Enjoy the current installment of "Weekend Reading For Financial Planners" – this week's edition kicks off with the news that a recent survey finds that women who work with a financial advisor are approximately 60% more likely to report that they feel confident in managing their finances compared to those who don't, suggesting a valuable role for advisors working with this group that is controlling an increasing amount of wealth. Amongst the key areas where women surveyed are seeking professional help, retirement planning, investment planning, and estate planning topped the list, with the report identifying putting cash to work in the market as a potential lever for advisors to add value, as 63% of respondents with at least $500,000 in investible assets reported having more than $100,000 uninvested.

Also in industry news this week:

• The IRS unveiled a new automatic process to provide penalty relief for taxpayers with a history of filing and paying on time
• A survey of broker-dealer advisors finds that effective firm-wide rollouts of AI-powered tools are associated with more time to spend with clients as well as greater advisor satisfaction and loyalty

From there, we have several articles on asset location:

• While strategic asset location could add approximately 0.3% of portfolio value annually, the value of this approach depends on several factors unique to each client
• While some investors might hold foreign stocks in taxable accounts to be able to access the foreign tax credit, sizable dividends or capital gains distributions could still make tax-advantaged accounts an attractive location for these investments
• How an investor's time horizon plays an important role in determining whether holding stocks in a taxable or tax-advantaged account might be the most tax-efficient choice

We also have a number of articles on estate planning:

• Why advisors and their clients might (re)consider certain trust strategies in a post-OBBBA world
• How irrevocable trusts can create challenges during divorce proceedings, and how advisors can help clients in this situation ensure they receive a fair financial outcome
• How a recent court case shows why following a retirement plan's specific instructions for making beneficiary changes is necessary to avoid inadvertently leaving assets to an unintended recipient

We wrap up with three final articles, all about self-confidence:

• Ways financial advisors can overcome self-doubt, from finding a peer group (who might be going through similar issues) to building skills that are valuable for their specific clients
• How creating a financial planning "playbook" can help newer advisors organize the insights and wisdom they encounter during their early years on the job (and ultimately help them create their own unique style)
• Why making an impact in the lives of friends, family, and clients could provide a greater sense of meaning than achieving 'fame' amongst a broader (but more anonymous) audience

Enjoy the 'light' reading!

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Financial advisors often struggle with a frustrating reality: clients routinely delay important planning decisions even when the benefits seem obvious. Estate planning is a particularly common example, as many clients acknowledge the need to update documents, establish trusts, or clarify legacy intentions… yet fail to take action. This raises an uncomfortable question for advisors: if logic and technical explanations are not enough to motivate clients (or prospective clients), is it appropriate to use more emotionally charged conversations – including discussions that invoke fear of adverse outcomes – to create the urgency needed to move clients forward?

In this 194th episode of Kitces & Carl, Michael Kitces and client communication expert Carl Richards discuss the effectiveness of a storytelling approach and its ability to transform an abstract planning concept into a tangible emotional concern.  For example, is it more effective to explain the mechanics and use of a QTIP trust, or to explain the worst-case scenario of an estate plan without one? Supporters would argue that the technique helps clients recognize risks they may genuinely care about but had never considered, while critics may question whether such conversations cross the line into fear-based selling by intentionally provoking anxiety to drive action.

Underlying the discussion is the broader challenge of creating urgency. Human beings are naturally prone to inertia, especially when dealing with complex financial decisions whose consequences may not materialize for years or even decades. Financial planning conversations often focus on logical explanations, technical benefits, and detailed analysis. Yet advisors frequently observe that clients who understand a recommendation – and its importance – still fail to implement it. The tension, then, is whether advisors ought to simply accept client inaction as a reflection of preferences, or whether part of their role is to help clients overcome behavioral obstacles that prevent them from acting on goals. In those circumstances, emotional engagement can be a powerful catalyst for action, but it raises important questions about the methods advisors choose to employ. Is emotive storytelling manipulative, or simply persuasive if it is in the best interest of the client?

