Kitces & Carl Ep 142: Carl’s 13 Magical Questions Of Conversational Goodness With (New) Clients

***Editor's Note: Can't get enough of Kitces & Carl? Neither can we, which is why we've released it as a podcast as well! Check it out on all the usual podcast platforms, including Apple Podcasts (iTunes), Spotify, and Stitcher.

Show Notes

• Carl's Magical Questions – Download (PDF)
• Kitces & Carl Ep 141: Creating The Space To Have More Meaningful Money Conversations With Clients
• Kitces & Carl Ep 115: Setting The Right Minimum Fee Per Client And The Revenue Model Generator
• Kitces & Carl Ep 35: Favorite Questions To Ask A Prospective Client To Build Trust In The First Meeting
• #FASuccess Ep 241: Scripting A "Values-Based Financial Planning" Business Development Process, With Bill Bachrach (What's Important About Money To You?)
• John Bowen
• The Smartest Sales Book You'll Ever Read by Daniel R. Solin
• George Kinder's EVOKE Life Planning Training
• Bill Bachrach
• The Dan Sullivan Question by Dan Sullivan
• Krista Tippett – On Being Podcast
• 50 Fires: Another Side of Downtown Josh Brown
• 50 Fires: Highlights From Chef Maneet Chauhan
• Hal Hershfield

Kitces & Carl Transcript

Michael: Well, good afternoon, Carl.

Carl: Hello, Michael.

Michael: I am really excited today. Do you know why?

Carl: I don't know why, man. I don't know.

Michael: Because today is Question Day. Today is the day Jack had his magic beans and Carl has his magic questions. So, I am excited to hear Carl's Magic Questions Of Conversational Goodness. I can trademark that, right? Carl's Magical Questions Of Conversation Goodness.

Carl: Yes, that's like the... What was it? The Lifestyle Planner Revenue Generator Deluxe Model?

Michael: Yes. Yes. Which still (I know you hate it to have to name a process) remains one of our most popular episodes of 2022.

Carl: Yeah. So good. So good.

Michael: We talked in our last episode about, like I said, the sayings of the industry. I think you had attributed to John Bowen, your clients will judge you by the quality of your questions, not all the stuff we tend to blather on about that we try to do to prove ourselves and our credibility and how great we are. And on the one hand, that's always been very powerful to me because I've certainly seen and lived and experienced over the years of this career, the more clients talk and the better I find questions that get them deeper into the conversation, the more powerful the discussion is, the deeper the connection is that could form. Just the better this goes. So, I've always felt this very gut experience of, okay, after a certain number of conversations with clients, I get it. You get those right questions in there that takes them to a cool place, and  cool things just happen.

And then, this may be entirely just me and my neuroticism over-projecting, but then I'm like, okay, someone says people judge you by the quality of your questions. Well, crap. Now I have to get a list of the best questions and make a spreadsheet out of them so that I can navigate them in the appropriate sequence. So, to me, you have always had this amazing gift around the questions that you have in the conversations that you start. You did it through the years in your practice. You've done it in your speaking, your writing. Now you're doing it in your "50 Fires" podcast. And so I was hoping today, for Question Day, that you would just share some of the questions that you have found over the years help take us down these paths of more meaningful, impactful conversations with clients.

The Best First And Second Questions For Almost Every First Meeting [03:07]

Carl: Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you. And I think we've done this before, and we could do it very structured, like, here are some questions for the first meeting, and we...

Michael: Well, I like that.

Carl: ...could point to... Well, I want to do some fun, just questions you could ask, certainly with clients, but with a spouse, with a partner, with the kids, but to get the first one out of the way. I'm not a question zealot. There are question zealots out there that have found a very specific question and think that that's the only way. But I think I could just point you to... I often repeat one that you asked, like, "What brought you in today?" Just simple, simple. And your favorite follow-up, which is, "And how do you think we could help with that?" which I think is great. All of these questions are designed at helping the client paint a desired future state. So, that's what's going on in the client's mind is, "I'm going to value this relationship based on the desired future state I have in my head discounted for my uncertainty about your ability to get me there." They don't know that, but that's what they're doing.

