Nazrudin Discussion on Financial Planning 3.0

Joseph: So they kind of get into the spectrum of financial life planning aspect of trying to understand what the client wants to do with their money and billing the client there.
Joseph: Then it goes beyond that, so what happens next? To me, one of the things that really occurred to me was the idea that financial planning being the ultimate liberal arts profession/book and what does that mean? So I talked a little bit about what that meant to me, and to me what that meant was that even when we're doing financial life planning, in many aspects we're still interpreting what the clients are saying through our own previous experiences, our own personal feelings. One of the benefits of learning and being open to more ideas and different perspectives and approaches, is that we open ourselves up to being more accepting of being able to see the client's perspectives, more from their perspective than our perspective. Even within the confines, or within the definition of financial life planning.
Joseph: So that's generally what I talk about, what I thought is a next step. We need to go ourselves to do more than we are, so that we can now accept clients to be more than what we think they are.
Roberta: Okay. So to preface the question, Dick and George gave us a wonderful gift 25 years ago when they started the financial life planning movement. What's happened now is Dick has once again given us another gift, in my opinion. He wrote a book called Financial Planning 3.0, but the thing that I need you to take away is that he wrote the book, but he didn't give us instructions on how to do the Financial Planning 3.0, just as 25 years ago, he didn't tell us how to do financial life planning per se.
Roberta: The difference was, he was around for 25 years and we could talk to him and bounce things off of him and things like that, but as somebody so poignantly told me, "Roberta, Dick is dead. He's not going to be around to tell you what his thoughts are, or how he would move this Financial Planning 3.0 in the future. So because he's not gonna be around, it's up to all of us ... Nobody owns Financial 3.0, we all own it, it's ours.
Roberta: We have an opportunity, especially if we know people here, to move this forward. So let me read the question, "In his book Financial Planning 3.0, the late Dick Wagner identified two periods in our profession's relatively short history. Financial Planning 1.0, which he characterized as a period where the profession developed technical knowledge, or [inaudible 00:03:45] stuff, and Financial Planning 2.0, where the focus shifted to building psychological skills. In articulating Financial Planning 3.0, Dick encouraged us to move beyond financial life planning, which he located in Financial Planning 2.0. What does it look like to move beyond financial life planning? What skills are missing and need to be developed? What new sensibilities should we be cultivating?"
Roberta: Okay? So I can read it again and ... Rena-
Rena: Yeah.
Roberta: ... is going to scribe what you think, what does Financial Planning 3.0 look like? What skills are missing and need to be developed? And what new sensibilities need to be cultivated? So Lisa?
Lisa: Well yeah, I have one thing to say, which is that in the book, my recollection is there was a whole other piece that Dick talked about, the numerator and the denominator before we sort of dive into the skills we need to have. I guess my impression was that he felt that we needed to take care of the numerators.
John: Could you describe what that is?
Lisa: Okay, so the numerators are the clients. They're the individuals as opposed to the denominators being the financial services, the banks, banking system that is sort of bigger global forces.
John: The economy.
Lisa: The economy. But it was, you know, these other forces, and that we were ... I mean, what I'm stuck with right now too is that, if there .. After the last financial crisis, Dick said, "Some of us did see it and why didn't we stand up?" Really versus the denominators. Why didn't we protect the numerators against the denominators and we can do it. So that's, I just want to throw that out. I realize that might take us a completely direction in saying what skills do we need to have to move beyond financial life planning. But I think it's a really important part of his book.
Roberta: Yeah, and I think Lisa, the feel is that Dick did pass away, so we don't know what he would have told us in the future.
Lisa: Right.
William: I compare some of what he says on occasion, but I'm also contributing my thoughts separately from that.
Roberta: Okay. So what we're trying to do, is I'm trying to get you guys to belly up to the bar and [crosstalk 00:06:26]
John: Oh that should be fun.
Roberta: ... and talk about what you feel, you know, what we as ... because all of us are at 2.0. Bottom line, all of us in this room are at 2.0, so what are we gonna do to move us to 3.0?
John: So I think that's a great skill to put on there first, is this pre-essence to see how the denominator is banking. To understand that there's this numerator which is the clients, and the denominator which is the establishment if you will. As the intermediary, it's 3.0 to be that filter, that guide, that Sherpa to the individual.
Roberta: Charlotte?