Ultimately, the key point is that selling and advising are not entirely separate activities. The challenge is not whether to encourage action, but how to do so in a manner that aligns with the advisor’s professional values and the client’s best interests. While fear and urgency may sometimes produce results, many advisors may find greater comfort in approaches rooted in client values, aspirations, and desired outcomes rather than potential catastrophes. The broader lesson is that helping clients make meaningful progress often requires more than technical expertise alone; it requires the ability to connect planning recommendations to what clients care about most, inspiring action while preserving trust, authenticity, and respect for the client’s autonomy.

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The first half of 2026 has seen significant headline-driven market uncertainty, from geopolitical events to inflation risk. Given the level of uncertainty, many investors might have assumed that equity markets would be down midway through the year. Yet, the S&P 500 has posted positive returns (hitting several all-time highs earlier in the year) amidst continued strong corporate earnings, rewarding those who have been able to look past the headlines and remain invested.

In this article, James Liu, CEO of Clearnomics, explores how advisors can put news headlines into context for clients in a data-driven way, helping them maintain perspective and recognize that periods of uncertainty don't necessarily lead to weaker equity market returns.

Looking at equity markets, the energy sector has been a standout performer in the first half of the year amidst the spike in oil prices associated with the conflict with Iran, though certain technology stocks have been supportive as well amidst continued enthusiasm surrounding developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI). International stocks have also joined the U.S. market in experiencing positive returns for the first half of the year, with both developed and emerging markets posting gains. At the same time, valuations (as measured by the S&P 500's forward price-to-earnings ratio or the Shiller Cyclically Adjusted Price-to-Earnings [CAPE] ratio) remain elevated in historical terms (though these data points don't necessarily predict where the market is heading next).

Inflation has perked up this year, with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rising 4.2% year-over-year in May, representing a multi-year high. However, this figure was largely driven by its energy subcomponent, which jumped 23.5% year-over-year, with core CPI (which excludes food and energy) rising only 2.9% over the same period – suggesting that if declines in oil prices seen over the past few weeks continue, the headline inflation figure could moderate.

In addition to affecting the prices consumers pay, inflation also plays heavily in the minds of decision-makers at the Federal Reserve (alongside the labor market, which has strengthened this year). After starting rate cuts in late 2024, expectations for further cuts flipped earlier this year, with investors now anticipating rate hikes in the coming months.  The Federal Open Market Committee appears divided, with roughly half of members expecting rates to remain steady through year-end and the other half expecting them to move higher.

Although future Fed interest rate decisions remain to be seen, current interest rates remain elevated across all maturities of the U.S. Treasury yield curve. While bond returns have been relatively subdued so far this year amidst higher rates, current yields could help restore fixed income to its traditional role as a portfolio stabilizer and income generator. On the other side of the coin, higher bond yields could serve as a headwind for equity prices, as they increase the attractiveness of bonds as an alternative and raise the discount rate applied to future earnings.

Ultimately, the key point is that while headlines can often drive short-term market moves, underlying fundamentals, such as corporate earnings, typically drive long-run returns. Which suggests that financial advisors have a valuable role to play by providing clients with perspective on the broader market picture and showing them how their asset allocation is designed to meet their short- and long-term goals!

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Welcome everyone! Welcome to the 497th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Shane Morrow. Shane is the CEO of IronBridge Wealth Counsel, a hybrid advisory firm based in Austin, Texas, that oversees $3.3 billion in assets under management for 2,600 client households.

What's unique about Shane, though, is how he has transitioned from being a solo advisor to being part of a siloed partnership and now leading an enterprise ensemble, all without taking on outside capital.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about how Shane decided that he wanted to be part of an advisory enterprise (despite the complex logistics involved) based on the greater camaraderie and mission focus it can provide compared to a more siloed business, how Shane and his partners developed a financial formula to determine ownership stakes (and how equity ownership has opened up to additional employees over time), and how Shane found that non-financial considerations (including the transition to shared decision making) were sometimes just as challenging as the financial implications of combining multiple practices.

