Every portfolio has a story. Most financial professionals only hear part of it. Renee Hanson shares why uncovering a client's financial identity can lead to deeper conversations and stronger relationships.

To learn more, please check out Renee’s book, Finding Your Financial Identity, available on Amazon.

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.

Renee, welcome to the Human Centric Investing Podcast. We're so happy to be here with you today.

Well, thank you. I'm happy to.

Renee, you know, the one thing that I know in working with financial professionals for so many years, we're constantly on the search to acquire new client relationships or to deepen the relationships that we already have. And on today's episode, we really want to explore the second half of that, deepening client relationships. I think everybody knows that's a good thing. We may know that at the initiation of a relationship. We may be one of several advisors, we may not have the entire wallet of the client, we may even not really know the client that well. So I think the word deepening relationships is thrown around an awful lot. But you say it's not just about deepening relationships, it's about elevating them. And I'm interested and I'm sure our audience will be interested in understanding, What is the difference in your mind? What separates an elevated relationship from a deepening process in a relationship?

You know, the deepening the relationship has been around for financial professionals for years. And when it first, when we were first told deepen the relationship, we thought, okay, so we'll take them to dinner, we'll go for cocktails, we’ll play golf together. Well, as your practice grows and you go from two clients to 400 or 1,000, there just aren't enough days in the week to do your business and deepen the relationship. So. What we discovered along the way, or what I've discovered along the way is that deepening the relationship is by adding additional value through services, tools, or advice, whereby we create value and deepen the relationship with the client. So it's tools, it's services, it is advice, that's all fabulous. But to your point, there are some consumers that will have several financial professionals. Who are all vying for the dollars. There's no doubt about it. And we see dollars moving faster than we've ever seen before. People are quick to make decisions. And we're finding more and more people are looking for a more holistic approach, or studies tell us, looking for a more holistic approach or advice-based relationship. Returns are fabulous. If you don't know what the return means to you, it's not so wonderful. Elevating a relationship. Is where you increase the value of what you provide in understanding their relationship with money. So elevating creates more authentic conversation, more genuine conversation to where you know your client differently. And I think that for advisors that we want to elevate our relationship because we continue to offer more services, we continue to offer greater advice, tools, those sorts of things. But when you elevate through authentic conversation and through designing a relationship where you address your client's goals, values and risk tolerance, both within the framework of their investment risk and life risk, to where it's within the frame work of their financial identity and their relationship with money, where they can make more comfortable and confident financial decisions, we then become indispensable as financial professionals. That's the difference.

Renee, if you're a financial professional listening to what you just said, clicking through your mental list of service model items and thinking, well, I think that I've deepened relationships based upon the knowledge that I had before I listened to what just said. How would I go from a deepening to a true elevating? What would be some of the conversations, the questions, the activities? I know in our previous podcast, we talked about discovering a client's financial identity. I would imagine that plays into that. Will you share with us that evolution, if you will? Again, for those that feel like they're in a pretty good spot because they've deepened, but probably haven't elevated.

I believe that as a financial professional, I look forward to clients coming into the office. And I know that there are certain things I'm going to do at every meeting. Okay, I'm gonna reground our relationship and their relationship with money and understanding what their values, their communication preferences and their primary goals are. We're gonna talk about performance and how this is aligning with their goals and their financial success and the purpose of their money. And after a while, it does become a bit boring to do just that. What I really enjoy in a relationship with a client is when I hear about new babies in the family or their recent trip, or when they have concerns about things going on. We have a fast-paced world. Our clients have greater concerns in their money, because quite frankly, they trust us to do what we need to do for them. What they want to know is are they okay? And for me to know if they're okay, I need to understand who they are. So if I understand who they are by understanding their financial identity, our conversations are different. It is not uncommon for me to be going through a meeting and all of my meetings are in writing, they're deliverables in writing that we upload the day before or two days before so they have a chance to see it. It reduces anxiety coming into the office. But if I begin to hear, well, there's so much going on because there is a lot going on, I can then go back and see, so you're concerned because the market is high and you think that what goes up must come down. I can go right back to the screen that lists their values and say, this makes perfect sense because what you've told me of your top values, it's being challenged right now and you might have a conflict. Change of job, if security is really important, and they're going through a change of job security, doesn't mean just financial security, but their sense of security, that's going to challenge that value. But if there's another value that it's feeding, they're gonna have conflict. And so we can talk about that. Then we can begin to identify the pros and cons of each decision that's in front of them so that they can feel more comfortable and confident in the decision they're making and how it aligns with their values, goals, and risk tolerance. It all comes full circle. But now we're having a genuine authentic conversation about what's happening in their life. Money is important. But I find that when people tell me that health and wealth are important, if their health is good, wealth is number one. And if their health isn't good, wealth is no. 2 or even lower. You've heard the stories about when people are on their deathbed, they don't regret the things they've done. They regret the things they didn't do. So I want people to live their life fully. Live your life, we'll find a way to fund it so that money doesn't become the focal point of every conversation, whether they have enough or not, that they have to fuel their life. So it's just a different perspective.

