InvestInU Founder Jonathan Ainsley takes a closer look at how three transformative revolutions—longevity, artificial intelligence, and our evolving relationships (especially with self)—are reshaping the future.

If you’re interested in learning more, please visit: longevityplanning.me

I'm John.

And I'm Julie.

We're the hosts of the Hartford Fund's 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!

Jonathan, thanks for being here with us today on the Human Centric Investing Podcast. We're so happy to have you back.

I'm excited to be here, Julie.

Well, Jonathan, I'm excited about today's podcast because when we talk about revolutions, we're usually talking about something that's going on current day and into the future that's gonna change the way we do things. One revolution's enough, but you actually posit that we're in the midst of three revolutions going on right now in the financial services industry. So maybe we can start by asking you to kind of tell us what these three revolutions are and then. Maybe we can jump into each one a little bit and understand what your thinking is.

Yeah, absolutely, John. So this evolved from a request from one of the longevity workshops that I did. And the client in their mid sixties initially sort of put, leave me alone. I want to grow old and die gracefully. But the conversation with his financial professional evolved over time. And it ended up him saying, well, can Jonathan come and do a presentation at my rotary club? And the workshop was an hour long. So I thought, okay, I've always wanted to do a Ted talk. What can I do? And bolt from the blue, I thought, oh, three revolutions. So the first revolution is with many people living far longer than they expected, we have this revolution of longevity. But then we also have the revolution of AI technology innovation. So that's the second one. And when you then flow into the third, well, if we're going to consume and not be consumed by AI, what does that mean for humans? And Elon Musk was asked this not so long ago and he said, seek fulfillment and be excited for the day ahead. Well, gosh darn it, what does that look like? So depending on what level you want to come from, the third revolution is either revolution of consciousness, humanity or relationships, especially the relationship we have with yourself.

That's so interesting to think about all of those things. And they're all changing so rapidly. Will you share with us from your perspective, Jonathan, why these are so important at this moment and, you know, maybe even take that a step further and let's think about from the financial professional perspective, how they can be engaging in meaningful conversations to help clients think about these topics as well.

Yeah, Julie. So I think let's start with the second one, you know, the revolution of AI and that drumbeat's been out there for a while now. You know, if you think about it, we started with Bedman and some of the robo advisors, about 15 years ago. So, you know, to focus on advisors, and you know what's the value of the human advisor in the face of, of technology evolving. And of course, in more recent times, you've really had this takeoff around AI. And again, depending on this bit like having your ear on the railway track, you know, there's this big train hurtling down and where is it sort of thing. And just in my travels, the idea that AI is ultimately gonna be as disruptive as the shift from the agrarian feudal system to the industrial production system. And of course the system today is set up for the industrial productions system. So... You know, that maps in, we don't have to look very far, go sit in a restaurant and observe people consuming or being consumed by technology with their noses buried in their handhelds and not really paying much attention to each other. So the question around, well, are you consuming AI or gonna be consumed by it? But that then opens the door up to the third revolution in essence around, Well, okay. If AI and technology is, let's say, going to take over 80% of someone's job, and essentially knowledge becomes the commodity, wisdom is going to be the value. So the financial professionals have typically been trained with the connection of the technicals, e.g. Connecting through the head and the technicals of money, and yet it's going to the heart connection that really needs to evolve, and that flows into that third revolution of relationships.

So Jonathan, I want to take a step back and talk about this revolution of longevity, right? Why is it a revolution? Why do you think it's kind of turning worlds upside down and causing people to think and do things differently?