Michael: Wait. Say that again?

Carl: Desired future state discounted for uncertainty. So, the client has a desired future state. They're going to discount you...

Michael: I want it to hurt less. I want to feel better.

Carl: I want to retire with $5 million on a sailboat. Whatever. There's some desire. Now, listen, we all know that the desired future state is cute at this point, but they have something either from Instagram, their parents, maybe really well thought out. And your simple question of what brought you in today, how do you think we could help is starting to get to paint a picture of what the desired future state was at the presenting problem level really quickly. We know that there's a lot more depth there. Another way to think about this is these questions are just a way to diagnose. And so you can... Dan Solin has done some good work on this in "The Smartest Sales Book You'll Ever Read." His is I would put... If we did this on a spectrum of comfortable, easy questions to ask all the way out to uncomfortable, we would put Dan Solin who I'm a huge fan of his work. Dan Sullivan wrote a book called "The Dan Sullivan Question", which is, “If we were meeting 3 years from today,” that question, which I think is great.

You've got Bill Bachrach's classic work around "What's important about money to you?" We're moving on this spectrum of easy, comfortable, all the way out to George Kinder, who was really just 30 years ahead of his time. He's been thinking about this forever. And the work is just so impactful if you've been through it. Scott Frank took my wife and I through the George Kinder, the EVOKE process. He was our planner that took us through it. It's incredible. So, find your sets of questions that you're comfortable with, practice, all of that stuff. Amazing.

Questions To Spark Deeper Conversations Around Money [06:06]

But I want to talk more about these questions that could just be sprinkled in. And maybe you want to start with them and maybe you're just going to use them for a subsequent meeting or maybe you're going to use them with a spouse or a partner. How can you have more conversations about money? And I was actually really curious. I was thinking about this this morning as we recorded a "50 Fires" episode, I was thinking about you and our conversation. And I was actually curious because I realized, I don't know. What is your earliest memory of money?

Michael: For me, individually?

Carl: Yeah. What's your earliest memory of money?

Michael: Probably getting an allowance. Some memory of getting an allowance and putting it in my little money box piggy bank thing that I had that I would save my money in so that I could then open it up to spend it when I wanted to buy something. That was probably been chewing gum in the grocery store line or something back then.

Carl: Do you remember when that was? Like, how old you were?

Michael: Not clearly, but I would guesstimate probably 6 or 7 years old if I had to guess.

Carl: 6 or 7. And you said spending box thing. Do you know what you're talking about? Do you remember what that box...? Was that the one with a key?

Michael: Yeah. The irony now as we're saying it out loud and I'm remembering the vision in my head, it was blue.

Carl: And what was it? With a lock or no?

Michael: Yes, it had some lock key mechanism that I didn't use or it was like a little mini blue box, like a very small lunch box size. No, probably flatter than that. It wasn't that tall, but just you pulled a little switch on the front and it released the claps and the thing would pop open. I think it did have some kind of lock on the front of it, although I never used it. And just that was what I like would set my $1 bills inside.

Carl: From that age, you can remember setting stuff aside so that you'd have money to buy gum or whatever.

Michael: Yeah. I was always an accumulator type. I think that was just hard-wired in me. For some folks, we teach them the Marshmallow project and don't consume today, save for tomorrow. I was always much more wired for patience on that end, which is, to me, there's probably some bizarre research study analysis thing because I'm also fairly ADHD, which is usually known for impulsivity and not diligently saving. But I got the other end of that, which was I liked to save and protect... Not even protect. Just save and accumulate the dollars for who knows what in the future. I was always fine with that end of the delayed gratification. Then I just want to play my video games. I want to play my video games. That was my impulsive event.

Carl: Wow. That's super interesting you remember that. I always find junior high to be some kind of an interesting spot. Do you remember what socioeconomic class you were in junior high? Were you one of the rich kids or one of the poor kids?

Michael: No, we were in the middle. I was the son of 2 computer science folks in the DC area, where everybody is a doctor marries a lawyer. Everybody's professional service is couples in the DC area. It's the phenomenon. So, I was definitely not at either end of the spectrum. There were folks, because DC's got a pretty wide socioeconomic range, were very, very much of a mixing bowl of socioeconomic status and race and religion. It's a very big melting pot area. And so, I remember being fairly in the middle. There were definitely folks doing not nearly as well as us, and definitely folks doing much, much better than us.

