Welcome back, everybody. We haven't had a money mindset here in about a month or two, and I'm very excited to get Coda Garrett on. We have been chopping it up back and forth on Twitter. I followed him for a while. And he is here today to, we're going to attack our industry differently and allow you as listeners to get a insight into it, but also what's best for you, what's best overall, and the insight of. The mindset of planners and what's got going on. So Cody, welcome with measure twice financial planning and some educational stuff, which we'll get to, but

Cody Garrett, CFP®:
0:32

welcome. Absolutely. Thanks so much for inviting me. It's fun to have conversations that go beyond what we're doing in our little offices here. So I love spreading the word. I'm focused on impact over revenue, which is a big part of why you do this, right? You want to. Really show you want inclusion. You also want affirmation to not just be within the walls of our firms and our own heads. It's good to collaborate and get out of our heads for a minute while sharing as much expertise and experience we can with our, with your listeners. Wait.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
1:01

You're a CFP and you don't care about money. Is that what I just

Cody Garrett, CFP®:
1:04

heard? People over profit, bro.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
1:07

I love that. So I, like I said, we were just down in nitrogen and I was speaking and I went around and just asked people those questions basically, and got a sense of, what is people over money? What does that mean? What does it, what does that actually equate to? And ultimately we're not saying that we want 0 because, we just don't like money. No, but if you care and focus on people more. The money will come, but if you focus just on the money, now, what are you doing? You might be taking shortcuts measuring once, if you will you might be taking advantage of people. You might be doing things that are against your character because the dollar matters. So I love how you just said that.

Cody Garrett, CFP®:
1:46

Cool. Yeah. It's definitely that case of when you, when revenue is your metric of success, just like you said, in terms of You don't just manipulate, clients and manipulate consumers, customers, but you also manipulate your own family sometimes. And how you here's a big one in terms of your calendar, right? A lot of business owners, they're trying to fit their family into their business rather than fitting their business into their family. And when you're chasing dollars, guess which one comes first, right? Yeah, the business. So yeah I really focus on not control because I know that there's a lot of things that are out of our control, but command effectively of I can command. We talked earlier before we started recording today that I've decided I'm not going to take I'm not going to have any. Any meetings on my calendar or any like really work on my calendar, things that are timed specific before 10 AM, right? Because I was realizing that as we know, maybe we'll talk about physical, mental, spiritual, relational, and financial wellness or interrelated. And if you're, again, if you're chasing that almighty dollar at the end of the day, if you're only focused on your financial health, financial wellness, revenue results, outcomes, what happens is you end up with all the money in the world. Let's think small business owners. At this point, you end up with all this value, great valuation of your company, all the money in the world. When you sell your company or merger acquisition, you turn around your physical health, your mental health, your relationships, your spiritual practices are all gone because all you focus on is that dollar sign.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
3:17

Yeah, let's be real. You can't take it with you, right? You, the most thing that you can leave to anybody is legacy and legacy does not mean money, okay? I want everyone to know that. Legacy does not equal dollars, and that's what you're attesting to there. If you focus everything on the dollar, congratulations, you're gonna end up with bad health and end up dying and then what? What is there? That's not life. And that is very important. I was interviewing Bill Semonite down there, and we were talking about retirement planning and how our industry used to be so focused on retirement planning. And this younger generation, not gonna put labels on there, but this younger generation doesn't really care about retirement, the traditional retirement. We care about living. And being in the now and in the present, yes, we have social media and we're always on our phones, but we care about living now, traveling, being home, being with kids, working from home, et cetera, not focused on age 65, 67, and that changes your mindset, that changes your focus, it shouldn't be about money. Just live your life and have it incorporated within how you want to live your

Cody Garrett, CFP®:
4:23

life, right? I actually think that's what financial planning is, which is there's two islands though. So everybody visualize in your head There's two islands here The first one is what a lot of people are focused on which is I call your comprehensive financial ecosystem Everything in your life with a number on it, right people are focused on income assets debt Taxes, you know all those technical quantitative things. That's one island A lot of people just live on that Island the whole time, when they're thinking about planning and thinking even long term, but there's this other Island it's qualitative. It's your family's unique values and desired outcomes. It's the things that the money supports, but it's not the money itself. It's your ideal lifestyle. I know Rameet Sethi calls it your rich life, right? Rich, not meaning money, but rich in terms of how you spend your time and energy, not just your resources. But you have these two islands, quantitative and qualitative. Financial planning is the bridge between the two. So I think anybody, again I don't believe that you have an intentional life, even financially, if you haven't built that bridge between. Your money and your life. Oh,