Well, we've all been wired, in essence, John, on this model of retirement, centered on 65, that's nearly 100 years old. And even that was revolutionary in itself when they came out with it during the depths of the Great Depression. But things are evolving. I think in 1900, life expectancy for humanity had never gone over 40. And you didn't need to be careful playing around with the numbers. So I looked up recently and those born in 1950. 77% of them were still alive in 2020, e.g. 70 years old. But in 1950, life expectancy was only 67. So this idea that many are living far longer than they expected already is a phenomenon. And who knows where that goes. This isn't about living forever, but it's how do we reframe and redefine what it means to successfully age? And so embracing these longer lives. Looking beyond the fear and frailty that many have, purely because of uncertainty. And again, those living longer, typically are doing so more by default rather than by design. So the question I've been raising in my travels is, well, what happens when we bring intention into that reframing and redefining what it means to successfully age, thinking about ourselves and our future in ways we may not have done before? So that's the essence of this, you know, revolution of longevity. And, you know, there are some out there saying that the person who's going to live to 150 has already been born. So rather than going, oh, which, you know, many do at the thought of living to just 90, listen to those words, just 90. It really is this sort of recalibration of how we look at longevity itself and embrace it.

Jonathan, can I just share with you, like Julie and I, as you know, speak to many groups of clients and financial professionals across the country, I think the one that really hits home for me is when we talk about the issue of boredom and loneliness. And when I say that, you know I'm sure there were all points in our 30s and 40s when work got to be a real frustration and exhausting where we said, are you kidding me? I can't wait to be bored in my life, but you know I read a think it was an article in the Washington Post within the last month that talked about 20 to 25 percent of Americans over age 65 don't see another person on a regular basis. And I just, I think when we, and I can tell you when we talk to audiences about this topic of boredom and isolation, there are heads nodding, right? Because we never think it's going to be a but all of a sudden it's here. And I think the value for the financial professional to anticipate not only challenges, but also opportunities that may present themselves. I think of being anticipatory versus reactionary. And I've got to believe that there's value there for the professional that can help their clients anticipate and navigate both the challenges and opportunities. Do you sense that as well?

Oh, yes, John. I mean, I don't just sense it. I experience it. It's off the charts, the impact it has. You know, I've had advisors say I've never had my client so engaged. The referral door is wide open. You know one of the things I do in the sort of the training program, I get people to list who are the six people you spend the most time with personally or professionally. And, you know, yeah, we've had people in the workshops who've got no one, but there's the opportunity to start doing something about it. Something else that sort of to add into that, you know, people seeing 65 as a sort of finishing line. However, the loss of identity that then comes because for many, their social structure can be around work. So you can you know so many dynamics here how much gray divorce occurs because no one sat down and had a conversation. I've had a financial planner say to me, I'm having a that I've never had before. So by opening up this framework to look on this longer-term basis and how are we going to do it successfully for the financial professional, I think that there's a need. I mean, ultimately, there is also a soft underbelly here, a fiduciary breach. And whether you're a fiduciary or operating under suitability, without this more expansive look with your clients, And the key word there is with clients, helping them. With longevity and literacy to then have a more meaningful conversation, which then comes full circle to, you know, what can we be creating where people do better engage? But it starts at the individual level. And that's really sort of part of what we're sort of the nut we're cracking with the work we're building out.

Jonathan, if I'm a financial professional and I feel like in my conversations with clients, I'm asking some good questions, but maybe it's a similar repertoire of questions that I've been asking for quite some time and I'm intrigued by digging a little bit deeper into the longevity topic with my clients. What are some of your favorite powerful questions that you think a financial professional could ask clients that might really sort of open their eyes to longevity possibilities and opportunities. I mean, I loved, you just gave an example of one, you know, list the six people that you spend time with personally or professionally. I mean I think that question obviously has the opportunity to really show either social isolation or social engagement. But what are some of the other ones that you would guide our listeners to consider adding to their question repertoire?

Well, I hope you don't mind me being a prideful father, but my eldest, he is now in a branch of one of the big banks, I guess, about a knock name names, but as a financial services rep, and he asked a couple recently who sort of came into the office looking for a little bit of help. And his first question then was, what does living to 100 look like for you? And, you know, the neat thing just with that one question there, Julie. You look at the challenges in the industry, it's typically been a very male-dominated environment. You know, the husband looking after the finances. How do you better engage both spouses? That question got them plenty of back and forth. So, you know, just dipping your toe in with that, because again, for a 70-year-old couple, asking about 100, you've just created a 30-year space in their minds that probably no one's really asked them about before.

