yes, hitting a retirement or a specific life change of new kids, new marriage, new job, things like that, where there’s, changes that affect, the money. And I suppose as a financial advisor, you’re asking, how do, we help them? How do we begin? There’s a acronym. The psychology world is full of acronyms, just like, just like the financial world. And the acronym is, pace Passi, where it’s really. How do you, approach the conversation? The P is for partnership. So this is not me telling you as a client. This is how it’s done. It’s a partnership. We’re working on this together. As for acceptance, where I need to be accepting of kind of where they are and where they’re they’re coming from. C is for compassion. E is for empathy. You can see how kind of partnership, acceptance, compassion, empathy, all kind of blend together. But just having that approach, just that, that mindset as an advisor, walking in or turning on your zoom camera, with the client or potential client, having that approach is a good place to start to begin with.

So, Jeremy, as an advisor, are you looking for signs of change with your client? Is it something you notice that they’re uneasy about or they have a lot of questions about? Like, where is a financial professional? Would I begin to kind of poke here, or is it something that when you, as the financial professional, look at something that they’re doing, you’re saying this doesn’t make sense or I don’t understand what’s going on here? What what is the initial cue? Where do I look to help facilitate the change?

Yeah. So, part of it is just your initial question. So first, thinking of, a brand new client or maybe even an existing client, they might have requested a meeting. And the question then is, what brought you here today? Yeah. What’s what’s on your mind? How can we help? Right. There’s questions that are, centric to the, individual, not centric to maybe the money, part of it. And when it comes to motivational interviewing, again, more, more acronyms, but their acronyms are darn cat drawn cat. So if someone is expressing a desire or ability to change or a reason or need to change, so they might say, oh, I really want to retire. Or, you know, I bet if I had 100,000 more, I could retire or I need to start paying off my debt because I’ve got a new kid or I, I just, really need to, start saving, for education. Right? There’s there’s the dark part zero ability, reason or need.

They just expressed, that they want to make some sort of change. And then the cat is commitment language activating language and taking steps. Easy to think of it. Almost like, it related to maybe some psychological things, quitting smoking. All right. Okay. I’m going

to quit smoking or, as soon as I get home, I’m going to throw away those cigarets. Or, you know, in the last week, I, I’ve only, smoked twice, and I went and got the, the nicotine patch. Right. You’ve taken some steps that are on there. So you’re looking for the client, for the person themselves actually expressing this ability change. It’s not me looking at their financials and saying, oh my goodness, you better change. Right? It’s them expressing that that need.

What are some of your favorite questions? To get a client to start to express some of these needs or desires to change, you know, as they’re going through some of these evolutions?

Yeah, that’s, that’s where I, have, a bit of a bone to pick with the financial industry. I see this, and LinkedIn especially, you know, here’s the 13 magical questions, like, like it’s some incantation, like, if I could just, say the right words in the right order, then everything’s gonna be right in the world. So really, it’s just.

Not that simple. Come on.

Yeah, it’s not that simple. It’s really. It’s it’s. How do you have the the the conversation? But really, just the first one is just what brings you here today, right? Or how can we help? Interesting enough, a lot of times people, especially if they’re a newer client or potential new client, they say something like, well, I need to retire or why is it today? Like, why did you wake up today and show up? So a question like they ask is what prompted you look, right now, you know what? For a financial advisor, what prompted you to book the appointment? You know what? Because there’s there’s a lot of times there’s some sort of trigger. And if you can figure out that trigger, that really helps you understand where they’re coming from and how you can help them, get get what they’re, looking for.

So interesting enough to. It’s not just, questions. As you, learn motivational interviewing, you realize that you’re often not asking question after question after question, right? It’s not, Columbo from days back. There’s the, you’re not, interrogating them. You’re interviewing them. And, yes, you do want to have open ended questions. But as opposed a closed ended, but it’s not just the questions, the skills of motivational interviewing. Here’s another acronym, AWS open ended questions, affirmations, reflections and summaries on there. So you ask the open ended question, right? So, what brings you here today? And they might say, I’m looking to retiring. You say, great, you’re doing your research, right. I just affirmed you, on that. And then they might talk about some other things and you reflect back on them. They say, I, like to retire at 62. And I like to have, you know, $2 million.

