Ep 51: What is your Financial Religion? Featuring Josh Curtis

Episode 51 of Rethink Financial Advice, co-hosted by Derek Notman, CFP® (Founder & CEO, Couplr AI) and H. Adam Holt, CFP® (Founder & CEO, Asset-Map). (40:42)

Episode 51 of Rethink Financial Advice, co-hosted by Derek Notman, CFP® (Founder & CEO, Couplr AI) and H. Adam Holt, CFP® (Founder & CEO, Asset-Map). Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or Acast.

Episode Summary

Josh Curtis joins Adam Holt and Derek Notman to name something the profession rarely says out loud: that most advisors operate from an inherited belief system about what good advice looks like, and that these belief systems behave a lot like religions. Notman describes joining an agency distribution system at twenty-five, absorbing its doctrine wholesale before he knew enough to question it, and watching his own convictions shift repeatedly since. The three-camp framework the hosts build is the useful part. There are advisors convinced their approach is the only correct one and that everyone else needs saving, advisors who have gone independent of any single doctrine, and advisors operating transactionally with no underlying principles at all. The uncomfortable observation is that the first group’s certainty is exactly what makes them effective at distributing one specific set of products.

What this episode covers

• Why every advisor carries an inherited belief system about what good advice looks like
• The three camps: doctrinal certainty, independence, and pure transaction
• How conviction gets manufactured in early-career training, and what it is useful for
• What changes when the compensation and the solution become an afterthought to the diagnosis
• How the same polarization shows up in technology preferences

Full Transcript

Machine-generated transcript of this episode.

Welcome to Rethink, the financial advisor podcast. My name is Adam Holt. And this is Derek Notman. We are your hosts, both veteran advisors and FinTech CEOs who challenge the status quo, question everything and have fun doing it. Hear honest commentary on the challenges facing advisors today. And be part of a community where we can all rethink the profession. Now on to our episode. Derek, what is your financial religion? That’s a, it’s a bit of a bold question. Is it inappropriate for me to ask you? We’re good friends, buddy. It’s all right. You can ask me about religious stuff, politics, whatever. I’ll answer you. Everybody wants to know what’s your personal financial religion.

Did you, you didn’t get that memo? No, I didn’t, but I’ll answer it. It’s an interesting question. If I look back in my 17 plus years now doing this stuff, I think I’ve been a member of a couple of different cults actually over the years, highly indoctrinated, highly indoctrinated. You know, I joined an agency distribution system day one and I didn’t know any better. I mean, what was I 25, you know, I didn’t know how to spell half the stuff they were teaching me. So I just drank the Kool-Aid man. I was a sponge and I did it. And then I started questioning things and I would say my religion has changed or evolved over time quite a bit.

And there’s probably not just one. I don’t know. How about you? I don’t know that I know how to explain my financial religion, but really what we’re talking about is what’s your underlying belief system that gives you confidence that when you’re helping people, you know which direction to help them take. Right. Not, not unlike a, a religious guide or a Sherpa or a missionary, right. There’s different aspects, I think about this analogy of a true belief system. He was almost to the point of religious, almost to the point of cult, as you said, that is seemingly prolific in financial services that we really haven’t touched on too much.

We haven’t, but there are a couple that come to mind that are definitely prolific, uh, almost to the point of you see some pretty heated conversation in an online chatter when it comes to people kind of sticking their stake in the ground for, no, this is the belief system that everyone should believe in. Right. I mean, you know, it’s dangerous. This these days polarization is so predominant, right? I mean, it’s everywhere in the media from politics to, you know, to belief systems, right? Legal. It’s almost overwhelming. Frankly, we’ve talked about it in several other podcasts where you’ve ever heard this statement, client says, no, no, no, no, no.

Index is the only way I ever want to go. Right. I have a belief system. That’s kind of core. We know advisors who think the same thing or fee-based advisors is the only ones that are really serving the greater good, or people say, I don’t believe in insurance. Like, what do you mean you don’t believe in it? It’s not a religion, but to some people it truly is. That is, I think it’s interesting because this came up in a conversation with Josh Curtis. And if you don’t know Josh, he’s the president of clarity financial. He’s a founder of the retirement waterfall method, which it’s funny because Derek, he and I were talking about, um, his retirement distribution planning model.

