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As AI continues to transform financial planning, what makes a great advisor valuable in a world where technology can increasingly provide the answers?
In this episode of Financial Behavior Thought Leaders, Mary talks with Carl Richards, creator of the New York Times Sketch Guy column and a longtime financial planner, about the deeply human side of financial advice. Carl explores why AI isn’t necessarily a threat to advisors—it’s a reminder of what has always made great financial planning valuable: human connection, presence, and the ability to help clients feel differently about their money.
The conversation explores what happens when clients move beyond technical solutions and begin to experience greater clarity, confidence, and peace of mind. Carl shares why advisors need to create the conditions for clients to slow down, let their guard down, and have deeper conversations about what really matters.
Carl also discusses practical ways advisors can use AI to enhance their work—from overcoming the “cold start” of a blank screen to recognizing patterns in past financial plans—while protecting the time and attention needed for meaningful client connection.
Notable quote
"You're getting paid for your presence."
Key takeaway
As technology makes financial solutions increasingly accessible, advisors have an opportunity to focus even more deeply on what technology can't replicate: human connection, presence, listening, and the ability to help clients feel understood. The future of financial planning isn't about choosing between technology and humanity—it's about using technology to create more space for meaningful human conversations.
This episode is a reminder that the most valuable part of financial planning may not be the solution itself, but the experience of helping someone feel clearer, calmer, and more confident about their financial life.
Resources & Links:
Hi, welcome back to Financial Behavior Thought Leaders. I'm Mary, and this podcast takes you behind the scenes with top speakers in financial services. This season, we're focusing on the future of financial conversations, how you trust, communicate, and decision making are evolving and what that means for the way we engage with money and work in our lives. So whether you're in financial services, you're planning events, or you're simply navigating financial decisions, you're in the right place. Make sure and subscribe so you don't miss a conversation.
Today we're exploring how good advisors stand out in the day and age of AI. And I should correct myself, artificial intelligence. So, Carl, we'll start there. I'm so glad to be joined by Carl Richards, creator of the New York Times Sketch Guy column and one of Financial Behavior Keynote Group's speakers. Carl spent over 25 years in financial planning and hundreds of keynotes, turning complicated many conversations into simple sketches. Thanks, Carl, for joining.
Carl Richards:
Thanks, Mary. Super just honored and always enjoy talking with you.
Mary Bell Carlson:
Same. Okay, so let's deal in. I I do wanna use the word AI and then I'd love for you to take it from there. But how AI is at a space now that it can build a portfolio in seconds. What are you seeing change in how advisors think about their own value and what we need to be paying attention to?
Carl Richards:
Yeah, so interesting. I I don't I mean, let me just try like here's here's what I'm interested in. Like if you are listening or watching this, just try something for a minute. I just want you to pay attention just for a second to how like the reaction you're
Body has, and what I'm actually looking for is the reaction your nervous system has to two different phrases. Right? Like just tell me the reaction you have. And maybe even try to, and Mary, we'll just do this with you and everybody else can play along. Like, maybe even try to tell me how it, like, where and how does it feel? And I'll ask you more questions. Like, if it was a color.
Mary Bell Carlson:
Okay.
Carl Richards:
What color would it be? If it was a texture, how would the texture feel? So here's two different phrases. So let's start with artificial intelligence.
Mary Bell Carlson:
Blue, deep blue.
Carl Richards:
And what like tell me about like the if you had to describe an emotion, like what what comes up when you hear somebody say artificial intelligence?
Mary Bell Carlson:
Drowning. I don't know if that's a real emotion, but I think for me, when you said that word, I immediately went to the ocean. And the deeper you go in the ocean, the darker it gets. So it's kind of got those layers. And I feel like artificial intelligence, you know, you can be in parts of the ocean that you don't even see land. So the visually side as well, so it's
Mary Bell Carlson:
vertical as well as horizontal, or I guess vertical as well as horizontal.
Carl Richards:
And how does that how does that f that type 'cause I you could say ocean to my wife and she would have she would describe to you the feeling she would get and but what feelings are what feeling are we talking about when you say ocean? The kind of ocean Yeah. Overwhelming. What else overwhelm? What else beyond overwhelming?