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
5:28

agreed. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. I always talk about like investments. Investments is a big deal. Right. Everyone talks about it. My return on investment, everything has to deal with investing. And I always tell everyone's like your plans here. Investing's just a piece. It's just a, it's just a part of your plan. It is an avenue for you, but it is not end all be all. I don't care if you get a thousand percent, if you only have 50 cents in there or 0, guess what great return, but it did nothing for you. And that's simple fact is that's just what planning is. And as business owners, I think business owners understand that a little more because they spend more time reinvesting in their business as opposed to outside investing. And I think that mindset of being able to take care of your internal investment, whether that's you personally or your business is when you get those actual returns in your living life the way you want to, as opposed to, hoping that my 10 million by the time

Cody Garrett, CFP®:
6:26

you retire. And you're exactly right in terms of that's really going to the output versus input. That we're focused on returns, by the way, a lot of output and result is not in our control, right? And your thing is about the markets and

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
6:40

stuff are not in our control. I don't,

Cody Garrett, CFP®:
6:42

I don't understand. So that's the thing is that we focus on output of performance, but if you don't focus on input, which is your disciplined contributions to those accounts or district disciplined actions, you're taking your business to do marketing in all forms, not just quote unquote sales. But in terms of like building, building a brand, building I, I very much am a believer of there's a book called the go giver by by Bob Berg URG that there's a quote that I always paraphrase, which is giving is a way of life, not a strategy. Which is the more you give, the more you receive. But here's the thing that you don't give. This is input, right? So input to me is the definition of kindness is giving to others without expecting something in return. Something you mentioned earlier was that idea of, and you don't run a business to not make money. Literally the IRS says you're not in business if you don't have a profit at the, like, why are you even in business if you're not making money? But there's very much this idea that giving without expecting anything in return. There's a, there's an irony in it, right? When you're not chasing the dollar, you end up giving not just intentionally in terms of your business, but when you give like with an more of an authentic self, people see that, right? So when you, I don't know about you, but when's the last time a business.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
8:02

I don't remember, I don't know,

Cody Garrett, CFP®:
8:06

actually, I don't have it, but how about this? So if a business did give you something without expecting something in return, what would you think, what would you think about that business? Oh,

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
8:15

I'd probably be the one to leave a review. I would tell my friends about it because they just treated me. Ultimately, that's what you want,

Cody Garrett, CFP®:
8:23

right? So you're talking about people don't remember what you did. They remember how you made them feel right. That's very much how I approach business. And ironically. By giving without expecting something in return, I ended up building a business that was 10 X, what I thought it would be and within, three years. So again it's it's funny to like, be surprised after the fact of the financial success being like, my, my plan wasn't to make that much money or to have that, have that many clients, customers, whatever you say but looking back and be like, wow, like I focused on input and the output kind of took care of itself.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
8:58

Absolutely. And you brought up feel, which feels like an emotion and you, but you didn't bring up, hard facts and numbers and accounts. You brought up feel and emotions. Feeling emotions is what drives everybody. I don't care what people say, right? Ultimately, that's what people feel like, what they care for. That's what drives the dollar. Ultimately, why do you believe That business owners, our industry, outside of our industry, don't speak more about the feel good in the emotions of whether it's their business or our society.