Cause it’s got a little bit of a buzz around it. He actually has this defensible method that puts to shame Monte Carlo and 4% rule. And, and as we both know, retirement distribution is the big frontier right now for everybody. That’s where the money is. And so he brought this up and then all of a sudden he mentioned something about this bias in the conversation and he called it financial religion and it kind of went down a path. Of course, you know how we go. And we thought we would bring him on to talk about this paper that he wrote that’s getting distributed all about financial religion.

So I thought it’s a really interesting thing. I’m really curious what you think after listening to him. We’re going to include his story is really interesting because you’ll kind of understand how he came up with this concept, pay attention. You’re going to get hooked right in. For all this to make sense. I had started at the very beginning of how I grew up. I grew up inside of a religious cult. I wanted to play basketball. I wanted to play organized sports. You can’t do that. So I, I’d got a job. Um, and I was telling my parents, I was going to work, but it was actually going to basketball practice and I got caught basically came after the decision was I can either stay at home, stay in the cult, not play sports, if I want to play sports, I need to leave the house.

So they gave me that choice and I was just about to be a junior in high school and I left and I never looked back. And a lot of people think it’s like, that’s a really sad thing. It was probably one of the most exciting bonus things I ever did. And I don’t know how in the world I didn’t end up in jail. It was awesome. It was like, you’re compressed like a spring and all of a sudden that was lifted off. Like, oh my gosh, the world is amazing. They told me that this is all scary out here and it’s not, it’s amazing. And so where that cult has their annual convention, I was lucky enough to make the team went to play the state championship in the exact same arena that the cult has their annual conference and that was just huge.

There was no safety net. I had no one going to catch me. Nothing. I, it was all up to me to make it. And so I made it through there. It was really survival mode. So I went from a cult, really almost like an agnostic atheist view. Like I don’t want, I don’t want, I don’t want anyone to tell me what I believe I should believe. I want to figure it out myself. Plus I was a teenager, right? And there’s also no one watching me financially. I was like, man, if I got a credit card application, I filled it out and they gave it to me, I took it.

It’s like, wow, they think I can have this. So I get married when I’m 25 and I’m a financial mess. And it took me three years, got totally out of debt. And I saw how that changed my marriage, how it changed my health. Like physically I felt better. There wasn’t this burden. And at that moment I knew that I was going to be in the financial services industry at some point. But the only connection I had was a general agent that happened to be my step father-in-law. And I was like, man, I don’t know if I want to work for family. I was like, well, I was kind of tapped out where I was at in my career.

And I said, oh, I’m going to, I’m going to do it. My daughter was 18 months old. My son was two. I had a six figure job and I quit it to go do this. And I thought, I’m going to help people with their cash flow. Cause you know, that’s what really helped me. It’s like the behavioral finance about cashflow and it was a humbling moment where there’s nothing worse as you’re going broke, teaching people how not to go broke. I knew that was a really bad thing. My wife is second guessing. Why did I do this? Why am I jeopardizing her family? And I always had this plan B like, Hey, I can always go to back plan B.

If this doesn’t work out, I’ll do plan B. And there was a point where it’s like, no, I’m getting rid of plan B and I’m going to do this. And the very next, that year I did MDRT, it was with the higher national was where I started as a career agent. And then there was just a couple of things that happened. It was like, I got to go independent. I can’t operate it this way and went independent. And luckily I had a couple of really good people around me. Otherwise I would not have made it. Uh, and then that’s where the independent journey started. That’s where clarity financial started.

And then, um, that’s also where the whole concept of the portfolio waterfall income strategy was the root. It started that, that year, 2015, but I didn’t really realize that it actually become a thing. And so I’ve seen life of a cult of an independent or non-denominational by, you know, faith I have now. Then we have the atheist view. And then I got into the financial services industry and I was like, oh my gosh, there’s the similarities between the two are so similar. That is almost scary. And I think the more an advisor can just see it that way. Not so you have to believe it all, but if you can see it through that lens, you can, I think add more value to your client.