Mary Bell Carlson:
Overwhelming. For me, the overwhelming. And that's where I think the word drowning kind of came in is like like I'm someone that likes to to to put things in finite position, explain things in a very tangible way. And you know, X plus or one plus two equals three. And I think a lot of advisors sit in that world, right? Like we need facts. Where are the facts? And yet we're living in a day and an age where
Mary Bell Carlson:
It's relative.
Mary Bell Carlson:
Yeah.
Mary Bell Carlson:
Yeah, and can't keep up. I think that's where the overwhelming comes back in. Can't keep up.
Carl Richards:
Yeah.
Okay, great. So now just like reset, like palate cleanse, like whatever you'd like if you had some lemon sorbet, you could just like and so then like how what experience do you have somatically like in your body when I say human wisdom?
Mary Bell Carlson:
Okay.
Mary Bell Carlson:
Hmm. Okay, so that one goes the opposite. Yellow is the color. And the feeling, and again, I don't know if I'm hitting the feeling words right, but for me the first word that came to my mind was light. Like intelligence, light, warmth. Just the opposite.
Yeah, I I I don't know what any of that means except to know that like I feel different. Like and and I and I'm gonna just
Carl Richards:
My sense is, and I think I could back this up. My sense is that what we're really doing for clients, and we've always been doing this. This is this is artificial intelligence is just is not a threat, it's a reminder. And the reminder is what makes real financial planning valuable.
Is this deeply human connection? And I think what's actually happening if we got underneath the hood is everybody in the world right now is revved up. I just a little more anxious, a little more like it does. I don't know that it has, I'm not pointing at artificial intelligence as the reason for that at all. I'm just saying, like the news, the speed, the pace, everybody at least in in the United States, sort of revved up, and I would say.
Carl Richards:
much of the world. Like you can't even look at the front page of a your local paper without like and the nervous system, like if you got if you're full throttle, you know, that's how I ended up a totally broken human moving to New Zealand.
Carl Richards:
And what I think the reminder of the sort of deeply human value of the work that a real financial planner does is you're actually getting these these people we love that we call clients.
To feel differently. Right? And until we can convince the nervous system that it's okay, right? You're safe. You don't, there's not a lion in every bush. You don't need to stay full throttle. Until we can convince the nervous system, we're gonna have, and what we run around saying is advice adherence problems, right? Like we'll we can build the spreadsheet all day long.
Mary Bell Carlson:
Right.
Carl Richards:
We can prove to them a million ways that they're fine and they're still revved up. Why? Because we are humans and our nervous system doesn't know the difference. And so, like I again, I'm not saying that we should run around saying that to clients. I'm saying what the reminder is is when somebody walks into your office and you create the type of container because of the consistency of the experience, the look and feel of the office, like the
The brand, the stuff you put in front of them. But most importantly, because of your deep presence, and I'm gonna say, like, the more present you are and the more clear you are in your own mind, the more settled. Like, think of a a snow globe. Like that's what everybody feels like right now, the shook up snow globe. Imagine, like, imagine the value of your ability to say,
Mary Bell Carlson:
Constantly.
Carl Richards:
Hey, can we set that down for a minute? And what happens when the snow globe settles? That's what AI is reminding us of. Now, how you do all of that, right, is through obviously the technical piece of your job creates the conditions where that experience can be can be had. Like you can't do this without being a technical rock star and having the biggest calculator and all of that stuff. That's that's that's important.
But the reminder I think AI is pointing us to is now people can do that anywhere. They they can have a a shook up snow globe for free anywhere. Right? Now, if I can take those same incredibly important tools, the math and the science of all the work we do, and I can blend it with a deep sense of felt, a deep felt sense of presence.
Okayyness. Like when you hear when I hear clients, now listen, you gotta understand that I the benefit I've had over the last 20 years is I'm talking to advisors and I'm also talking to clients. Like I I've I get to talk to both sides. I think I'm having more conversations about money than anybody. I don't know. Who knows? I just don't on both sides. And I feel like I'm often the the Lorax.
Mary Bell Carlson:
On both sides of the coin. Yeah, right.
Carl Richards:
Where I speak for the tree, it's because the trees and the trees are the advisors. And then I often am the one translating from the people to the back to the advisors. And what the people are telling me is when they meet with a real financial, like when I talk to somebody who has like a five a sometimes it's short, 12 months, but often when I'm talking to people who have like three to five year plus relationships with their financial planners, the words they use, I say, geez, that's cool. What, what, like, what's the value to you?