Right. So you can summarize right back to them, like, okay, you’re looking to retire, you want to retire at 62, which is in a couple of years, and you’re hoping to have $2 million. You think that would be a good place to start for retirement? And that’s just making sure we’re kind of connected, together. Right? If we don’t know, exactly what’s motivating them, then how can we really help them, make whatever change might be.

Jeremy, what do you think the number one obstacle is to making changes? I think as human beings, we all say, yeah, change. Change can be positive, but none of us really want to change. What’s the biggest barrier to making changes?

Yeah, the biggest, barrier, according to motivational interviewing, I agree with them is, I think, an unresolved ambivalence. Right. You’ve got the status quo. You’ve got the change. Right? And, you know, the status quo is doing all right. So why make the change? I went to the doctor just recently, and, he he came through and he looked at all my test numbers. He said, everything looks good. I said, you know, I really

think I need to lose about 10 pounds. And he said, you know, things are, your numbers are good. Why change?

How do you help people clarify that unresolved ambivalence? Is there continued questioning or taking them through, the planning process? Like how do you get them to that next step of saying, this is really what I need to do? I now can feel it, I can visualize it, I can see it. This is really important to my future.

Yeah. So part of it is just to explore that ambivalence and perhaps even you amplify it, on there. So, for example, a lot of times, people come in as a, you know, I’m a financial advisor and they’ll say, yeah, I’m not sure if I’m going to take my, pension at 60 or 62. I’m sure it’s all the same. Right. And, in their mind, it’s all the same. I know mathematically it’s not. So if I can maybe push apart that difference and say, okay, you’d rather, go at 62 and have 20% less in your pension. So anyway, I don’t I don’t want 20% less of my pension. Right. I’m kind of intentionally and, you know, factually trying to push apart the differences between, you know, option A and option B, because then that that pushes them towards, making it and making a choice. Make a choice.

So, Jeremy, as you travel down this conversational interview path, in your experience, do you usually get to a point where you recognize we’ve had this conversation long enough for this session? Like, how do you prevent going further or exhausting the conversation when a client is in in the examples you just gave? We’re not talking about necessarily changing the world type of decisions. We’re talking. About maybe small changes that people recognize that they may want to explore. So are there natural signs when you’re like, okay, enough for right now, maybe we’ll come back to this topic later? Or how do you wrap up the conversation?

Yeah. So I’m going to. It’s bits of practice, I suppose. And I’ve done, through you go to motivational interviewing.org and they have a lot of, trainings that you can do live in person, live through zoom recording things like that. So it it’s a bit of, practicing learning the art of the conversation, the motivational interviewing. But it’s also looking at that, that change talk, that darn cat. Right. Once they start making commitments or, taking steps kind of language, you know, the more you talk about it, the more you might talk them back out of it. Right? So they start making some commitment language, some, taking steps, language of, yeah, I’m going to go home and I’m going to print off that, those pension options, and I’m going to, send them over to you, you know. Great. I need to be done talking. I say awesome. Thank you. I look forward to seeing that. Right. They’ve they’ve mentioned they’re taking steps. And if I kind of beat a dead horse and say, all right, well, here’s a 17 reasons why you need to do that, they might say, well, forget you. I’m not even going to bother doing it like they just made that that, that commitment, that activating language that is taking steps. Go with what’s, go with what they gave you, on there. But that’s the power of a summary as well, too, right? It could be where they’re not ready to make some sort of change right now, or make a decision about which financial advisor they’re going to go with, or which pension option or which 529 plan. There you can summarize where they’re at right now. We’ve, we’ve talked about a few different options.

And, and so far you’ve mentioned that option, you know, one, 2 or 3 or ones that you’re looking at and they’ll say, yeah, that’s the one we’re looking at. And you can also ask permission. Do you mind, if we kind of table at and start looking at this other, area?

Because if you ask permission and they say, yes, well, you better go with it because they just gave you permission. Yeah. But if you kind of a process brush aside some of their, concerns, they’re going to think correctly. Okay? I don’t really care about what I’m looking

for. They’re just trying to look for, you know, the advisor just trying to figure out how they can make money or something like that. Right?