You can just see things more clearly because this is actually how it is structured. I believe because I’ve, I’ve lived it. So anyway, Josh, what is your unique perspective of the advice market today? Well, my view may be a little bit twisted, but I think the similarities of how religion is structured and how the financial services industry is structured are too similar to ignore. And you know, it’s really that my upbringing inside that cult that once I was inside of the financial services industry, I start seeing all these similarities and I shared the idea with a couple of advisors and they totally did not see it at all.

And then I started unpacking this idea of how religion and financial services is connected and all of a sudden they can see the industry from a completely new perspective. So I think it’s, uh, you know, my view because of my upbringing inside of a cult, I see it differently. Well, walk us through that. Cause that’s it’s a really interesting article that you put together, kind of inspired this conversation, help us understand, or for everybody listening, what is that similarity and how do we understand what camps we’re in or recognize that? Yeah. So the first thing, my goal is not to discredit religion or discredit the industry.

I hope to offend anyone, but I also want to hopefully bring up some ideas to make you see things differently and maybe rethink how, what you believe in. I think when you’re talking to advisors, I’m sure you can realize this like how many times does an advisor say, I believe, I believe. There’s all these religious verbiage that is very similar. But I think there’s these three camps in religion, but also in the financial services world, there’s the cults that say we’re the only one’s right and everyone else is wrong and we must save them, right? When you have a newly recruited advisor that just went through their training, they have this missionary zeal that you cannot deny it.

And they are so, they need to go save people. And from the sleazy salespeople that are out there, right? That’s their motivation. And then you have the independent or non-denominational, right? So the, in the religious world, it’s the non-denominational world. And then you have the independent. And then you go over to the other side of the spectrum is the atheist. It’s very short-term thinking there’s, they don’t really care about these consequences. The principles that they follow maybe are just not quite as deep in history. Um, those are maybe more of the transactional type people in the industry and I think what clients want and where I think a large part of the growing part of the industry is this independent world that, Hey, we just don’t, we just want principle-based things that aren’t weird and that we want to provide value that’s meaningful to the client.

We don’t want to get to this point where we’re the only one’s right. Everyone else is wrong and we must save people. I think that’s dangerous. I’ve seen it on the cult side as I grew up, the consequences of that. What I see as a trend is, is a lot of people may be leaving the cult side. Maybe call that the career side. I think the career side has a place, but they bring those cult beliefs back into the independent world and that’s super dangerous. Do you think of where does someone get their business religion as an advisor? It’s their initial training. A lot of times this initial training sticks with us.

It’s hard. It took me probably 15 years to get the cult mindset out of my mind. I think it’s similar to, you think someone that grew up in the career side that was truly captive, right? You are a captive. It’s hard to get those theories, those doctrines out of your mind and you can drag them into the independent world. I think have an advisor that’s just aware of that. It’s very, very helpful. This, this analogy you’re sharing with religion and cults back to financial services is fascinating. And I think you’ve just addressed this challenge that advisors are going to face, depending on what the client wants, and we probably have advisors from all three camps listening.

You’re basically saying, maybe we should challenge ourselves here and rethink this culture, this religion we got initially easier said than done. So maybe what are some action steps for someone who’s actually been through it on how to break through this? I think one of the first things is to be willing to test if your religion is right. Can you let the guard down? Is what you believe to be true as an advisor? Is it really true? That sounds simple, but it’s very farred and maybe, is what if you find something that’s not, are you willing to go back to all your clients and adjust it?

That’s, that’s really tough, but I have gone through that painful process, both in the religious side. I’ve had to rethink a lot of things. And then I had to also do that in the financial services world with my own practice and found that there was a handful of things that were not true, that I was taught. So let your guard down and try to find, is there any doctrines that you believe that are not a hundred percent true? Someone just told you that was true, but is it actually true? And how do you find truth? That’s the other big thing. So I love the concept of, I learned this from Elon Musk and Charlie Munger, this way of thinking called reasoning from first principles, trying to boil it all down, like, what is the purpose of financial planning?