Charlotte: To me it gets over-
Rena: Turn around please. Speak to us.
Charlotte: To me it takes you to a more spiritual, ethereal plane in that you move out of ... You can't plan, you can't counsel, you can't advise anyone until you really understand their essence, and that takes time. Typically in the industry, it's like, you meet somebody, you talk to them a couple of hours, you do a proposal, they come in, you know. Early, I was taught to give people advice. I dont want to give advice, I want to use my experiences to help them with their experiences in a framework that they're comfortable with. If they're not comfortable and you can't help them to get comfortable, then it's not gonna work.
Charlotte: I have an 85 year old client that passed away. She fired every other advisor she ever had because she said, "I dont want bonds in my portfolio ever." I could give you a list of bank trust- she said, "I don't like bonds, I don't do bonds." But people would say, "Well you have to have bonds." Bam, bam, bam, I could give you the list of trust departments. But it's because they didn't hear her, and they didn't understand where she came from on that. So it doesn't matter that I think that's not a good idea, it's not about me.
Roberta: Lisa.
Lisa: So this is something that we're talking about in our firm, is actually our [inaudible 00:09:21] goals. So I'm going to take a much more practical approach to it, is that we're doing all the financial life planning and we do a lot of assessment work to understand a client's [inaudible 00:09:33]. To us, part of it is understanding willpower, understanding a lot of the behavioral side of things, bringing all that in in a very practical sense.
Lisa: I want to build as big of a financial life planning firm as possible. I think that sometimes we're on the margins here, and I want it to be seen as something that is really legitimate, making profits, but that we're taking completely different ... Like, 3.0 for us, at our firm, is bringing in much more of the behavioral finance side of things.
Lisa: Certainly there's always that spiritual conversation, but we're moving towards a place that is ... We're scaling it and we're delivering it to more people with real process, with real tools in a very viable way.
Roberta: Cecily.
Cecily: I sort of sit ... I don't know, on the bridge between what my client's aspirations would be and the practical side about what can I control and what time frames do I have to do it in, and what can I do to continue being a sustainable business. So I'm extremely practical. My point is ... knowing where the client is is extremely important, but it starts with knowing where you are.
Cecily: If you don't arrive in the room having known who you are and why you're there, you will not connect with the client. And the connecting with the client is more than asking the right questions. They can feel what you feel, and if you are not feeling the right way, they get it.
Cecily: So I'm more about the client than I am controlling this denominator. If there are enough of us impacting individuals in our practice, and we're successful at it, we will start to impact the bottom line. The providers of all of this down here will see this, and they will react to it, but it at this point is outside our control.
William: That was a wonderful 3.0 thought.
Roberta: Bob, did you want to say something?
Bob: Oh [crosstalk 00:12:12] but I'll go back to it, because I think it's an important point.
Roberta: So this is Dick's brother Bob, from Michigan.
Bob: And I should make it clear at this gathering in the next two days, that I'm also my own person.
Bob: We'll start here. A little while ago somebody mentioned a comment, we don't have the skills for 3.0. My immediate reaction ... I'm a therapist by the way, in my practice, is you do. You do and you're probably doing many of them already, it's the lack of awareness of it. Which is incredibly important as well, by the way.
Roberta: William. William, right?
William: So I actually loved a word you used, willpower, and I thought that was the most [inaudible 00:13:02] takeaway I could take from your work. It's hard to describe what we're doing. I mean, having difficulty finding the right words is obviously the hardest part of branching into this new frontier.
William: For me, it feels like 3.0 has to involve scientific measurement of where the clients, these individuals are so that you start with their baseline. Someone else talked about scaling this, and I think that that also necessarily involves scientific measurement of ... this is kind of like your word, Susan, measuring what it is that they're doing, what it is about them that makes them unique, and having process and procedure for measuring that, understanding their own willpower as it is today.
William: And then separately, applying that across our own objective scientific measures of how to advance. If willpower is the issue, or something like that, behaviorally, we need scientific measures to know where they are and to move the needle. That's ideal.
Roberta: Susan?
Susan: There's a [inaudible 00:14:22] movement and it's been there for a while. The term that they use is non-duality. Some people would refer to it in different ways, but non-duality is essentially that science and spirituality are one. But as you get into non-duality, it's not about the combination of the two that make a one, it's about transcending that one, that there is something underneath and that what is underneath is really where the power is to affect the change that we're talking about.