So Jonathan, I want to transition to the AI revolution for a second because it seems like AI, especially among older people, and I'll count myself in that crowd, has got off on the, on a wrong foot almost. It seems like all we heard about AI early on was it's going to destroy the world within five years, take all our jobs and, you know, and we're going to be left with nothing. We all know that we're probably using AI in ways that we may not even realize, or we're being served by AI. How do you ask clients or maybe instruct them about how to balance the caution that we are leaning into this new technology? The optimism. And optimism can sometimes be hard to find with any new technology, but especially this one that seems so powerful that we're not sure if we can trust it, we're not sure yet how to use it. How do you get people thinking positively about, other than potential security prices of all the companies that are involved with it, how do you get them to think about how we'll be using it positively in the future?

Well, I think I'm smiling like this, John, because I saw something not so long ago. Again, I've already sort of touched on the disruption as being as big as the agrarian to the industrial shift. And someone likened it to Dickens, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times in a tale of two cities. So right from the get-go, people have a choice. I do it in the workshops. 12.4 years of chronic illness is the average. What is your number gonna be? And what could you do to reduce it? So same idea, best of times, worst of times. Which side of that equation do you want to land? So hopefully, whoever you're asking that question to, they're gonna come back with the best of time. So then, well, now I've got your attention. How can you start better engaging? And again, the evolution, I think it's fascinating. Just from my sort of observations, lots and lots of investment. Let's stick with the financial services world. Lots of investment into bringing AI into the financial professionals world in terms of making flows more more efficient. One of the dangers I perceive is a bit like in the doctor's world where you see reports that doctors now spend very very little time with patients. So they may be way more efficient in terms of flow but in terms an actual impact with the client or the patient. So, you know, caveat emptor for the financial professional world, because you see things about AI coaches on helping the professionals leverage AI. My fascination and again, what we're looking at is the coaching, the AI coaching to help advisors move into that human space. So for argument's sake, if AI takes over 80% of the advisory role, the knowledge part how do you better evolve that 20% for the advisor? So helping off for the financial professional. So building that side of the equation out, and I think the flow there goes, if you've got competency in something for yourself, then it's easier to start talking to others about it. So, you know, the idea of being able to use it to, right, I'm gonna travel to Switzerland and Austria, I land here, I leave there. I've got five days, I want to do three days hiking. I'm not renting a car, create an itinerary for me and there it is, wow. So, baby steps, but again, in the background, it's are you consuming rather than being consumed because it's very easy just to be mindless and let stuff drift across the screen at you. So again, I think that watershed, best of times, worst of times, is a great starting point.

I love the way that you say, are you consuming or being consumed? I think it's just, it, it sums it up so well. And I was just going to say, Jonathan, and I'm glad that you did, that I was curious about your thoughts around a financial professional starting to use some of these tools in his or her own life, and then being able to speak to them intelligently. So I think that's so interesting that, you know, oftentimes that evolution, we can start with ourselves and then. Use it as a great example later in conversations on here's how it helped me, here was the pitfall. Have you seen other examples of this coming to life where financial professionals are using tools and then it enables the conversation with clients to really think about it in their on life.

