Tear Down the Curtain Sample 2025
September 2024
There is a naturally existing curtain of sorts between a financial advisor and his/her client. People don't come to a potential advisory relationship with the same predisposition to trust that they would accord a physician, an accountant or an attorney. Indeed, I believe they arrive in our office with a certain reservoir of distrust—a fear, however unconscious, that they may be taken advantage of.
If we're actively aware of this, and perceive it to be the potential barrier to a healthy relationship that it surely is, we will begin dealing with it right away. And we'll go on doing so until we're reasonably confident that the curtain has been torn down.
Unfortunately, the less we make this a conscious priority, the more (and the longer) the curtain of potential distrust will likely remain. And the more it may impede not just our ability but our willingness to speak warmly and freely to the human issues that really matter.
So in the first of our two inquiries, the accomplished young advisor—recently arrived at the Behavioral Investment Counseling paradigm—adopts a burden of “proof” and relies on his ability to answer financial questions convincingly. Only to find that this isn't working for him. As how could it? He's been trying to talk through that curtain rather than making the human connection—heart versus head—that sweeps the curtain away.
The other question comes from a veteran advisor with a deep, clear commitment to endowing clients with better lives. Yet he evinces considerable anxiety about how to even raise the subject of being in touch with clients' heirs—somehow not seeing that where there's genuine mutual trust and respect, the how can't matter.
I refuse to believe that any subscriber to this newsletter doesn't intuitively know a profusion of ways to do this—and to keep doing it until the curtain is in shreds on the ground. There is a world of difference between simply assuring people that they needn't worry—blessedly devoid of amplification—and trying to demonstrate to them intellectually/statistically why they needn't.
Did you, for instance, feel impelled to explain in detail to worried clients during the Imaginary Apocalypse what “the yen carry trade” was, how it worked, and why it was now coming a cropper? If so, I might politely wonder why. And did you think that your erudite explanation did them (and you) more lasting good than if you'd dismissed it offhandedly?
“A bunch of allegedly sophisticated speculators piled into an allegedly sophisticated trade that used a ton of leverage. It is now blowing up on them, as all such trades do sooner than later. This is not something a long-term investor in great businesses—like you—needs to be concerned about. It's a sandstorm, not a real crisis.”
Again, this says that your client needn't worry rather than why he needn't—and I believe it thereby carries immeasurably more emotional weight. Or certainly should: “My advisor whom I trust implicitly says this isn't something I need to worry about. So I won't.” What client would not prefer to think that way, if you had given him sufficient prompting to do so in all your previous interactions?
Surely this is where we should be striving to get to in our client relationships. I believe that no amount of expertise, erudition and/or intellectual rigor on its own will get us there. It is our own confidence in our truth—rather than the structure of the truth itself—that communicates itself most clearly to the client.
And the way you get there begins with the simple, conscious decision to go there. You can get up on any given morning with a renewed commitment to touching clients emotionally. You can go to the office, assemble your team, and make this the new priority. They will undoubtedly (and joyfully) think of ways that you and they can be more focused on helping the clients like, trust and be candid with you.
But however you do it, and regardless of how you say it, that curtain must come down. And only you can tear it down.