Susan: I don't know everything about that at all. It's a fascinating study, there are conferences, there are books, there are thought leaders. If you google non-duality and go to YouTube you'll see some great scientists talking about this. They are generally particle physicists but it's interesting stuff.
Susan: The challenge that they have is to really face that there is work to do, that it doesn't just happen. It's not a weekend, it's not a year, it's not a book, it's not a conversation, it's all of them. And it's an intention to move into this source beyond the two separates. Allow them to be what they are, each is important but it's the combination of the two where you get the true force of nature that I think is what it's going to take to move this profession to the high level that Dick is talking about, and beyond that that he couldn't see, that we eventually hopefully will see. So non-duality would be a word I'd toss out there.
Roberta: Just one quick thing to add and that's ... Sorry. Don't throw it at me because I was [crosstalk 00:16:13]. Somebody will be impaled.
John: That's a weapon, yeah.
Roberta: One other point that I think about is helping our clients build in 3.0, resilience and living into the unknown. Because we all know that in fact the work we do is are masquerading as science, that's how we talk about it at our firm. I think the more that we can be comfortable in the unknown, we can guide our clients into the unknown. That is about resilience, whatever's gonna show up we can deal with. I think that's a critically important element as we move forward.
Roberta: All this, you know, whirlwind too, et cetera, we don't know and all we can do is prepare for the uncertainty and the ability to respond to that.
Roberta: Joseph.
John: On the way to that person, I just wanna-
Roberta: No, no, no.
John: Please?
John: I think the skillset ... so since this financial transition planning work is building skills in us to do this work, so we have to move beyond the skills of 2.0 to 3.0 to just, Ted and [inaudible 00:17:23] Financial Psychology Institute is point on ... Some of that's already been said but I just wanna-
Roberta: Joseph and then Russel;.
Joseph: So just to elaborate a little bit of what I said actually, try to tying it on to what you were saying also, I think a lot of financial planning the way it's done now is focusing on ... Taking what we know now and essentially projecting the future based on what we know now.
Roberta: Exactly.
Joseph: But we don't fundamentally know what's going to happen. So even just on the practical level, I mean how many of ... Right, it is resilience, but how many of us have done things other people told us is a bad idea and we would've did it anyway, and we've been able to do it. But how many of us are comfortable when clients come to us and tell us that they want to do things that we're not comfortable with them doing and support them in doing it?
Joseph: So I think that's one of the ... but I wanna say there's more than that though because we're kind of ... [inaudible 00:18:24] was kind of teaching me. Our identity has to be evolving, so any one time we only know what we know, but we need to be aware that tomorrow we're gonna need to know more than what we know today. So when I'm thinking about clients there's always this sense of what I'm comfortable with right now, why am I uncomfortable with it and what can I do to extend myself so that I can at least see it more objectively, to understand at least why I'm uncomfortable with it and to see how I can best support [inaudible 00:19:00] at this point.
Joseph: That's one of the reasons why I do believe that a big part of this is to ... this is where stream of consciousness happens, to know more than what we know now. Not necessarily [inaudible 00:19:14] but just to know more, to be open to more.
Roberta: Yeah, that's how you have to say it. You can't know it, you can be open to it.
Joseph: Right.
Roberta: Russel. [crosstalk 00:19:24]
Cecily: The key is to be comfortable with what you don't know.
Roberta: Exactly. Yeah, exactly.
Bob: Which is a skill.
Roberta: It is a skill.
William: Which is [inaudible 00:19:33]
Russel: Yeah, so I ... Joseph, thank you, because you said that better than I could have. My sense is that Financial Planning 3.0 is about impact and accessibility, but not from what we're use to. We're used to living in our realm as business owners wanting to provide value to clients, and we constantly turn it back into ourselves, how are we adding value? It's always about our wheelhouse, and 3.0's about the client's wheelhouse.
Russel: I think that it's ... We're uncomfortable with that because we don't like not knowing. We can't ... it's difficult for us to let the client be okay with not knowing if we can't not know.
Roberta: Correct.
Russel: And I think that we have to be able to remove ourselves from any fear of what the outcome might be and help the client live what it is that they feel like they need to live, rather than us imposing things because as Joseph said, we have a view of what's possible. We don't know what's possible for the client, and we might be restricting them. So 3.0 is a bout increasing the impact that we have on our relationships with clients, and accessibility not to the profession, but to what the client can actually become.
