As financial professionals, we consider our clients' physical and mental health—but overlook the importance of our own. Brian Portnoy, founder of Shaping Wealth, sheds light on a difficult topic and how to make it a focus going forward.

Well, John, it’s interesting, as I’m having conversations with financial professionals and their teams, it’s the topic and focus of the conversations. And a lot of the coaching sessions that I’m having have seemed to shifted really more to a personal standpoint, not necessarily so much about process or service matrix or operations like maybe the conversations were five or ten years ago, but really more about, Gosh, Julie, I’m just burnt out, I’m really tired. I’ve been through a lot. The world has been through a lot, my team has been through a lot and I don’t have a lot of fuel left in the tank. I don’t know. John I know you’re having conversations with financial professionals across the country as well. Are you finding those themes coming up in the discussions you’re having?

Yeah, and oftentimes, Julie, it’s coming up not just in the case of the advisor in their professional business, but it’s like the clients that we talk to, right? The ones who are caring for mom and Dad sometimes don’t even identify themselves as caregivers. But I think as advisors or financial professionals, we’re trained to look at the client and say, Wow, they’ve got a lot on their plate, right? We you can see the signs, but oftentimes we don’t see those same signs of fatigue in ourselves. We we just go back to the routine. And as you just said, think about it. Over the last three times, our routines have really been not just disrupted, but kind of turned upside down maybe two or three times over the course of the pandemic and then kind of readjusting to the shift back in. And, yeah, I think that, you know, we talk about financial wellness. We think we think about those who are giving care being well, but it’s seldom that we talk about the wellness of the financial professional.

John That’s so true. And I’m really excited to hear what Brian Portnoy has to say about really looking inward and starting with the financial professional first and making sure that their well-being is is being addressed and taken care of. I just think it’s such an important piece of the equation.

So Julie, I agree. And what I would say is maybe we can ask our audience to kind of set those daily challenges. Whatever issues are on your mind, set them aside, take a deep breath. And Julie, why don’t you tell our audience a little bit about our guest, Brian Portnoy?

Absolutely. Brian Portnoy, Ph.D. in CFA is an expert in the psychology of money. He’s the founder of Shaping Wealth, a coaching and content platform inspiring financial well-being globally. Brian’s multiple bestselling books have been published in eight languages, and one of them, The Geometry of Wealth, inspired his current venture. He previously worked for nearly 20 years in the hedge fund and mutual fund industries. As an investor, researcher and educator, Brian lives in Chicago with his wife, three kids and a dog named Freddie. So let’s hear from Brian.

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.

Brian, thank you so much for joining us today on our Human Centric Investing podcast. We’re delighted to have you.

I’m really happy to be here.

Hey, Brian, you know, one of the things that really interests me is a lot of times when we talk about well-being in our industry, we’re always talking about someone else. We’re talking about financial well-being, right? For participants in retirement plans, we’re talking about the well-being of care givers who don’t realize that they’re exhausting themselves as they provide care for others. But when Julie and I were talking with you, you brought up the topic of advisor well-being. And I don’t think I’ve ever heard a financial professional talk to me about their own well-being. So given your specialty, why is why is advisor well-being something that we need to think about for ourselves?

So, John, I really appreciate the question because we’re tapping into something that’s going on in the industry globally, not just the U.S., but globally, that I think we need to shine a brighter light on. By way of context, just a few sentences over the past generation, our industry has changed dramatically, and I would say crudely, but I think still accurately is was a transaction based business. I mean, this was go back half a century or not even that long brokerage business. Fast forward to now very much a business based on relationships, taking care of other people, caring about their well-being. Well, guess what happened along the way? The role. All of the adviser changed and the adviser kind of stepped into a helping role. And what we see in other fields where there are really good analogies, whether it be in medicine or in psychology or even with clergy helpers, have help. Okay. So, you know, doctors have institutionalized support, at least in the U.S.. Therapists by law have to be in therapy themselves, well as advisors, either by choice or by their organization’s design, have begun to engage their clients emotional lives in much more depth than they have before. We as humans, we advisors and coaches were being exposed to these deep, legitimate, serious emotions like fear and greed and envy and hope and joy and anger and all the things that are attached to money in one way or another. So guess what’s happened along the way? We’ve barely recognized that this has become a helping profession, let alone that helpers need help. And so we work with financial advisors all over the world. We’re seeing it globally where you have issues like stress and anxiety, burnout, imposter syndrome, even more serious mental health challenges. Now, there’s a lot of great stuff going on there. There’s a lot of good to great stories that we can talk about, and I hope we do. But let’s not forget that the advisor is being asked to do things that she wasn’t really asked to do ten, let alone 20, 25 years ago. And we collectively, as an industry, need to acknowledge that and provide the support.