We also talk about how Shane's firm operates with seven centralized departments (including for advisory, investments, and operations, among other areas) to ensure a high level of client service and create efficiencies for advisors and other staff members, how Shane works alongside a chief of staff who both oversees several departments and specializes in execution across the firm, and how Shane's firm established a "Department of Colleagues" charged with maintaining culture and continuity across what has become a national enterprise.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Shane shares the importance of the paraplanner role in his firm (not only for the support they provide to lead advisors but also for the opportunity to develop into lead advisors themselves), how Shane has promoted both professional and financial opportunities for next-gen employees by creating a mandatory age at which partners must liquidate their equity holdings in the firm, and how Shane has found that establishing and working towards a defined mission statement has both helped the firm remain focused on its overarching goals and has brought a greater sense of purpose for his own career.

So, whether you're interested in learning about the unique financial formulas Shane and his partners implemented to blend distinct asset books and reallocate equity ownership, the strategic utilization of an operational pod framework, or an accelerated career pathing program for paraplanners managed by specialized directors, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Shane Morrow.

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Welcome to the July 2026 issue of the Latest News in Financial #AdvisorTech – where we look at the big news, announcements, and underlying trends and developments that are emerging in the world of technology solutions for financial advisors!

This month's edition kicks off with the news that Salesforce, RightCapital, and YCharts have all launched their own new AI capabilities, from internal notetakers to capture meeting notes, to analyzers that help to craft better planning recommendations and automatically solve for desired client goals, to document extraction tools that expedite the process of analyzing a prospect's existing portfolio and developing a proposal. Which marks a rising trend of "The Incumbents Strike Back" as standalone AI providers have threatened industry disruption, but the fact that advisors are slow to switch software means that now existing leaders in the major AdvisorTech categories are developing their own versions of the same AI capabilities to retain their advisor users and preempt their disruptors!

From there, the latest highlights also feature a number of other interesting advisor technology announcements, including:

• AI Notetakers like Jump and Zocks are developing their own expanding capabilities, from Jump's new account onboarding automations (that can kick off directly from the client information and action items collected in a new-client meeting) to Zocks' rollout of Client Queries (that allow advisors to ask questions about their aggregate client base to spot new business opportunities)… capabilities that unto themselves represent useful incremental improvements, but in the long term appear to put the AI notetakers on a slow but steady collision course with traditional CRM systems (eventually forcing advisors to choose which they will stick with in the long run).
• New roll-up Arca emerges from "stealth" mode with a $48M capital raise, while Farther raises another $150M to fuel its own growth, as the new generation of tech-enabled RIA platforms make the case that engineering talent can build internal proprietary all-in-one tech platforms good enough to materially improve their advisor productivity and margins (even as the past 20 years of AdvisorTech improvements have failed to produce any reduction in the typically-40% overhead expense ratio of large advisory firms!?).
• WealthReach raises a $1M seed round to support the development of their "Living Sites" platform that leverages AI to create more dynamic SEO- and AEO-friendly websites, with content that can more continuously update to make the sites appear fresh and attractive to search engines, as the ongoing drive for organic growth shifts more advisory firms to finally pivot their websites from 'digital marketing brochures' to become differentiated websites that are actually findable by new prospects (at least for advisory firms that are differentiated enough in their own value proposition to support a differentiated website in the first place!?).

Read the analysis about these announcements in this month's column, and a discussion of more trends in advisor technology, including:

• Edward Jones takes a minority stake in Quicken, as the firm seeks to delve deeper into financial planning and enable its advisors with more tools that support good financial planning conversations with clients… but raising the question of why Edward Jones felt the need to invest into Quicken rather than just leverage its existing MoneyGuide contract, or pursue more "modern" personal financial management solutions like Monarch Money (or simply purchase Mint.com before it was shut down)?
• As advisory firms continue to invest into data warehousing solutions to create new AI orchestration layers, a deeper look at what they're actually building reveals solutions that are remarkably non-AI in their nature, from automating address updates across multiple systems to facilitating billing and advisor payouts and improving onboarding processes… raising the question of whether firms really need to be investing so much into centralized data to facilitate their AI initiatives, or whether their AI initiatives are simply becoming the impetus to finally establish more systematic processes and begin to better use the APIs of their existing providers to implement the deterministic non-AI workflows they needed all along?

