February 13, 2020

Episode 85: Dennis Moseley Williams: Growth of the Experience Economy: A Transformation of the Financial Services Industry

February 13, 2020

The financial advice industry has always been a place of change, and yet certain old practices hang around for decades. Our guest today, Dennis Moseley Williams, is all about moving things forward for the good of the client and the advisor. The basis of his understanding is the characterization of the economy as one fundamentally built around experiences. Applying this lens to the financial sector means that advisors need to think about how to provide more than just a service to their clients, they need to stage an experience and a process of curated growth and learning. In our conversation, Dennis unpacks the evolution up to this point, showing how each step requires adjustments and progress from providers and the space that opens up due to technological advances must be filled with something of value. We discuss communication, fulfillment and happiness and Dennis makes a strong argument for the role of the financial advisor reaching beyond the bank; he believes it should include all important areas of life. The last part of the episode is spent thinking about ways that willing advisors can offer the most to their clients and how to pitch and scale these businesses in the smartest ways. For this fascinating chat with a truly innovative thinker and gifted speaker, be sure to join us!

Key Points From This Episode:

Dennis' explanation of the experience economy and trends in the financial services industry. [0:04:04.4]
How Dennis found himself in the world of finance and investments. [0:07:07.7]
The evolution of the skillset needed for good financial advice. [0:09:38.2]
The five stages of experience and the lasting impact of a meaningful experience. [0:14:40.7]
What the experience economy means in terms of finding good financial advice. [0:18:52.9]
The space created by new tech advances and what will fill it. [0:23:35.6]
Better communication in today's economy; physical and virtual experiences. [0:31:41.5]
Differences between big and small business; pitching your offer for those who care. [0:33:29.3]
Red flags and green lights for investors in the search for the right advisor. [0:38:12.2]
The place of technical financial know-how and its decreasing value. [0:42:31.7]
How an advisor can fill the space left by the church. [0:48:31.3]
Happiness and fulfillment; putting funded contentment at the top of the list. [0:54:47.8]
Dennis' hopes and predictions for the future of financial advice. [0:59:00.2]
A highly differentiated and relevant offer — the recipe for success. [1:01:35.5]
Connecting clients and allowing relationships to grow out of advice. [1:04:02.6]
The question of scale; the care and caution that goes into growth. [1:08:39.9]
Dennis' own definition of success in his life! [1:10:54.6]

Read the Transcript:

So, off the top, can you describe the experience economy?

Mm-hmm (affirmative). The experience economy, the central argument let's say, of the experience economy, is that selling goods and services is no longer enough. That, if you will, every economy has a predominant economic offering. In the agrarian economy it was commodities. The industrial economy, it was goods. The service economy, obviously services. And here in the experience economy what we say is that there's something else, beyond goods and services, that people value and pay for. And that's the experience itself.

So in the context of financial consumption or maybe financial services, how have the needs of financial consumer changed as we've moved into what you call the experience economy?

Well not to put too fine a point on it, but let's just agree that if you look back at the history of financial services and where it started, it started with life insurance. So financial planning is really about dying. Die without a mortgage, without debt, and life insurance so you could leave, generally speaking, your widow with a place to live and a check in the bank. But, as things have changed and moved on, we've invented mutual funds and all kinds of different vehicles. People live longer. They have second and third lives. So the financial services industry has involved in that clients have a lot of different ways to accumulate wealth, and a lot of it, and many more decades to enjoy it.

So the financial services industry has changed from access to investments and products, to more advising, lifestyle. And I remember early on in my career, one day I saw a seminar, it was on retirement income planning. And then a few days later I saw a seminar advertised, as I used to pay attention to all of these things. And it was retirement living seminar. And right away I remember saying ... And I think at the time my office was about five blocks from here, west, just up at the corner of Island Park. And I remember saying, "This is the harbinger of where it's going," and explaining to the two guys I was with, "Look, just in my short time here, the seminars that are being advertised are switching slowly, certainly, from products and services to more what are you going to do with the money."

So I think the long winded answer to your question is, where the financial service industry has changed is really partnering with clients and helping them tap into meaning, purpose, happiness, et cetera. And not just amassing wealth.

So you think it's getting away from ... And I don't know if this is true in reality. Maybe ideally. Is it getting away from sales, from selling product? And more into-

Mm-hmm (affirmative). For sure. At the end of the day, there will always be investments and advice within the financial service industry. But where clients find value increasingly has to do with more than returns. All investments have become commoditized.

So, generally speaking, everybody has access to the same things. So really what they're looking for ... I think increasingly the question that investors are asking is, "Who is this company helping me become? In addition to wealthy, what else am I learning? How am I transforming?" And that word, transformation, you see more and more, not just in the investment world but in all businesses really.

I'm curious, why is it that you ... I don't know if you stumbled on this industry. But what is it about this industry that you've found fascinating, that you wanted to have such a high impact on?

It was a complete stumble. In fact, the first person who ever asked me for help, I tried to beg off of it, with the excuses you would expect, "I don't know anything about money. I don't know what a mutual fund is. I don't want to know what any of that is. I don't want to know." So it was a friend of mine who called me and asked me for assistance. He even offered ... It was literally, "Will you do me a favor after work and come and watch a dress rehearsal of a seminar that I'm going to host, and just tell me what you think? And I'll get takeout."

So I agreed to do it for dinner. And at the end of it, of his dress rehearsal, I told him two things. The first, I said, "You're the smartest guy I've ever sat in a room with, I think." And the second thing was, "If I had any money," and I didn't. "If I had any money, I wouldn't give it to you." And I said, "I didn't understand a word you said." And I said, "I think you're making an assumption that people who have a lot of money are smart. And I'm going to make the assumption that their grandfather saved a lot of money. I don't think they're any smarter than I am. And I think you should connect with them on what it feels like to be them and not have answers to the questions that they have."