Brian, It’s interesting you mentioned burnout just as an example, and I know John and I are having conversations with advisors day in and day out, and I have never heard in all of my time in the industry and I’m guessing John would agree with this statement, the number of advisors say, Julie, I’m tired. It’s been a it’s been an interesting few years. Things have changed so much. I’m just really tired. And it’s interesting because, like I said, for them to even be sharing that statement, I’m sure that that’s even hard to get to the point where you’re even verbalizing it. I’m sure many are thinking it, but they haven’t actually said it out loud because then it’s real. So what are some of the main trends or, you know, can we dig a little bit deeper into some of these themes that you’re hearing and how we might help advisors really take some steps to start addressing them and maybe, maybe especially for those that haven’t actually said the words out loud, maybe they’re just swirling around in their minds and they’re starting to feel it and think it.

Yeah. So let’s, let’s dive into this topic of of burnout, because it is, it is a distinct issue from a biophysical as well as an emotional perspective. We are collectively very tired. I mean, we cannot forget the context that it wasn’t that long ago that we all endured and most of us survived a global plague. I mean, this is like a really big deal. And if you think about in sort of the collective challenge that we all faced in terms of just wild disruption to our daily lives, disruption in our family relationships, some of them quite dire. And then through that all, you had your typical market gyrations and other, you know, sort of quote unquote, normal financial planning considerations, this frontline adviser because remember, we just established that the advisor is just not a technical expert, but a helper and a guide in somebody’s life journey. We hear, I hear all the time exactly what you said, Julie. Like I’m tired. I had I had lunch not that long ago with a senior advisor at a very prestigious firm. And he is very successful. He makes a great living. His clients love him. He’s got a beautiful family. And as we’re just kind of sitting around having a conversation, he’s like, You know what? I’m just kind of exhausted all the time. And I never I feel like I can never catch up. Which leads to his next comment, which is partly an answer to your second question. He then said, I don’t have anybody to talk to about this, all right? I don’t have anyone to talk to. And that sense of feeling alone is one of the scariest human experiences that we can have, because by definition, genetically, we are tribal, we are attached to a community. And when you feel like you are alone, that you are not seen or understood. It’s a pretty bad place to be. And so where is the industry now in terms of being able to acknowledge, um, that things like burnout aren’t just sort of, oh, go take a nap or take a day off and you’ll come back. You take off Friday, you come back to the office Monday and you’ll be fresh. We’ve engaged in a collective multiyear trauma because of the pandemic. Oh, by the way, life was already really complicated to begin with. Um, We’ve now and I don’t know if we can get into it, but we do have new innovations like chatGPT, which are challenging and wild ways. What it even means to be a human being, let alone a financial advisor. And maybe I’ll establish how old I am when I quote the old commercial, Calgon, take me away. It’s like it’s like I don’t know how many listeners will get the reference. I think that was in the seventies, but so the ability to actually share with a colleague that you are just tuckered out, that you are tired, that you are burned out, that I don’t know how commonplace that is. And I have not seen a widespread legitimization at big financial planning firms where they say, We get that you are just beat up and tired and we’re asking you to do more and more things we’ve got to think about, Well, where does that conversation start? What are the resources that are needed in order to support people throughout their careers? One, they will inevitably face this burnout.