Cody Garrett, CFP®:
9:31

Well, success is defined by the ability to create and meet expectations. And our business, when you first come into the business, the first expectation that's defined is that your success is based on assets under management. How like it's all quantitative metrics is how many clients, how many insurance policies, how much money under management. And even when you go through that, like I even have the CFP education books next to me for the financial planning designation, everything in there is just quantitative, it's numbers. They're just now adding like behavioral emotional behavioral elements to education, but our industry is very much like 95 percent of our industry. It's focused on widgets, right? Like how many things can you sell? How many people can you sell? How many products? And that's where I always talk about, not letting the product lead the plan. Our business traditionally has been so focused on transactions, which is which is quantifiable. It feels good. Cause you're like, you can put all that in a spreadsheet. You can put a transaction in the spreadsheet, but the industry is shifting from transactions to relationships. It's going from telling people what to do or doing it for them versus. Recommending, providing personalized education to empower people to make their own well informed decisions, knowing what to do, how to do it, and ultimately why they're doing it in alignment with their life, not your life as the advisor. So this shift from transactions to relationships makes everybody, most everybody in the transactional side of the business, very not just anxious, but also in a way. They feel defensive quickly. I want to share this thing. There's this book called I think it's called like the seven desires of every heart, which talks about there's seven desires that every person has. We have them in varying degrees, but I'm just going to mention these quickly. And think about this on the consumer side, the client side, but also as a business owner, if you're listening to your business owner, think about your desires and the desires of the people that you're serving, those desires are to be heard and understood you'll listen to rather than talk to. Our industry has a history of just telling people what to do and doing it for them, rather than actually pausing, listening, having a genuine curiosity about the people we're serving. Now, it's just about the profits we're serving. I should probably say that twice. If you're listening, rewind, listen to that phrase again. The second desire is the desires to be affirmed of who we are and what we do. So we know words of affirmation. Nice job. Good work. Keep it up. Thank you. How often, in our industry to financial advisors, congratulate people on how far they've come before, before they even started working with the advisor, usually advisors are focused on what they can do for a client, rather than congratulating the client for even getting to the place where they're at a place where they can, feel confident that hiring a financial advisor will provide value to the. The next one is blessed, which isn't necessarily like religiously blessed, but unconditionally love for who you are and not what you do again, if you go back to our industry again, we're so focused on what people have done with their money, technically, quantitatively, that your net worth is your self worth. So it's it's time that we, we show people that they're loved and appreciated for who they are, not just what they do and how much money is in their bank account. The next one is safe, which is a big part of the financial industry, by the way, materially and emotionally secure. We really retirement planning. You talked about. That's usually focused on materially safe. Do I have enough money to retire? And I don't want my last check to bounce. Or, I want to leave money to my kids, like these estate planning things, but we forget the emotionally secure part, right? So yes, material, but also emotionally, I always say that clarity precedes confidence. Everybody, they want the confidence to make well informed decisions, but you first have to have clarity of understanding Hey, not just understanding everything, everything in my life has a number on it. Like understanding like, where is the money? What is the money doing? How is it in alignment with my life, but also understanding is it in a place? Where I can feel like it's actually funny working with clients on the path to retirement. Just typically not every situation, but typically if I'm working with a spouse with a couple, husband and wife, the husband wants freedom and the wife wants security as they move into retirement. The wife wants still wants security, but now the husband wants security for his wife. So there's a shift, there's a shift from being focused on being materially safe to being emotionally secure. I'll go through the rest of these faster so we can get into more depth, but the last desires are to be touched in healthy ways, both sexually and non sexually touched, which is something that, usually financial planners, we're not going to be involved in that except for, by the way. That also means things like, if you're meeting in person, handshakes, on a zoom call, just Hey, like waving. That's almost like a form of like physical touch on a zoom call. He's waving and showing it. Hey we're like, we're in the same room. Like we're in this together. We're close. And the last ones are. There's the desire to be chosen, which means selected on purpose, desired, special, and beloved for who we are. So in our industry, that's very much. I know a lot of financial advisors are very selective about who they serve. A lot of small business owners. I think that's actually, it's ironic, but a lot of people's business owners are trying to be everything to everybody, which ironically is being nobody to nobody because people want to be chosen. People want to be selected. People want to be a part of an exclusive group. So actually serving a niche, whichever business, whichever industry you're in, serving specific people actually makes people feel even more chosen when they're served by you. And then the last one connected to being chosen is now that they're chosen, they want to feel included. So belonging to a community or feeling like they're part of a family, which is another reason to do just like you're doing with a, with videos or podcasts is that. You're not just doing one on one engagements, you're creating a brand, like a really a community where two clients who don't know each other, still feel like they're a part of each other's lives somehow, because you're serving them collaboratively and you're sharing ideas from some clients to the others. Of course, confidentially along the way. So a lot to say there's those seven desires we all have, but I think it's so important that we don't forget that the desires that we have. Every client we serve has those same desires, just in different ways.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
15:54

100 percent and the one that I think ultimately, I don't know which number it was, but ultimately it is when you're talking about security and growth with the husband and wife or male, female, whatever the hell it was, ultimately it comes down to this one question and it is. Am I good? Are we, am I safe? That's what that's what we talk about a lot with my clients is just ultimately you're good. You're in a good spot. You're in a good place and that means more than, yeah, you've got, 1. 3 million in this account. Like it's not a numbers thing. It's not a returns thing. It's, are we good? Are we, can we live like, is everything all right? And that's what people really want to know. And ultimately that's why they hire us, right? From a financial organization standpoint, someone to have their back and third to make the right decisions or help them make the right decisions. And so that's seven you have there, which hopefully we can summarize and highlight.