Carl: I'm super curious. Well, how did you know? Can you remember a story about how you knew that there were people doing worse or better that you were in the middle?

Michael: I don't remember as clearly on people doing worse aside from probably remembering...I'm trying to remember back, probably through activities in Sunday school and religious school around giving activities. And we did a lot with people in the area that were homeless or food insecure. And so being aware of, "Oh, there's a lot of people out there where they're actually not certain...the kids are not certain if they're going to have food." Okay. I've definitely never had that. That's not a problem from my worldview experience. And I think being aware on the higher end was folks that were going on what, at least to me, were fancy vacations that I couldn't imagine going on or just didn't understand.

Carl: That statement of, didn't understand. Do you remember that? Can you remember that feeling either way? Do you remember discovering, "Whoa, there are kids that don't have food?"

Michael: Yeah. I have some memories remembering there are kids that don't have food. And I remember there are kids who have other houses that they go to when they're not at this house. I'm like, "Why would you need more than one? You can have more than one?" I'm like, "We definitely only have one and we stay in it all the time unless I'm sleeping on the couch in the basement of grandma and grandpa's when we go and visit." So, yeah. And trying to remember back was probably the phenomenon of some friends were saying, "Yeah. We're going to our other house for the summer." It was like, "There was another house after the first one?" Mind blown. Oh, 12-year-old me, mind blown.

Carl: Yeah. Yeah. So, that's an example. I have 15 more questions that I want to ask now.

Carl’s Chronological Questions To Explore Someone’s Fundamental Relationship With Money [13:00]

Michael: So, is there a standard I don't set? To me, there were a few there that I felt like middle school's an interesting time. Is there a memory that you have? I forget exactly how you phrased it. But I feel like that's a thing you could ask with some repeatability whereas some others were clearly just follow-ups that you were asking.

Carl: Yeah. I like going through time. And often these conversations will happen, and it could happen with clients, but certainly around the conversations with friends. I've done this with friends now, and it's really, the practice has been around because of "50 Fires," but now I'm like, "Wow. I could do this with my own kids. It's amazing to do this with my kids. I can't believe I didn't know this." And one of the episodes is with Lindsay, our oldest was, "Hey, what's your first memory of money?" So, I love that. Let's back up. And I got this inspiration from Krista Tippett, who would say, "What was the spiritual upbringing of your childhood?" And I loved that question. "On Being" podcast is about spirituality and people's spiritual journey.

And I'm sure that somebody... I'm wanting to say one of the Klontzes or something. I'm sure somebody suggested that idea, "What's your first memory of money?" So, I love that one. Now, you didn't bring up anything particular... It's shocking to me how often, like, if you go listen to Josh Brown's episode on "50 Fires," Josh Brown, right? So, here's Mr. CNBC and fast-talking, Long Island, the whole thing, nobody's going to cry. It took him 3 seconds to say, "Yeah. Yeah. Actually, I had this $100. Somebody gives me $100. And I went to sleepaway camp.” And then he told us 3- to 5-minute story about how it disappeared. And it became clear as we talked through the next hour that that had actually informed like his, like, I am a little protect..." He said this, "I'm a little protective. I'm trying to make sure that what's their angle." This story.

And then he said to me, "I haven't talked about that in 25 years." And I asked him afterwards, I'm like, "Josh, what do you make of the fact that you haven't talked about this in 25 years?" And he said, "No one ever asked." That's crazy. So, it reminds me of that Carl Jung quote that something like, "Until we make the unconscious conscious, it will drive your life, and you'll call it fate." So, if somebody brings up a story around childhood that seems to have some emotional resonance... Let me tell you one quick example of the middle school one. What's your earliest memory? The next question I was going to ask you, because I wanted to actually just do this, and then I was like, "Wait, I'm just going to have Michael in '50 Fires,'" was, "What was money like in your home? What do you remember your parents talking? Do you remember your parents talking about money? What was that like?"