So this is how I fell into it. But what I learned about it instantly was this, the financial service industry, specifically the financial planning industry, is not what I would've considered to be "banking" at the time. It's not about numbers and money at all. It's about people, and helping people make better decisions, and understand what they actually want. That's aligned with who I am as a person. I can't explain why it is that I like to help people, but I always have, including working at kid's camp. I really enjoy that.

The financial services industry, as an audience for the experience economy and what goes along with experience economy, which would be authenticity and generosity, that's just the perfect storm for me. They work with people. They need to help. And they need to know this message. So in many ways I've been in the financial service industry since I started, because it was ready to hear this and to move in this direction.

So with those industry changes, and I mean the experience economy idea is not specific to financial services. But within financial services, how do you think that the skillset required to be good at giving financial advice, like you just described, how do you think that skillset has changed over time?

So, take this idea. It's a big thought within the experience economy, of the progression of economic value. And I mentioned a minute ago, with every economy there's a predominant economic offering. Agrarian economy is commodities. Industrial is goods. Service is services. And the experience economy is the experience. So when I started in the financial service industry, which would've been 1995, very much in the goods and services industry. For a financial advisor to be successful, they had to be organized, they had to be excellent communicators, and they had to be able to explain complicated concepts to people really, really easily.

But people didn't have access to investments. So even if you were only halfway decent at that, what was I going to do walk out and buy these mutual funds on my own? So really you had more of a captive audience. How its changed, in the service economy all goods, all investments became commodities, in that they compete on price.

So then what happened is you got into specialization and niches. So why am I going to hire the guys at PWL? Well because they specialize in working, let's say, with business owners or retirees or people who are selling franchises or doctors or dentists or whatever it is. Well now that's all become commoditized as well. So the new skill, the change, is empathy. What's happening is the financial advisors that succeed are those who do their job with more humanity and generosity and compassion than anybody else is willing to do, or would even be reasonable expected for you to do it that way.

But that is not new. That's been around for ages, hasn't it?

There's always the outlier who cares. Take yourself to every teacher you ever had. You had a lot of them. How many of them were those outliers that really cared, that said, perhaps on your way out, "Hey Cameron, you got a minute. Are you okay?" You know, just leaving math class one day, "Am I okay? I'm okay." "Are you sure you're okay? I'm asking. Are you okay? I see you every day and I see your face." Versus, how many other teachers let you walk out the door and they tell themselves, "That's not my job."

I talked about this forever. There's two kinds of work. And maybe this is a more succinct answer to your question. There's two kinds of work. There's work that's assigned, and there's work that's required. And the work that's assigned is whatever is written on your business card. And let's assume that lots of people listen to your podcast that aren't financial advisors. So whatever's written on their business card, that's the work that's assigned. Anything on your business card has been commoditized. Everything off your business card is what we call the so-called easy stuff, is, in fact, the hard stuff.

Now if you roll back 20 years ago, there were far fewer advisors who thought it was necessary to pay attention to the so-called soft stuff. There would be certainly a small number of advisors, outliers, that would be their bread and butter, their entire business would be that. But it would be a much smaller number to be really focused on that. And most everybody else would send a birthday card or a newspaper of the day that you were born or what have you.

Now fast forward to here. There's all kinds of access to investments everywhere, online, places on every corner, commoditized. At 1% it's really affordable. What are we looking for now? And what we're looking for is somebody who is going to partner with us and help us get somewhere else. And that somewhere else, up until recently, has always been ... The top of the mountain has always been financially independent, so wealthy. But I think that now it's to get me to be prosperous. And prosperous is about a lot of things, including wealth. But just happiness, contentedness.

But are you saying experience is more a state of mind like that? Or is the actual physical interactive experience with the advisor?

It is a state of mind in that for something to truly be an experience, change has to happen to you on the inside, and you have to have a memory. For something to be an experience, the hallmark of the experience is a memory. So in that sense, experience is magical because it happens on the inside. You can't see it. What brings it about is things in the real world, stage. This is very important. And students of the experience economy understand this. People who know a little bit about the experience economy tend to skip over it. But there's a very clear distinction here. Services are delivered. Experiences are staged. And that's a specific ... I use that term intentionally.

A series of successive experiences, in succession, to bring about a guided transformation, is ultimately what you're looking to do.

Whether it's in the office or how you met that person before they came into the office.

Absolutely.

As a consumer, it's that whole experience from the time you first read an article, listened to a podcast, all the way through to how you met the advisor, to the experience, receiving the planning, that impacted the change on you.

Yeah. Experience is time well designed. So think about ... There's five states of experience, enticing, entering, engaging, exiting, and extending. So if you think about when a person comes into your office to meet you and talk about the possibility of becoming your client and tucking themselves in under your care. That's the engagement stage of the experience. But, whatever you put in their hand on the enticing stage to get them ready for this appointment, to get them thinking right, begins to affect their thinking and their anticipation of this event.

So if you think about anything. If you say what is an event, any kind of an event. An event is something that you look forward to, you think about it, you do a little bit of forecasting, a little hoping, a little daydream planning. When it's going on it engages you and changes you in some way. And when it's over, you tell everybody they should've been there. Who did I just see is coming? Pearl Jam is coming to play Ottawa. I immediately looked for tickets. I'm not getting the tickets I want, so I won't be going. Pearl Jam fans are already looking forward to it, talking about it. When they go, it'll be like going to church for them. And when it's over, they're going to say, "Dennis, you're a dummy. You should've bought that ticket."

Right.