Cody Garrett, CFP®:
16:54

Well, there's an irony here that people have the desire to feel safe. And usually, usually like they're asked, there's an irony that people who have the desire to feel safe, one reason they want to feel safe is so that they don't get to a point. Let's say financially secure that they never want to get to a point financially where they have to seek help from others financially. They don't want to have to ask their kids for money burden. They don't, this is the quote they use. I don't want to be a burden to my children. I don't want my children to take on another role of being a caregiver for me, especially financially. There's an irony though, that the same people who have a desire to feel safe and not ask for help, you have to acknowledge that they're very, they're being very bold and vulnerable by asking you for help as a financial advisor. It takes a lot of guts. For somebody with the desire to feel safe to, to also ask for help. So I think that we need to respect that. We, and by the way that's a form of affirmation that other desires, we need to affirm people saying, Hey, like what you're doing by asking for guidance. I some people have a hard time with the word word help. But you can say like guidance or, being a a a thought partner, right? Like a collaborator. So that you're, you're not the hero of the story. You're the guide, right? You're the Yoda, not the Luke Skywalker of their story. And that's very much a building a story brand Donald Miller book, by the way but this idea of. Again, like we have to affirm people say, Hey like you have to acknowledge, like you have to thank them for being generous and transparent and vulnerable with you by asking for help to begin with, because asking somebody to help you feel safe is a very hard thing to do. Very hard,

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
18:28

Very hard. And if your planner is listening out there, start doing that. If you're, prospective clients for us and you're thinking about hiring somebody also go into it with that. We know it's tough. It's really hard to come in and to say, Hey, I need help guidance. I don't know what I'm doing. I help, right? Like ultimately that is tough, but a lot of people are in that boat. I'm doing a series here come November, December called 12 days of giving, having planners come in and say a client story. And that story and the whole reason behind it is not because I'm here to have other planners glow about how good they are, nothing to do with that has everything to do with that. These clients are in a position in their life that a lot of other people can relate to. And the ultimate goal is to get you to take that risk, that step to come meet with one of us so that way we can help you. And that is the hardest thing or two hard things in our industry that planners fail out a lot is one showing and providing value and to meeting people where they're at so that they will come to us and speak right. There is way, millions more clients than there are planners that we can't handle. If sometime in this lifetime that flips where people are very comfortable coming to us, there is not enough of us to surf. There's just not, and that'll be an issue at that time. But that is what I do for this podcast. That's what you're doing. Educating. That is our purpose. One of our purposes is to get more people comfortable in order to make sure that they are in their life.

Cody Garrett, CFP®:
20:04

And a big part of that is acknowledging the truth that financial planning is not choosing. A mutual fund or choosing an ETF. I always say that, Google, it's not a financial plan. A mutual fund is not a financial plan. Your spouse is not your financial plan. Your insurance policy is not your financial plan. And I love what you said earlier about investments being a piece of the puzzle. If everybody can visually imagine you just like you've dumped out a puzzle, right? A puzzle, of course, all the pieces fall out of the table. Like just focusing on the investments or just increasing their income or just debt repayment. That's like creating just the border of the puzzle. What happens when you, it's, it feels good to achieve the border of the puzzle. You're like, yes thankfully we didn't lose any of the pieces. Like we've, we found all the border, the borders in place. But guess what? If the, in real life, you don't have the box that it came in that shows you the picture. Imagine if you had puzzle pieces, but no box with a picture on it. You said, Hey, I figured out my investments. I got the border, but you have no idea what the picture actually looks like because you have it connected to all the other pieces. So yeah, I think it's really important that yeah, before people can even feel comfortable that they have to understand that financial planning goes beyond investments, that's a big reason. We've been communicating that as an industry, sadly, for a long time, which is you have to be successful enough with your own money before you can work with me, there's minimums and things like that, which it's more, more so a minimum on compensation than a minimum on the amount of assets managed typically. But that means that pretty much. I imagine pretty much anybody with on average, anybody who doesn't already have a million dollars says to me, thousands of people have told me I don't have enough money to work with a financial planner. It's oh no, you don't have enough money to work with that financial, that investment manager, but you can actually have negative net worth and afford to work with a financial planner. There are ways, but by the way, though, this is the, what's funny is there's a lot more financial planners providing services to those underserved communities. But they're at full capacity, the demand exceeds supply, just like you said, and once the industry realizes that demand exceeds supply that'll be the thing that like pushes them over the edge and says, Hey we need to figure out how to serve these people better. And by the way, without just. Our service being put your money in this account. We'll have this portfolio model and we'll send you a birthday card once a year.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
22:29