That’s the very first question that we asked a client. What is the purpose? Because guess what? We don’t want to get hired for the wrong purpose. Are we going to be their financial housekeeper? Are we going to be their investment nanny? No, we want to be their leader. Just like how they would maybe see their pastor in the financial world. We want to be their leader, not just the financial housekeeper. So I think being willing to let your guard down is what you really believe is it really true. Test it. I think it’s great to test it and maybe kick around that idea with some other people.

One of the interesting things about your kind of premise here of religion and finance or finding your financial belief system or religion is heavily predicated, I think on how you’re compensated. Talk to us of how you’re thinking about how these belief systems play into the camps that you talked about. Yeah, I think that’s the lure of, Hey, if we’re getting paid by a fee, then we obviously are doing a better job for the client. We have a higher standard. And in my own experience, I don’t believe that to be true. I think maybe you can limit some of the options. Well, you think of what we’re trying to do as an advisor is to guard our clients from what I call financial pornography, looks good, sounds good, has a horrible ending.

Well, getting paid by a fee kind of limits some of that stuff. But I don’t believe that that makes me a better advisor just because I’m paid in a certain way. I think that’s a false value proposition. I think that is something that you’re hearing a lot of, like, if you’re earning a commission, then you obviously didn’t have the best interest potentially of the client. I don’t think so. I don’t think that is a part of the value proposition. It’s just part of the formula that the client needs to be aware of. And I don’t think there’s one that’s better than another when it comes to quality of advice, is my opinion.

There’s a lot of controversy around that. And I hope that there is some chatter on it. I tend to agree with you. I don’t think sticking to one camp and forcing that as the ultimate religion makes a whole lot of sense and how does, how I charge you ultimately determine if my advice is the best for you or not, is it related? Yeah, but it’s not the only determining factor. I think it depends on which camp you’re in. Are you in the cult side, the independence on the atheist side? Well, just because I’m a cult, but I also charge a fee, then I’m right. Like, no, well, how about instead of following?

Cause usually we want to be principle-based, I believe that’s where you know, Hey, am I doing the right thing? Well, am I following the right doctrine? Do I have the right guiding principles that can stand the test of time? Those are the things that add value. How you get compensated is just a side piece, but it’s more of your is your religion, right? Are you following the right doctrines? Are you having the right guiding principles is your methods and practices in alignment with your principles and your doctrine. Is all that in the right alignment? You can be earning a commission or a fee as long as you’re in the right religion and everything’s in alignment.

That I think is the key thing for advisors to rethink. So this really intriguing Josh and interesting, I think, perspective to hopefully everybody’s contemplating this, but is there anything else you think needs to be heard, debated, or that you’re working on in community building? Yeah, I think we need to be open to hash out these ideas. I think trying to do this all by yourself can be overwhelming and you have blind spots. I think having a conversation in some groups is very beneficial. That’s one of the reasons why we’re right now in the midst of building a producer group to have these types of conversations and to really get accountability of like, Hey, you said this, are you really following through with your doctrine and your principles to try to build a community that is willing to test our religion and then make sure that we’re not drifting off into the cult side or on the atheist side, that we’re staying true to our beliefs and to continually rethink things for the benefit of the industry, but also for our clients.

So I think that is a piece that we’re currently working on that we’re trying to have an impact in industry, but we have to do it together. This isn’t something that you should do by yourself. I guess that’s pretty much like most religious discourse, right? You need to have a community to help have a healthy debate. I think one of the things that I hear a lot, it’s a buzzword in the industry is we’re here to educate. We’re not salespeople, we’re here to educate. To me, that instantly says I’m smart and you’re dumb. I’m here to educate you. Instead, replace educate with the word serve.

