Reimagining Wealth Through Simple Sketches with Carl Richards

Hi and welcome to Financial Behavior Thought Leaders. I'm Mary, and this podcast takes you to the behind the scenes with top speakers and financial services. So whether you're a financial advisor booking a client event, or an event planner looking for a perfect keynote, or a financial professional wanting to learn more from industry thought leaders, you're in the right place. Today we're featuring Carl Richards, one of our Financial Behavior keynote groups. Exclusive speakers. You probably know Carl from his long running column in the New York Times or his simple yet powerful sketches that cut straight to the heart of our most complex money behaviors. We'll explore his journey to the stage, the themes beyond his keynote, and even hear a moment from him when one of his talks has left a lasting impression on audiences and exciting news. Carl has a book coming out this fall titled your Money Reimagining wealth through simple Sketches.

We'll ask him about that in just a bit. Good morning, Carl. How are you?

Hi, Mary. Thanks for doing this. This would be super fun.

I'm excited to have you. Thanks for being here. So before we dive into your keynote though, I think a lot of us want to hear what did your speaking journey look like of getting onto the stage?

Yeah, look, it's. It's such an interesting question because we're always, I'm. I'm always tempted, and I think humans, we're always tempted to look backwards and have this really beautiful narrative. But there's just nothing about my career that works. Like, none of it makes sense. And so I. It's all really funny stories. I mean, I applied to be a security guard and everybody knows that story.

That's how I ended up in the industry. I. The speaking thing happened because I kept getting asked. In fact, I remember, I think I remember the very first event in Phoenix, and it was an advisor event and they asked me to come speak and I said, you know, what do you pay people? And they said, some number. And I was like, are you kidding me? To speak like, that would be like for an hour. I would pay people to listen to me. Like, this is incredible. So I went and I thought, man, wouldn't this be cool? All these.

I was always thinking, like, you know, PowerPoint presentations. And we've all been through boring things. So I was like, man, what if I brought T shirts? And I. I'd been to a basketball game, a college basketball game recently, and they have those T shirts in the T shirt cannon. And I was like, what if I brought T shirts? And right in the middle of my talk, I stopped and I had Them rolled up and I just threw them into the audience. And that went about as well as my description. But I, I did throw T shirts. I remember Bill Winterberg caught one and he has.

He, he put one up on back in the day when Twitter was actually useful for any of us. So that was like my early speaking. Let me tell you one more story. One of my first attempts was at. I was really into. I don't even know what we. We called it back then, but it's basically ESG investing now. So it was really around values based investing.

And I talk the people in. At Whole Foods. Whole Foods predecessor, which was Wild Oats. There was a Wild Oats, I believe this was in Vegas. It might have been here in Utah. I can't remember exactly. I talked them into letting me do a presentation at the store in the little place where people eat. And it was sort of like I was in charge of that.

They put up a little thing in the store and I was in charge. And, and no, not one person. No one, no one came. And it was just like the butch. The butcher was over in the corner. Just like, bro, what's going on? Like it was, it was. No one came. And I've had other events where like three people.

It's almost worse. Like no one is fine, right? Three people when there's 40 chairs. Oh, you just gotta be like, I'm okay. I'm gonna go all in for these three people because they're here. So the, those are some of the early experiences speaking.

So I'm hearing you say like T shirt, canon grocery stores. Probably not the best way to launch your speaking career, right? Don't follow me is what I'm hearing.

There's nothing about, there's nothing about my career that would suggest anybody should follow any of it. It. Yeah, that's exactly right. And then I remember at one point my, my. I, I was, I, I had a book agent, which again is just another lucky amazing story. And I asked my book agent about speaking and she said, oh, I'll book a few for you. So she booked them and I remember her saying something like, we want to price them at a level where 80% of the people will say no because the price is too high. And it doesn't really help us to talk about numbers because we over index on a number.

But I just remember saying like, oh, what's that number? And she told me and I was just like. And she said, and we also want to price them, so you get one. And the number was so outrageous that I was like, don't ever talk to me about that again. Do you know what I mean? Like, I can't. Whether it was $500 or $500,000 doesn't really matter, but it was so outrageous. So there was that whole part of speaking too, where you had to get used to the idea of like, people will and you should be paid for the value you add as a speaker. And we should never forget that. And it.

But it's also, at the same time, it's okay to. You can hold two things true at the same time. Number one, you deliver massive value and you should be paid for it. Number two, I can't believe anybody will pay you. You know, like those, those can be true at the same time, which is why I think it's nice to have somebody else like you handling all of that side of the business so you don't have to deal with it every single time.