And be certain to read to the end, where we have provided an update to our popular "Financial AdvisorTech Solutions Map" (and also added the changes to our AdvisorTech Directory) as well!

*To submit a request for inclusion or updates on the Financial Advisor FinTech Solutions Map and AdvisorTech Directory, please share information on the solution at the AdvisorTech Map submission form.

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Enjoy the current installment of "Weekend Reading For Financial Planners" – this week's edition kicks off with the news that on the eve of individuals being able to open and fund Section 530A "Trump" Accounts, the IRS has issued a revenue procedure that will significantly reduce the number of individuals who have to file gift tax returns as a result of making contributions to these accounts by establishing safe harbor rules including, among others, that taxpayers donating must be individuals and that such contributions must be made in cash. Which could reduce the administrative burden of making contributions to these accounts for parents, grandparents, and others, though these individuals might consider more broadly whether other savings vehicles for future generations (e.g., taxable custodial accounts or 529 plans) might better meet their objectives.

Also in industry news this week:

• The SEC has advanced a proposal that would make electronic delivery of documents the default for RIAs and asset managers (while allowing clients and investors to opt in to receive paper copies)
• A survey finds that wealthy families are increasingly looking beyond tax efficiency when it comes to estate planning to also create frameworks for the next generation that outline the purpose and meaning of their wealth

From there, we have several articles on retirement planning:

• Updated research on retirees' spending trajectories finds that they could resemble a 'smile' or a 'smirk', with implications for initial withdrawal rates
• The history of 'lost decades' in the stock market and how financial planners can help clients prepare for them
• How historical visualizations can help clients better grasp abstract retirement income strategies (and how their portfolio and income strategy would have fared in different historical periods)

We also have a number of articles on advisor marketing:

• Key metrics for measuring the success of a marketing strategy, including average new client revenue and the percentage of leads that are qualified
• The pros and cons of keeping marketing in-house versus using an outsourced provider (and how a hybrid approach could offer the best of both worlds)
• How having a marketing "point person" within an advisory firm can ensure that marketing tasks don't slip through the cracks

We wrap up with three final articles, all about enjoying the holiday weekend:

• The science behind fireworks, from how different colors are produced to innovations in sound effects
• Why controlling heat and moisture are key to successful grilling and how the 'best' fuel source can depend on a chef's priorities
• How to choose and use sunscreen to avoid a nasty sunburn after a day at the beach or pool

Enjoy the 'light' reading!

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For most of our history, the domain of the financial advisor has been helping clients to invest their savings in publicly traded stocks and bonds that create opportunities for long-term growth, in order to achieve clients' retirement and other savings goals. While the particular vehicles have changed over time – from individual securities, to mutual funds, to exchange-traded funds – the underlying continuity has been that all of these issuers are registered with and are subject to the reporting standards of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which mandates detailed and extensive disclosures about the issuer, its business, and the securities being offered. More recently, as companies are staying private longer and issuing more private equity and debt, private investments and funds have proliferated, and more and more advisory firms are now exploring whether to add allocations of private funds into their client portfolios. However, without the rigorous disclosures required of issuers because of SEC registration and reporting, it is significantly harder for advisors to conduct due diligence on private funds, which present investment and legal risks not typical for most public investments.

In this guest post, Rich Chen, founder of Brightstar Law Group, explores the practical due diligence considerations that advisors must navigate when considering a private fund investment, with a particular focus on what to look for in governing documents and the operational systems of the private fund.