Right. Well that should be the same case for every single thing you do. If you go see your advisor, you should be excited about it, looking forward to it. You shouldn't ever walk in, just think about that, with some vague sense, "What are we going to do today anyway?" That's a death question right there. Why are we gong today? What are we talking to Cameron about? You don't want to do that. You want them excited.

You mentioned transformation. And it makes me think of a question related to decision making. So when we talk about experience, the experience of the client, of the person receiving the advice. Is there a relationship between the experience and the ability to make good decisions? So if someone has a bad experience, can that lead to a bad decision, even if they've been given good information?

Absolutely. Absolutely, because it doesn't feel right. How a person feels is what they will do. What they feel is what they think. What they think is what they'll do. And I have to watch, I do have a tendency to slip into these frameworks which are really familiar to me. I joke about it in my talks that this is how I kill time in airports. I sit there taking businesses apart and putting them back together. But I do. I do it all the time.

So the framework of experience design is that you have this theme. And this theme is the conceptual law that informs everything you do. Okay? And that after your theme, you really want to be conscious of the impressions that you want to make. So I know for a fact that one of the best impressions you can make on your client ... And I learned this from one of your guests that's been on your podcast, Daniel Crosby. One of the impressions that you want to make is confidence. Now, where I like to come in on this on the experience side is I say, "Well what kind of confidence?" How about quiet confidence. An assured position.

So to answer your question directly, absolutely, how the experience is going to lead to a person's ability to make the right decision. So go back to what I was just chatting about, the five stages of experience. What if I was your partner and I said, "Okay, let's agree that every single person who ever comes here to meet us, that one of the ways they feel walking in the door downstairs is possible. That they're coming in feeling possible. They are coming in to hear about what's possible, what we can do."

If the experience is, what a meeting, versus if they come in and you know that they're fighting under the corner of fear and uncertainty. Well good luck. Good luck. You got your work cut out for you. But if you can have them coming in feeling possible, confident, open. Hey, that conversation can go anywhere.

So imagine I'm a consumer of financial services listening to this right now.

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Given this experience economy, what advice would you have for them, listening to what you're saying about this?

I would tell them that the most important ... that they need to look at fit. It has to feel right.

From the moment they have any interaction at all, online, checking your website out?

I'd tell you to trust your gut. Yes. To a certain extent, you might miss an ... Oh, you should have looked again.

As opposed to scrolling for the returns, for portfolio construction.

Forget all that. That's all nonsense. No. For me it all comes down to when you're sitting there with Ben and Cameron and you've felt them out. What kind of process did they take to feel you out? How interested where they in your portfolio, versus you as a person, who you are, who you're trying to be, what your story is? And what you have to choose is a person that you could tell absolutely anything to.

But, what if there's less than great solutions that are wrapped up in that great experience?

You mean if they can't get the job done?

Or they do a poor job. Or unethical.

Oh, well those are different things. Then you have to find a different advisor.

Right.

That's the end of the story. But I assumed, or course, it was all things created equal, we do our due diligence and we find 10 people and they all check out and they all work out and they can all be trusted. What am I looking for?

A great experiential fit.

Yes. And I'm suggesting that you're looking for a home. And again, for me it's you're looking for somebody you could tell absolutely anything to, who understands you, what you're trying to do and how you can actually hinder yourself. Like, okay, let's appreciate Dennis, now he's going to get in his own way.

You talked about how investment products have become commoditized. It's true. Anybody can get whatever they want, cheaply and easily, online. And we've kind of touched on this, but I want to ask about it explicitly. Why do you think people are still seeking out and working with firms like us? Why do people still want financial advisors when they can do so much of this themselves?

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Well probably because, as we all know, a bull market makes everybody look pretty smart. Every financial advisor is probably at the greatest risk of getting fired right now. The market's been going on forever. Everybody looks like a genius. Anybody, anywhere, in any car right now thinks, "Oh yeah, I remember one time thinking it might be a good idea to buy XYZ company. Oh and look what they're doing." Well everybody's done all that for all these years.

I think that what people want is quiet confidence and reassurance. They want a guide. They want somebody ... As much as I said earlier in your career you had to be able to do these three things to succeed. Well they still need somebody to interpret the market. They still need somebody who's wet fingering the sky. They still need that. And I think they especially need that when things get bumpy. The fear of loss is certainly more persuasive to us than the possibility of gain.

Having said that, and I say this and I don't say it easily. Because I do believe that a lot of advisors who are maybe not doing things the way I would tell them too, nevertheless have their heart in the same place. I'm going to say this. But heaven forbid if you're just an advisor just trying to do the work that's required. If you're really just trying to do what has been a traditional financial advisor role, you're going to be in a lot of trouble. Because these robo-advisors are going to become more and more attractive. This whole move to technology, it will be about personalizing. People don't understand that.

What the industry messes up, candidly, is the difference between service and experience. Service is about saving people time and money. Experience is about creating time well spend. Okay, so that's mistake number one. Here's mistake number two. Don't think that these robo-advisors are finished. They're just getting started. After they save you a bunch of time, which is where the human advisor punches out. Cameron, Ben, we just did this 35 minutes shorter than we usually do. High fives from me. Look at the value I created for you. That's not value. You just made it quicker. You literally commoditized yourself.

What the robo is going to do is say, "Cameron, Ben, I just saved you 35 minutes. And now with this extra time we have, this is what we're going to do together." And right there on a tech platform it can gamify financial planning or you can zip right into booking your lifestyle. With the time we saved, we're now going to use this time to plot out for you this big life goal you're working on.

I've said this in talks. I'm always afraid to share it, but here it is. In the talks I mention those superhero movies, the Marvel movies specifically, with Iron Man. Go with me here. I feel you pulling away.

No. No. We're with you.