Now, the junior high, when I just developed on my own and I was so excited about it when it happened, because I remember just saying, "Do you remember what socioeconomic class you were in in junior high?" And it's very intentional, junior high, because that's the height of angst around, "Do I fit in? Do I not fit in?" And so I switched it. I did it to you, which was... Do you remember what...? I was actually thinking very carefully. Okay. Michael's has got a background here, so I could just say socioeconomic class, but I actually like softening it afterwards with, "Were you one of the rich kids or the poor kids?" Because that's what you would have said back then.

So, I said that to somebody, and she was like, "Oh, yeah. I remember my dad used to drive me to school in this old beat-up car, and I remember one time pulling up in front." In fact, Hal Hershfield just told me a very similar story, the UCLA professor that we all know and love. A very similar story about this. So, this lady said, "I remember pulling up one day, and we always got there about the same time the buses were unloading. So everybody could see. And I remember one time his car backfired, so everybody looked over." So, if you get something like that, you can't just go...

Michael: Yeah, projecting to junior high stage, the car backfires. It's the ultimate, "Oh, my gosh, everyone's looking at me."

Carl: Yeah. And how beautiful...

Michael: Talk about a traumatic moment. I wasn't even there, and I feel it.

Carl: Yeah. We all do.

Michael: I feel that anxiety in that moment in that story.

The Gift Advicers Can Give When Discussing Deep-Seated Money Beliefs [17:52]

Carl: We all do. What's so beautiful about that conversation in a client engagement would be you now have the opportunity to help them make sense of that. And it's only one question. The next question is... “Oh, man. Wow. Given the benefit of 20 years of hindsight, what do you make of that now?” Or, “If you could go back and talk to yourself with the benefit of hindsight, what would you say?” And now you've just given them one of the best gifts you could have ever given. You can now put a little bit of resolution, a little bit of meaning around this experience that's been informing their lives. Literally, I could tell you 100 stories about that now over the last 20 years. But it's so easy to miss because you could just go, "Oh, wow. Where do you keep your bank accounts?"

But if you're just aware to what happened to you, just now, you were like, "I wasn't even there, and I can feel it." Well, if you can feel it, you could just sit for a second and say, "Oh, yeah, I can feel that. What do you make of that?" Or something simple, "Tell me more," or, "What else do you remember about that day?" I was waiting for something, and then we just decided not to use all the time for it. But if I said something to you about junior high and then I could say, "Okay. What did you...?" Most families didn't talk about money. Do you remember money being talked about at your house? What would you say to that? What was your experience with money growing up in your house?

Michael: Honestly, not a lot of conversations growing up. Again, that's in the middle dynamic. I had some awareness there are people that were definitely not doing as well. We definitely weren't at the other end of the spectrum because we didn't have other houses and extra cars and all the things. Those are the sorts of things I associated with, "Okay. Apparently, they have a lot of money. We don't have that stuff." But for me at least growing up, it was just this... I don't know. My perception of securely middle class, just...

Carl: So, it didn't come up that often.

Michael: I had the things we needed, didn't have much more than that, but didn't need more than that. There really weren't any conversations about money happening in the households. I don't have any memories of parents talking about money stresses and how are we going to pay for that thing? None of that ever cropped up. But we never really had any splurges in the other end either. Just always felt we're doing okay and things are fine. I think even the child, I didn't worry about it. It just wasn't...

Carl: It wasn't a thing.

Michael: It wasn't particularly on the radar screen.

How Advicers Can Navigate The Next Stage In The Money Conversation [20:57]

Carl: Yeah. So, let me interrupt here. Listeners, it'd be super curious to just hit pause on the podcast for a second and just think, what would you want to ask next? Because what I'm really curious about is given Michael's background, my next statement, we don't need to be looking for trauma. That's not the goal here. It would simply be, "Wow. That's really interesting. What do you make of that now?" It was just like a thing that wasn't even a thing. And what do you make of the fact that you don't remember any conversation...that your parents... You didn't talk about money. What do you make of that? And I would imagine you'd have another 5 minutes to talk about, "Well, gosh, that's interesting." And you're now giving them the benefit of making sense of their experience.

