Dr. Amy D'Aprix, President and Founder of Lifebridge Strategies, talks about bridging the gap between the stages, changes, and events of life transitions, how life and money go hand in hand, using the right “script” in your interactions, the 3 levels of listening, why empathy is everything, and offers a tease of what’s to come.

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Today's guest is Dr Amy D'Aprix, president and

founder of LifeBridge Strategies, a partnership with

the Southwestern Family of Companies. An internationally

renowned expert on lifestyle issues related to retirement,

aging, caregiving and family dynamics, Dr Amy, as she's

affectionately known, has provided guidance on life

transitions to individuals, professionals and organizations

for over 30 years. Amy, it's a pleasure to have you with us.

One of the things we love asking our guests about on our podcast

is a little bit of their history and their path that helped them

arrive where they are today. Most people in their teenage

years weren't necessarily dreaming about the profession

they made as an adult. In fact, they've gone through a lot of

change and transformation in that period. But what did you

start off being motivated towards as a young woman, and

then how did that evolve?

Dr. Amy D'Aprix: I love that question. Adam. I get asked a

lot about, how did you get where to where you are? It's a

circuitous path, which I think it is for many people in their

careers, and certainly for entrepreneurs, my background is

social work. So I have a bachelor's, a master's and a PhD

in social work. And my original thought was I was just going to

work with older adults and their families, you know, to help them

have better lives. And I did that. I did some of that. Early

on, doors opened, and I walked through those doors, and I

didn't even know those doors existed at one point, you know,

and then you walk through and you have an opportunity, and you

find another opportunity in the future. So where that all led me

was after I did work, I actually worked as a home care social

worker and worked with families who's had a family member with

dementia, did a lot of work in policy, and then I ended up

teaching at University for 13 years. I worked at university,

both teaching social work graduate students and doing

training around North Carolina on issues related both to aging

and on the other end, to young families. And I was doing my

doctorate at the time, and during that time, I thought, I'm

not really cut out to be an academic. I love being in the

classroom, but I'm not a researcher. I love reading

research, and I really had one of those kind of existential

crises about, Do I finish this doctorate, which I'm halfway

through and have invested a lot of life energy and money into,

or do I just stop it? And I felt like I should finish it, even

though I didn't think I was going to use it the way I

originally thought. At that point, I got an opportunity to

do speaking and to work for a company that offers a

designation for business people around aging. That was like an

intro to aging class. Certified senior advisor is the

designation, and I started teaching for them all over the

United States. That program got brought to Canada, and one of

the big banks in Canada brought that internal and put all their

advisors and their vice president through it, and they

got to know me that way because I taught several hours in this

three day program, and they asked me if I would come up on a

work permit to Canada and help them figure out what to do for

their clients on the non financial side of retirement, I

did that in 2008 came up for a year and then ended up staying

and we developed all sorts of training workshop for the

clients around life transitions. And that's really my love. Adam

is helping people. How do they get through a life transition?

And, you know, I say that's the stages, changes and events we go

through in our life, retirement, estate planning, caregiving, we

developed one to help women have a better relationship with

money, and suddenly I was completely immersed in financial

services. What was interesting is I find financial services

gave me a platform to do work that I hadn't had an opportunity

to do, and it was so exciting getting to have these

conversations with people and help them through these

transitions that just snowballed.

Well that's an amazing story. What do you feel

are some of the skills that you may have developed all the way

back when you started doing social work that stuck with you?

Dr. Amy D'Aprix: Empathy is the first word that comes to my

mind, you know, and I say, you know, when we think about

empathy, I think we all have some idea of what that. Means,

but, you know, but stepping into other people's shoes, I say

empathy is really about saying to someone, I see you, I hear

you, I understand you, and conveying that. And a lot of

people feel empathy, but struggle conveying it. So that

became something I took from my early work. I also think a lot

of the love of helping families, because I have a real I, you

know, we live in family, whatever we call family. It

could be family of choice. It could be our biological family,

whatever it is. How do we strengthen families as they go

through these transitions and help them have a better time?

Because in key transitions like caregiving and when the estate,

when the estate is settled, these are two key points,

families often blow up, and I believe it's mainly preventable

if people only have what I call essential conversations and

learn how to work together better.

100%. I mean, empathy has been, kind of a

fundamental trait in general to be successful, I think in

business in any format, right?