Oh man, we could go on and on about the traditional sense of our industry and how just terrible it is, but you nailed that. And I want to attest to more people. There is yes, there are planners that you don't fit with. But there, I guarantee, which we cannot use in our compliance, right? I don't like that word. We're

Cody Garrett, CFP®:
22:49

not talking about performance, so we can guarantee another part. Yeah,

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
22:51

I will guarantee that there is a planner out there for you. And I will also go out there and say, if you follow us, reach out. If you're not a fit for us, I, and you have a list of planners that we pretty sure that you can fit into, and that is something that our industry needs to take the next step in. And that is. Coming together as a network and understanding that we're not in competition with each other

Cody Garrett, CFP®:
23:13

without expecting something in return, right? Free referrals around the globe. Yeah, no

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
23:17

way. Look at that. See, we went full circle there.

Cody Garrett, CFP®:
23:20

It's funny. I, my my financial planning firm is at full capacity. So not accepting future clients. So rather than having a website, that's pretty much useless. Cause I'm not accepting clients. I turned my website into a free referral source. So when people go to my website, measure twice financial. com again, I'm not pitching my business cause I'm not accepting clients. But if you go to work with Cody, it says, Hey, we're at full capacity, but here are a list of financial advisors. You can serve you similarly without any conflict, without any referral fees. Just but I think, yeah even before you get to full capacity, just like you said, like We have to be at a place of understanding that I always say that you're only competing if you're copying somebody else. And since in our industry, we all serve different people differently. There's no such thing as competition. If you have that mindset and yeah, if I'm not a good fit for somebody, like it would be a disservice to just say, just go back out to the wolves and good luck.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
24:10

Awesome. Whoa. Okay. You say you're at full capacity. So what does that mean now? What are you doing? What are you working on?

Cody Garrett, CFP®:
24:16

So that's a great question. A lot of people think capacity means that I'm like burning the candle at both ends, right? That I'm working like that. I like I'm overstressed, overcommitted, but full capacity is intentional. Limited capacity of I've actually limited my capacity for financial planning to only five hours a week. So you're like, well, that's not really full capacity. You're like, well, It is intentional. It's my full capacity. About five hours a week dedicated to my financial planning practice. I have two other businesses within, I would say a lot of people are building a firm. I'm building a brand. So I have an umbrella brand called measure twice. It's trademark brand. It's based off of that phrase measure twice cut once, which is really making sure that your, your decision is the right decision before actually implementing that decision. So people come to me to measure twice before, Hey, I want to make sure we're good before I retire. I want to make sure we're good before we move this money over here. So I have this umbrella measure twice, three companies. Measure twice financial is my financial planning firm. I've limited that to five hours a week. It does about 70, 000 in revenue. And it has about a 90, 90 percent profit margin. So not a bad place to be. And I'll be fully transparent about all this stuff. Cause I think it's important because the transparency is lacking in our industry. So I'm going to just give it all away. The second is rather than just serving clients one on one, I know that the impact of my knowledge, expertise experience should go beyond me. So I created a measure twice planners, which is effectively a way of me sharing how I do everything, what I do, how I do it, why I do it, giving it all away as a subscription, annual subscription it's, there's now over about 30 over 30 hours of educational content specifically for financial advisors to teach them what, teach them, Hey what is it, what's actually contained in a financial planning process. So I show how I review financial documents. How I communicate with clients and I own, by the way, I don't even say the term, my clients, I say, the families I serve, because again, we're going from transactions to relationships. So that's a subscription right now. Again, the pricing is on measure twice planners dot com. I just increased the price because, as you add value, you increase the price naturally. So there are about about 1400 financial advisors that I currently educate on that platform. And then the third business is measure twice money. Which is actually it's teaching consumers, non advisors, how to create a comprehensive financial plan as a family. So how to have deeper conversations as a family but both from a quantitative and a qualitative standpoint, as we talked about those islands. So I'm teaching consumers about how those islands work. And how they can develop a financial plan even before they hire a financial advisor.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
26:55

So do you believe that every family should have a financial planner?