Roberta: Okay. Grady. Grady was next, or Grady then Vanilla, goes to back there. And then John. And then Lenna. Okay.
Grady: My focus is primarily on older clients, so I apologize for [inaudible 00:21:13], but when I look at the profession and how it's changed since I've been in it for going on 40 years now, one of the great unserved needs that I see is the inability to make discussions or enter in discussions about very uncomfortable issues, about things like declining health, old age and eventual mortality. You know, if your clients can't deal with issues about losing independence and gradually transferring responsibility over to someone else, that is an area that I find many people are really uncomfortable with, and it's an area that really isn't being addressed.
Grady: We're addressing the financial aspects of it, but we aren't really addressing the need for them to have someone that they can bounce their [inaudible 00:22:05] off of and open up a dialogue about what's going to happen when you can't drive and you're living 15 miles out in the country by yourself, what's gonna happen? What do you need to be thinking about now, while you can make those decisions in order to optimize your quality of life later. So that's an area that I think needs to be addressed.
Roberta: Eric? Okay wait, Eric, Lenna, John, Dick, Ed.
Grady: Sorry John.
eric: I think a lot of them, everybody's saying similar things and you [inaudible 00:22:40]. I think would add my cockenspiel spiel on it, is the word that's coming up for me is the word courage.
William: What was the word? Courage?
eric: Courage to ... not only talk about the possibilities but also talk about the impossibilities, the realities of people's lives. I'm not sure I'm doing ... I think that's the next step for me and I know that in my own like, I'm just now being able to really look at myself honestly. Just for example, with my invisible disability, what is that gonna mean for my life down the road? You know, and what does that mean now? And what does that mean to my money and my time and how I'm going to be spending it? I don't know about you, but a lot of my clients don't like going there.
eric: You know, you don't like looking at your own situation and your own limitations within the framework of possibilities. So how about I learn that skill and learn to have those courageous conversations so that people can make better choices, using their choices? I don't know if that makes any sense to you people.
William: It does. Yeah.
Roberta: That's a good idea. Next, Lenna. And then John [inaudible 00:24:13].
Lenna: In those [inaudible 00:24:21]
Roberta: Louder!
William: Louder.
Roberta: Back of the room. Come to the front darling.
William: That's the problem. There we go.
Lenna: So the most valuable things we bring to our clients when we enter the room is our presence. And presence is purity. My concept of presence is I don't bring Lenna who is 55 years old, that has these experiences in life, that the minute you say that word it triggers my mother or father, or a bad experience. 99 percent of our reactions come from the past. It is very rare that we have a present experience and react to what is happening in the field between me, the client.
Lenna: When we work on ourselves, work on ourselves, work on ourselves incessantly, and I believe you are never done. I do [inaudible 00:25:22] until you die, and then I'm not sure you're even done that you die.
William: I'm pretty sure and all. Pretty sure.
Lenna: So when we enter the room, when we enter the video space, when we enter that telephone call, there is the advisor, the clients, and then a third thing arises in the relational field. We are there as catalysts to create that alchemical reaction. And when we talk about knowing and not knowing, it's not anything we're going to read in anybody's book or in anybody's retreat or podcast, it is something that arises in the knowing that may not even be verbalized.
Lenna: Sometimes though, with a client ... and really, I was not being brilliant in whatever I was sharing with them, and they were like, "Wow! This has been amazing." And I was like, "What? What's been amazing?" Because there's nothing I can point to, like if you heard the transcript of the conversation, you'd be like, "Wow, that is important advice."
Lenna: So I encourage all of us that 3.0 is really looking to ourselves first and bringing this incredible pure container. In that container we have a lot of stories of how things should be. Marriage is good, marriage is not good, you should merge your money, you shouldn't merge your money. I challenge you that in our advice those stories don't really belong, it's what is appropriate for the client at that moment, and only if you bring your presence can you be that advisor.
Roberta: John?
John: To a large extent Lena took the words out of my mouth.
John: Okay. But I'm going to amplify on what you said because it was really terrific. The sense I also have, and more as somebody who works with a lot of folks like you, is that Financial Planning 3.0 really is about who you become as people, who you develop, of that full awareness of how you show up and the presence you bring. Because what happens, and to build on what you said, Lena, I thought this was great. When we interact with a client we create a container of space, ideally a space of full acceptance.