Carl Richards:
They don't say insert presenting problem. They don't say, I rolled over my four one K. they helped me buy life. They don't say that. They say, gosh, you know, I just don't worry about it anymore. Or, man, I every time I go meet, every time I go meet with Richard, I feel quiet. Like they'll use wacky words. And that's been going on forever. Like you they came to you with a presenting problem. you know, we just inherited a bunch of money.
Carl Richards:
You greet that with empathy and you play a series of righteous tricks on them. Righteous tricks are always in service of the client. So that two to three years from now, so you treat the presenting problem. You got a tax issue. You got a portfolio problem. Like what? Yes, you know what we do that here. 100% we do that here. But you in your head are like, Yeah, we do that here, but like what we really do is go seven more layers deep to help you understand. And then let's say that three or four years later, they
Come out the other end of the financial pornography detox program, you've taken them through, and they start telling their friends, and they don't say, they helped me with my taxes. They say, my gosh, I've never felt more relaxed with my money before. Or I I peace of mind. Like try marketing that to somebody. Like they don't even know they that you could buy that. So to me, that's a very long-winded answer to like that's becoming.
Mary Bell Carlson:
Right. Right.
Carl Richards:
increasingly important every day, your value actually hasn't changed really. It's just we're just getting a a more pronounced reminder of it.
Mary Bell Carlson:
So you started out this visioning and like now that I have a picture in my mind, there's a I wanna explore that a little more with you. So if you've got the sun and the ocean together, to me, what I just envisioned too is the sun is actually the thing that's giving life and light even to the ocean below, right? To all the animals and things like they're needing that. And if you use that sun as human wisdom and the ocean being AI.
Like the human wisdom part of it is the thing giving light and life to the artificial side. And that to me is that benefit, right? Like that is who you are. The other part that I was thinking there is there's a connection where the sun meets that. And that connection piece, and I think that I mean that's what you've spent your life talking about, is making connections. Just had a a conversation with someone the other day that said.
Carl Richards:
Sure.
Mary Bell Carlson:
Hey, I just had we know we're one of three financial planning firms that this client's looking at, right? It's a big merge. They're wanting the assets from the client. And we're gonna send this awesome gift basket. Do you think that gift basket will help us land this next client? Help me understand. Like, where would you recommend?
that connection piece for someone we've talked about someone that's established. What about early on? How do you really gift basket, no gift basket, you and I know that doesn't matter. Where's the connection part really matter?
Carl Richards:
Yeah, I I think the s a after the table stakes of knowing what you're doing. Right, like knowing how to use the calculator, the single most important thing is developing the ability for somebody to quickly feel different in your presence. And and and that is something that can be practiced. And I think it's I like a word we could use is is
presence or paying attention, but creating the conditions where somebody can finally let their guard down around money, that makes the difference. Like that that it it turns out you're not getting paid for your solutions. You're getting paid for your presence.
Mary Bell Carlson:
Mm. Yeah.
Carl Richards:
That does not devalue the solutions, by the way. But you're you're getting paid for your presence. Everybody has the solutions now. They're available at now they may not be the right ones and they may not be the most optimal ones. And like we could argue all day about that stuff and that there's some truth to that. But your clients don't know that. They don't know the difference between honestly, they don't know the difference between a 75% good solution and the 99.7% good solution. Like that that once we get up in that 70, 80 percent range, like
Once you get to good enough, no client's gonna ever know the difference. And w I wish they would. And I and I know a lot of people listening are trying to optimize for the last ten basis points, and I think that's part of our job. That's great. And it doesn't really matter unless they f unless they feel let me tell this is an interesting story. I d and this happened like I don't know how long ago. It was more than five years ago. I think it was almost a decade ago.
Mary Bell Carlson:
Good enough, yeah.
Mary Bell Carlson:
Yeah. Yeah.
Carl Richards:
I have a friend who runs a really, really successful firm and he's done a lot of work around the whole place feels deeply designed. Everything about it. The website, the way they dress, the food they have, when they the snacks, everything feels and it's all designed around the idea of like, and I think you see some of this from the K-State study on how to set up your office. It's really designed to give everybody a chance to exhale a bit.
And my friend had this and he's also very, very proud of their investment process. And they that actually, this was, you know, let's just say it was 10 years ago. This was a time when a lot of us thought that having access to a particular type of investment process without naming it, you know, that's like evidence based, you know, all of that stuff. That having access to that was actually like we thought that was a core part of our value. And so we'd go around telling everybody.
