In May 2022, Joe was a guest on The Thread Wellbeing Podcast – a podcast connecting people from around the world who are living from their soul’s purpose.
A lot of the conversation revolved around one of the perennial questions when it comes to financial advice: What makes a good adviser?
A seemingly simple question, but one that has a multitude of answers. Joe said what he loves about financial advice is having conversations with the clients to really understand what is important to them.
He explained, “A lot of the time, we make financial decisions first based upon performance returns and those types of things, but we don’t actually have any understanding of how those financial decisions can hold us back from doing other things that we wanted to in our lives.”
Joe didn’t always approach financial advice in this way. When he was younger – in his 20s – a lot of his clients were retirees. Reflecting back on those years, he admits he compensated for the age gap by being ‘stuffy’, technical and rigidly professional. He started to feel the disparity between who he was outside of work and who he was at work.
He made a conscious decision to be more honest with who he was and connect authentically with his clients. He started to notice a shift; the more himself he was, the more his clients engaged and opened up with him. It made his life as an Adviser easier because he was able to genuinely understand his clients. He was able to give financial advice that wouldn’t inhibit their life.
Joe explained that, “by being more genuine, I feel like now I have this capability of being able to engage with clients and get better outcomes as well. It hasn’t been the technical journey that has improved me in Financial Planning in any way, it’s been more the humanity.”
Listen to Joe’s full conversation The Thread Wellbeing Podcast here.