In your experience, Jeremy, how many conversations or cycles does a change discussion typically take? I mean, I would imagine this is and, we sit down for one conversation, share our feelings, and, you know, everything comes out and we decide to do all these things. And all of a sudden, you know, we make these changes kind of like you’re example and losing weight. I would imagine it’s a series of building a relationship, connecting, you know, sharing our thoughts, reflecting, coming back together. You share, you know, typically kind of how that unfolds. Obviously I would imagine it takes time. It takes a process. What is what is a follow up look like? Also, after someone shared some of these these emotions and these thoughts. Is it an email back to them? You know, how do you reinforce some of the things that they’ve shared, you know, really paint that picture for us would you.

Yeah. The one part, a couple of things to think of is that, this isn’t necessarily huge high emotion, items. Right. It’s not every day that someone comes in and says, you know, I’m thinking of getting divorced, cutting my kid off from the will, and buying a new house. Right? And also two. They came to you right there. They’re coming into your office as a financial advisor, as perhaps they’re thinking of choosing you as a financial advisor, or they’ve already made that choice and they’re coming to you to, ask for your advice. So you’re already kind of up a few levels. Another piece, too, is to maybe look at things one one thing at a time, right? If you say, here’s the five things we gotta look at, and let’s look at all five of them before make a decision on any of them. That might be hard to make a decision. That might be the status quo, because it’s just easier not to make a decision. So one thing, especially with an existing client, you might have that agenda and say, okay, here’s a few things that we would like to review. What are the questions might you have? And of course they might have a few questions. And here I am asking an open ended question. Right. What other questions might you have as opposed to anything else. Because they’re naturally going to say no, right. They don’t want to rock your boat. At all.

They just going to say no. So ask what other questions might you have and then summarize. All right. I like these these are the three things I’d like to review. Here’s the two, that you mentioned. Let me add those on in. Where would you like to start? Right. You’re putting them in the the driver’s seat of where would you like to start? And they would say where they want to, start there and you can start going through, those different agenda items and perhaps say, okay, here’s the decision we made there. Let’s move on to the next item. Right. Here’s a decision there. Let’s move on to the next item. And, having a summary at the end of these are the three things we went through today. Here’s the next steps that you promised to take. And, and I’m going to take on your behalf. Is a great way to end the meeting and then, sending a follow up email. So now it’s written down, right.

That’s that’s helpful for, for me as the advisor and and use the client.

So, Jeremy, I would guess, when you get to the end of this conversation and look back, give me an estimate. Should the client be doing 80% of the talking, 50% of, like, if you were to gauge it, as a way that I could judge whether this is working or not, how much should the client be? Be talking of the conversation.

Yeah. So if you, count this as a partnership, that’s going to say at least 50%, I’d say definitely, that the client themselves should be talking more than half the time. And, you think of an interview where it’s an interview, maybe even a, kind of interview, you see, in like 60 minutes, right? The, you’re not there to watch the interviewer. Right? You’re there to watch the person that’s being, interviewed. And so that’s really the approach you

have to take when you’re meeting with a client or a potential client is the the real action. The real value is is what the. Interviewer. Right. Maybe me as a financial advisor is I’m asking some questions, but the the big, the big value is what the client, the person being interviewed, it’s what they’re saying and what they’re realizing as they’re, they’re talking through.

I’m curious when you think about, examples of this unfolding and sort of success stories, if you will, or which will you share with us? Maybe an example, obviously, with no names of kind of taking someone through this process and how it really resulted in, in them being able to make a decision and have that clarity to go through that change and whether it was a small change in their life. But, you know, they they weren’t quite sure what they should do, or maybe it was something more significant.