I feel you pulling away. I feel the concern of your audience listening in the future. In the Marvel superhero movies, Robert Downey Jr. plays Iron Man, Tony Stark. And he has this digital assistant named Jarvis. And Jarvis is everywhere he needs him to be. He's in his superhero costume. He talks to him, in his helmet. He talks to him in his car. He talks to him in his living room. Alexa. Okay.

Life imitates art. What we're putting in those movies is the vision of the future we have. It's not going to be far in the future where I'm going to be in my car and I'm going to say, "Hey Cameron, what's my annual return right now? What's my weight in this? What should I do?" And some algorithm is going to say, "Dennis, you should do this."

Can I still retire in five years?

That's right. And then I'm going to say, "Cool." And then I'm going to say something like this, "Hey, do me a favor. I want you," and I'm talking to a robot. "I want you to plan a holiday to Italy, three different itineraries. I want to land in this city and fly out of this city. And I want you to give me three little ideas here, cheap, moderately priced, and then luxurious. What can I do, and throw it together." And your robo-advisor person thing is going to say, "Okay, I'll work on all of that. I'll email it. And do you want me to add it to the agenda and we will talk about it on Friday?" And you'll say, "Yeah. Yeah I do."

Now you either think, yeah that's possible, or, I don't know Dennis, that sounds pretty crazy. But I'm going to say this. How many users does Google have? How many users does FaceBook have? And what's with human beings and their crush on technology? We love technology. I just saw the Consumer Electronics show. I was following it online.

Right.

Some company, I can't even remember the name. It starts with an N. Don't they just love that shout out. It starts with an N. They make artificial humans. Okay. I'm going to point something out. As soon as you name something an artificial human or an other human, it's a human. You just named it that. When these robo-advisors, when you get on your screen and it's a face looking at you and it can use measurement and algorithm to know the language that is best with you and how you like to be handled, and it's a totally personalized experience, that's where people are going to go.

So your question, why would they even go to an advisor? Depends who you're talking about. My nephew who's 19, I have no idea why he'd do that. I know why I'm here, so to speak. I know why I've got an advisor. But somebody younger, I don't know.

Given all of that, what is that special something, if there is one, that a human advisor is adding, on top of all of the stuff that you just described that can be done by a robot or AI?

Okay, so here's the obvious counter to my previous argument. Ask a robo-advisor what a meaningful life is, and you're going to get an error/file404, what the hell are you talking about. I don't know what you're talking about. And that's where the value of the other person comes in.

How do I teach my kids what to do with the amount of wealth I've amassed?

Yeah. Did you ever have this happen to you, growing up? Do you ever feel this way? It's almost like a trip to the psychiatrist. That's where the human comes in.

Do you see the pricing model around this changing in the future?

Mm-hmm (affirmative). I do.

And what sort of models do you see happening? And what should consumer be looking for?

Okay, so every time the economy changes; Again, we're back to the progression of economic value; we ask people to pay for something that they used to get for free or do for themselves, every time the economy changes. So commoditization is a fact, even in the experience economy. In fact, something that a lot of people get wrong is when you're engaged in the experience economy, you're still selling goods and services.

The difference is people will pay you more for them. But only for a while. Driven home recently when I purchased tickets to see the new Star Wars film, Rise of Skywalker. So I'm a kid from the 70s, but I'm also a dad so it took me months to get there. So I asked Sherry, she's going to come with. My wife, Sherry, will go. And my buddy Annick from back home, he's going to go. So I said, "I'll buy the tickets right now." So when I'm buying the tickets online I choose every available acronym, ADXMZ, whatever all these 3D, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Wind in your face.

Shake the seats.

Shake my seat. I'm in. I'm going to do it.

The full experience.

The full [foreign language] as they say around here. So I'm in. I love it. And when I purchase the whole thing, tax is $39. And the first thing I think is, what? Oh no, I bought one. No, no. I bought three seats for $39, taxes in.

Wow.

Two and a half years ago that would've been $39 a seat to pay for that experience. My point is simply experiences also come down in price. So let's go into this idea of guided transformation. Yeah. So here's how pricing is going to change. You're going to charge your clients less. And what you will do is you will delay gratification until the transformation has happened, down the road. So you'll pay them less for the day to day financial planning. And down the road, when you collectively have made them who you said you would make them, you'll start to participate somehow with the backend of that.

So I'm seeing this in education. So you take all these schools, they're all competing for students, charging tuition. Well now there's ... 25 years ago, if you did your degree online, somebody might say something about that, "Oh well, it what's really a university. You did it online." Even when I was in school, if you took just one ... Was it ITV at Carleton University or something? Oh, I'm sorry, Cameron, you went to a real school.

Basically even then it's like, "No, I'm taking my full course load, but one of my classes I'm just doing it with VCR tapes that I get at the library." And even that, your own friends would be like, "Oh my god, Cameron." It's basically cheating, right. Well now you can do all these courses online, and you can do whole degrees online.

So take a school like Harvard. Previously they'd charge really big tuition up front to be a Harvard lawyer. And now what they're doing is they're saying, "No, no, no. We're going to pay you far less up front. But when you have achieved what you set out to achieve, which is you're a lawyer and you're employed with an office and you've made it, we will participate in your wages for the rest of your life," or for certainly some long period of time. So the onus is now on Harvard to do better triage bringing in a client.

So where I can see this going in the financial services industry, is what you'll charge to run the investments will be next to nothing. And I believe that what you'll see is a flat rate charge, "Dennis, Sherry, it's going to cost you this much a year to be our client. We're going to run your money and do this." And it'll be education, entertainment, and escapism, is the other stuff that you will host, so that truly you become a partner in my life. If you follow me. Almost every client you have will be similar to Sherry and I. We'll all sort of gravitate to the same thoughts and thinking. And it'll be a lot of education, a lot of lifestyle coaching.