And Brian, as I think about that, by the way, if you can’t find that Calgon bath, you could always take a bite out of your York peppermint Patty. Right. Take me to another place. So there you go. Yeah, we’re in the same generation. Yeah.

Yeah, we are.

But, you know, as I think about holistic financial planning, which seems to be the the direction, it’s not only now the investment picture that we shoulder, but it’s the emotional burdens. I mean, Julie and I have a very good friend who’s a top financial advisor in the industry and described to us a situation where she actually got a call from one of her planners who wanted her to call a client because this was an older client, female client who is unfortunately thinking about taking her own life. And this financial professional had to step in and talk to the client and eventually kind of talk to her long enough to convince her it wasn’t the right thing to do. And I’m thinking of myself as a financial advisor. First of all, there’s got to be a tremendous sigh of relief, but there also has to be I’m not sure I signed up for this, let alone the emotional burden. So you mentioned about the difficulty. It doesn’t seem that the industry has kind of institutionalized a place where people can talk to one another. What are some resources you see or that you recommend for advisors that feel like they’re stressed out, burned out over their skis or whatever it is? Where do you suggest they start looking for help?

Yeah, and I just want to repeat that phrase because I had the exact same phrase in mind. I didn’t sign up for this, which doesn’t mean I don’t care, but I feel like I’m out of my depth here. And in fact, my one of my partners at Shaping Wealth, Dr. Joy Leary in a PhD in psychology practice practicing clinical therapist. We talk about this all the time with, you know, the folks we work with in terms of, well, where is that line between financial advice and financial therapy or just therapy per se? And that can be a dangerous place because you want to do the right thing. Advisors want to do the right thing. But am I qualified to have that kind of conversation? I mean, I think the answer is no, unless you can prove otherwise. So in terms of solution, I mean, maybe the three of us can anchor on just the word community or connectedness and the different ways in which we can feel not alone, the ways in which we can, you know, feel that we are being seen and heard and understood. And, you know, then we can almost like Venn diagram wise, like think about, well, what are all the communities that you can maybe be exposed to feel comfortable being vulnerable? Because especially in bigger organizations, that vulnerability could have career costs. Like I don’t want to show anybody them that I’m weak. I don’t want to show anybody that I’m struggling because if they’re seeing me as struggling, well, this other person’s going to get the promotion or the better accounts are going to be funneled in that way. So I think the first form of community we can talk about would be in the workplace itself, just a flat out recognition, a validation that the role has changed, that these issues are front and center. And let’s we, the firm, provide resources so that we can be talking about this in small group settings. We can give you access. to, you know, mental health professionals and mental health expertise. There’s a variety of different you know, we don’t designed the actual tactical plan, but there’s a variety of things that a firm can be providing. And it starts off with that just the word validation. This is happening. This is real. This is serious. We get you. Now let’s figure out how to move forward. That sort of takes a lot of the pressure out. That does, in my view, takes so much, carries so much of the weight in this. There are also, you know, outside the firm, other, you know, professional communities, the throughout the, you know, the wirehouse and broker dealer and independent RIA space. This is now a massive industry. There are trade associations. There are kind of, you know, affiliation groups where, you know, you can be networking and talking to other people and just recognize either formally or informally, whether it’s at a conference or on a on a Zoom webinar, like, Oh, you’re going through that too. Oh, okay. I’m having that sort of challenge and just being able to connect with others. Again, that sense that you’re not alone, it doesn’t solve the problem entirely. but boy is it really sets a floor where you can begin to, you know, make sure that this doesn’t become overwhelming for any particular individual, let alone an organization.