Now, of course, if Michael said, "Man, I remember my parents really arguing, and this comes up more often." More often, people are like... Josh Brown said something very similar, like it wasn't a thing. And so now I'm moving through history with you and Josh, and I'm saying, "All right. Now, okay, tell me a little bit about when you went away and you were responsible for the money for the first time for yourself." And then we can go to, "Hey, you told me money wasn't a thing at your household. How are you doing it differently with your household, your spouse? If you weren't taught how to talk about it, tell me about the first conversation you had with your spouse or partner. How did that go? Did anybody else teach you?" "No." So, you're just trying to understand, and you get to bring those things back. But more often people are like, "Man, it was a stress..." The most common thing I'm learning is that it was really stressful, but nobody told anybody. It was like I felt it...

Michael: What was really stressful?

Carl: Money was stressful in the house. There was arguments and there was fighting, but nobody ever talked to me about it. It was an elephant in the room, and I could hear it. They didn't think I could hear them in the other room. And if that happened, I would be so curious to be like, "Can you remember? Where were you?" Because people have said to me, "I remember sitting in the corner holding onto my pillow." Look, there's a line here that we don't want to unlock because we're not trained, but I think there's a level at which you can just be like, "Hey, what do you make of that now, that experience?" As a podcast host, I can just be like, "What do you make of that now? And with the benefit of hindsight, what do you wish you would have known back then?" I hate to keep picking on Josh, but it's just because many of the listeners will know him and his story. It's really interesting to say to him... I would be curious to you, Michael. Do you wish your parents had talked to you a bit more about it? Do you wish they had involved you in these discussions?

Michael: No, not particularly. I didn't mind it. I didn't have regrets. My parents were conscious to start teaching me about money and dollars and money lessons, but...

Carl: Like budgeting.

Michael: Yeah. Budgeting allowance and essentially reward for hard work. So, my father got me started fairly early on, like how to get opportunities, mowing lawns in the neighborhood. Then I convinced him to pay me to mow our lawn, which I felt so proud of that I convinced him, and I'm now very clear in retrospect was he was teaching me up money lesson around work and feeling rewarded for work. Well played, Dad. Then, at some point, when I was 14 or 15, he introduced the conversation of basically, like, you're doing this with my mower.

Carl: Right. Cost of goods sold.

Michael: And I said, "Well, your mower is not very good. I wish we had a better one." And he said, "Fine. We can get a better one, but you have to pay me $10 a lawn until it's paid back."

Carl: So good.

Michael: And it took 2 summers to pay him back. And then I still remember the pop in the third summer when the $10 skim to pay back mower went away and all of a sudden my lawn mowing income went up because I'd paid off the lawn mower.

Carl: Hey, listen, that is so rich. I would want to know even, like, "Hey, where were you keeping track of that?" I talked to Maneet Chauhan, the restaurateur, and she's on celebrity chef shows. And she could remember the feeling of the paper and then little notebook that her dad kept where he wrote down all the ins and outs, like the ledger that her dad kept. And I'm like, "Man, that's so embedded with meaning, the pop." You use the word pop, right, when the $10 skim. Maybe it's just me, but I just see all these beautiful, rich stories in there that I would just be paying attention to.

The Broader Life Stage Structure Around Money Conversations [26:13]

Michael: So, I'm struck as you're describing this, as you're putting some of the questions forward. There's a few things that I'm drawing from this. One, you've got a couple of different life stages around where money interacts that you seem to like to ask about. First money memory, money dynamics when you were young. Were you aware of it? Were your parents asking about it? Were they teaching you lessons? Middle school. You've grown up and got out on your own. What's that like? You're now getting married and incorporating finances. What's that like? So, I'm struck, there's this series of life stages that you like to probe at and that you don't just get into the thing, the memory, the experience, the whatever it is that you seem to like to draw up visualizations around it. Can you remember what it was like? Where were you? What did that feel like? I'm assuming it gives us all the more of putting people back into that visual moment, immersing themselves back into what that was like.