Yeah. It’s interesting. I used the word change, but it really is decision making. Right? Yeah. This isn’t, you know, everything’s changing in my entire life. It’s. You run, you go through your life, you’re making financial decisions, and, if someone doesn’t talk you through it, you you probably don’t make the decision as quickly as you as you want to. One that comes to mind, in particular as someone who was, widowed and she was planning on going through and, taking a large trip when her daughter graduated. But then she starts having some guilt. Right. She’s going to take this nice trip from her dead husband’s insurance money. Like you’re spending your dead husband’s life force to go take a nice trip. That just doesn’t seem right. And then to, once you become widowed, you probably meet other widows, and you realize that not everyone maybe is in a, particularly good situation, financially, as you might be. So maybe there’s some more guilt of I go take this fancy trip, and I go tell all my widow friends that I took a fancy trip. You know, there’s some guilt or jealousy that’s going to be happening there. And so, she came to me saying, you know, I want to, take this trip, but, I don’t know if I should do it. And the. Natural financial advisor response, I think is, well, let me go check the the software and I’ll plug in, you know, 20 grand withdrawal and has it affect your percentages? Yep. You can take the trip. Right. That’s not what she’s looking for, right? Yes. We should make sure she can afford to take it. But we need to figure out, what is it that, maybe is truly kind of behind the question. Right. And so, went through and asked her some of the different questions and, and started trying to discover more of what was, behind that and was getting, the information out of there. And, and. A lot of times the people are coming to you almost looking for an answer, and the answer is inside of them, right? And that’s what you’ve got to realize as a financial advisor, is that I might be the financial expert, but they’re the expert at themselves. And so when we get towards the end of that conversation, I say, well, what? Which way are you gonna go? I said, well, I’m gonna take the trip. And she was far happier taking the trip because she said, I’m going to take the trip compared to if I said, oh, yeah, you can afford to take the trip. Right. She was able to kind of walk through the different, emotions and reasons behind her. Her initial reticence for taking the the trip.

Because she was the one that said, I’m going to take the trip for these reasons. She was far happier, far more satisfied, with her choice.

Well, Jeremy, thanks for the example. And I want to share with you that on the Human Centric Investing podcast. Julie and I have our own interviewing style, which is completely opposite of what we just talked about for the past 20 minutes. And if you’re willing to play our game, it helps our audience learn a little bit more about you. So here’s what we do. We call it the Lightning Round. We’re going to throw a bunch of closed ended questions at you. Very simple top of mind answers. And by doing this, as I said, I think our audience just gets to know who Jeremy is a little bit better. So if you’re a game, we’ll fire away.

Let’s go for it. And you did some motivational interviewing. You asked me for my permission.

There you go. Perfect. Julie, why don’t you start?

Okay. Perfect. Well, on a scale of 1 to 10, how good of a driver are you?

I’m going to go with, a seven. I just got a speeding ticket, so I got a I got to.

So I did two. So we’re in the same boat.

It’s the. Yeah. It’s the old confident. How about, what did you want to be when you grew up?

Well, when I, I wanted to be a professional baseball player, but, realized someone that’s, below average speeds and below average size is not quite, make it to the big leagues. My dad was always telling me I’d be an engineer or something, or to to mass. And then my, my aunt, when I graduated college said, you’re good at math and you love helping people. You should be a financial advisor. So eventually, eventually hit on the right one.

That’s great. What’s the best age.

When you’re done? What’s the best age? I’m going to go with, 43 because that’s where I’m at right now.

Would you. Would you rather watch a movie or binge a TV show?

I’m going to go binge a TV show.

And then I have to ask, are there any lately that you’ve binged?

Right now I’m watching, the Brooklyn Nine-Nine, the, with the Andy Samberg. Cool. Terry Crews. Yeah.

Stuff. Always. That’s how Julia and I build our own personal watchlist.

So I think it is.

It’s very selfish. What’s the ideal outside temperature?

74.

Would you prefer a beach house or a lake house? Jeremy [00:25:00]

Are you a fan of a paper To-Do list or a digital one?

I want to say digital, but then you forget to look at you, pick up the phone, you look somewhere else. So I’m gonna I’m gonna I’m going to go with paper.

I hear you. Are you a morning person or a night owl?

Definitely. Morning. I’ve been getting up early and playing pickleball lately.

There you go. The rest of the country is doing it. You should too, I guess.

Exactly. Yeah.

Well, Jeremy, we can’t thank you enough for joining us today on the Human Centric Investing podcast. And for our listeners, if you’re interested in hearing more from Jeremy, he has his own podcast. It’s the Retirement Revealed podcast, and you can also find him on his YouTube channel. Mr. retirement, thanks for listening to the Hartford Funds Human Centric Investing podcast. If you’d like to tune in for more episodes, don’t forget to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, or YouTube.

And if you’d like to be a guest and share your best ideas for transforming client relationships, email us a guest booking at Hartford funds.com. We’d love to hear from you.

Talk to you soon.

The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the guest who is not affiliated with Hartford Funds. Investing involves risk, including the possible loss of principal. Fixed income security risks include credit, liquidity, call duration, and interest rate risk. As interest rates rise, bond prices generally fall.