It’s interesting, Brian, John says all the time. But, you know, if we have no fuel left in the tank and if we’re burning the candle at both ends, or we could come up with all the analogies. But, you know, as we’re on the road and saying yes, yes, yes to every every event and every engagement, that ultimately we’re not going to bring our best selves to the forefront. And so it’s something that that little tiny word. No. Right. Very challenging for many of us, myself included, to use. But sometimes it can be the most powerful word and the most appropriate word because ultimately, we can’t be all things to all people. Have you do you have any success stories or examples of situations where maybe an advisor really has been able to not only say out loud to themselves, but come to that connected community situation where he or she has been able to talk through their situation and really find that outlet to to begin to go through a healing or re-energizing process to make sure that they are on the path to being their best selves and maybe putting a little bit more fuel in the tank that ultimately does impact their team, their client experience in a positive way?

So the short answer is yes. And what you said earlier reminded me of what my partner Joyce says, which is that you can’t pour from an empty cup.

Exactly. Yeah. So true.

Ah.

Hard lesson to learn, though, at times, isn’t it?

Yeah, well, it’s a hard lesson to learn for for let’s forget the fact that we’re in the the world of wealth management or financial advice. We’re just human beings trying to be good to other people and find our way in a big, confusing world. And I think especially with the, you know, the way the industry works, it’s increasingly attracting people who want to be helpful. You know, what exactly do they say on the airplane when they give you the instructions that we now ignore? Because we’ve heard them a million times, you know, in case of emergency, put your own mask on first. Guess what? We never do? We don’t put our own masks on first. And one way of putting on that figurative mask is Julie, to embrace the word boundaries and to to to use the word no more often than we are comfortable with. Another word that we can interrogate is the word busy. When you talk to people now, you know, you run into your neighbor at the store or outside or you’re just talking to a friend. What? What? How are you doing? How often now is the answer? I’m so busy.

Very.

And when happens all the time, I’m guilty of it. Sometimes I cognizant of it, but I still say it. And to me, that word busy is to some extent a white flag that we wave in front of our own agency. And something that we can do for ourselves is recognize that busy is a choice to a large extent. And that busy is actually a just a a proxy for priorities. So instead of saying I’m busy, it’s hey, I’ve, I’ve set a number of priorities. And part of that gets back to having to say no to certain things. To your core question about things that we’ve seen, I mean, I’ll share two brief examples. One is, you know, we we do run sort of workshops on on advisor well-being. I delivered one version of it a few weeks ago. It was really well-received. You could just tell by the body language. And over the next couple of days, over the course of the conference, I had seven different advisors, none of whom I’ve ever met before. In one way or another say to me, Thank you for saying that all out loud. I haven’t really been a I haven’t even sort of allowed myself to to to admit these things to me, let alone talk to others. You kind of created a space. So maybe that’s more kind of further validation that this is a widespread problem. A second example I would give is that and this is, you know, in the work that we do, just to be very clear. But Joy technically is a therapist. We don’t we don’t provide therapy. You know, that there’s a very serious line, but we do create community and we do create connectedness. And, you know, Joy, you know, we have one experience where we bring an open forum where advisors can join. It’s a it’s a private session, you know, be respectful, don’t repeat what you heard, but feel free to be vulnerable if you’d like. And we’ve got advisors from three or four different continents now that sort of show up for these what we call office hours. I don’t go Joy runs these sessions, but what I hear back, not on anything confidential, but what I hear back is that it’s just an opportunity in a peer to peer setting for someone to say, I’m really struggling. I’ve got this difficult client case, or Oh man, my firm just got purchased by this other firm. I don’t even know who I work for anymore. And and I’m struggling with that. And what seems to be happening in that forum is inevitably other people saying, I’m dealing with the same thing. How did you deal with it? And sometimes I haven’t dealt with it. It’s just it’s a pain point. I haven’t dealt with it. But again, back to this idea of not alone. So as we socialize this idea of advisor well-being, you know, for better or for worse, we’re seeing it’s a it’s a really big deal. But I wish that it weren’t. But it is. And I think it’s going to get worse just given the nature of the roles that we’re playing. The good news is there are so many kind of light and inexpensive or free strategies that you can use to fight back against some of these things, either at the individual level or at the organizational level.