That's such a good question, Julie, and I need to be slightly careful how I answer this because, again, I've got sort of 20 years experience of sort of desk to desk. And of course, the financial professional world, in many ways, is still in its infancy. I mean, it's been evolving over time, you know, in the 70s, coming off fixed commissions, you had the advent of planning. And so engaging to make changes. And elevate. So just from the longevity planning aspect, and to me, the longevity planning encompasses these three revolutions. And so, you know, the debate 20 years ago about do you have a Motorola or Nokia mobile phone, and along comes iPhone, and suddenly, you know, Nokia has gone from 50% down to 5% market share. I see, you know, this seismic shift is that big. So where the leadership is in terms of bringing this to advisors, because again, another thing, especially let's say in the independent world, I guess across the board, you know, what's the bottleneck? You're only getting in your office, whatever anyone's giving you access to. So whether it's office by office in the RIA space, or you know in the bigger broker dealer firms, you know someone at head office is making those decisions for you invariably. So helping it percolate while all the time, the drumbeat of these three revolutions is only gonna amplify and upgrading to a more robust advisory model. Because again, if it's simple portfolio management, there you have, you are in essence gonna get consumed by technology. So again, it's not about doing it through a fear-based thing, but how do we motivate and encourage essentially an upgrade to the system overall.

Jonathan we we talked about the third revolution being the revolution of self and You know, it's interesting Julie and I see it all the time, right people who are let's say Within the first five to ten years of retirement when when asked after their name, what do they do? They often say well, I'm a retired engineer. I'm retired doctor, retired teacher, I carry my profession with me in your workshops. How hard is it? To get people to dig a little bit deeper to tell you who they really are outside of how they made money, what they were successful at, you know, so golden rule, the one with the most gold wins, right? But not that there's anything wrong with having gold. I think most people would say it's better than not. However, I do think we are seeing people think more reflectively how easy is it to get people open up to their really core values? Outside of just what they've done.

Well, that's such a great, you know, look at things in question there, John. So the third revolution is to me really about being more human beings than human doings. However, we've been conditioned to be human doings that's the industrial system. And so, you know, this almost, you know, transcendence, it's funny in my travels, the idea that people have an something is missing. I was the keynote speaker for a Meals on Wheels appreciation lunch, and I was asked to present on being a better you. So I started 250 in the audience, and I said, okay, what makes a better, you? And the first answer I got back was a kinder inner voice, to which I said well, how much would we all benefit from a kind or inner voice? And so the narrative we have, those quotes you sort of made, people don't have any better point of reference in many ways, their identity of what they did. Now, built into that. I had a 93 year old in a workshop say, you know, I'm surrounded by people with lots of money. They're very rich and they're all miserable. I know of three, three very hardworking folks all worth over 30 million bucks each, all died in their early sixties because you know that the treadmill they put themselves on to succeed at an early age, financially they did well, but what did it cost them on the inside? And so you know, this branching out, what's been really fun in this, in many ways, that initial workshop, as I referenced, keeping it sort of very simple to engage people to talk about, you know what a successful aging look like. Well, people started coming back saying, well, okay, we want more. All right, what do you want more on purpose? Okay, there's plenty of stuff out there. You know, purpose is quite a buzzword out there, however, I sort of, again, this is the connecting dots to see the bigger picture, I thought, We'll- If we think of humans a little bit like computers ourselves, we're born with a natural operating system, me 1.0, as I like to say, then at an early age, we take on the malware or the ego. So if we're gonna sit down and take a little look at purpose going forward or fulfillment, who's doing the voting? So we actually have pre-work for the second workshop, which we've got built into the training, even if we’re not doing the workshop of. Sit down, shut your eyes, take some deep breaths, picture yourself as a small child at play and come up with one word that identifies that child at playing. So then it's in the workshop, did you identify that word? And now out of 10, how much has it shown up in your life since then? So again, if the ego or the malware took over, that word may have been lost in the dust. So let's at least bring that back in. You may be able to put yourself on a completely different trajectory because again we get stuck on the sort of the hamster wheel you know in our 20s of conforming and you know college family career etc etc and I appreciate younger generations sort of developing a different model to that but nonetheless that's what many have been put on and so again getting into the 60s or thereabouts and of course in the past if you wanted longer retirement you retired early So, breaking these things down, creating a safe environment becomes a lot of fun. That's the other thing, because once you start getting people engaging, they love it, and that's the opportunity I see for financial professionals. We build a framework, doing the heavy lifting for them to then pick that ball up and run with it.