Dr. Amy D'Aprix: Yeah, it really is. And I think we all crave it,

right? We want to be seen and heard and understood, and we

don't often get it a lot in our day to day lives. So those of us

who learn how to do it and business people who get good at

it tend to be more successful.

When you started the prior business that you've

built up until this point, it was called Life Transitions,

correct?

Dr. Amy D'Aprix: Yes.

There's always inherent risk when you start a

company, and so a lot of people risk averse to doing that. What

compelled you to start something for yourself?

Dr. Amy D'Aprix: Yeah, I think I've always been pretty

entrepreneurial. In the time I was doing social work, a lot of

times I also had a little side gig doing sales and something.

This is a very weird combination, right? So I always

felt a little who am I? Am I the social worker or the sales

person for decades, probably at least for the first couple

decades of my career, I felt a little out of step with people

who just sort of seemed to know this was his Lear path, and they

got a job. And so I, when I was working for the company that

offered the designation CSA, I started to move out on my own,

and I was an independent and a solo preneur at that point. So

from the time I became a solopreneur, I had no net,

right? Those of us who do these things often don't have been

met. And I think you have to have a certain makeup to do

this, you know, I if you look at most people, as you said, Adam,

are pretty risk aversive. They want the security. And when we

talk about being an entrepreneur, we often don't

have external security. So we have to find that somewhere in

ourselves that we're okay. And I think I just always felt that if

everything fell apart, I could always go get a job, but that I

wasn't really cut out at it. And I I want to tell you a funny

story, because I'm now at an age a lot of my friends are starting

to retire and from jobs with pensions, you know. And those of

us who are entrepreneurs don't usually have a pension, so one

of my friends and I will sometimes say, why didn't we

just take a job and stick with it for 30 years, like other

people do? But that's not if you're an entrepreneur, it's not

in your makeup. You know, one of the things I think I would have

done if I had a job was I might have met a guidance counselor,

like my dad. And what I joke is, I would have met a guidance

counselor, but then I would have thought I could run the

department, so I would have then gone and become the head of the

department. Then I would have thought that there are a lot of

things in this school that need fixing. And next thing you know,

I would have tried to move on. So, you know, you have to know

who you are as an entrepreneur. So I think I took the risk just

because inherently I felt secure enough there would always be a

Plan B I could operate with Plan B, and I kind of kept that in

the background. And there were times it was really scary. I've

gone through those times.

Yeah. Give our audience context for this

business in particular, LifeBridge Strategies, that

partnership with Southwestern Family of Companies, what is the

problem that you're specifically addressing?

Dr. Amy D'Aprix: Well, so as I was doing the speaking

engagements for clients. What I realized was the advisors needed

help in having conversations about these topics, so I

developed some workshops for the advisors that were quite

successful, but what they would say to me after the workshop is

okay, so how do I say that to my client? And I realized they

needed coaching around the conversations and how to do it.

So I started our first product, which is trusted advisor of

choice. And trusted advisor of choice is for advisors to we

call it a practice Elevation Program instead of a training

program, because it's it's really about working with

advisors who want to take their practice to the next level. It's

framed around life transitions, so again, the stages changes and

events that people go through. And it's a modularized program

with videos on the topics such as retirement, estate planning,

caregiving, how to improve your practice with women, how to work

with old. Adults, referrals, those kind of things. And in

each module, besides the videos, we have some client facing

tools. We have some advisor resources. And each mod for each

module, there is coaching, available, group coaching, and

Adam, we launched that during the pandemic. And I was very

fortunate, because initially, the pushback I got was, advisors

are not going to want to do training online. They had no

other choice of ways to do it, and so we launched trusted

advisor choice to fill the gap to meet the need of, how do you

deepen your relationships with clients by better understanding

their life and tying life and money together. And one of the

things I say is that life and money go hand in hand. And what

we teach in that program for the advisors is how to go where the

client is, which is on the practical, emotional and family

aspects of their life, express empathy. And then segue back to

the business conversation. It's that we've actually trademarked

this process now because it's been so successful, and it's

called Lyra, and it's about going to the client, but coming

back. And what's great about it is then the advisor always feels

in control of the conversation, because they know they can segue

back and forth between the life conversation and the money

conversation, which is key. So that was the big need we were

filling with that, which was, you know, how do you deepen your

relationships with clients, by understanding them better,

expressing empathy better, and tying that to the business. From

that, we developed life map, and that's for clients, but the only

place they can get it is from their advisor, Adam. What that

is, are really robust resources for clients on these

transitions. And again, it's about strengthening the advisor

client relationship, because what we found with trusted

advisor of choice is advisors would say, Great, I'm

comfortable having these conversations, and now clients

are sharing things about their life, and I don't have any

resources for them on the life side. I only have resources on

the financial side, and so it's like opening a wound without a

bandage. So we created this program that has, again, robust

resources for clients from professionals who are top in

their fields, and the only way they can get it is from the

advisor. So it again deepens that relationship.