So, Brian, I want to ask about two terms that I would say is being maybe a first step. One, you’ve talked I’ve heard you use the term several times in our podcast today. Vulnerability become being able to be vulnerable. I think that’s a challenge for some folks, especially when the external world looks at us as the ultimate problem solver. Right. I have no weaknesses. I’m supposed to be the person helping everyone else. The other one you mentioned earlier in the podcast was this term imposter syndrome. I think it’s something that we hear about, but if you could just give me a brief description of what that is. And I guess in the people that you talk with and they come to your workshops, how big of an issue is vulnerability and this this imposter syndrome?

Great. Let me take those in order. So the matron saint of shaping wealth is Brené Brown, who I think is just one of the wise sages of our day. So, you know, I read and track so much of what she does. I think she has created a space and a vocabulary for so many of us to explore these emotional issues. And one of the most powerful things that she says is that the source of courage is vulnerability. If you open up, you can move forward. John It’s really hard. It’s really hard. Look, there’s demographic issues there, generational issues. There’s so many different cross-cutting things. But when you think about the structure of our industry being inside this financial services conglomerate, hard chart, I mean, what’s the most famous movie ever in our space? It’s Wall Street where, you know, greed is good. Blue Horseshoe loves Anacortes Steel. I mean, it’s just this hard charging. And people, you know, Oliver Stone made that movie as a cautionary tale. It created a spike in applications to investment banks. I mean, it’s so so the idea that now we’re supposed to be vulnerable with our clients is is jarring. And and to be clear, vulnerability is in no way the same as a different concept known as emotional contagion. It’s not that. Okay. What you’re sharing, I’m sharing. And hey, let’s drown together. Let’s let’s let’s. That’s not what we’re talking about. What we are talking about first step, in terms of a financial advice professional and by the way, it doesn’t have to be an advisor per se, but it could be anybody that’s kind of contributing to this to this broad effort. The idea is that you can, um at least begin to admit to yourself, um, even before others, that you have stuff going on. So when we think about kind of the bedrock principle of emotional intelligence, that is self-awareness. So in some sense being vulnerable and open to yourself, we can um, we can begin the process of getting healthy and being healthy. To the second question on imposter syndrome. It’s just this idea that I don’t fit. I’m fooling people all of the time. One of the questions that one of the comments that that a friend who was an adviser made to me recently was I feel like I need to know everything. Because when you’re providing financial advice, well, what are you talking about? The stock market, the bond market, local politics, global politics, macroeconomics. And the client calls. I’m really worried about fill in the blank political party taking over. When they take over, I’m screwed. And and versa a visa depending on who the party is or hey, what’s going on in China or ChatGPT or whatever the issue is. And in some ways the advisor is put in a position of kind of having to have an opinion.

Right.

We’re not often comfortable saying, Well, I just don’t know. Because then the clients like, Well, okay, well, I hired you to help me navigate the market. You’re telling me you don’t understand? And to give a, you know, a lecture on epistemology about what’s knowable and not knowable in the world, like, that’s not what we do. We we put a front on and we we’re confident and we say things, but behind the scenes were like, geez, I’m making this up. And so this idea that we need to be an expert in so many different things, it leads us to think that we’re not authentic, that we’re frauds, so to speak, that the good things that might be happening, they’re not deserved. Well, that is. The more we raise that issue and the more we listen, that issue of being of impostor syndrome is rampant in the industry.

It’s so interesting, Brian, and my mind is swirling and I have so many thoughts and ideas. What would you say before we wrap up on this really important topic is truly the first step for anyone listening, and that is that one of these topics or thoughts has crept into their mind or their thinking. He really gets me. He’s speaking to me. What is they finish up listening to this podcast. What would be the first step that you would recommend them taking?