So let me ask you the next step, because you're also seen as a thought leader in the industry. How have you become, or are you comfortable with that term? I can tell from your face that's not a comfortable term.

Let's talk, let's talk about this thought leadership for a minute. Like, where are they? The little thoughts that you're leading? Again, where are you. Is it like the pied. Do you have a flute? Like, it's like the Pied Piper, like, and there's a whole bunch of thoughts coming with you. That's how I always feel when I think about thought leader. And I, I should, I should mention, like, anybody who feels comfortable with that title, that's totally fine. And this is probably more a reflection of my own self esteem than anything. So I have not become comfortable with that.

I've also learned probably more recently in the last three to five years that it's okay to allow other people to use labels or terms for your work. That might just be the term people use, right? Like, like, you may not be comfortable with it. So this is the first time in maybe a year or two where I've actually had that discussion because I'm like, this will be fun to do with Mary, but it's okay now, right? I don't, I, if somebody introduces me as a thought leader, I just say.

Okay, so it's a lot of how you see yourself, but also, I mean, we're not going to deny I've been to conferences with you. You do have a line. So you may not be playing a flute, but there are a line of people that are following you that want to hear your ideas. Fair enough.

Yeah. So here's the trick I've played on myself with that is to get really comfortable with the idea that it's about the work. Right. And I don't really claim any ownership of the work. So those thoughts in the thought leadership term or the ideas, I'm really comfortable with the idea that I just have an opportunity right now to notice things in the world and share them in a way that is uniquely mine, because that's all I have. I don't have any way to be anything else. And that if people say nice things to me, I can be really gracious about that because I now understand what they're really actually saying is not necessarily me. And what they're saying is, hey, the works had a profound impact.

And it's a gift, it's an offering. It's not really mine. And those things can be true. Both those again, at the same time. I can be like, oh, thank you. I mean, it's really. You have to. Anytime you give a talk and people clap, there's some real, like, you've got to build some guardrails in around ego and all of those things.

And I think, to me, the trick to that, and I'm still not very good at it, but I'm working on it, is it's about the work. Right. I will even say things like, oh, that's so kind of you, Mary. Thank you. I'm glad the work's had an impact on you. Like, I'll even say, versus, like, I'm glad I've had an impact on you. So that's a little. And I think it's quite healthy.

Like, it's not just a trick. I. It's. It's been really helpful for me to think that way.

I love that saying humble and grounded while also appreciating that your ideas and what you do say has impact, you know, using those words in a good way.

And. And again, I'm going to be really careful about humble and grounded. And. And hopefully that's true. But I'm just trying to get to the truth. And the truth is I can't really claim those things anyway, and it would be weird, too. And so that's, to me, just the truth. It happens to have a side benefit that it's a good trick to keep yourself humble and grounded.

Maybe that's the right way to put it.

I love it. Well, let's get to your work. I'm super excited about this new book coming out this fall. It's called you'd Money reimagining wealth through simple sketches. Give us a sneak peek. And what inspired you to write it?

Yeah, that's such a. That's a fun question. I mean, I've noticed over the years since Behavior happened, one page plan came out, that the sketches have just served as conversation grenades. Like you. You kind of toss them in a room and conversations break out. Like, that's so at the heart of this, the. The book. It's not like I'm not on a book tour.

I'm on a conversations tour. The book is just an artifact of the conversations, and that's why advisors buy the digital license to print them and put them on their wall. I think real financial planning happens in conversation. And I think if we get outside of the financial planning profession, having a wise money friend, you know, or like good financial decisions and financial alignment between what you say is important to you and actually how you're using your capital, that kind of alignment happens in conversation. The challenge, of course, is we're not very good at it because we've never been taught. Like, I'm sure almost all of the listeners can relate to that. I mean, there's. I'm continuing to find exceptions here and there, but for the most part, nobody taught us how to talk about money.

And if, if we were taught, we were taught it was a math problem. And then suddenly we're feeling fear or greed or envy or worry or concern, and we're confused about like, wait, I thought this was money. So nobody's taught us how to have an emotional operating system for our financial lives. And I think that emotional operating system is developed in conversation. And so the book is a collection of 100. It's actually 101. We snuck one last one in. A hundred sketches and really short essays.