The starting point in due diligence is to recognize that what is stated in legal governing documents can differ quite significantly from a private fund's marketing materials, as the latter is written to attract investors to the fund by focusing on the opportunities, while the former is written to minimize the risks for the fund sponsor (and thus more clearly articulates the rights of investors who put dollars into the fund). Accordingly, a detailed review of governing documents can highlight conflicts of interest (e.g., between the fund sponsor and affiliated parties), reveal  restrictions on an investor's ability to exit the fund investment (which can often be significant), identify red-flags regarding indemnification provisions, and detail how expenses will be allocated between investors and fund management. In addition, due diligence of governing documents provides an opportunity to ask about “side letters” to determine if other investors might have preferential or different rights or return opportunities.

Beyond due diligence of legal documents, it's also important to evaluate a private fund's operational systems, and how effectively they are built to protect investors. For instance, does the private fund segregate key functions, ensure dual authorizations for disbursements, use an outside custodian or separate accounting firm, and conduct annual audits? These measures can significantly mitigate risks of fraud or misappropriation by the manager or its personnel. Similarly, advisors can inquire about the firm's cybersecurity and client data protections, engage in background checks of the fund sponsor's history (to ensure no prior legal issues or enforcement actions!), and determine how the firm values its assets (especially in cases where it calculates carried interest or other management fees based on those valuations).

Ultimately, Chen provides a due diligence checklist to help support the process, though notably it's not enough to just 'mechanically' complete a checklist; instead, the SEC expects to see advisors showing contemporaneous documentation that they were thoughtful in their questions and evaluation of the answers provided, to demonstrate robustness of the process itself – for  which advisors may even wish to engage outside providers to support in due diligence (especially if their internal resources are limited). The growth of companies in the private markets represents a significant opportunity for clients to invest, but those who are accustomed to the natural protections the SEC has built into public markets need to be cognizant that there are unique risks of private equity and debt funds that, at the least, require a substantive proactive due diligence process from financial advisors (with the SEC increasingly applying enforcement actions against advisory firms that “just” relied on the marketing materials and representations of the private fund sponsor alone).

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Welcome everyone! Welcome to the 496th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Shannon Eusey. Shannon is the chairman and co-founder of Beacon Pointe Advisors, an RIA based in Newport Beach, California, that oversees $62 billion in assets under management for 25,000 client households.

What's unique about Shannon, though, is how she led Beacon Pointe throughout its path to becoming a large advisory enterprise, from starting out as an independent RIA to adding partners through M&A transactions to bringing on capital partners to now transitioning out of the CEO role.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about how Shannon started Beacon Pointe alongside her father with an eye towards eventually building a large advisory enterprise (at a time when large RIAs were much less common), how Shannon and her team decided to start adding partner firms to contribute to Beacon Pointe’s growth (and why her firm places culture fit near the top of the list of criteria when evaluating potential partners), and how Shannon decided that adding a private equity partner would both provide capital to support her firm’s acquisitions and serve as a source of business-building wisdom as her firm evolved over time.

We also talk about how Shannon decided to centralize operations at Beacon Pointe with the goal of allowing local offices to focus on providing advice to clients, how Shannon and Beacon Pointe develops content and partnerships to boost the firm’s organic growth (alongside assets brought in through acquisitions), and why Shannon has met one-on-one with every new employee at the firm (to better understand their journey to Beacon Pointe and to let them know she and the executive team care what employees think).

And be certain to listen to the end, where Shannon shares how she made the difficult decision to step out of the CEO role (though she will remain with the firm as chairman and continue to work on priority projects), how Shannon has led research into women and wealth that has revealed lessons for how the financial advice industry can better serve this group, and how Shannon has found value by keeping a certain amount of ‘white space’ on her calendar to ensure she has time to step back from day-to-day business and consider the big picture of her role and the business as a whole.

So, whether you’re interested in learning about what it takes to build a $62 billion advisory enterprise, considerations around making acquisitions and taking on outside capital, or the role of culture within a large advisory business, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Shannon Eusey.