You know, I hear the empathy come up, but it was

really in the questions that you guide them to ask or not ask,

curiosity and asking great questions. Is there a specific

common question that you either guide in your trainings advisors

to ask or not ask, that come to mind right now, just as an

example?

Dr. Amy D'Aprix: Sure, well, and I've got to speak to the

curiosity, because that is actually one of the things I

say, is that you have to go into these conversations with

curiosity, and you have to listen at what I call level

three, which is listening for what's not being said. So, you

know, level one is listening to reply, and we think, we don't do

it. We all do it, and it's actually an occupational hazard,

because we want to add value. So we're listening to add value.

And then level two is listening to the content, which obviously

is better. You know, you have to be present do all that. But

level three is about going somewhere beyond that, and it's

about listening to what's not being said, to what what the

person feels about what they're sharing with you. And you know,

I often share a story around this that I sat in on an

advisors training who was a really good advisor, and she

knew this client really well. And the client was a 72 year old

woman retired, didn't bring her husband. She was a physician,

but the advisor knew the client, and they had nice conversations.

We went through a portfolio review, she went through some

planning, and then at the end, right as the advisor is kind of

wrapping up the meeting, and the client says, I'm going to Italy

to see my mother. And the advisor responds at level two

and says, which, again, is to the content. And says, Great,

have a wonderful time. Let's connect. When you get back, and

I'm thinking to myself, this client 72 her mother has to be

quite old. And the client did not look enthused. She looked

upset, you know, and so I said to the client, How's your mom

doing? And she said, she's not doing well. She has dementia.

I'm not sure she'll recognize me, and I'm guessing this may be

the last time I see her. And I said, I am so sorry. I can't

imagine how hard this trip is. She said, it's very, very hard.

So in that moment, I made the connection that deepen, not the

advisor, because they didn't switch to level three. She had

left the room and wanted to move things on, so that and the

curiosity factor helps you get to where you are. And then you

said, Is there specific questions? This is one I. Have

advisors. Ask advisors often say, Tell me about your family.

Instead, I ask them to say, tell me about the people that you

want to take care of. When we look at financial planning or

estate planning, now you may say, Well, what's the

difference? Well, the difference is they may have people who are

not in their immediate family who they're taking care of that

you'll never know about unless you say something. They may have

a niece. They may have somebody outside the family. And what you

want to do by asking these kind of questions is create context.

The person knows exactly what you're looking for when you ask

a question like that, tell me about your family is you know,

what do you want to know about? So asking questions with context

is a key thing to do. And with advisors, I try to get them

instead of saying, So, what are you going to do in your

retirement, asking specific things like, So, what are the

three most important things to you that you're going to do in

your retirement? And I had one advisor tell me he shifted to

that question, and one of his clients said, wow, I've not

thought about that. I've got two things I've been thinking about,

we're going to travel, and this client was a big golfer, I'm

going to golf, but when you ask me about the third, I realize

that my wife and I need to have different conversations. Those

two things aren't going to be enough for me to do. And they

ended up getting to this conversation about how so many

people struggle in retirement because they don't have purpose.

And the client came back and said that question for him was a

game changer. So it seems like such a little thing, but

specificity in questions and creating contexts makes a huge

difference.

Also not telling people that you can imagine

things that they're going through, but instead telling

them that you can't imagine things they're going through.

You know, people aren't feeling good that you're sitting with,

but you want to relate and say, Oh man, I can imagine that must

be really hard, when maybe what they prefer to hear, and what's

probably reality, is to say, I can't imagine, I cannot imagine

how tough that must be.