So, Renee, I have a question about whether this hypothetical client exists because I think sometimes maybe someone listening to this podcast would say, hey, that sounds great and I would love to do that for my clients, but my clients don't want that. They just want me to manage money. Do you come across clients like that or does everybody have a human need to want to go deeper to some extent? And I guess, do you ever run into clients that resist? The elevated experience, if you will, they do kind of just say, look, I'm just trying to save for retirement, or I'm trying to generate an income stream. And how do you, given your practice, kind of deal with that situation?

I think as a financial professional, you have to determine where you are in your career. I'm blessed that my career has gone very well and I'm successful and I get to choose the people I work with. That was not the case when I first started out. If the mirror was fogged, you're a candidate. And I respect that. And a financial professional, they have their own values. And they might have a family they have to feed, they might some goals that they want to accomplish. I respect that. But it doesn't mean you can't begin to grow that so that when you do have a good candidate that wants more that you're capable of doing so so that they don't find other professionals like myself who do that, right? So how can you make yourself a well-rounded professional? I would say is understand who you're working with, segment them, and if that's what they are, but they just want the investment advice fine. But you don't know until you ask the question. Please don't wait for them to deliver the answer by changing advisors. Ask. What more would you like in my services? Am I meeting your expectations? I have found that other clients would like to go deeper in understanding what the return means to the longevity of assets. If you don't ask, you don't know.

It's a really good perspective.

Absolutely. I mean, I think we've all heard the stories, right, where those assumptions are made, a client transfers out and when the financial professional reaches out to say what happened, they say, you know, I, I really wanted a financial plan or a financial planner. And yet that original financial professional is a CFP, but made the assumption that that client was just there for the investments. So you're right. I think when, when making those assumptions, that can be a dangerous place, if you will.

I think that's the Achilles heel of all of us professionals is we're so quick to assumptions. We are fixers and we're genuine. It comes from the heart. We can fix this for you and we know exactly how to do it. We're going to get it done for you fast, but then we don't often uncover the other issues that might be at hand.

Do you have an example of a situation where asking just that great opening question of a client just cracked open a whole new aspect of the relationship where maybe you were on the path to some of the assumptions, right? Thinking, okay, I know what they need. I've seen this before 15 times. I can fix this. I have the team in place to do it. But maybe you asked that one additional question. And it all of a sudden just blossomed this relationship and took it down a completely different path.

Yes, one of the examples and and I believe many professionals have seen this very same thing is You you finish a meeting But something was off. it wasn't the same connection that you've seen before or you're just sensing something and and That's the time to trust your gut so you can conclude or you can even I've done it halfway in a meeting one time where I'm going along and I was pretending and I stopped and I said, I'm just sensing that something feels off today. Is it me? And she said, no. Let me tell you what's going on in my life, okay? We never finished the meeting. We never finish my agenda. Right, right. One of the things that we have incorporated after, during our meetings, I bring one of the first slides in our PowerPoint deck after the name, their name is, is they're listing their values, their communication preferences and their goals. And then we have. A place that says agenda and it's open lines. And I say, I of course have the agenda that you've seen. What should we be talking about today that isn't on my agenda? And then we'll type in what those are so that we have them. And sometimes we get to one item that's like, okay, let's address that now. I had that yesterday with the meeting and maybe two minutes into it, he says, Well, I... I have this I have a question for you. Maybe you're not the right person and I don't know You can hear the stumbling Right. I said let's find out if I'm the right person. And he asked the question. I said, I am definitely the right person. He says, well, I'm derailing the meeting. No, you're not. I will get everything we needed within the half hour time slot we have. I promise you, I did it in 26 minutes. Okay, we had it done. So, and he sent me a text following, says, I, you know, I I'm sorry, I derailed the meeting, I said no, this is my job. This is exactly what I do. And then I complimented him on what a great team we were yesterday and coming up with a solution, right? So. So we want them to feel comfortable in knowing that they can talk to us and knowing that it's confidential. So I do meeting summarization. If anyone else is doing meeting summarization, you need to follow up with, by the way, that will not be in the meeting summarization. But thank you for sharing. I'm always here for you.