So when you say education and then you think about stuff like what we're doing now, like Cameron and I do this podcast and a lot of our clients listen to it, and other people listen to it. Do you think that things like that, the ability to scale communication like what we're doing here, is that becoming increasingly important?

Yes. Central to the experience economy is creating spaces, both physical and virtual, where your clients can experience you. And that's another thing that's changing, is, virtual reality, augmented reality. We used to just dismiss that stuff as childish almost. And yet, I don't know. My daughters play Minecraft. That place is very real to them. It has meaning. So a podcast is a place for your clients to tune in. And what it tells them more about your ... What they learn more about you from your podcast isn't so much what you do, but who you are and what you think about. And there's two kinds of loyalty out here in the world. There is the loyalty of connection and identity, which is what you have with your clients. And there's the connection of fear and obligation, which is what you have with some faceless corporation.

Think your iPhone and your cell phone provider. Your iPhone, it's all about the loyalty of connection and identity. People love their iPhone. But they all can't stand their provider. The provider holds on to you through fear and obligation, contracts, the unknown if you change to the other one, and the hassle factor. So what this does for your audience is it reminds them or reinforces, "Oh, that's who those guys are. That's what they're about. That's what they find interesting. That's why I like them. Because I feel that way. We're the same." And it becomes something really easy to endorse.

Can you talk about the industry right now, and say the difference between large firms and smaller firms and their ability to deliver this? Are they delivering this? And on the other side, are consumers demanding this? Where is the rate of change? Demand side, supply side, big firm, small firm?

I think it's always on the demand side. Business innovates because of consumer demand. So consumer sensibility drives business imperative. General Motors didn't make an electric car until we all squealed and said we wanted one. They didn't say, "Here's a great idea. It'll be good for everybody." We had to demand it.

But Tesla, as an example, has come out ahead of this.

Yes.

Robos are coming out ahead of this and really shaking things up.

That's right. And who they appeal to are, of course, those early adopters or the outliers. So now we're on to two different questions here. Big and small, and now Tesla. So I got to keep my head straight here. You know me-

Stay focused.

You know me, this is not easy to do. Stay focused, for the first time since 1971, August. So let's first start with big and small.

Yep.

I'm a big fan of small. I run, by design, a very small business. Small is the new big. Small is beautiful. It's more nimble. It's more attuned to their clients. The CEO is on the front lines. Small is better. Big is big and cumbersome. It takes committee meetings. Before the CEO of big ever knows they have a problem, it has to get all the way through various levels of ridiculous overlapping, unnecessary management. And the first complaint was made two and a half years ago. That's big.

And now let's go to Tesla. Whatever you do, you should make it for weirdos. Weirdos pay attention. If you both decided to ... This is the example I use. If you both decided to pack it in right now and, "No, we want to make skateboards." Disclaimer, I've never ridden a skateboard. I'm not particularly interested in skateboards. I use that as an example because very few people are and it's obscure.

I'll chime in and actually say that when I was in my early years at university I was pressing my own skateboards and riding them.

Okay. Well there you go. I just got a little cooler. Okay. You're off the wall. So here's the deal then, if you were to say that I'm going back to my roots and I'm going to be pressing out my own skateboards. Does that mean making the board?

Oh yeah, making the board.

Out of plastic, et cetera?

Out of wood. Pressing thin pieces of wood together to get all the curves and stuff. Laminating. Yeah, exactly.

Oh yeah. I totally get it. Okay. So here's what I would tell you. In anything you're in, and, case in point these donuts on the table, make your work for people who care. Don't try to make a skateboard that you're going to sell in a hardware store for $26. You're making average skateboards for average people. We don't care about anything but price. But if you make really beautiful skateboards for people who care about skateboards, I care, I'll care about the work they put into it, I'll pay for what I have to pay to have that skateboard. And most importantly, from the point of view of the skateboard, I'm going to tell everyone else I know that cares about skateboards about it.

So if you go to Tesla and how small they are, they catered to a tiny market. People who really cared about the environment, but also style, form, and function. And, they made their experience incredible. Separating the fantasy, for one, of the showroom and the repair place. The repair place will always be hidden in some building somewhere in an industrial park. The showroom is the fantasy. They're all beautiful and from space. So small is beautiful. And making your work for people who care is beautiful.

So if you're obviously an advisor listening to this podcast you're thinking, "Okay well I don't make skateboards. I make financial plans. Explain to me again how I make financial plans for people who care." Easy. By having conversations nobody else is willing to have, by asking questions that make your clients uncomfortable. The right kind of question, not, "Do you think you should lose 20 pounds?" That's the wrong question to make somebody uncomfortable.

But how about ... I assume that's what you're wondering about me right now, Ben. And the answer is yes. Yes I should lose 20 pounds.

I was not wondering that.

Let's get into those damn donuts. And by doing your work with, as I say, more humanity and more generosity than any person would ever reasonably expect you to do, that's how you get it done. Quite frankly, you get it done by making a point. If your point is, "Well you need to save money. Because if you run out of money, your life's going to be miserable." That's a point that's been made. Nobody's going to pay a lot to hear that. If you go outside without a coat in the winter, you'll be cold. Thanks. What's your point? What's the point of your work? What's the point your work is trying to make?

What are some of the biggest red flags that you think investors should look for in making sure that their advisor is the right fit for them?

Okay. So look for how many places you, as the investor, have to sacrifice. How easy do they make it to discover what they do? And how much of an effort do they make to personalize around you and make you comfortable? Versus services where really ... Most people don't look at it this way. But whenever you make an improvement in service, this is back to the advisor, what you're really doing is shortchanging your client. Generally speaking, when you make an improvement to service, "We've put all of your statements online 24 hours a day." What you're really doing is saying, "Look your statement up online and don't call me."