John: But guess what? Anybody here full accept themselves? We're on the journey, right? So in the same way, the greater degree to which we can fully accept and love who we are, not in a narcissistic way, right, but accepting ourselves warts and all and its limitations and songs. I love what you said Eric, about connecting with the impossible and saying you know, there's some things I'm not gonna do. That's part of my reality, accepting diminishment of life ability and life skill and capacity and finance.
John: So think 3.0 is very much about who we develop as people and the reality is about 60 to 65 thousand thoughts a day go through our head, and 95 to 98 percent of those are the same crap we've been telling ourselves for the last umpteen years. It's kind of [inaudible 00:28:34] by the time we're about 35.
John: However, what helps us break through to that place of being the right container we want to be with our clients, is things like tools, like meditation, contemplative prayer, which breaks down the dualism between all the garbage that's going through our head and the things that we don't know, the unknown that we want to connect with and be open to, and create the space for with clients.
John: So I guess what I'm really saying is dittoing what you said, Lena- and ... Lenna, sorry. Who we are, and developing ourselves is the foundation, and creating the space in the counter encounter. I think that's the new frontier which brings together mind, body and spirit and emotion. And technique.
Roberta: And Dick and then Sally Jo. Do you want to say something? Okay, Sally Jo and then Ed.
Dick: I would suggest possibly a route to 4.0, which is the relationships that have been discussed here are a very duality [inaudible 00:29:48] based thing that we, me and my client operate independently from the rest of the world. That our actions, we are free to do whatever we want and society won't really be affected.
Dick: And that we in Western cultures tend to believe in fact that the world is infinite. We will never run out of things, often we will never die. You know, that there are no limits and therefore we don't have to pay attention to the rest of the community. A lot of other Eastern groups think in terms of what I do as it effects everybody else. And I am in a world that is limited, and I am responsible to my ancestors, I am responsible to my descendants. I am not just about what makes me feel comfortable today, it's about what can I do to make sure that there is a world?
Dick: My daughter wants to have a baby next year. That baby, we talk about what a hell it's going to be in 2100. She's going to be 81 then, she's still alive based on the rules we have now. What world are we creating for her? Most of the conversations in this room and in what we do don't really involve that. It's how do I make the client feel fulfilled? How do I make myself fulfilled? Not what is my responsibility to this entire enterprise that includes the mountains, it includes all these other things that we think we can ignore, you know, the 75 percent decline in sea birds.
Dick: That's part of what we do when we have the kind of fulfilling life that we want to do, and Dick and I talked a little bit about this, my thinking is that that's where [inaudible 00:31:44] goes, but that's sort of where 4.0 is. Is, how is the capitalist, privately focused society that we have, how does that work on a finite planet? So anyway, that's one of the reasons I left financial planning.
Sally Jo: This is the future. What we've been talking about recently is no different from what we put on board here, it's just what do we want to talk about next? What do I still want to talk about, and we're able to say it more completely as we speak with this than we are when we try to announce our session.
Sally Jo: The thing that strikes me, I dont want to be sacrilegious and I dont want to be disrespectful to Dick by any means, I loved him dearly. But this is and always has been a leaderless group. And all of us are leaders! We're here because we have like mind. That's why you came. You had some ideas and some thoughts, and some skills and some abilities and some knowledge that hasn't been satisfied by the rest of the industry because the conversation hasn't been allowed.
Sally Jo: Here is where it's allowed. Here is where we can share it. And we all have. We all know this stuff, we're all struggling with this stuff, but when we come together it allows us to have a conversation about it. Even those of us who don't very often [inaudible 00:33:22], or lead a group, which has been me, I've been one of those. We have a shitload to offer. We are leaders.
Sally Jo: Thank you for the organizers, thank you deeply for the organizers. Thank you for those people who have decided to take their ideas and create books and create seminars, and law structures and organizations. But frankly, all of us have equal and as valuable information to share.
Sally Jo: So what I'm trying to say is we, Nazrudin, are the future of the question. Okay? We are. We always have been and we always will be. We just need organizers. We don't need leaders. We will have leaders who have poignant concepts, many of you. But all of us are leaders even though we may not speak.
Roberta: Thank you. Ed? Yes.