Cody Garrett, CFP®:
27:03

I guess net with the way things stand, I do believe that yes, you should have a third party involved in your financial planning. So it's one of those things where when in my CFP education program, there was a professor who taught estate planning. And he said this great thing, which is everybody has an estate plan. Everybody has an estate plan, but not everybody has an intentional estate plan. So I guess my answer to that would be everybody already has a financial plan. They already have a financial situation and circumstance, right? But not everybody has been intentional with, with every movement of money being aligned with their family's core values and desired outcomes. So I, I do believe that everybody has a financial plan. But yes I think at this point I would have said no. Because traditionally a lot, like a lot of people who need a financial planner, just there wasn't one available to them without selling, like without the product leading a plan, especially in the insurance industry. But at this point, I do believe that everybody everybody would benefit from working with a financial planner at every stage. I've never met with somebody opposite most clients I work with. They say after working with me or just working with a financial planner, they'll go, wow, I wish I would have known this stuff. When I was in my twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, right? I've never heard somebody say, Oh, like I just realized that I, I don't really need financial planning until later on. So yes I do believe at this point in a way, I know there's some caveats there that I think everybody would benefit from being served by a financial planner.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
28:41

Yeah, and I tossed it out to you because the answer that you are, the driven purpose you are doing is the quick answer to yes, right? You have your own practice, you're training other advisors, and then also the public of having one, right? Correct. So I want, I just wanted to see what you would answer there because you're doing it, but there's, there's caveats, obviously I am. Yes,

Cody Garrett, CFP®:
29:03

but yes. And yes, and, but,

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
29:04

but depends I, I believe a hundred percent that everyone should not necessarily in the exact role of planner, but everyone should have a mentor in

Cody Garrett, CFP®:
29:14

life. Yes, you nailed it. Yeah.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
29:16

And if that is on the planning side, or if that is whatever they need to have that person who at least can connect dots. And that's more what I do for my families is I'm more of just like their mentor through this thing of life. I can connect them to where it needs to go. We can get things done. I'm just a planner that decides to do it that way. I believe our industry is moving towards that more to me. That's more of a family office feel and just modernizing it and having that person be able to be like, okay, story, I got in a car accident yesterday. I'm dealing with insurance stuff. I need a new car, right? And cool. All right, well, let's make sure. Are you okay? First of all, no, I'm good. Great. Okay, cool. Are you safe? Are you safe? Thanks for telling me. But there's other things you deal with the insurance. I'm going to go get with the lender. What kind of car do you want? I'll have a test drive set up within 48 hours. If you want to, right? If you want to leave, we already have lending done. You can buy that car, walk out with it. Like though that's more. That quarterbacking and mentor thing, then it really is me worrying about the financial planning. And that's like the type of one person I am, but two, I believe that's where our industry is moving towards is more of that mentorship, less of, advising, which I

Cody Garrett, CFP®:
30:31

really, that's actually, yeah, like I, I love. So yeah you had more of a bold. Yes. So mine was like an italics. My yes was like an italics, but with that said, I have a great example of that. So I, I do not have a financial advisor. Like I have not hired somebody else to manage my money or to give me financial advice, but with a huge caveat that I go to a mental health counselor. Bi weekly I hire, I work with a business coach semi monthly. I have mentors. I have masterminds. So yes, I believe that you do need mentorship in every part. We've talked about, you need a mentor in your physical health, your mental health, your spiritual health, your relationships and your financial wellness. Yeah, so that financial planner, if they just cover your finances. You need to make sure, first of all, I'd say at this point if they're only talking about your money, there are better options out there. I think you, yeah. So financial planners are now understanding that I'm not going to say I'm a therapist, but I need to understand that my role as a financial planner is no longer choosing the right mutual fund. It's being a counselor, a coach, a mentor. And a part of their mastermind community,