Like, there's not a single one that's more than a page and a half, but a lot of them are a paragraph. There's a ton of white space in the book intentionally. I bet 30% of the book is white space. It feels more like a poetry book than it does a personal finance book. It's seven by seven square, right? It's not. So it was very intentional to try and do everything different in an effort to open up the space for conversations to happen. So that's. That's what the book is about, is really a hundred conversation grenades.

I love it. And so part of this is also going to be speaking on. Based on your book. Right. And I think what I love about this is it can be so powerful. Personalize to Your audience. So talk to us a little bit about the keynote that's going to coincide with this and what the audience can take away from it.

Yeah, sure. I mean, you know, for years I would show up and do, do sort of canned is not the right word, but like, like sort of a standard set of keynotes. And those are, those are amazing and great and they have their place. And most of the best speakers I know do that. Um, but I started noticing probably like five or six years ago, I started noticing sort of. I'm always on the lookout for crunch. I call them the crunchy bits. The like emotional resonance when something kind of lands.

And I started noticing people in the audience where things would land.

Yeah.

And I, I one time I just sort of by accident went there with someone. Like I was like. And I remember there's a person on sort of center row to my right side, a couple seats in that I said something. And this was in an 800 person crowd. I said something and I noticed it landed. And for some reason I was like, hey, could we chat for a minute? And it just, I just let everybody else go away and we had this conversation. And that was an incredibly powerful experience for that person, but for everybody else in the room. And so then I started building off of that.

It was like, why can't I have a more. Why can't I scale an intimate conversation? Was the question I was asking. Like, is that possible? And so what we've done with this, this series around just using the book as the framework for a conversation. It's not about the book. What's really cool about this, this series of talks for the next year or two is that we can send you a copy of the book. And if you are an organizer of an event, this is the other thing I noticed, like the organizer of the event has some goals in mind.

Yeah.

And one of the questions I like to ask in these pre calls we do with organizers is like, look, if the 400 people in your audience were to all be pulled, if you were standing outside the door and you got to ask every single one of those people, what's the one thing they took away, what would you hope they would say? Right. I don't, I don't have the, the privilege of being that close to the audience. I don't know and I don't know what the goal of the event is. And so I love if we can, if we can say, what's the goal? What's your strategic initiatives? Like, you're spending a lot of money and time on this event, like what do you really want to come out? What do you want people to take away? And then we can customize the conversation around that. So one easy way to do that is we send the book and we say, pick seven. Pick your seven favorite. There's nothing magic about seven. I mean, there is something magic about seven, but you know, it doesn't matter if it was eight or 11 or three.

Pick seven. And I will build my keynote around those seven. And in some cases, we may even have somebody from the organization sort of involved in that discussion. Maybe like a moderated style Q and A in some cases. But that allows me to really go deep on aligning what I'm saying with what's going on at the event. So that's how we've structured it. We've already done some this way and it's been really, really amazing because the stories that come out of it, every one of these sketches, I mean, geez, I have, I mean, I could talk about any one of them for hours. So that's how we've structured these.

Okay, so I'm envisioning here kind of what you showed me before that conversation, the one on one in a group of 800. Let's talk about your smaller events, specifically client events, because you love doing these. But I think a lot of us are like, what is that? Why are those valuable? Talk to us more about what you do there.

Yeah, so it's so fun there. I love doing something small client events and small like workshop style stuff with advisors where we have a chance to really go deep. But let me, let me give you an example. With client events. One of my favorite things to do now keep in mind people coming to a. So they get invited by a financial planner, financial advisory firm to come to an event. There is probably a non interested spouse that's like, seriously, I don't want to go to this. So you've already gotten like, what an opportunity.

In my mind, I'm like, what an opportunity to play with that. How could this be something completely different? Like you showed up, you thought you were going to get the economic forecast and the whatever, whatever, right? And instead somebody's crying like, how can we play with, with that environment? So one of the things I've done which is really quite fun is, yeah, I'll tell the story really quick. I'll tell. So a group of 20, right? And they're all clients. And I'll start sometimes by just saying, hey, I want everybody to kind of settle in for a second. I'm going to draw something on the board. And I want you to take out a piece of paper. Don't put your name on it, just take out a piece of paper.

And I want you to write down the first thought you have and the first feeling you notice. So first thought, first feeling. I'll let everybody take a second. They had a piece of paper. And then I'll just draw a dollar symbol up on the board. And it is unbelievable what happens next. Right? Because. And in, in some cases I'll have them hand those cards in and there's no names on them.