I love how you said, listen to your gut instinct. I always say the only time our gut leads us astray is when we don't listen to it. And so I think it's just, I love how you've said that, right? You felt that something was off or you felt that, you know, so I just think that that's so great, right. I mean, this is a people helping people business at the end of the day.

Yes, absolutely.

So Renee, I imagine that as you begin this process of elevating that relationship, and we begin to discover more about the client's financial identity, their values, their money story, different aspects that we've spoken about, I guess my question is from the role of the financial professional, how do you customize or tailor your communication? With that client versus a different client with a different money story? Because I think sometimes we have natural tendencies to communicate the same way, because we are who we are. But do you find yourself tailoring or customizing conversations with people? And how does that work?

Absolutely. So in the communication preferences, I'll be able to identify, because they've shared with me, that they learn by graphs, or a slower pace, those sorts of things. And I reground our meeting, the initial part of our meeting is always regrounded in that information. But I also have a statement from them that will say, which I asked in our initial meeting, what is it I need to remember about you? And one might say, my tendency to detrust everything you have to say and not know anything about money. So then I know, remember the five attributes of financial identity starts with a person's money story, their values, what knowledge they currently have, what their skill set is with money, and what their experiences are over time. I can begin to say that, oh, this is an opportunity to share something new with you. So I'm building their financial identity along the way. So yes, I will tailor a conversation, or especially when we have couples. Oh my goodness, this is so important. And I don't wanna be offensive in any way, but oftentimes there's one party in a relationship who does know more about money and will communicate that they know more about money. And they like a different conversation, which is what's going on with the economy and rates of return and how's it compared to the S&P. So you want to address that communication style. But then you absolutely must follow up with the other person who is now looking up in the air, oh boy, here we go again. And this is what it means to your portfolio when I talk about this. And this is the alpha that I've been able to provide. And alpha is the excess return. And that means that we are exceeding the expectations in my projections at this point in time. We may not always, because there's ups and downs. But what I can tell you is that you are trending for complete success. For all the goals that you want to achieve. And I promise I will continue to monitor that for you so that you can continue to live the life that you'd want. Thank you. Thank you for telling me what this means to me, right? To always want to address their communication styles and have different conversation that means sign. I have one that is, I know you don't wanna hear all this, but give me two seconds to cover the things that I feel are really important so that don't go home and say, well, I wonder what my rate of return was.

Renee, I know that this topic is very near and dear to your heart, obviously through the relationships with your clients as a financial professional. But also, you took the next step and you wrote a book about it. And the book is called Finding Your Financial Identity. Would you share with our listeners what prompted you to write the book? Because I'm sure so many of our listeners out there have thought or been told at one time or the other, you should write a book on this. Right? So how did you actually go from concept to doing it? First question, and then to follow on to that, will you share with us some of the unique ways that this book is being used? Because I think that that's a really cool aspect of this, that it's not necessarily just a book for the financial professional. So tell us a little bit about your journey in the book writing process.