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
31:40

a hundred percent like more than a hundred percent. If you could ultimately and no, we aren't therapists. No, we aren't that. But we start off every one of our family sessions prior to even signing them really. And even when we do, it's, I always ask, what's your first money memory. And what is the most financial traumatic event that you've been through that you can think of? i'm not asking for the trauma that led to any of them I'm asking about that event and the whole purpose behind it is I need to understand where you came from Your trauma the things that you've been through. You really understand who you are Right because all of that matters when we're building the plan and dealing with the plan if we don't I'm gonna you know I was on the yesterday but back in the day We used to have binders right financial planners had these giant like things that they would just hand clients and see you later Before we can even build that thing we have to know that. And if we don't, it's just like a diet fad, right? A lifestyle diet is different than I'm going to lose weight in, 30 days on this one diet fad I heard of. If you're just trying to do that little short sprint diet fad thing, what's not going to happen is it's not going to turn into a lifestyle and you're not going to have a healthy lifestyle for long. That is what needs to happen in a financial plan for it to become a lifestyle. And not just a way to reach one certain goal, it needs to become a lifestyle by knowing what you've came from, who you are, and how we can adapt that to go forward.

Cody Garrett, CFP®:
33:11

Well, Stoy, you just transitioned perfectly into I have two trademarks, we talked about measure twice. I have a, I actually have a trademark called keep finance personal and a really good version. I love that you say that if somebody gives you advice without knowing where you came from, they're actually giving you advice based on what they would do, not on what you should do. I always say to give him, to give somebody advice in their best interest, you first have to understand their interest. And a really good example of that is let's say that I reach out to my friend in California and say, Hey, I'm about to go to lunch. Like where, where do you think I should go for lunch? And he goes, Oh, you should go to In N Out Burger. So he gave me advice to go to In N Out Burger, which is not a bad, maybe not a bad suggestion, but guess what? There isn't an In N Out Burger within four hours of me, right? So like to him, he's that's solid advice. Like I just told him to go eat at lunch where I would eat lunch if I could. But that advice actually didn't align with my circumstance. So I see a lot of that. And I also there are two things here. There's this idea of if you're interested in motivational interviewing. Which is we've really been in this place of just telling people what to do based on what we would do, but most people, when they come to us for help, we might assume that they're delegators, but a lot of them are actually validators, which means they already have ideas of what they want to do and what they need to do. But they need to hear it. They need to hear their own words from somebody else. So sometimes I work with people who they come to me, they rather than there's this idea of, do you spend less than you make, or do you make more than you are do you make more than you spend? But this client came in, they were spending more than they made, and they didn't realize that they were, you're spending 4, 000 a month more than they could afford. And rather than telling them, Hey, here are all the, here are all the things you should cut in your budget. I showed them a list of all their transactions, but I completely hid the dollar amounts. And we went down the list and they subjectively said from a zero to a 10, how much subjective value does each transaction provide to you and your family? And what's great about that, they went through all the transactions, zero to 10 at the end. They effectively told me what they were going to cut from their budget based on their own perception of value, rather than me saying, Hey, like I see you spent a thousand bucks at this Mexican restaurant. You should stop eating there so much. Whereas that's the one thing in their budget and their spending that they value at a 10, right? Whereas there are other things that I value as a 10 that they value as a one, right? So should I be giving people advice based on what I would do or what they want to do? So I just think again, but getting to a place where you can provide advice really based on somebody's interest. You have to be willing to spend the time and that's not efficient, but it's very effective when you start spending time with people. And our industry, by the way is traditionally been about doing the least amount of work for the most amount of money that's in the transaction bucket and the relationship bucket. It's about spending the right amount of time with people for the right amount of money. It's a very different dynamic and it's a, it's almost like an entirely different industry.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
36:17

And I, I want to, I'll address that. Like your exercise there. I do it very similar. I don't take out the dollar figures, but we go through each transaction. I just say, how's it feel? What is this? Like how, and they do the same thing, right? They ultimately cut the things that they should cut. But what I wanted to say about our industry how. It's always about as little time and as much money as possible when you do the things that we're doing like that on the front end might be front heavy, but it makes our job a lot easier going forward, which means it's more efficient and a lot less time when things occur and they come up down the line and ultimately that's what we want to do. We want to get people running efficiently and it's their lifestyle. Not just a blunt change because we all know how humans work. If we implement a change immediately, it might work for a couple of weeks, maybe. And then they go right back to what's comfortable and in order to get them to change what's comfortable, we got to recognize that all on the front side. And that's a very heavy situation, which is okay. Which