I’m here to serve you. That is totally different. Imagine if a pastor said, Hey, come to my church, I’m going to educate you on Jesus, right? No, I’m here to serve you and I hope to uncover some things that you may have not have seen. I’m not here to point out your financial sins and make you feel guilty about it, I want to serve you and make sure that when you go through rough times, that you have people to help you financially. That’s what our job is, the good times and the bad times. I think it’s pretty amazing that when you typically call a pastor for help, the second call is usually a financial advisor.

That’s really interesting. So I hope that this sparks some conversations through the audience and to engage with people about this. Cause I think it is a win for all of us in the win for the industry, if we can be aware of this. So that was interesting, Derek. What do you think about that? Man, like his comparison between different cults and religion. And then he throws in atheism and then agnostic and comparing that to financial services. I do see a lot of similarities. Given just how I grew up in the industry myself and Kool-Aid that I’ve had a couple of different flavors of Kool-Aid I’ve consumed over the years.

Do you know what’s so weird about that? Because you and I both grew up in the agency system and had to be indoctrinated into an environment where we had to very, very quickly be experts, especially amongst our family and friends. Remember that list of hundreds? Yes. We had to look like we really had a strong, passionate, believable leadership role, which means we had to come into this missionary type of role that we knew what was best for people. And ironically, a lot of those solutions, all were things that our company sold. So in a sense to distribute a product with a relatively young, but passionate advisor, you kind of have to buy into this belief system cult, right?

You do. And you can’t allow distractions of, well, there’s other ways to do this because you know what happens when you’re distracted, your salespeople don’t sell when you’re focused that this is the best set of knives on the planet and you’re passionate and you’re going door to door, you start to become believable to a percentage of the population and they buy in. And, and that’s what we’re referring to, I think, or what Josh is referring to as a coal, because it doesn’t allow for outside influences or possible insights because you’re gunning for a specific outcome. You really are. And it almost makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up a little bit talking about this, looking back and reflecting on the indoctrination we went through.

But when you’re getting into this business, man, is it overwhelming. And most of us don’t do the due diligence to figure out all the different types of religion we could go assimilate with, go learn that belief system and really go with it. So we just take what kind of works. Cause we do have to get a paycheck. I got to pay my bills. And if you’re telling me this belief system over here is pretty solid and you’re selling it to me hard and you’re teaching me. And I got my mortgage or my rent payment coming up next month. Okay. I’m going to drink that Kool-Aid.

So I got to go make sure that mama’s happy. Um, but that’s, that’s a real challenge though. I almost, you’re almost making me think Adam that what if there was a way for advisors to be, maybe to be exposed to all the religions before they actually have to pick one. Well, isn’t that what the CFP board is trying to do? I mean, the funny part about it is that when you have to create a standard or any, actually any of the accreditions there, you’re trying to educate the advisor as best you can to be holistic or to be conscientious of different solutions, like here’s the big travesty.

My friends who grew up in the wire house side, and that’s all they learned, they grew up almost like an athletic team, a bias against all the insurance players. All those insurance guys don’t know what they’re talking about. Want to sell your whole life and the whole life guys were like, Oh my God, those wire houses just want to sell you a stock and make a commission and turn and trade your accounts and pay taxes. They don’t care. Like it’s almost like culturally and maybe the cult is in the culture. Yeah. Culturally these organizations have to polarize their people so that they can go out there and compete because the reality is that they’re competing for the consumer’s attention.

So if you can win the customer over to your belief system, they’ll be yours and they’ll naturally defend against change or like, you know, don’t bring that in my house, you don’t believe that here. We don’t believe in X, Y, Z and interesting enough, because it’s a business, it’s like the business of financial missionaries. There’s underlying a non-aligned best interest because you have to come with this passion of conviction. This is the right way to do it because nobody has any certainty. We don’t know what the heck the truth is. We just have to have a belief system and then a behavior that supports it and do it like you need to save, you need to budget.