Roberta: He's gonna come up. He's gonna come up. Is there anybody else other than ed as my last ... William? Okay.
Ed: So, the [inaudible 00:34:48]
Roberta: Ricardo!
Ed: You're doing a real slapping thing today.
John: Don't hit him too hard!
Roberta: Just fucking!
Susan: That thing still smiles though.
Ed: It's pretty amazing, I think of some random reflections as I've been listening to this. First of all, Sally Jo, where you been because you come back and read next year's and it's like, you make me miss having ... missing you in the intervening years. You come up with the fullness of your being and holy shit.
Ed: But seriously, just to have you. I want to pick up on one thing that ... describing us as a leaderless group, how did that group, when I was with KP and G in Chicago we used to meet and I think we called it Spirit at Work where we'd talk about leadership. [inaudible 00:35:47] over at First Chicago Bank in organizational development said, "No, we're not a leaderless group, we're a leader full group." And I just love that phrase. I never had occasion to share, well I guess maybe very occasionally, but I guess this is the perfect opportunity.
Ed: And you know, in organization work there's the notion of being a leader at whatever level that you find yourself. Maybe we need to look into our lives and help them look at where their leadership is, where is their power. So ... Eric scooped me because, not for the first time, because when I was putting together all the bits of wisdom, or gobs of wisdom that were coming at the same core in ten different ways, it seemed to me that the word courage really resonated because it takes courage to look inside ourselves. And not turn away. And when we turn away, to know that we're turning away and come back to the self-examination. To make friends with ourselves, friends our experience.
Ed: So I'm thrilled at this conversation, because I think of Gail Coleman who was the first one to say in my experience, you can't ask a client to go where you haven't gone before. That almost sounds like a ... almost hackneyed except it's brilliant. And it's true and we're discovering ways in which that's true today. I'm grateful for ... I dont want say it in such a greedy way, because I'm going to be doing a session at the AICPA summit in January on true leadership, bringing your full self to your work and to your clients. This gives me a lot of expert opinion about that and ways to go with it, so thank you on that.
Ed: But if we're ... I'm trying to think of who it was, the prayer that begins with "Lord, make me an instrument of your peace."
Roberta: Saint Francis.
Ed: Well that's a pretty good story, Saint Francis. Yeah, thank you. So we are instruments, much like shamans and other folks are instruments. A lot of you, I've used this notion from time to time, that financial planning without being ecclesiastic, is a ministry for a lot of people. So we're asking our clients to go on that journey with us so we need to model courage if we're asking them to be courageous in looking at themselves.
Ed: So that involves this great phrase that I heard, so being in conversation with your life. One of the greatest things that we model as a coach, consultant, and whoever, whatever I am to you as, [inaudible 00:38:56] and whoever else, is to invite them into that conversation with themselves, and to use ourselves as an example. For me, that's a model. Not a model of purity, at all, but a model of being on the journey or in the conversation.
Ed: I have to say that every coaching session I do, when I'm at my best, I'm aware of things that I do that aren't perfect, if I can use that phrase, and use that to ... Use that in the conversation and then use it to keep in myself. I guess I'll lead with Vladimir Horowitz, a great 20th century pianist, concept pianist, genius, was asked, "Maestro, you're 92 years old and you're practice is [inaudible 00:39:57]."
William: We noticed.
Ed: I have a lot to say.
Ed: You're 92 years old and you say you practice three hours a day, do you know this story, Lisa?
Lisa: I do.
Ed: So what was his answer?
Lisa: I don't remember but it's ... I was really moved by it.
Ed: My recollection is that his answer was, "I practice because lately I've been noticing some improvement.
Roberta: Thank you Ed.
William: I'll be quick.
Roberta: Brief?
William: Yeah.
Roberta: Okay.
William: Alright, I'll speak carefully and loudly. I have two quick and distinct comments in response to some great things that I've heard. Number one, [inaudible 00:40:50] a state of non-duality, this is something I've through a lot about and in fact, so much so that I don't think it would be possible to deliver a brief [inaudible 00:40:57] without that level of presence. In our practice, we began guided meditation for our staff a year ago, and that has changed everything. All the years in practice ...
William: So now the question is how do we do this for clients? Which is a whole nother level of difficulty. I remember when I tried to introduce it to my staff, I was nervous and paranoid of all their biases and misperceptions around this practice. But it's been wonderful and the most skeptical are the greatest [inaudible 00:41:29].