Cody Garrett, CFP®:
37:17

is, there's something that I'm doing. That's very rare. Not everybody, I'm not saying everybody should do this, but in our industry, we have a tradition of charging people more and more over time. Where I actually charge people less. The second year than the first year because of the amount of time and energy it takes to really build that initial comprehensive understanding of a person. I'm not saying that everybody should do that, but I think again, but we have to come back to just realizing that like efficiency doesn't come first. Yeah. You can create great efficiency moving forward once you have a very good understanding, but again, that's once you've built the puzzle and you see the, you understand, you see the whole landscape in front of you, understand both islands. At that point, you can say, how can we create efficiency, but don't create efficiency in building relationships. Like you have to spend time and effort in genuine curiosity to really understand somebody. And that comes back to

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
38:06

time. This isn't something that can occur overnight. I think our industry gets it wrong a lot where people, cause it's more transactional. Is just here's a plan. Here's this we're done. See you later. Honestly, financial plans. It's a lifetime event. It's a lifetime process. Not a plan. Yeah, correct. It is a process, not a plan. It is a journey with basically no destination at the end. As you die, like

Cody Garrett, CFP®:
38:28

I assumed that, yeah, like we can assume a destination, but. Yeah, you might go like even one degree east or west is up in a completely different

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
38:35

place. Absolutely. And that's really what it's about. And I'm hoping, and I'm seeing that a lot more of these families are recognizing that this is a long term deal. This isn't I can do it in a short sprint and get, get rich quick type of scheme. And that's what's phenomenal. But that's why I attest to back to you, reducing your fees over a couple of years. I do something, I do it like backwards, like I grandfather them in as my fees go up. I get right,

Cody Garrett, CFP®:
39:02

yeah. You just put it on the other end, right? Exactly.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
39:05

But the one thing like that I believe in is these AUM things got it. They got to be cut. They got to be, I don't know if zero is ever the answer, but ultimately investments are investments. They make a very small percentage of what your plan should be involved

Cody Garrett, CFP®:
39:20

with. Yeah. My very solid take is that investment management is a form of implementation, which is part of the planning process. But if I were to, I don't manage any investments, but if I did I would actually, I would, even if I charged one fee, I would clearly show which portion is for investment management, which portion is for financial planning. And I would do that for a flat fee just because. 4 million isn't twice as much work as 2 million in terms of the investment management. And complexity isn't defined by how many commas are in the number is another way to say it. No, not at

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
39:51

all. I have clients that are extremely more complex. And have basically a negative, then I have, someone with a couple of million that are super simple. And that's how it works. And working with business owners, their complexities always outreach, whatever they have investable. So I agree. I agree with you. I like that. All right. Well, we are at about 45 minute mark. We're going to have a different, another episode. We, this is good. We flow very well. So what do you want to leave everyone with? Is there any final piece of advice or anything you want to say as we wrap this up?

Cody Garrett, CFP®:
40:26

I think going back to those I'll share the five things. Think about each of these in your life. I imagine if they're like, if I think some people call it the wheel of life or something, but imagine that this was where this were a pie of slices and there's five slices, physical health. Mental health, spiritual practices, relationships, and financial wellness. And think about if you were to fill each of those, fill each of those parts of the pie, again, you could split those like five ways, 20 percent each, but effectively maybe make it twice. So one is how do those stand currently? And then how am I allocating my time and energy into each of those areas? I ask every client at this point, they're focused on investing in the stock market or investing in their business, but I say, Hey, in which ways do you invest in your mental health? And by the way, if I don't see, if I don't see glimpses of mental health practice and their spending on their tax return and their other financial documents I always say that, where your money goes, it tells a story about how, where you go, where your money is there. Your heart is also right. Yeah, just ask yourself, what's the current status of my physical, mental, spiritual, relational, and financial wellness? And how am I currently spending my time in those areas? And you'll probably see a little bit of a correlation there that if you feel like your physical health is not in a good place. You're you've most likely not been spending a lot of time and energy focused in that place. So I think it'll just help you develop, what your next week's calendar might look like a little bit differently. All right.

Black Mammoth:
42:17

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