You need to max your 401k. You need to reduce taxes, right? So the behaviors are kind of driven from this principle base, but I don’t know, I think it’s all mushed up together in this very like biased outcome, which I don’t know how you get to a place where you actually align with the consumer’s best interests without having a belief system that’s believable. Well, if you are in the belief system of fee only flat only commission hybrid, whatever, how can you now go preach your belief system and say that that is the only belief system for all your clients? I think I talked about an example before about if a consumer or a client comes in and all they need is the life insurance solution, that’s it.

They don’t need anything else. How is the fee only person going to serve that client? They aren’t most likely. And then now the client’s left with nothing. So I don’t think that you can just, you can’t, it is too polarized. I don’t think there is a one-all solution unless is there like a financial God that knows like, is it all predetermined? Well, who’s the, who is the financial Dalai Lama out there? Is it, right? Is it Susie Orman? Is it Dave Ramsey? No. Is it right? Tony Robbins. I mean, who, who is it? Is it Michael Kitsis? I mean, the interesting thing is that all of us in advice, probably find a couple mentors, a couple we’ll call them religious guides, right?

That we probably adopt their thinking or financial pastors, financial pastors. Okay. Great. Why can’t it be rabbis? Can be financial. Okay. Fine. I had to pull that on you just so we could make it more polarized. I love it. We’ll go with financial rabbis. That’s better. Financial Imam. Okay. That’s what you’re going for. Uh, our Zen master, right? Yes. No, but isn’t it true that we probably espouse or seek it, or if we don’t have one, we become one ourselves. I mean, you and I have, in a way created a bed of thought leadership around these topics. I’m sure there are people that tend to generally follow what we’re talking maybe and take it for, you know, with a grain of salt, maybe we believe it really stringently.

So that’s kind of good enough. But I think people are really seeking people, financial advisors alone are also seeking leadership here and they’re finding their own religion that serves them and lets them sleep at night. And that’s an interesting thing. So let’s talk about their takeaways because I think there’s some really important things that everyone else here can listen to and think about challenge. We think their own world. Well, do financial cults serve us? I think that’s a question that, that we need to think about as an advisor. And maybe we don’t want to use the word cult. Although I do like your culture. I think that’s a good little play on words there, but is our financial religion serving our clients, really serving our clients the best that they need to be served.

And why does that, why does one religion exist versus another? That would be something I would really want to think about as an advisor. If I’m going to actually affiliate or believe in any system. I wonder how advisors have to deal with this. So maybe the first question is as a financial professional, are you part or could you be perceived to be part of a cult? How would you know? Yeah. How would you actually know, Derek? You probably would have to ask yourself the question. Am I eliminating options or recommendations that are defined by my own biases or belief systems? Or maybe not even your own biases, but the belief system that’s been implanted that you’ve been indoctrinated into, so what exclusions now exist because of that?

Are you limited to market a certain way? Are you limited to certain products or services, certain types of clients and so forth? It is an interesting question, but at the same time, you got to ask, is that really enabling you to serve? Because I think there are plenty of advisors that say, well, you know what, I actually, I don’t sell or cannot sell alts inside an SMA on a true fee, I don’t have that access. So am I biased because I don’t have that, that style of pew in my So no one can kneel, right? So, you know, so we eliminate kneeling because no one can kneel.

I got like, the question is sometimes our infrastructure dictates what our accessibility is to doing certain things. So is that a product of my environment or is it a product of my choicefulness that I don’t believe that those tools or strategies can work? Like I see a lot of fee-based advisors who I would argue is becoming a cold enough itself because they look down at everybody else. Anybody who’s selling anything tied to commission or monetization is that’s the devil, like those devil worshipers were like, really? I, so you don’t actually place insurance for your families? No, no, that’s the devil. I don’t believe in that.

Like, oh, so nobody believes in seat belts and bags. Like, really? That sounds like really best interest. So there’s a, that’s my fun debate that I have all the time, but I think that’s an important question is, is what’s your capacity to inspect your own biases and restrictions on what the experience of your customers can be in your, we’ll call it financial charge. So further down that vein and really almost like another takeaway here is what you believe in. Is it actually true and having the awareness to be able to maybe step back and ask those questions. What, is this really the best thing? What are my clients seeking?