William: Item two, I've heard a few comments yesterday and today and we had a discussion briefly about this, and it's something that I personally have some disappointment in as a practitioner. It's the end of history illusions. Comments just keep causing this to be recalled for me, it's the idea for those of you who are not familiar, that when we plan, we plan where they are at this exact moment, we extrapolate their present self as if it will be always their future self, and I think that's a real shame.
William: I mean, if you think of all software in our industry, it's all predicated upon this moment in time. So that is a deep flaw of 1 or 2.0 financial planning, but 3.0 won't allow that any longer. 3.0 will ensure that we envision, one, that we won't be so arrogant as to think that we know all of the future possibilities and we don't try.
Roberta: Okay, thanks. So Jake would like to make a brief statement, and I'd like to make a real brief summary and then we're out of here. Okay?
Speaker 19: Yep. So one, I don't know if this audio's gonna be usable, but I did just record what we just have. I have two questions with that, one, if anyone objects and wants to be cut from that recording if it's usable, please speak now or forever hold your peace. Could I put it on NazNet for other people to listen to and for us to listen to later?
John: A transcript would be better.
Speaker 19: I'll [crosstalk 00:43:02] we can make a transcript, we can do both. Yeah, it's not that hard. There's websites for that.
Speaker 19: Okay, and then the other part is, is that actually as some of you, but Natalie and I sent out three podcasts that we're working so far about the What Is Finology Podcast. Those are with me, but this entire thing, as we described at the beginning is not about me speaking with [inaudible 00:43:28], please let's let him rest in peace.
Speaker 19: So a number of you, I've recorded with some folks in the room making arrangements with some of the other folks in the room, stuff like when we're really excited for Natalie and Susan to talk, for example and just, what I'm doing is making a container so that we can have a place to have these conversations. I just wanted to let you guys know that it'll be whatisfinology.org, I'm gonna make a place where we can go and post our stuff that is specifically on these topics there, you can link it back to the website for SEO purposes, it'll help you in those ways.
Speaker 19: But I'm really concerned, I want a coherent way that we step forward. I have my way of understanding, I'm going to continue to pick on Susan, she has her own amazing and wise way of understanding this work and bringing it forward. So I just want to make a space and a container so that as we have these ideas, we have a place where we can share it, a place where people are gonna know to listen. So that's it, and thank you.
Roberta: Okay. So the final word and the reason why I wanted to do this particular session is because it turns out that, well, we can't wait for the CFP Board to do anything because they follow us, we lead. Okay. And then number two, there are already people in the community who are teaching or talking about Financial Planning 3.0. Dot's one.
Ed: You know what, I just want to say something in that space, because a lot of people have asked me is what you're doing Financial Planning 3.0?
Roberta: It's part.
William: And the answer I have is, I have no idea. Dick's not around for me to ask him, I can tell you that having read his book after he died, and having now talked to him and led purely up to it in as much as I usually did, I typically did, that I found that our journeys seem to be on parallel paths. But to call what I'm doing Financial Planning 3.0 would be a mistake, so I just wanted to ...
Roberta: Okay, clarify that. And then the other thing I heard at roundup which I found amazing is Elizabeth [Jacon 00:45:40] who is a collaborator with Dick, she's apparently teaching at Golden Gate University. So remember, the people at roundup are young-
William: What is roundup?
Roberta: Roundup is the-
Speaker 19: Far West Roundup Santa Cruz.
Roberta: Santa Cruz conference. That's in August. Huh?
John: First ever retreat.
Roberta: Right. Okay. So what had happened at that one, which I found totally amazing was I found out that Elizabeth had been teaching this course at Golden Gate University and this really young guy said, "No, we learned about how to gather data." And it was interesting, because I think what he's doing, or what she seemed to be implying or teaching is that she's incorporating some of the Financial 3.0 skills in this data gathering. I thought, I don't think he really knows what he's talking about, you know, he can't quite put it together, but he's definitely on a track.
Roberta: And for me, just sitting there listening to him, it was like, wow. This is great because it's a gift that Dick left all of us, Financial Planning 3.0. It wasn't just for Jay, or just for Sally Jo, it was for all of us and I hope you've enjoyed this session and this conversation, thank you.