Carl: Yeah. Just to be clear, I'm not sure... I'm positive that there's plenty of this that plays a role in the work we do. This is certainly applicable. And I don't know where it's outside of the work we do. I just know it's beautiful and that people... The thing that I've been trying to do with "50 Fires" is create, show the world what it means to have a really great first meeting. And sometimes it's gone a little farther than that or a little less than that. And really, what I've been trying to do is help everybody understand how hungry we are to make meaning around this stuff. So, let me just give you some of these... So, I'm looking at the list of questions that I have in front of me every time I do an episode. So, earliest memory of money, what was money like growing up in your home? Do you remember your parents talking about money?

Michael: Wait, wait. Slow down, slow down. These are good. So, earliest money memory. What was the...

Carl: Yeah. Can you recall your earliest memory of money? What was money like in your home growing up? Do you remember your parents talking about money? That might've been 30 minutes of conversation right there, by the way. I often don't get to it, but I really love it when we do. What rituals or habits around money do you remember from your family? That could be the allowance, or we always did this thing, or... Then that heading was called Family. And then we moved to Community. And I'm happy to send these to you, Michael. We can put them in the show notes. What social class did you belong to relative to other kids at school? And I've fine-tuned that down to, in middle school, can you remember what social class, were you one of the poor kids, rich kids?

How did you first become aware of that? I can't believe how many times people bring up school lunch as the thing, "I was one of the kids that got school lunch and I remember somebody making fun of me for it," or, "I had peanut butter and jelly and somebody else had chicken cordon bleu," whatever. So, school lunch, clothes, and cars are often [referenced]. Then were you brought up within a cultural, spiritual, or religious community that had shared beliefs around money, wealth, or possessions? That's been really interesting. It doesn't come up often. Here's one of my favorite ones that we didn't get to. I'm just going rapid-fire here so we can wrap up. But I love this question.

And one thing that's interesting about this whole set of questions is it's really fun later to link these back, like, what you and I already did. You can link back to Josh Brown's losing the $100. How has that played in his life? So, I love tying this all up with, if you had to summarize your beliefs around money in early life, in one word, what would it be? That's universally been one, if you ask it right, slow down. "Hey, Michael, if you had to summarize your belief around money early in your life, in one word," that's how I'd ask it, "in one word, what would it be?" Just leave lots of space in that sentence because I've universally had people be like, "Oh." That one takes...

Michael: It's hard to get down to one word.

Carl: I know. And I don't let people off the hook. I did once. I was like, "Oh, don't worry about the one word." And then I was like, "Ooh, that was wrong." Just let them simmer in that. If they said 3 words, I wouldn't say, "I said 1 word." It really forces the... It's really amazing. That one's really great. So, then I moved to now, there's a heading called Now. So, we've gone from family to community to now. I love... I used to ask, the way this is written, it says, "Financially, what does enough mean to you?" I dropped "financially." I said, "What does enough mean to you?" That's been really fun. And that's, again, that sometimes is the whole show. The answer to that question could be 30 minutes of conversation.

What's the biggest lesson you've had to learn about money and how has it shaped your perspective now? With respect to money, what do you do differently in your household than your parents did when you were growing up? That one's really fun. This one's really interesting. I haven't asked it very often, but when I do, it's fun. And it's just like if it comes up. I'll say, "Hey, I'm going to make a statement, and I just want you to reply to it. Here's the statement. How much I earn as an individual is an indication of my value." That's been really fun, because it's really confronting and it sounds cliché and silly. Nobody would believe that, but we actually behave as if we do often. That's been fun. I've asked this a couple of times. "Do you remember the first time you received a large sum of money and held it in your hands?" And what I'm after there is it's been really crazy.

There's this universal feeling of electricity, like energy, like, "I don't know," but Hal Hershfield, again, UCLA professor, behavioral finance, talked about this sense of, "This was this thing that has gone." He talked about having an old coin, maybe even hundreds of years, maybe a prior, an old coin. And he was like, "I couldn't believe that this had been passed around by different people, and it meant value, and they traded it for things." I thought that was fascinating. And then there's just a few more. I love this. Imagine 100 years from now, somebody shows up and finds a box of your last 10 years of credit card statements. What would they know about you? Sometimes I'll like, "Pretend like there was an archeology dig 100 years from now and they uncovered, right now, the last 10 years of credit card statements and bank statements, what would they be able to tell about what you valued?"