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One of the biggest challenges in scaling up an advisory firm beyond the founder is figuring out how to ensure that all the new and future team members of the firm will deliver advice consistent with the founder's approach. Historically, this has meant training advisors largely through osmosis; associate advisors were expected to be part of client meetings alongside the founder, to not just capture notes for CRM, compliance, and follow-up purposes, but to be present and absorb and learn by seeing and hearing (and eventually, supervised doing). Yet with the arrival of AI notetakers, many advisory firms have begun to question whether it's even a good use of time for team members to still be in client meetings when notetaking can occur automatically. While at the same time, the question arises: if team members aren't in client meetings, how else can they possibly learn the founder's approach and planning philosophy? (Unless they go separately to the founder with each and every planning question, which ironically can take even more of the founder's time!)

In this guest post, Jake Northrup, founder of Experience Your Wealth, shares how his 3-person advisory firm built their own custom AI assistant, not as a means to replace team members but a way to teach, train, and support their advisors and ensure advice is delivered more deeply and consistently to clients… while reducing how often the team comes to Jake as the founder for direct input.

Of course, the starting point for any AI-related initiative in an advisory firm – especially when it involves client-specific situations and therefore client data – is how to do so securely. Which Jake ultimately solved for by transitioning to a new CRM system (Slant) that has securely integrated Claude directly into its own client database. Additionally, with support from the firm's outsourced IT and Cybersecurity provider, CyberSecureRIA, Jake was able to set up a secure private cloud environment – dubbed "Rocky" – where the firm's IP can be uploaded and utilized safely (after trying a smaller-scope setup with a contractor on Upwork that failed!).

Once the client and firm data was secured in a safe environment, Jake shares how he utilized Claude to develop a "Standard Operating Procedure" (SOP) document that could be used to teach their AI-assistant Rocky how the firm handles any particular planning situation based on the AI-generated notes and transcripts of various internal firm and client meetings (already held safely in their Slant CRM or secure private server), along with other firm data.

Once trained, Rocky is now able to act like a thinking partner for the firm, allowing them to more consistently create the deep advice that Experience Your Wealth provides to its clients while reducing how often the team needs to come back to Jake for input. With the caveat that Rocky isn't expected to be (and isn't) perfect, and some issues will still need to be escalated for input from the founder. Which means that from the team perspective, the focus can shift from memorizing what the firm's standard approach is for certain client scenarios (since Rocky can quickly make those connections), to exercising judgment about when to trust Rocky's output, when to push back, and when to bring it to the founder for further (albeit still less frequent and time-saving) input.

An interesting side-effect of Jake's efforts is to find that 'just' consolidating the firm's information into their CRM system has been enough to apply Rocky as their own AI assistant "lens" through which client scenarios can be analyzed. In other words, it wasn't necessary for them to go through the complexity of creating their own "data warehouse" as some larger firms have done; instead, Jake's firm achieved their AI unlock by switching to a new CRM system (Slant) that was able to bring together all of their client relationship and meeting data (e.g., AI notes and transcripts) into one central CRM location.

Ultimately, the key point is that building an AI assistant tool, trained on your firm's individual data, is something that can be accomplished even in a solo advisor or small team environment, as long as some outside help is used for the initial technical setup. And doing so is arguably especially helpful for smaller/solo advisors, where training team members – who otherwise crave the founder's input and time – can create growth bottlenecks that an AI trained on the firm's planning approaches can help to solve. Which in the long run doesn't only help the firm to train and develop team faster, but also helps them more quickly go deeper with each client, supporting the firm's ability to continue to grow without needing to hire additional team as rapidly, thanks to the technology support!

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Enjoy the current installment of "Weekend Reading For Financial Planners" – this week's edition kicks off with the news that a recent study from The Ensemble Practice finds that while surveyed advisory firms posted profit margins in excess of 38% for fiscal year 2025 (a figure up nearly 15 percentage points over the past decade), organic growth rates have lagged, with strong market performance being a key contributor to both (serving as a revenue driver for AUM-based firms, but also leading some consumers to continue managing their own investments). Which suggests that during a future market downturn, firms that do invest in pursuing organic growth (e.g., by engaging in multiple tactics and creating a structured marketing and sales process) could be better positioned to reach consumers who are newly incentivized to seek out an advisor, ultimately weather the storm that could otherwise significantly erode their revenue, and emerge even stronger when the market eventually recovers.