When you go to the airport and you check yourself in, what the airline is saying to you is, "Isn't it great, you can check yourself in." What they're really saying is, "I don't want to check you in anymore. And we don't want to check your bag either." Which leads us back to this whole idea of saving people time is only half the answer. Let's say all airlines do that and they make it possible to check yourself in and check your bag in really quickly. Awesome. Now if you can get me through security quickly, so suddenly I have an extra hour in the airport, there's an opportunity here.

Can you stage an experience on the other side so that I don't want to leave the airport? Imagine I want to get there earlier, "I can't wait to get in." Now I want to get there earlier, now because I'm afraid of missing my flight, because I want to enjoy the airport longer. What kind of airport would that be?

So now go back to your question, what are red flags that the investor should look for? So some of them are going to be obvious, organization, et cetera, et cetera. Did they lead with product? Do they ask you lots of questions about their money? Are they trying to impress you with their smarts or do they spend a whole lot of time listening and asking you questions about where you're coming from? "Who are you? What's your first memory of money? What was money like, growing up when you were a kid? What does happiness look like to you? If there was one thing that you could change in your life right now that has nothing to do with me, what would it be?"

Look for people who are genuinely interested in who you are as a person. Because if they're a good advisor and an honest advisor, that's who they want to help. They'll tell you right up front, "We're pretty good at running the money, but so is everybody else." They'll tell you that right up front. Maybe it's harder for me to answer what to watch out for instead of saying what to watch for. But what I'd be looking for is a person who tells me that up front. I am looking for a person who says, "What do you think your life is going to be like at the end of the road? And what do you think the greatest danger you're in?" Because most people ... And this is just a big thing of mine. Most people are really over concerned about not having enough money, and they're under concerned about any kind of sense of happiness or fulfillment or avoiding depression.

One of my buddies has this line. He says to me ... So I will share with you, I am now 48 and a half years old. And I got a good buddy, he's one of my best friends. And he's now probably 62 or so, and we've been hanging pretty steady for about a decade now. And he said something to me really interesting. He said, "Just keep an eye on yourself as you get old," kind of thing. And I said, "Oh, yeah, yeah," assuming he meant the whole stay trim and fit and all those things. He goes, "No. No. No." He says, "Men get old alone," he said. "Women get old together. They become coffee groups and movie groups and walking groups and get together and they do lots of social." He goes, "Men withdraw and they grow old alone." And he's cautioning me. It's like, "You'll see. You're way back from me. You're a dozen years younger than me. Watch out."

I'm thinking with advisors, that's the biggest obstacle you have to clients avoid, depression, a sense of themselves, of fulfillment and happiness as to where they are. You hit that certain part of your life, you want to have as few regrets as possible. And you're going to thank the person that made sure that happened.

We, in our team here, place a lot of value on financial knowledge, technical knowledge. But based on the stuff that you're saying, does that stuff even matter?

I think it matters. I certainly think it matters. And I think it's great to have. I don't know if it is necessarily the lead card that you would've played 15 years ago. And again, I look at my career. I don't want to name the person, but you would know him. And a long, long time ago, if you were a financial advisor for instance, and you wanted to have a full event. You would hire this speaker. In about '95 his fee was $5,000, Canadian, for an hour. You'd put ads in the newspaper. That was a thing people used to read. They got your hands really dirty. And by the time you read it, it was history. But it worked.

So you'd put an ad in the paper and you'd say, "I got this guy coming. He's going to be at the Sheraton hotel on Tuesday night." And you'd run that ad for a couple of weeks. And he helped turnkey marketing system to help you roll that out. And then the tickets would sell and then you'd say, "Hey, I'm holding him over again." So you'd have him two times to speak, Tuesday and Wednesday, or Wednesday and Thursday at the hotel. And you know what he talked about? Mutual funds. Just mutual funds. A particular one? Nope. Just mutual funds in general, which obviously offered people diversification, protection, all that great stuff. I kid you not, people would fill the room. They'd leave and sign up for appointments with the financial advisor who booked that speaker. Within my career, within 36 months that man went out of business. There was just no more need for him. Everybody knew about mutual funds.

So then what happened? Oh, everybody went and got their CMA and then specialization. We moved into away from products, up the economic value. Okay, services then. We build our own portfolios. We know all these things. That is still really nice. But technology is grabbing a hold of that stuff really, really quickly. There's a blogger I follow, he's also a financial advisor. He regularly posts exactly what you should do with your money. He gives it away for free.

So I really because, going forward, yes it's nice to have and you should never diminish it. And education is, as my dad would say, it's the lightest thing you're going to carry over a portage. The more of it you get, the better. But what I would be leading with is how I am, what I'm about, and where I want to take my clients, risking this, "But I don't want that." It's like, perfect you won't be happy here.

To do otherwise, in the service economy, we hide in the elusion of big numbers. "Oh, I just work with business owners. Do you know how many business owners there are in Ottawa? I just need 100 of them. If I had 100 business owners in Ottawa, I could have $1 million a year." Okay. I guess that makes you feel good at night when you go to bed, thinking about the thousands of business owners and the 100 you need. I guess. Okay. But no, no, no.

But they're people.

But they're people. And they're not just people. There's this exercise we did in experience economy school called markets of one. And I do it at my workshop, where I put all these advisors in a circle and I put masking tape, a big circle on the ground. I put you all in it and I walk around it. And I sort of study you for a moment. And I say, "You're a market. You're a market of financial advisors. And you all make pretty good money and you could all hire me. Hell, you just did." I'm saying, "Here you are."