Cause the more conviction I have around my belief system, the better I’m going to be able to sell that to my clients, right? Of course. Right. So I really have to believe in it, but is it really truly what I need? And I would argue that there probably isn’t one belief system that trumps all of them when it comes to what clients actually deserve and need. Think about like, ultimately, how do we serve our clients by connecting with them on a human level, by understanding who they are, by listening to them, by helping them visualize their financial situations, things that are missing and through this process of almost empowerment and then helping them identify those gaps so they can solve those things and take action.

So when we take action, the way that the advisor is compensated or the solution that’s implemented, it is almost an afterthought in a way that, Hey, like we did all this other amazing work and here’s the solution. You know, like we determined through all these tests, you’re sick, you’ve got this issue, here’s a pill, the pill is the easy part, and we don’t really care who’s getting paid to take the pill or how, how they got the pill, just give me the pill because now I know that you listen to me, you understand me, you’re helping me, but I don’t know if there is a cult that subscribes to just that type of belief system.

There’s it’s multiple really. Now that I’m thinking about it, I see this show up in technology as well, you know, one of the most polarizing pieces of financial planning and obviously being in that space is, do you believe in goal based or cashflow based financial planning? Do you believe in the 4% distribution rule or Monte Carlo, or do you believe in the confidence index or do you believe in cashflow buckets and set aside, right? There’s all these distribution debates, which is, I think ironically how Josh came up with this in a strange way when he realized there was such biases when he was designing his own distribution model.

It was clearly coming up that everybody had a belief system of how it works, but the challenges of very few advisors have actually lived through a distribution period themselves. They’re still working. They haven’t tried to turn their assets into income. And so whether you believe in annuities or whether you want to do some kind of ladder bond strategy, right? There’s so many different things here, but people have a fervent belief that that process is the best process. Monte Carlo is the best. I don’t know if you heard me on kids is I literally got bleeped out because I called it bullshit. I’m not even going to bleep out myself here, but the point is that people are overly confident in these belief systems, but they don’t necessarily challenge.

So when you ask, is this actually true or just what I’ve been told? And I, I believed it too. So I’m just selling the belief down the line. Oh, I remember that early on. I didn’t ask if it was true. I just assumed it was. Right. Your leader told you and I sold the hell out of whatever I was told was. And then, so I guess what we’re saying is take a step back, ask yourself if it’s actually true. And, and if you have to ask for somebody else to have some dialogue on that consider asking someone not in the same cult that you’re in, by the way, if you can prove that it’s true to yourself, it’ll just make your belief system even more for, but it’ll, but it’ll give you the conviction that you can defend it all day long.

Yep. So the cows come home, right? Right. And that’s truly followable by the way. If you can not only sell what you’ve been told, but I have had a personal come to Jesus moment on this one and that really, really works. In which case I think defining your own personal religious and owning it and like saying, no, I wear it in on my sleeve. That is actually something that empowers people, I think. And I think there was this kind of challenge like, wait, is being a cult bad, it doesn’t have to be a cult to be passion, right? I don’t know. Do we call the Dalai Lama cultist?

I mean, probably not for some reason. We don’t believe that’s the same thing. So, but the point is, I think there’s an interesting dichotomy here. And it’s really important that you bring it up, which is just challenge what you believe, just challenge, right? Rethink it. What’s the third one? What do we have as number three? Well, initially when he said this, it almost rubbed me the wrong way, but I listened, I heard him out and he actually makes a really good point here. So a lot of us, not just the two of us, but a lot of us talk about financial education and the importance of financial education.

And yes, education is important, but if we are there speaking the gospel, talking about our belief system in an education format, we’re basically saying, Hey dummy, come over here. I’m going to educate you on everything you’ve done wrong. Force you to come to terms with the mistakes you’ve made, and then we’re going to try to fix it. And I don’t know if education would go that far all the time, but I can see that perspective and he uses the analogy of a pastor doing this while rabbi now in this situation, it’s gotta be a rabbi now, but it doesn’t have to be, but it, but instead serving, instead of educating, serve and talking about the overall values and beliefs of a system and helping you become aware of said values and beliefs and so forth.