Go through the two step process of the two word process of permission and validation. When we started Shaping Wealth a few years ago, a couple of years ago, we talked about permission and validation in the context of the advisor advising the client. Because often we show up with a stack of papers and a bunch of numbers and technical stuff when the client most of the time wants to answer the big questions of hey am I going to be okay, how much is enough? This money buy happiness like really big ticket items. And that script or that theater between advisor and client has been can be broken when they’re sort of just talking past each other. And so from a coaching point of view, indulging in saying, yes, we can go there, give permission, and then the validation piece for the client is you’re not alone. There are people just like you sharing the same concerns. Permission and validation. Well, guess what? We found out that whereas the more we talked about that, we want one step back in the process. Advisors themselves needed permission and validation. I’m allowed to talk about these issues and I’m not alone. Other people just like me are struggling. Again, to the point I made earlier, that really builds the foundation for a much healthier engagement, first and foremost with oneself and then with peers and then with the industry more broadly. So permission and validation. Think through those words. Embrace them. Use them as like PowerPoint, if not power points that are powering not PowerPoint haha. Use them as as words or points that are powerful for you in in recognizing where you’re at.

Well, Brian, since this is the Human centric Investing podcast, we have a few human centric questions we would love to ask you next. So John and I will go through a series of questions. Feel free to just answer with whatever comes to mind. Top of mind, this is all about you and getting to know Brian Portnoy a little bit better. Are you an East Coast aficionado or fan or the West Coast?

oh come on? The Third Coast is the best coast? I’m a midwesterner. I mean, that is the most geocentric question I’ve ever been asked. That’s terrible.

How about tea or coffee?

Coffee? Pot of coffee every morning.

Would you rather travel to the past or to the future?

I think the past. I love history. I love evolutionary psychology. I love being able to look at maps and connect dots and sort of think about things that took place. There’s so much I’d love to explore. I’m not. I like big future technology, space travel kind of guy.

On a scale of 1 to 10, one being introvert, ten being extrovert. Where would those closest to you say you would fall on that scale? And would you agree with their assessment?

So I can’t claim that I’m an Adam Grant style ambevert. Let’s see. So probably a. I do swing, so I probably a six or seven. But some days I’m a nine and some days I’m a two.

Yeah.

So yeah, I’d say probably on average with a pretty wide standard deviation. I’m a six or a seven. And I think I think folks would agree.

Are you spontaneous? Oh, go ahead.

I think you asked it differently. Like, what would they say and do I agree. So I think I think the answer would be I think the answer would be a six. And I think I fully agree.

Okay.

Are you a spontaneous person or a planner? And I think I might know the answer to this just by what you shared with us already, But I’ll let you go.

I’m a I’m a planner. Yeah, Yeah, I’m a planner. I like to have a sense of where things are going.

I’m right there with you.

Yeah. IPhone or Android?

Android?

Here you go.

Pepsi or Coca Cola?

I gave up soft drinks a few years ago, but I was definitely a Diet Coke guy.

Uh, Huh, And would you rather read a book or listen on Audible?

I’ve never listened to an audiobook. I like reading books.

uh huh hahaha.

You might be able to see behind me a pretty, pretty big stack of books that I’m constantly trying to get through.

Do you prefer texting or a phone conversation?

It depends who it’s with the these days, actually. Phone call. I’ve been doing this thing lately where I just randomly call friends because I want to hear their voice. And lo and behold, sometimes they pick up no calendly links, no emails or texts To say that I’m calling, I just call. And lo and behold, other people want to talk live, too. It’s pretty funny.

Thank you so much, Brian. And I know you’ve mentioned Shaping Wealth a few times during our discussion and Shaping Wealth as a learning and development platform powered by behavioral science training financial advisors in the psychology of Financial planning, they bridge leading evidence based insights from behavioral finance, positive psychology, and emotional intelligence with timeless wisdom on a life well lived to deliver experiences that serve individual growth, team building and client engagement, and may be brought in. To wrap up this episode, why don’t you tell listeners where they could find a bit more information or insights on Shaping Wealth?

Well, thanks, Julie. Nice of you to mention all that. It’s real simple shaping Wealth dot com. It sort of sets out what our mission is and what we’re all about and how we are engaging the global advice community.

Perfect. Well, thank you again for being a guest with us on the Human Centric Investing podcast.

My pleasure.

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