Ahead of time I have everybody answer questions. The questions are really simple. If you did a weekend away, would you want to go to Las Vegas or a bed and breakfast in Vermont? If you had to give up something for the rest of your life, would it be coffee or chocolate? And as everybody reveals their answers in this circle I start putting down extra strips of paper. And I slice it up until it's a pie, until every single person ends up in their own little slice, a market of one. So within five minutes, or maybe 13 questions, I get this very ... They experience it themselves, the advisors. So I get them to realize, do you see how different you and Ben are? We're both advisors. We're both Ottawa guys. We're both married guys. We're both this. And it goes on and on. It's like no. You're each markets of one.

So to your point about, "But they're people." Exactly. And they're not just people. All your approaches needs to be personalized. Advisors don't realize this, but when you segment your clients, bronze, silver, gold, my top tier, my A's, my B's, my C's, whatever you want to do. Gold, silver, bronze, whatever. You're commoditizing your clients. And then you're surprised that they in turn commoditize you. When Dennis and Sherry walk in here, the experience should be personalized around us. And when I leave and your next couple comes in, that's an entirely different experience, personalized around them. Staged. It requires effort.

Well this is the beautiful part about what we do. I just jotted down, in the past three business days I've met someone that's figured out how to share facts about their background with a new relationship, someone with high net worth, how do you tell their kids about it, which takes a lot of coaching, sudden death, serious illness, cancer. That's just literally the past week. These are the kinds of unbelievable, impactful, dramatic, vulnerable conversations we've been part of, just in the past week. And so although we talk a lot of technical stuff, I know, in this podcast, Ben you've had many, many conversations like that as well. Which is the choices and helping people make choices, given the facts in front of them.

But it's helping them make choices in the context of what you know about their life and goals and tendencies, and how they feel and how they've felt when they've made decisions in the past. I think that's the part that's really hard to replicate.

And mesh that with your prior experiences and see the outcomes for other people. A lot of these conversations are not normal, because you don't have them often. But how to navigate through that.

Not only do you now have them often, we don't have them often. Or maybe we don't have them often enough. There's been a sea change in society. A lot of people used to go to church and you'd get your soul on. Whatever your thing is. There's an absence of that now. We're all splintered a little wee bit. We are all failed meditators. And I think that there is a space there. There's room there for that, from our advisor let's say, from someone. You say to have these important conversations.

I remember attending an event one time with my advisor and it was about how to raise kids free of anxiety. They could've had a seminar on our ESPs and education funding. Yeah, that's great. And they would've sold a whole bunch of our ESPs that night, I guess. But just what does it tell you about that advisor? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. We're going to do our ESPs, that's just part of financial planning. we're going to talk about that in meeting three. We're going to get to that. Way more important is let's talk about anxiety and raising a child that will talk to you. My advisor gave me the book, How To Talk So Kids Will Listen and How To Listen So Kids Will Talk.

Great book.

Great book. What a wonderful book to say you got from your financial advisor? "Who got you that book?" "Oh, my best friend. He's a great dad. He gave me that book." That would make sense. "My mother. My mother gave it to me because she says I needed to read it." That would make sense. "Oh, some white guy downtown. He gave it to me." That doesn't make sense. "Whom?" "Oh, some guy in a suit who works at a brokerage firm. He gave it to me." That doesn't make any sense. But it does if you knew him, right. That's the way it goes.

You know it's a weird void to say that financial advisors can fill, but the amount of times that I have had a conversation with ... In a lot of cases I'll have a conversation with one spouse of a couple, and maybe then a second conversation with both of them. But between those two conversations they'll tell me that they had some of the most meaningful discussions that they've ever had, because they'd never been prompted to talk about any of this stuff.

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

They never even know what questions to be asking each other.

Exactly. Earlier I talked about the enticing and the entering stage, the five states of experience. This is it. Can you imagine the experience you could stage, the exercises you could get your perspective clients to do before they ever came to meet you, interviewing each other. And you could be right up front about it, "I know that this is the kind of thing that's incredibly easy to dismiss. It would be so easy for you to say, 'That's silly. I don't want to do it.' But I need you guys to go to Starbucks for an hour and talk about these things. And this is the question. All I want you to think about and share with each other is this." Don't kill them with homework. Just a series of little things you could get them to do, to watch.

There's this advisor I worked with in the states. He did this amazing retirement ... like retire on purpose or with purpose seminar. And he started by showing five minutes of the movie The Intern, with Robert De Niro. Do you know the film I'm talking about? So he retires. In the movie it's kind of sad. He's a widower. He's retired. And he's bored. So it is so real. You're watching the show and he says, "Well, I had some plans. I worked my career. I worked really hard. I got promoted. I did very well. I retired a wealthy guy." I'm paraphrasing. He says, "Unfortunately," and even how he says my wife died. It's written well how he says, "These things you don't plan for, but these things happen. And you have to do the best you can."

So he goes on to say, "So I blew all my hotel points. I blew all my airplane points. I flew around the world. I took conversational Japanese." He says some things in Japanese. He says, "I did this. I did that." He goes, "But I was bored." And then he'd start to go hang out in coffee shops. And you see Robert De Niro lurking over a conversation at Starbucks, with two guys like you. And he's just listening to them talk about business. And then they walk ago in the film and he's left there. And then you see him reentering his house. And he says, "But you cannot escape this feeling that you're just alone and this is it."

I think of that. I think of something Shane Parrish said to me about money. And he said, "It's just a tool." And he said something really good like, "It can just buy you out of a lot of inconvenience." So you think about that. Why you guys should be having this conversation. Well, because in our world you're tied to a really important tool we have. Really important. It's that tool that's going to buy us out of a lot of inconvenience, let alone some other lovely things. Okay. Funded contentment. Brian Portnoy wrote the book, The Geometry of Wealth.

Great book.

Funded ... Great guy, man.