And then sometimes, if I use that one, I'll say later in the show, "Hey, imagine 10 years from now we look back at your credit card statements, what do you hope they would say about you?" So, those are some of them. And then I almost always end with, I've asked, "What would it take for you to feel happy about money?" I've asked about financial role models. I'm particularly interested in wisdom traditions, what have you learned from your...? Do you belong to any religion or particular wisdom tradition? A lot of people have brought up things that Jesus said about money.

And then my favorite question to end is if people have kids. If they don't have kids, I just use them, but it's particularly powerful if they have kids. So, let's say you have a 10-year-old, and I try not to ask about names for privacy. But if they brought it up, then I'll say, "Oh, let's say your 10-year-old's name is Sally." And if they don't bring it up, I just say, "Do you have kids?" And they'll say, "Yeah." "How old is your youngest?" "10." And I won't say, "What's their name?" I just say, "How old is your youngest?" "10." Or they might say, "She's 10." I would say, "Let's pretend 20 years from now I'm still doing this show and your daughter is now 30."

It's so funny how emotional I get about this just because I can feel the conversations that have happened. "Your daughter's now 30, and I have her on the show. What do you hope she would say about her relationship to money?" That's been just so good. And that's a great question with clients. Your earliest memory of money, great question. What does enough mean? Were you one of the poor kids, the rich kids? I could tell you so many stories about these kinds of questions with clients that if I had not known the answer, I don't know how I would have done my job. And it certainly wasn't going to come up in my risk tolerance questionnaire.

How Carl Helps Clients 'Connect The Dots' [36:17]

Michael: So, as we come to the end of this conversation, I'm curious if you can close the loop with us, how does this conversation end for you with the client? If I go all the way back, as you noted, as I joke, no one wakes up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night because they need a comprehensive financial plan. The presenting problem is never that stuff. It's something more immediate and proximal, my elbow hurts, my knee hurts, whatever the money equivalent is. Then you do your proverbial righteous trick, and all of a sudden we're having this conversation that's going in all these strange directions that I didn't anticipate, but I'm going along for the ride.

And it is a powerful thing. For anyone who has not done these kinds of questions and started these kinds of conversations, it will feel strange to be asking because you in your head, you're saying at some point the class is going to say, "Why the heck are you asking me about this?" You realize, "I came in for something completely different." And in practice, when you're the question-answerer, your brain goes all in on that. You're just telling your stories. So, if you...

Carl: I was super curious how quickly you went there. I was like, "I'm going to see." And you were just like, "Yeah, let's talk about it."

Michael: Yeah. Human beings, we like to share our stories. So, you fall into it very naturally. To me, then, at some point, it's, "Okay. But I did come to you because..."

Carl: Ask for some help. I didn't come to...

Michael: "My elbow hurt. I'm freaking out because my kids went to school in a few years, and I've hardly saved anything and now's your chance to be a miracle worker, whatever it is. There was something that came in for." So, we started there. You take me down this path. How does this meeting end?

Carl: Yeah. Let's wrap that up real quick.

Michael: And what comes next? If there was a way for us to wrap this discussion.

Carl: Yeah. I can't imagine doing all of those questions with a client in a first meeting. There's no way. I think you...

Michael: Right. That's a lot in the aggregate.

Carl: Yeah. I think really, what you're trying to do is a very, very modified version. You just may get to those in other meetings. I'm curious about this. Just drop one in every once in a while to deepen the relationship. But in the first meeting, I think you're doing some version of a discovery series of questions that helps you paint a desired future state so you can feel like you've really diagnosed, "Hey, I know performance is really important. It's important to us too. Can we back up? Hey, Bill Bachrach, what's important about money to you?" And if you need training on that, Bill is probably still the right place to go. George Kinder, Dan Sullivan, Dan Solin, your question, whatever. You do something there.