So. And I'll just look through them and pick one and you'll, you'll get words like, like, like what did somebody just tell me? Oh yeah, what I just did last week. Bondage and fear.

Wow.

And then somebody else would be like, this is one. Literally it was Y, a, a, a, a a S exclamation mark was like, yes. And then, and then the, the feeling they notice was love. This is in the same room.

Wow.

Like now we can go deep on that. I don't have to say, hey, you, who said bondage? I can say something like, oh, wow. I'm noticing some in here that say like, fear, anxiety. Anybody who wrote that down want to chat for a minute. And suddenly we're having this amazing dialogue. And then the punchline is, wait, back up at the board. I thought that was just a dollar symbol. Right.

And suddenly the dollar symbols. It turns out a dollar symbol is a provocative symbol. It provokes people and sometimes it's excitement, sometimes it's bondage, anxiety, worry. Almost nobody writes down store of value or medium of exchange. Nobody. I've never seen that written down actually. So now we're suddenly into it. And then I go, okay, great.

Now let's talk about this sketch and this story and this image. And we go through. So people leave asking questions they didn't know they had. And the advisor suddenly is now connected to that client in a way that like, what's great, what my goal is in those events is I want the client leaving thinking, I'm so glad Mary invited me to this. And I particularly want the non interested spouse or partner to be like, oh my gosh, I had no idea. Like, Mary's really smart. She really thinks like, I want this all to reflect on the advisor.

And you've done a lot of these before. What, what have you heard the advisors say that has changed for the clients after going through this experience?

Yeah, the, the like routinely, like, man, we had a conversation about sort of like why Are we doing the things we're doing? Goals are being adjusted. Discussions that I've been wanting to have forever, suddenly the door is cracked open and we've got more alignment. And, and like some of the practical takeaways is like advice adherence, you know what I mean? Like, like they're actually sticking more to the plan because we adjusted the plan. Months later, we're now getting much more advice adherence because the plan actually reflects what they really wanted, but they didn't even know. The clients don't come into our offices knowing this stuff. And for most advisors, it's not something you're particularly comfortable at, cracking that door open. And so this gives you an entry point into those conversations. So we're seeing things, advice adherence.

Suddenly the value is not portfolio design or tax savings, which is valuable, right?

Sure.

The value is alignment money sort of money. Why? Like a deeper sense of connection to my goals and my values. That's what I'm hearing.

Well, and I've heard you say this before is your biggest takeaway is that one spouse that said this really resonated with me. Like this made an impact. And we hear a lot, Carl, about this transfer of wealth. Right. Shifting from men to women. All the rest of the. We also hear the other side, that 70% of advisors are going to be fired within their first year. How can conversations like this with those non interested spouses change that trajectory?

Yeah, yeah. I mean the thing you need to realize is I think we've, I think all the advisors listening to this conversation probably know this story that if you have a client for three to five years, if you ever get the opportunity to hear them talk about you. Right. What they say to their friend, their friend who says something like, ah, my portfolio's down 20%. Like complaining at work. And that your client is thinking, why is he even like, why does he even know? Or even worried like what. And he'll say something like, you need to go see Mary. And what the next words that come out of their mouth is not going to be Mary designs amazing efficient portfolios, or Mary does a great job with our cash flow, or Mary helped me get great life insurance, or Mary helped me design my estate plan.

That's not. Those are incredibly valuable. And that's what we, that's probably what they came thinking. Yep. That's why I said it's, it's actually like 18 months. 18 to three. 18 months to three years after they've been through the financial pornography detox program, you've taken them through what they're going to say is Mary gets me and my family or my non interested spouse loves going to the meetings or gosh, that's weird. You're thinking about.

I don't even think about that anymore because Mary, like those are the words they're going to use. That's not what they came to you at first because they didn't even know that existed. And so you're just accelerating that experience of saying, hey, I sometimes use the word cute. I don't mean it this dismissive, but like, hey, cute that you thought portfolio design was my value. And by the way, I take it super serious like I'm the best portfolio designer in the world, but that's actually, you know, 18 months from now. The thing you're actually gonna value is the fact that you're not thinking about this anymore. Right, Totally. So we just accelerate that experience.

And I think it goes back to what you said at the beginning. They're grenades, they're conversation grenades that open the door for further conversations with the advisor. Right. And it's just the impetus.