Mary Bell Carlson:
Yeah, yeah.
Carl Richards:
And he had a client come in, it was a a woman who had just sold her business. And as I recall, it was like fifteen to twenty million dollars. And she came and she brought her adult children with her. And she met with three or four. And you can imagine with fifteen or twenty million dollars, you're getting in you you have access to all the names. And she'd met with five or six different firms. And she called my friend, whose name was Matt, and said, Hey, w you know, we've got good news. We'd love to work with you guys. And and then she said,
Mary Bell Carlson:
Right.
Carl Richards:
But I want you to know something. It's not because of that investment process you're so proud of. It's actually in spite of it. Like the reason we're working with you is because of the way you made me feel. And the more importantly, the way you made my adult children feel. So I that was a decade ago. And I remember just being sort of like back then I used to share that story at conferences and workshops and be like, what do we do with that?
Mary Bell Carlson:
in spite of it.
Mary Bell Carlson:
yeah.
Carl Richards:
And now I think we're much further along and now we're understanding like you know what you know you do with that is like you met you practice. How do you like if you're meeting in person, like how how how how do you when they walk in the door, what do they feel? When they sit down with you. And again, a big part of this feeling is you're you better like I I sometimes miscommunicate this and it's my fault. But I'm also talking about being a technical rock star.
Mary Bell Carlson:
Mm.
Carl Richards:
That creates the conditions that you can that's part of when people feel safe and secure, is they know you know what you're doing. But that to me is that it's not about the gift basket, as you pointed out. It's more about, wow, I gotta ask questions I'd never been asked before. Like I want them walking to the car afterwards thinking, geez, that's the first time I've ever talked about money that way. That's the first time anybody ever asked me. That's the first time I felt.
Mean we overuse this phrase like seen, right? Like I I I felt like that person really understood me. Well, how does that happen? Well, you practice the questions you ask. You practice listening carefully. You practice slowing down. You practice pausing. If you're doing it virtually, you practice being here sometimes instead of here, right? Maybe even your maybe even Mary's down here. This feels much different than this, right? And so
Mary Bell Carlson:
Up here. Yeah. Yeah.
Carl Richards:
You you know, you you you you think a little bit about about lights and what's in the background and you how you're dressed and all of those things that we sort of sometimes are like, I'm a financial planner, that stuff's doesn't matter. No, it matters a lot, right? Just like if you showed up at the brain surgeon for your eight-year-old daughter, if they were wearing a tie-dye doctor jacket, you'd be like, Hey, cool, I'm into the Grateful Dead too, but I'm not sure.
You just that brain surgeon just put one barrier between you and trust. So that's how I think about that. I would get deeper into my presence practice, whatever that means for you. I would practice asking really good questions. I'd practice on my spouse, my partner, my kids. I would take classes that helped me with communication. Again, assuming you're already a technical rock star.
Mary Bell Carlson:
Well, and you use AI yourself. Like we've talked about that and how much it's become a part of your life. So where is that how do you use it? I guess. How does that part of it really help you enrich the deeper side?
Carl Richards:
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean I use it in any any way that is not this. Right? Like so if I have to if I have to I use it a l I use some really like I mean we've spent a lot of time and we've actually been doing it for more than a decade. Like we built a an entire data my CO started building a data a catalog of all of my work ten years ago and we didn't really know why.
Mary Bell Carlson:
Connection.
Carl Richards:
It just felt like a smart thing to do. Like I I own an intellectual property business. Where's the intellectual property? I don't know. It's in the notebook. It's there. Okay, what if we put it all in one database? So every sketch, everything I've ever said, every recording, every podcast I've ever been on that people would give us a recording of, every 1532 episodes of Behavior Up Radio, 500 500 columns of the New York Times, like all the morning star, everything is loaded in that database.
Mary Bell Carlson:
Mm-hmm.
Carl Richards:
And so we didn't know why we were doing it. Well, we did know why. We wanted someplace that had a catalog of all the stuff. I actually remember when Bob Dylan sold his catalog, I remember thinking, where's my catalog? Not that I would ever be able to set I mean eighty million dollars eighty million dollars would be nice, but it just seemed like a good idea to have a catalog. If you run an intellectual property business, where's the inventory? Where's the inventory? So so all's that that is all that to say, like we've we've spent a lot of time on the J curve.