And that's the beginning. I think I love Bill's phrase. That's the values conversation. I think the output of that first, that's like 10 to 15 minutes. And I think of the output of that as a statement of financial purpose. Afterwards, I could write down, "Carl, you told me that time with your family mainly outside and serving in your community is the important thing. Is that right?" "Yeah." Then I'm going to move on to more practical situations, "Okay. Now I've understood clearly why you want to go someplace. So, now let's do the normal thing, which is, out of that conversation, time with your family, mainly outside, or Jerry and Vera. Jerry said, "I just don't want to be a burden to the kids."

Naturally, out of that conversation, I could now paint a picture on goals. So, I go from values to goals because I can say, "Hey, Jerry, you told me you don't want to be a burden to the kids. What does that look like? Let's put some..." Here's what I say, "Let's put some framework around that. And if it's okay after we put some framework around it, we'll call it a goal. My rule is you can't ask somebody what their goals are until you teach them what it means to have a goal. So, let's put some framework around it. "Carl, you said time with your family, mainly outside. How much time? How much would that cost?"

So, goals. And then I back up to, now I've earned permission. That's the way I think about it. I don't know if it's right. I'm just saying, "I've earned permission now to ask the questions that normally we start with." So, I'm going to back up. What's the current reality? So, I just say, "Hey, let's back up. I think I have a clear picture of where you want to go. Let's talk about where you are today. What do you owe and what do you own?" That's my favorite way to say it. Start with the bank. How about the investment accounts? So, now basically we've gone values, goals, balance sheet. And then I love John Bowen introduced me this, "Who do you love?" idea. "What other people would you have financial relationships with? Tell me about your parents. Do you have obligations there? Tell me about your kids."

And he always started with just, "Hey, tell me about who do you love? And what financial obligations might you have?" So, now you've painted a picture of that. Then I love other professionals, and I love to paint distance there. Hey, do you have a stockbroker? Do you have an insurance guy? So, you're painting distance. And then interests are always, like, I'm just thinking of this as a series of questions around, what magazines do you subscribe to? If you had a free day, what would you do? What books do you like to listen to? Do you listen to any podcasts? And then I always asked a question around like, "How frequently in an ideal world would you communicate?"

So, then, at the end of that, I can say, "Hey, you know, based on our conversation today, it seems like this... I really think we could add some... This would be a good fit. Is there anything I've missed? I think I have everything here to put together a plan." And as soon as the word plan comes out, there's a big asterisk. "Don't worry. I'm going to try and keep it to one page. There's going to be a summary of what I heard for our next meeting. And in our next meeting, I'll present that to you, and we can decide if we have a basis for moving forward." That's how you wrap that whole thing up. And we could dive into every single part of that in more episodes, of course, but I'm not thinking that you're spending an hour sitting on the couch. I think that was really important to be clear about.

Michael: And I guess it sounds like you're not necessarily going to some of those past or first money memories type questions as quickly. You started more in the direction of the Bachrach style.

Carl: Desired future state.

Michael: You're in because you want to retire. So, cool. What's important about money to you that you're building this nest egg up?

Carl: Yeah. Dan Sullivan's question. I think we were just mixing things in here to talk about, "Okay. How do I have good conversations about money generally?" And then I think it's nice to tie it up like, "Okay, great. Are you suggesting that all fits in a first meeting?" No.

Michael: Awesome.

Carl: So fun, man. Thank you.

Michael: Thank you, Carl, for sharing the Magical Questions Of Conversational Goodness.

Carl: Let me just suggest, please, if you can, go practice. That first memory of money question, you could ask at a barbecue. Do you know what I mean? Somebody brings it like, "What do you do?" "Oh, I do... Yeah. I was thinking about this. I just listened to this podcast even. You blame it on me." Well, what was your first memory of money? We need to normalize conversations about money that actually matter. So, let's go do that and then send us emails because I'd love to hear about them.

Michael: I like that. Normalize conversations about money. Normalize conversations that actually matter about money.

Carl: Yeah. I think the best way to say it is normalize having meaningful conversations about money, not, "What did the market do today?" But meaningful conversations about money.

Michael: All right. Okay.

Carl: Okay. Cheers, Michael.

Michael: Awesome. Thank you, Carl.

Carl: Okay.

Michael: Thank you.