That is, well, Jonathan, we've covered so much territory today. And if I were a financial professional that really wanted to continue to educate my clients on the three revolutions of longevity, but obviously don't have time to go through all of it in one meeting, where would you start if you were a finance professional wanting to open this dialog and really push the bounds of longevity with your clients? What would you do? As the next step in sort of evolution.

Well, thanks for that, Julie. So I have basically advisors came back to me saying, look, Jonathan, no one is training us how to do this. So, you know, tooting my own horn here a little bit, we've got the 12 module financial longevity advisor training programs being approved by the NASAA for the annual CE. And again, I've been told by advisors that that CE is generally very mind-numbing, so invest the 12 hours to actually gain the competency, upgrade to being an Apple iPhone. And with that, within it, is how you introduce this to your clients. So, it's step-by-step through each module to make it really easy for the advisor to take this on and bring it to all generations and build it out from there. And even then, as we're seeing today. Three years on from our last conversation, you know, what's this going to look like in three more years time? I'm talking to, you know independent living communities, for instance, helping them reframe what their experience for their residents looks like wellness programs within corporations, you know this thing is not happening in isolation in the financial services world. So you know longevity planning .me is our sort of landing zone, plenty of other sort of resources out there. I think one of the key differentiators of what we're bringing to the table is the intentionality. So we're not just sort of talking about the dynamics of longevity and what we seeing there. It's bringing the solution. And, you know, I'm posting lots on LinkedIn as well of really sort of helping bring this sort of broader context as we make it up as we go because that's basically all I'm doing.

Well, Jonathan, just a moment ago, we talked about that third revolution being the relationship to yourself. And it sounds to Julie and I, because we've known you for a while, that you've kind of been redefining your relationship with yourself for quite a while. So you'll probably be really good at what we call the lightning round of questions where we want to ask you questions. About yourself, Jonathan, so that our listeners can get to know you a little bit better. So if you're game, I'm going to ask Julie to lead off with one of these top of mind questions. We just want your first response, maybe a little bit of comment as to why, just to get us and our listeners to get to know you, a little better. Sound good?

Brilliant, bring it on.

What's the first concert you ever went to?

Oh yeah, 1975, 14 years old, 100,000 Wembley Stadium, the Eagles, the Beach Boys, and Elton John.

Oh, wow, what a lineup.

What a way to get started.

Seriously, that's a high bar.

What's your favorite board game or card game?

Uh... We used to be i used to enjoy blackjack about but uh... I don't know it's childhood rebellion because let's sit down and do ballgames unless I could cheat that I wasn't really interested

It seems like people were either one way or the other. You either play them all the time or you can't stand them.

Yeah, I mean, again, coming out of the British side of the equation, there was a lot of you must conform. So whatever, you know, that straight jacket was, my younger self was invariably looking for an escape hatch.

What's one thing you always pack when you travel?

Ooh, well, I'm going abroad, probably the adapters for charging.

Yes.

Let's, let's stick with that.

Jonathan, my last question, do you have a favorite quote or mantra?

We are infinite beings handicapped by our limiting beliefs.

Excellent. What's a hobby you've always wanted to try?

Well, OK, so it's less I've wanted to try, which infers I've never done it, but I last scuba dived. They just had the summit in Sharm el-Sheik. I was there after the Israelis had handed it back to the Egyptians in about 1983 and slept on the beach with some friends from University of London's Scuba Club. And so I think the next thing I will be trying is getting back in the water and scuba diving again.

Amazing. I love it. Well, Jonathan, we can't thank you enough for joining us here today to talk about the three revolutions of longevity. And for our listeners, as Jonathan just mentioned, feel free to visit his website for more information at longevityplanning.me. Thanks again, Jonathan.

Well, thank you both. This has been great to be back with you both, thank you.

Good to see you Jonathan, take care.

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The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the guest who is not affiliated with Hartford Funds.