Mary Bell Carlson:
You and Bob Dylan.
Mary Bell Carlson:
Yeah. Yeah.
Carl Richards:
Meaning like any use of any use of a new tool it gets worse before it gets better. And this go like try teaching your I mean, is anybody trying to teach their kids to do the dishes? Like it's just easier to do the dishes. But you know, you you just do them yourself, right? Then okay, I'll do them with them. And this man, this is getting worse. This is taking me more time, more. And then one day something magic happens, the kid knows how to do the dishes. And you're like, that's great. And the AI tool. So here's some practical places.
Mary Bell Carlson:
With them. Yeah.
Yeah, that's true.
Ha ha ha.
Mary Bell Carlson:
Okay.
Carl Richards:
Anytime any cold start problem, like staring at a blank screen, there's something really valuable. And some people, part of their creative process, you don't want to remove the cold start problem. It makes you but for me, it was really helpful to not wonder, like for instance, any email that I'm responding to that I don't know how to respond to, I'll ask. And luckily, I've got an AI tool with 12,000 pieces of data in it.
Mary Bell Carlson:
Mm-hmm.
Mary Bell Carlson:
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Carl Richards:
That I can say that sounds exactly like me when I query it. So we've trained it really carefully. I I I went through a hundred question questionnaire that took me a couple of days actually to be like, I like that word, I don't like that word. We've we we we've trained it. So now I can say, hey, I don't know how to reply to this email. Give me three ideas. And then it just gets me started. Like I don't, I don't copy and paste those, although some of them are getting really close. Sound exactly like me. content creation.
Mary Bell Carlson:
Mm-hmm.
Carl Richards:
You know, wondering about like I for any sort of calculation or spreadsheet, why not ask just to get started? So cold start problem is a big deal for me. if I was a planner, I would find a secure safe way to load in anonymized plans, like so without, you know, personal information. Cause all and I I know some planners who've done this, which is just amazing. So they've loaded
Mary Bell Carlson:
Yeah, yeah. Okay.
Carl Richards:
you know, five hundred recommendations they've made over the years. So the fact pattern minus any identifying information, the fact pattern, and then the recommendation. So now when they have a new fact pattern, they can just load the fact pattern in. And what what are like what is a financial plan if not pattern recognition? And I can at least get the benefit. All we're doing, we're not
Mary Bell Carlson:
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mary Bell Carlson:
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Carl Richards:
All we're doing is tapping into something that we didn't have the ability to tap. I can tap into five hundred.
Of my custom written plans to see patterns that I may miss. And it can give me a list of seven bullet points for me to consider so that I can then go, my gosh, I wouldn't have even thought of that. That's really helpful. And now I can go write my custom plan if I if I want to, if that's what I do. So any to any place where a database, I mean, this is the way I think about it too.
Mary Bell Carlson:
Mm-hmm.
Carl Richards:
You we've all I mean, actually a lot of people probably haven't had this experience, but I don't know if you did, Mary, but when you went to the library and you would say, I'm looking for a book like, go to go to a independent bookstore and just tell them, like, I kind of like Kurt Vonnegut, and I read this book a little while ago, and I read that one, and I didn't like that one. And they're gonna be like, follow me. And they take you to like third aisle, bottom row, and they pull out and they're like, read this.
Mary Bell Carlson:
Yeah, right.
Carl Richards:
That's all I'm saying is like, why not have the best librarian in the planet that can serve up intelligence to you so that then you can do your job. And part of your job is still knowing exactly what all those recommendations were based on. I could still do it longhand.
Mary Bell Carlson:
Sure. You can still go the card catalog and try to find it yourself. Yeah.
Carl Richards:
You can still do do the whole thing, right? And then you still write the thing and now you get to spend more time being like deeply present. Hey, did we get it? Did this actually reflect what you were looking for? Is there anything that misses that we missed here? What what what else how does that make you feel? Like we can be deeply present now with the client because we've we've we've i and this may allow us, maybe, if scale's important. And I don't think it it's certainly not to me, but
Mary Bell Carlson:
Mm.
Carl Richards:
If scale is important, maybe this allows us to to have a an impact on with more people, maybe. Maybe it allows us to deepen our impact with fewer people. Maybe it just allows us to have a little bit of free time. Like I use that for I don't think it's so I can suddenly 10X my if I hear that word one more time. Like I so that's that's how I think about AI.