And in that process, you start to become aware of things that maybe you didn’t know or didn’t do correctly or can fix, but now you are being served in a way that is, is really, I’d say much more beneficial. You’re going to be more open to getting stuff done. And you know what? You’re also getting education in the process, but the way it’s delivered is different. Serving is not presumptuous, right? You’re not presuming that somebody needs to be edumacated, right? Like that’s a, that’s a different frame. And I think language really matters here. And it’s probably a nuance that most people don’t even pick up because we believe that educating is what people really want, but really what they want is they want empowerment.

They want to be engaged and engaging. Doesn’t mean we’ll call it pejorative. It doesn’t mean that you’re putting people down actively or passively or unintentionally. It means that you’re supporting their needs where they are. And serving is really, how can I help you? You have to ask that question because I think a lot of people. I don’t, I, you know, this, a lot of clients come to us and they’ve got a good face, likely they’re somewhat successful. They don’t want to seem like they’re idiots. They probably intimidated about the whole thing, but they don’t want to look like they’re, they’re. So you have to run this fine line of asking them, how do I actually serve you and not just you, the CFO of the family, right?

But also potentially, if you have a two person household, the other party who’s relatively under engaged or underserved even, and that’s, I think the important part is really is knowing the client, right? We call it talk about this all the time. Just do you really know your client, what their needs are? And can you find their North star together? That’s a new aspect of financial planning. I think that’s going to become more and more prolific is really understanding what people care about, why they’re doing what they’re doing. Because that way you can always go back to it. At the end of the day, financial planning and financial wellness comes down to behaviors.

All of this is just to get to diagnosis and figure out what path of action you should take. We’re all going to have a belief system about what things people should do based upon our experience, credibility and education ourselves. But I think it’s really important. So, uh, I think it was a great mic drop moment for Josh to say, are we serving or are we educating and educating probably should fall into serving category. I think so. Yeah. We’re helping them along this religious theme here or seed the light. Right. That’s what it is. But anyways, awesome conversation. Yeah, it was fun. Glad that he was able to give us his perspective.

Well, we’ll put a link into his religious financial services industry, Jerry Maguire write-up that he put out there. I thought that was cool. Look, I love the fact, Derek, that he, that he challenged the way we think. No, he has no agenda here. Uh, he’s not trying to convert anybody to use the analogy further, um, but rather force people to think we appreciate that here at Rethink because we want to challenge what we’re doing. So from one financial profit or cleric to another, I hope today has forced people to really rethink it and come up with some new ways. Certainly. If you have an idea about it, direct message us, tell us what you think when these social posts come out, bring up your own topics.

Challenge us there. Love it. All right. What are people supposed to do now? Do we just want to tell dad jokes for 10 minutes or? No, we’ll let them go. It wasn’t enough. Send them a link to good dad jokes. That’s it. We’ll do that in the show notes. That’s a good, everybody needs those great stuff. So everyone, thanks again for listening. Make sure you follow us. LinkedIn. Online, like YouTube, Spotify, YouTube you have, and just so you guys know, everyone who listens, you have to give us a five-star review on every platform, not just one, right? Yeah. So I want you to dedicate the next eight hours to giving us reviews on all platforms.

That would be really right. And if you do it, you will find financial spiritual. Welcome to our Colts. We think Colts. Actually, I think we do have a bunch of followers. I think we do have a couple. Yeah, I think so. That’s good stuff. Hopefully you’re laughing with us because it’s all good fun. Of course. So Adam, good seeing your brother. It was awesome chatting and getting into religion. Maybe we can weave in politics into one of these. Oh, that’s perfect. Let’s do left and right side. Financial politics. I love it. That’s right. All right, brother. Until the next time. See you later, dude. Thank you for listening to rethink the financial advisor podcast with Holtz and Notman.

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