So I oftentimes start my webinar presentations with, my name is Renee Hansen. I'm a certified financial planner. I'm certified divorce financial analyst. I'm A certified certified certified. Well, clearly I'm certifiable. And all of us professionals have lots of knowledge. We continue to build it so that we have, as people say, creds in the industry, right? And, and what happens is that we know so much that clients don't know, that we don't have a process within our industry that brings the information together with the consumer or the client and the advisor. We know so much, but they don't get to know so much. They trust that we so much, that will deliver what they're expecting to happen. And I decided that clients don't know what they don't know. Because they haven't learned it yet. And if we understood them differently, and more importantly, if they understood their own financial identity, it creates an interdependent relationship versus a dependent relationship. I used to say years ago, people walk around ready to plug in their umbilical cord so that, you know, just take care of me, just take of me. Information is readily available and they don't know what's relevant to them because they don't know who they are financially. And that's what prompted me to write the book. So that they can understand what are the attributes of financial identity. Why do the Joneses have so much more? What makes them different from me? And this comparison creates behavior that can be very dissatisfactory to a financial plan. So I decided that we needed to have a foundation of knowledge and education that both the advisor or professional had as well as the consumer so that there was a foundation of their communication. So it's. The money story as well as understanding their values and they understand their values, right? This is enlightening to the consumer, not just the advisor, then also what their knowledge base is because we can grow the knowledge base and we don't need to have a classroom experience, but we can drip knowledge to them in the course of our relationship along with then their skillset. So if we have to help them with their budget, we help them with their skills set how they can make decisions. How they can negotiate for cars. We help in a lot of fashions and then understand their experiences. How did that financial decision feel for you? It felt good. I feel like it aligns with my values, my goals, and my risk tolerance. I feel comfortable and confident. I'm doing my job at that point in time. The book then goes into what the five levels of financial identity are so that now clients can peg themselves of where they are and do they want to grow more? Many don't, and that's okay, but they trust that we can continue to grow in that. So the book was interesting because I wrote the book knowing that I wanted to get to this point so that the unspoken can have clarity, authentic conversation, genuine conversation, a foundation for interdependence, a collaborative approach. And what I discovered is that people are reading the book and saying, but it isn't just about money decisions. This is helping me in life decisions, and I feel better about making life choices. And I thought that that was pretty powerful. The other thing that I began to discover as people were talking about it is they were beginning to say, you know, this is really important for my children. And we got into a conversation with somebody about their grandchild and how they want their grand child to learn to save money early on. And I thought, this is also helping us create or help others create their financial identity. So I started with making it a traveling book. So my inscription says, this a traveling copy. Write in it, reflect in it. Challenge it. Make notes and then share it with someone who matters to you. So I think that's important and I'm encouraging highlighting. I'm encouraging writing the margins. I know so many people don't write in a book. No, write, write write. If you have more to write than the margins permit, I have a little notebook that you can use. So I think it's powerful and I am finding that consumers are buying it for their advisor, which is a real message, right? So it's wonderful for those professionals who don't know how to start the conversation. This is a way to start the conversation. Please read the book, and let's talk about our financial identities together.

Well, that's terrific, Renee. And Julie and I certainly appreciate your collaboration with us today to kind of share some of these insights. And we'd like to further that collaboration with all of our listeners that are listening by asking you a few questions we call the lightning round to help our audience get to know you a little bit better. We've already heard about the book and some of your professional insights. But if you're OK, we'd to ask you a series of questions that. Are a little bit off topic, but we think really help to connect with who Renee Hansen is. Is that okay with you?

I'm ready!

Julie, why don't you start?

Perfect. What's your favorite quote or mantra in life? We do well to do good.

And if you play board games or card games, what's your favorite board game or card game?

I like Canasta and yeah, Canasta is probably my favorite card game. My husband won't play with me.

Because you win all the time?

Mexican dominoes we play a lot with the family so that's another fun one and and my husband plays begrudgingly.

What's one thing people would be surprised to learn about you?

I always do this as the three questions, you know, so I was a model as a teenager.

Awesome.

That's amazing.

And my last question, let me think up a good one here. What hobby have you always wanted to try?

Boy, I think you stumped me, John. So what hobby have I always wanted to try? I've had the pleasure of trying a lot of different things and so this one is going to have to…

So why don't we morph it into then, what's the favorite thing you tried that you discovered you really loved after you tried it?

Sewing. I love sewing.

Wow. Terrific.

Since we've talked about going back in time, when you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?

I wanted to be a teacher because I was told I had three opportunities. I could be an administrative assistant, a teacher, or a nurse. So I chose a teacher and I used to teach the neighbor kids in my garage. And then I discovered that I could do more.

I love that. I used to hold classroom garage sessions too, growing up. My sister reminds me all the time. Well, Renee enough for joining us here today on the human centric investing podcast. And for our listeners, if you want to elevate your role from financial professional to guide, please feel free to explore Renee's book called finding your financial identity on amazon. It will give you the tools to better understand your clients and their core and build relationships that naturally drive loyalty, trust and referrals. And as Renee mentioned, this could make a great gift for clients and your clients might even send you a copy. So again, Renee, thank you so much for joining us today on the Human Centric Investing Podcast.

It’s a pleasure to be here, thank you.

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.

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