Mary Bell Carlson:
Mm.
Mary Bell Carlson:
Ha ha ha.
Well, and slow down the slow globe snow globe, right? Like let let the snow fall and just let it be.
Carl Richards:
Yeah. Yeah. Just settle settle in. Sometimes I think about the visual that was given to me recently was like a high alpine lake that at dusk. And for those of you listening, if you've ever been like in the mountains, this this works not in the mountains too, but my favorite version is the mountains, like a small alpine lake.
At dusk, you're looking across the lake at the ridgeline behind, and there's you can see the outline, the silhouette of all the pine trees. They're black because it's dusk, and the sky behind you is like inky, inky blue, like starting to get, and the moon's coming up, and the lake is perfectly still. Like that clarity.
That stillness is what clients they they're never gonna use those words, but that's that's what draws them to the type of financial planning I am the only kind of financial planning I'm interested in. There are other kinds, like it's fine. If if none of this resonates with you, it's totally fine. Like, but this is the only thing I'm interested in. When you throw a pebble in that lake, it does not ignore it. Pretend that it's not there, you know, treat it as an objection to be overcome.
It responds with the perfect amount of energy. It's just a pebble response and then it goes right back to perfectly still. If you throw a bigger rock in there, it's gonna do the it's gonna respond with the per it'll be my bigger response, but the perfect and then it's gonna settle right back down. Like if you could do that with a cloud markets, news, something happened in your life, you're just the late. They're mad at you because they think you made a mistake.
Mary Bell Carlson:
Sure.
Mary Bell Carlson:
Driving. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Carl Richards:
Like if you could just respond with that same level and that's why I think these tools we're only using these tools to the degree that it allows us to be more deeply human.
Mary Bell Carlson:
So let me put you in a different seat. You just you've got advisors in the room. Let's pretend you're the advisor of the room that just heard this speech. What would you want those advisors, how do you want them to feel when they walk out of this keynote? How would they respond to that?
Carl Richards:
Sure.
Carl Richards:
It I just I mean, I don't know if I can pull this off, but I I just want people to feel
deeply assured of their
value in the world because of their ability to connect with other humans. And and there's a couple versions of that. One is like deeply assured of their value in the world because of their ability to relieve anxiety or pressure that people feel. And what I hope they would do if they walked out, I'm hoping there's a break right after the keynote, and I hope they go on a walk. And I like I hope like can we
Instead of being revved up at a conference, which we mostly are, and in our heads, could we remember what it's like to feel? And that's and and I we've I've been asked to do this for over fifteen years now. Like one of the common requests I get from event organizers is, especially like maybe like a corporate event,
They'll say something like, they don't use these words, but I asked I repeat it back to them this way. Like, there's a professional self-esteem issue in our profession. And it's because we're always hammered by like nobody really knows what a real financial planner does. Like your father-in-law doesn't even know. They still ask you, What did the market do today? Like, and then the news, right? And then AI and robo advice, and like, why do I need you? And so often we that.
Mary Bell Carlson:
Mm-hmm.
Carl Richards:
our our sense of our value gets eroded. And I feel like that's accelerating because of all the other all the talks you hear at conferences about if you don't get on the bandwagon, you're gonna be like your job's being eaten. Like I just want people to feel the opposite. And because it's true, I can't think of a time when the job of creating the container for a client
Mary Bell Carlson:
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mary Bell Carlson:
The fear based. Yeah.
Carl Richards:
Again, like not language we use with clients, but creating the container for a client's nervous system to settle just a bit and they can go, I feel okay. I can't think of a better job right now.
Mary Bell Carlson:
Well, and on the opposite end, that means I have to create a container for my own nervous system to regulate so that I'm not Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I I think that's the beauty of it. I literally love the analogy of the lake and the rock, regardless of what the rock is or the size of the rock, if the rock is AI or whatever, and just letting it settle, right? Like you talk about throwing grenades all the time, like a talk conversation grenade and then letting it resonate, letting it go deeply in.
Carl Richards:
Yeah, that's a whole that's a whole other, yeah. The whole other yeah.
Mary Bell Carlson:
And figuring out what's next. I love it.
Carl Richards:
Yeah. I'm pretty just one last thing on that. I'm pretty convinced that you want to be a better financial planner, be a better human. And that's one thing that's the only thing that's kept me doing the work I'm doing. The only thing that has kept I don't want anything to do with money. I don't really want anything to do with financial like I don't I I I just like I could not like if somebody asked me one more time about a correction or about Roth IRA conversions, like I don't care about that at all. You know what I care about? It's humans. And the coolest part about the work we all get to do is that.