Dr. Amy D'Aprix: And you know, one of my favorite takeaways on

empathy is you can say to somebody, if they cut you off

guard, I'm so sorry that you're having to deal with this. And,

you know, I don't even know what to say right now, except I'm so

sorry that is a great thing to say instead of trying to say

something profound. Or, you know, I think that again, if we

think about being present and wanting to convey to somebody

that you see and hear them, and it's hard when we get hit in a

going to be business or personal with something pretty

significant somebody's going through. It's a skill that we

all need to practice. You know, I always joke. Some people

think, of course, I must be great in empathy, because I

teach it. And I used to joke when my daughter was a teenager,

don't ask my daughter, she had a different perspective on that.

But in, you know, in reality, that's, it's, it's

really important training. And I often, you know, as a consultant

with that training and background that I have, have

often thought that people often misconstrue consultancy or sales

as being very scripted. And I often reflect on the fact that

it's actually what we're all very scripted. I mean, we all

have our response mechanisms to introductions. It's Hi, how are

you? I'm good. How are you? It's just what we say, and you don't

even realize it. Do you go to a different country? Like if you

go to Germany and you ask someone walking down the street,

Hi, how are you doing? It's so weird to ask that question to a

German that they'll look at you and they'll tell you exactly how

they're doing and it's not well. So I always think that, you

know, good, effective sales training and script building

helps us build more effective language to truly be impactful

in life, versus we grew up with, which is most likely not the

best script.

Dr. Amy D'Aprix: Yeah, I agree with you on that. You know, very

few of us grew up in homes where we where we heard warm, empathic

responses to things, and it wasn't because they weren't

loving people. It was just a different time, right? And a

different approach to parenting.

That's right, yeah, that's such a good point.

What's the vision where you want to take Lifebridge into the

future, and what's your hope in terms of impact?

Dr. Amy D'Aprix: I always want to have a huge impact. So I'll

start with that. I'm here in at this time, in the world, at this

time, to do what I can to make people's lives easier and to

help people have better quality of lives and more peace of mind.

So that's that's the impetus for what drives everything I do. We

have two offerings right now, the trusted advisor, choice for

the advisors, life map for the client. And the goal there,

again, is to help clients, really all of it is to help

clients have better quality of life as they go through

transitions. So our goal is to work with advisors all over

North America and beyond to help them have again practices that

are, you know, the other word I like to use is more fun. It's

more fun to do business this way than it is to not really know

your clients. So help advisors have more effective businesses

and help their clients get through life more easily. That's

our vision. We want. Take it, you know, as big as we can to do

that, and then behind that, Adam, we have another offering

that I'll just tease, which is called Essential conversations.

And I'm excited to really get life map and trusted advisor out

there, so I can start getting essential conversations out to

I love that. But in any part of the population

the world.

where you can focus on, you know, just instilling curiosity

at a different level is helping everyone. Because we could all

benefit from being better students and learning how to

listen first and ask better questions instead of coming in.

We have a kind of a crude expression that you be in their

industry often shows up and throws up all over their

thinking they have all the things and the magic sauce

that'll help. But while we are driven by adding value, usually

greatest value can add is understanding.

Dr. Amy D'Aprix: And I think it all comes down to authenticity,

right? If we can just bring our authentic selves in. And when

we're nervous, we're not as good at it, and when we're, you know,

feeling pressure in our businesses, it can be sometimes

hard to do that, but that authenticity and true caring for

those people that we're interacting with that comes

through and people want to work with people who care about them.

100%. One of the kind of lightning round

questions I always love asking; pieces of technology, is there

an app or something that you found useful or constructive in

your practice, business with advisors?

Dr. Amy D'Aprix: Well, I have to tell you the thing I'm I've been

drawn to AI, and I'm not using it a lot, but I'm using quad or

cloud, depending on how you say it. And I'll tell you how I use

it, because for me, this is making a huge difference in

speed of getting things done, but also in creating more depth.

So I act like Claude is my graduate assistant, and so I ask

Claude questions that come back with, you know? So I'll give you

an example. We create these client facing tools that are

around life issues. So now, after we do that, I go to Claude

and ask a question about that topic area and see what comes

out from AI that we might have missed. And what we've done on a

couple of the tools is is really deepen and improve them based on

those responses. And so sometimes I use Claude to

generate an I, you know, as I'm thinking about an idea and

thinking, Where should I take that? And sometimes I use it,

and on the other end to say, how did we do but it is like having

a graduate assistant in who does this in three seconds. So I'm

only using AI like, a teeny little bit, but I'm amazed how

much it's shifting how I do my work in a really positive way.