Also in industry news this week:

• NAPFA announced a new fiduciary standard for its registered advisors this week, going beyond SEC and CFP Board fiduciary requirements, particularly when it comes to advisor compensation
• A recent survey indicates that financial advisors on the whole are largely upbeat when it comes to their growth prospects over the next few years and are leaning into the human element of advice as they prepare for greater competition from AI-powered self-directed advice tools

From there, we have several articles on retirement planning:

• A rule from "SECURE Act 2.0" restricts the type of catch-up contributions that can be made to workplace retirement plans for certain high-income earners, though these contributions could still be valuable despite the absence of an immediate tax deduction
• How individuals can gain early retirement flexibility using the "Rule of 55" to make penalty-free withdrawals from their workplace retirement plans
• A study finds that married couples sometimes don't maximize the employer matches available to them, in part because of concerns about how workplace retirement plans would be treated in a potential divorce

We also have a number of articles on insurance planning:

• When long-term care insurance might (and might not) make sense for clients in the current challenging environment for the product
• How financial advisors have responded when clients face sharp premium hikes on their long-term care policies
• Why individuals might want to seek out insurance policies that are expected to lose them money (on average)

We wrap up with three final articles, all about the future of content in a "Zero-Click" world:

• 17 types of content that could continue to perform well at a time when fewer individuals are actually clicking through to websites from Google searches
• Why nurturing a highly tailored audience could help content creators (including financial advisors) succeed amidst the centralization of information
• While "how-to" books have experienced a sharp decline in sales amidst the growing popularity of AI chatbots, those dedicated to consuming long-form content (and/or who have an accountability partner) might be more likely to succeed in their fitness, financial, or other goals

Enjoy the 'light' reading!

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Helping clients become more financially successful is a multi-faceted process, but much of it ultimately comes down to implementation. The challenge is that for clients (and advisors themselves!), "implementation" is more than 'just' point-and-go, where a direction is determined, then everyone executes perfectly. Instead, motivating clients towards action requires multiple steps of goal-setting, then dissecting why those goals are those goals, adjusting accordingly, then creating clear steps… and even then, the client may not act. Yet for some clients, is the feeling of progress enough?

In this 193rd episode of Kitces & Carl, Michael Kitces and client communication expert Carl Richards discuss the difference between feeling productive, being perceived as productive, and actually being productive – and the place that each of the three states plays in motivation. Whether a client (or advisor) is focused on productivity, creativity, fitness, or financial success, it is easier to feel that they are being creative than it is to actually go forth and create (let alone publish something for public consumption). Self-help books and the like proliferate in part because they provide helpful frameworks and thought leadership… and in part because they can create a sense of process without requiring sustained effort.

Similarly, clients may enjoy the feeling of being financially responsible – they have an advisor and a financial plan! – yet may not implement the goals they appear to agree with. Some of this, undoubtedly, is due to the fact that many of the actions associated with financial planning are tedious at best – even if the advisor tries to make them clear and pleasant, and even if the client likes the financial advisor. Some of this may be because the client gets 'enough' from feeling responsible. And some inaction may come due to an unspoken unwillingness to act due to 'something else'. Advisors may be able to diagnose and address some of these tactics by using scaling questions ("On a scale of 1–10, how ready are you to implement this? If you're a 6, what would it take for you to reach a 7?") and other communication strategies.

Ultimately, the key point is that effective financial advice is as much about client behavior as it is about actions and solutions. Sometimes the most valuable contribution an advisor can make is helping clients feel understood, supported, and capable of making progress, even if that progress initially appears small. By recognizing that the desire to feel successful often precedes the willingness to become successful, advisors can approach advice adherence with greater patience and compassion. In doing so, they create an environment where clients can gradually build confidence, readiness, and momentum… allowing meaningful financial change to emerge over time!

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