Mary Bell Carlson:
Yeah.
Mary Bell Carlson:
Yeah.
Carl Richards:
Everything you do for yourself, right? Your ability to pay attention, your ability to be present, your ability to be clear-minded about risk and how you make decisions, your ability to pay attention to all those things, your ability to have a conversation, ask really good questions, all of those things. Your your ability to be clear about your own. Like if you I'm actually quite surprised at the number of us that haven't taken time to get clear about what matters to us.
Mary Bell Carlson:
Internally. Yep. Yeah.
Carl Richards:
Again, but if we do that, if we go through that exercise ourselves, it the coolest thing is then it leverages out to a hundred families. And that to me is why I think like the work we do at the Society of Advice isn't about being a better financial planner, to be honest. It's about being a better human. And wink wink, we know that means that you're a better planner.
Mary Bell Carlson:
Yeah.
Mary Bell Carlson:
Yeah. The impact is there. Yeah.
Mary Bell Carlson:
Well, not only does it resonate to other families, a hundred families, it resonates to your family. Right. Like this improves not just your business life, this improves your personal life and every part of you. Because you're not just asking better questions to your clients. You're actually asking better questions at home.
Carl Richards:
That's right. Yeah.
Carl Richards:
Yeah.
Carl Richards:
Yeah, yeah, that's and that's been that's been a twenty year process for me, if you asked my wife. Like you know, being a like kind of like a a superhero out there and a and a mess in here. but that work has paid off at the house, starting to pay off at the house. But it it's the same work I'm doing with
Carl Richards:
Advisors is the same work I do with some humans that still ask me for financial advice but aren't clients. And I just think, like, look, entrepreneurship, which many of us are, and financial planning. I I would go so far as to say it's a it's a spiritual practice because you you get a chance to bump up against, you know, you get a chance to feel like how am I going to respond to this? Wow, there's a disturbance in the force.
Mary Bell Carlson:
Mm-hmm.
Carl Richards:
This person's coming with a bunch of anxiety at me. Do we even realize it? Do we realize the energy we're bringing into the room? I didn't know that until like five years ago. Somebody pulled me aside after a board meeting and said, Do you realize the energy you brought into the board meeting? And I was like, No. And it wasn't good. And I was like, No, I I didn't I didn't have any idea. And he's Yeah, you can you think about that next time? I was like, Wow, how many of us think about that before we open the conference room door?
Mary Bell Carlson:
Yeah, yeah.
Carl Richards:
You know, I didn't even I was so hijacked I didn't even know that was a thing. But now I do and which means I get to realize how bad I am at it. And I get to realize how often I get to practice. And the more I practice, the better I get at it, even though I'm still bad. And it's a it's it's actually not about being good at it. It's about getting the the my meditation
Mary Bell Carlson:
For sure.
Carl Richards:
My meditation teacher, I was like, I'm so bad at this. I was like, it I like I can't even count to ten during a twenty minute I like I lose track at six and then I'm like, no. He's like, Well, that actually means you get more opportunities to return than the rest of us. You know, like I may only get two in twenty minutes, you get a hundred. And I'm like, cool, I'm really good at this. So like it's not about it's not about getting spun out, it's about are you do you have the ability to return?
Carl Richards:
You have the ability to return. And so every time somebody hits me with some negative news or I open Instagram or or a client comes in, even if I get spun out, the question now is like, can I return to the still lake in the out in the out in the mountains? Like, can I return? Yeah. So I don't know if any of that's helpful. It's sure fun to talk about though.
Mary Bell Carlson:
Beautiful. Beautiful.
I love it. Well, if you are looking for a speaker who brings this kind of clarity to your audience, you can learn more and book Carl at financialbehavior keynote.com. Carl, this has been fantastic. I love the images that you've brought to us. And quite frankly, you've summed up my last question is be more human. Like, what is that one takeaway that I will bring into my next conversation? Be more human, be more present. Do that inner work. I love it.
Carl Richards:
Yeah. Yeah. Cheers. Thanks, Mary. Yep.
Mary Bell Carlson:
Thank you so much. Join us next time on Financial Behavior Thought Leaders. We'll see you next time.