That's right. And precisely the kind of conversations you want to be having. Instead of like, I look like I'm still so surprised. This hasn't happened in a long time, but I still have the experience where I show up at a deeply holistic, empathetic financial Advisor's office and CNBC's on in the foyer. Do you know what I mean? And that's just a, or a picture of a bull and a bear or a stock chart. Those are just sort of artifacts that are left over. And what we want on the walls is travel photography, a picture of a waterfall. Like, like what we want is the kind of conversations that you want to be having, not the ones that we reinforce by sending a quarterly performance report.

You know, like so much of this we're doing to ourselves is what I'm saying. And this is a way to shift those conversations to what you want to be having.

Well, and that takes us where we want to go and that's behind the scenes. So we know you're an avid traveler yourself, you've lived in New Zealand, and I've heard you even get in the margins of your passport. Give us a little more insight to some of that.

Yeah, I tell, tell me what would be most interesting out of that? Like the travel. The what would be most interesting?

Yeah, tell us where, how this really, it's influenced you and your family because you've taken your family on a lot of these experiences as well.

Yeah, I, I, I'm really torn because we went through a, a period of time. I mean, we moved to New Zealand for what was supposed. I was promised it was a year. It turns out it was four. And then we went to London for a year and I went kicking and screaming. And my wife was super smart. And this was just, you know, a little bit of the backstory. This was, you know, on the heels of the financial crisis, some really intense stuff in my own personal life, really gas, like full gas living.

I was involved in a 20 to 30 hour a week volunteer position in my church. Like it was just maxed. And my wife was smart enough to see that I was a superhero everywhere else and not a superhero at home and, you know, getting burnt out. And so she pulled, she was smart enough to pull the plug. And I didn't realize how serious it was until we got a couple months in New Zealand and she explained to me how serious it was. So I have some mixed feelings about it because New Zealand changed my life. And travel, travel changed my life. And the perspective that you get, this is part of what I'm trying to capture with the project at 50 fires is like trying to get different perspectives on money.

Like you, you realize in New Zealand, I was there six months asking everybody what they did for a living when I first meet them, until one of my friends finally said, mate, why do you ask that question? Like, why don't you ask what do I do on the weekend? Or what am I doing with my family? Or what's my favorite beach? Like, that's what we care about. We don't ask that question here. Well, that, that was immediately just something like, whoa, I've been swimming in a different water. Right, right. So that perspective is amazing. And now I'm also loving like the stability of, you know, like we planted some plants and they're growing this year. Do you mean like. So I think travel, taking kids on.

I took my daughter to my first international in well known, my first. It wasn't my first, but one of my biggest international events was in Vietnam. And I took my daughter with me. It was so fun. I South Africa, incredible. So the opportunities that can come up as a speaker to see the world and get perspective. And I would just encourage any speaker that gets the chance to go do that to, to lean into it, to learn, ask, why is it different here? How do you view it? Don't come feeling like you're there to teach everybody else, but you're there to learn and share perspectives and bounce ideas past. Because that changed my life.

I've loved the international. I've been all over the world. It's crazy to look back on those couple of years where it was all over the world. And I'll go back to someplace like in Australia and I'll remember like, oh my gosh, I was on the street, like, hey, around the corner there's this taco shop around in Australia. But so anyway, that, that's some of my perspective on speaking internationally.

And I love it. And I think that that idea of travel goes beyond just speakers, like the financial advisors, anyone. I, I've been to South Africa now four times. It has completely changed my life because it's changed my perspective. And I didn't go to speak. I went for a learning experience. And I think that's your point is go to learn. And these experiences, it's not you.

It wasn't me going to South Africa to teach them what they need to do with their money. Okay. It's actually just the opposite. I went and soaked up so much goodness and so much. That was different. Right? They live such a different life than I did. And I learned to. I always come home from those trips appreciating carpet.

Now, that is the weirdest thing in the world. But it's the little things in my life that I come away with going, you know what? I'm just glad that I have a roof over in my head. I'm glad that I have food on my table. I'm grateful for the small things that we kind of seem to get lost here and we get caught up in the rat race. And yet traveling and taking you out of your comfort zone and putting you in places that you're uncomfortable brings so much growth and perspective.

For sure. No doubt.

I love this, Carl. We could talk to you all day. And it has been such an honor to have you on here. If you're looking for a speaker who offers that holistic approach to business growth and someone who blends both personal development and professional strategies, you can learn more and book Carl at Keynote Financial. Thanks for joining us on financial Behavior Thought Leaders, where we'll be back soon with conversations that bring you closer to the leading voice, voices in financial services. See you next time.