Yeah, but it's pretty amazing how it's going.

Dr. Amy D'Aprix: It IS amazing. And I know we have lots of

concerns about where it's going, but I'm pretty excited about

what it's doing for me and my business.

I love that. And what's something that you've

learned here in the last couple of years through your work

directly with the advisors or the client that you didn't know

before. Like, what's I mean, we're always learning, but is

there something that's that light bulb moment that over the

last few years that's really come to you through these

conversations and discussions that you that you have so often?

Dr. Amy D'Aprix: I think that one of the things that surprised

me with the advisors, that I learned was how many of them

struggled to make that connection, because they were

afraid of being intrusive in clients lives, and so that was

an interesting thing that we had to work through about, you know,

because curiosity, you know, you think about, They're sitting

with someone. They're talking about deep life issues. It's

like, how far can I take that conversation before I'm being

intrusive? And so I was surprised by that. That was

something that was kind of a surprise. And also with the

advisors, how open they were to adding the things that I talk

about into their practice. You know, the people I work with

want those relationships with clients, because you do better

work. And I think on the client side, you know, a lot of the

people I work with are financially well off because

they've got financial advisors. And one of the takeaways is that

we all, we all are struggling with the same things. It doesn't

matter what are income level you know, if I ever thought money

solved problems, I let that belief go when I started working

with ultra high net worth clients. You know, more money,

more problems, sometimes with your if you haven't done the

work about yourself and your family and you're not grounded.

So those things that we do to ground ourselves, to learn, to

grow, the things we do to cement things in our families, they

matter and matter no matter what income level you're at.

There's an organization you might be

familiar with called Tiger, 21 people who come together peer to

peer, advisory to some degree, where they have a certain amount

of liquid well. Wealth that presents, within itself its own

challenge. And, you know, some people listening to this might

be a challenge I'd like to have, right, but you know, in

conversations with a couple of their chapter leaders, what,

what I've found is that, yeah, one of the big challenges they

face because of wealth is the is the secession planning

component. Oh, yes, you know, giving your wealth to your

child. If you don't do it and you have it, it can screw up the

relationship. And if you do do it and you have it, then it can

screw up the teenager or whoever is about to have it, if you

don't construct it in the right way. And there's very personal

things, even as a consultant, working with business leaders of

companies, when you come to the business being passed the next

generation, yes, that they're, they're incredibly challenged by

and it's often not the structure as much as it is the emotional

implications of the relationships itself.

Dr. Amy D'Aprix: Everything you said, I concur with. I get to

work with business owners sometimes. And you know, it's,

it's like having a baby that you're, you're thinking, how do

I, how do I pop past this baby to someone else, or or, and one

of the issue with business owners that surprised me was

they often give absolutely no thought to this, and they say,

I'm just going to work forever. And the problem with that is, at

some point they're not going to be able to work in that

business. Something hits them now or because they pass on, and

they have to, you know, and a lot of people haven't done very

good planning. And I think that's another takeaway I had,

is I've been working with or on behalf of older adults and their

families for about 40 years now. And I think one of my big

surprises is, or big takeaways is, people don't do very good

life planning for that last third of their life. We do it

well for earlier than the last third. So that's one of my real

passions, is helping people do that planning so they have

choice, control and independence and have the best quality of

life possible. So that was a huge thing when I started

working. You know, again, doesn't matter what income level

you're at. People often don't think about those things.

Yeah, being intentional with your life at

every stage.

Dr. Amy D'Aprix: Yes, at every stage. And we're, you know,

we've done a better job early, and then we sort of get people

say, Oh, I'm going to retire. And they sort of see that as one

long stage. But it's actually many chapters within that to

continue to have passion about your life forever. In order to

do that, we have to be intentional.

Well, you've just made me decide to alter the

final question. I always end with asking our guests to give

what advice they might give to their 20 year old self. But I

mentioned a different question. Okay, what advice would you like

your 100 year old self to be able to tell you now?

Dr. Amy D'Aprix: Oh, I love that. That's a great question.

When I think about that, I think about what I would hope because

I'm 62 so it's almost 40 years to continue to plan your life,

to continue to stay engaged and continue to make sure you have

purpose and connection for the next 40 years, because that's

what's going to get you through.

Well said. Thank you so much for giving us your

time, Dr. Amy.

Dr. Amy D'Aprix: I appreciate it. Thank you.