Great guy. I'd love to have him on.

He'd do it. He's sweet. I saw him speak by accident. I couldn't get out of the room fast enough. As soon as the money guy gets on, I'm the hell out of there, I'll tell you. And I was somewhere in Rhode Island and there was too many people jammed at the back. And I was like, "Damn." And I had to sit down. And am I ever glad I did. Well he, in that book, The Geometry of Wealth, he says, "Funded contentment." You guys have got funded down. You've got over funded down. You'll have more than you need. You're crushing funded. It's that contentment thing that we're all failing on. We're failing. We are failing on being happy. And somebody's got to lead us out of that to who we really want to be. That's what I believe.

And it's interesting, because we had Dr. Moira Somers on last year, as well as Ted Seides. And both of them mentioned, they referred to a quote about how more money makes you more of whatever you are. So if you're innately generous, more money makes you more generous. If you're a jerk, more money makes you a bigger jerk. So money just highlights that. So this is a big issue then, as you talk about, as we figure out the accumulation side.

Yeah.

How do we be fulfilled and add value and deal with who we are?

Yeah. There's something I talk about in my talks. And I even shared, before coming to see you ... I put out a little some kind of thing, a Tweet or an Instagram thing. Maybe I was on TikTok. And I shared a slide from my talk. And it's a happiness graph. So basically we're really happy when we're kids and then we trough out for a little while. And we start getting really happy again somewhere in our mid-40s, when, generally speaking, your children are a little older and they're a little bit more self sufficient. And you have more of your own time to pursue your happiness. So happiness.

And the other is fulfillment. So the happiness curve looks like a saddle. And the fulfillment curve is the opposite. So you continue to get more and more fulfilled, until you have enough. And then after that, nothing. Every extra bit of consumption leads to being less happy. If there was a time in my life where if you would've said to me ... And I love that I am here, specifically here, geographically speaking. Before we started this little conversation I said to you, "You know I can see the roof of my first ever apartment in this city right over there." So I'm talking right now about that guy. Him. He was wild but mostly harmless. Right over there. He lived right over there on Bell Street South. Oh my goodness.

If I could travel back in time and talk to that guy that lived, as the crow flies, 2,000 feet from where we're sitting, 1,000 meters, not even. And say, "Hey, this is how it's going to work for you." I would've been thrilled. Then if you would've said, "And you're not going to drive a Porsche." That would've made no sense to me then. There's no way on earth I would ever get to this point in my life, and be doing these sorts of things, and not have one of those. Okay, well here I am. I drove here in a vehicle that's 12 years old, and I love it. Okay.

And it's not a Porsche.

No. And I'm not judging beautiful cars. And I still really love beautiful cars and all that great stuff. It's just in terms of where we're at, what I want, funded contentment, there's no happiness in there for me with that. I am guided by other stars now, that are much more meaningful to me, time and thinking and all those other good things that are just about me. But you go back to the stuff with advisors, helping people manage accumulation and all these things. You really need to challenge them on what they believe.

I know people and you know people that ... Can I plug another investment firm here? A big, major bank in Canada. They have the best taglines. The Bank of Nova Scotia says, "You're richer than you think." Every time I see it on TV I think, that's brilliant. And that sums up everybody that's walking around. Like oh my gosh, you're all walking around fearful. You got the funded taken care of. It's everything else, who do they want to be when they grow up? The best version of themself. Okay. But what is that? Do they even know? Oh, their bucket list. You're assuming they've got one. You might have to make them make that list.

Is that how you would sum up the concept of providing experiences in the role of the financial advisor? Is not the funded portion, but the contentment portion? Does that capture the experience piece?

Yeah, because the service would be the returns.

Fascinating.

Yep. The experience is a series of sequential experiences, staged to lead to a guided transformation. So hey Dennis and Sherry are brand new to you. You probably wouldn't immediately invite me to some event that you would have with all your clients you've had for 10 or 12 years, with whom you've opened up with and you've got a really meaningful relationship with. Us, you'd start on the slow end. Just bringing us in and getting us accustomed to your culture and ourselves and how you operate. And eventually, down the road, it leads to, "I want you to come to this event. This is what it's about." So yes, absolutely. A series of staged experiences that lead to a guided transformation.

Are you optimistic that the industry will pull this off?

Yes. I am an optimist. Even when I try not to be, I'm an optimist.

Awesome.

So are we ready? Yeah. I'm also pretty optimistic that there will be a third fewer advisors working. That's the way it goes. Some will adopt and some will not. Some will not. And if they don't, that's the way it goes. This is what I think you're going to see. You're going to see independents that run their own show and have a kitchen in the middle of their office, like you do, and clearly wear their intention on their sleeve, and live with it and build their business that way with like minded people. You'll see that.

So you'll have individual advisors that run their own show by their own rules, and they'll do very, very well. Then you're going to have institutional advisors, they'll always have big businesses that'll do well. And then the next group you're going to have are advisors who work for a salary and a bonus, and have 1,500 accounts. And that'll be the way they do it. And they will just do financial plans and basically be what we would just for the purpose of today call sales folks with an affinity for investments that aren't going to hurt anybody. And then there will be this other pile which is people that go robo.

And even that advisor with 1,500 clients, he's probably AI augmented.

Oh, absolutely. They'll have to be. Absolutely. AI's everywhere already, and most of us don't even realize it. Again, that, as a subject, which is a whole other day, that has fascinated me since I was in school and I was taking anthropology and we were talking about literally the evolution of consciousness and the future of technology. And this was before I had an email address. This was like in 1990. So I've been on to robots and cyborgs and AI, as an interesting subject, for close to 30 years. I read about it constantly. Find it fascinating.

So I know we're running a little bit long, but I've got a question I want to go back to. Ben alluded to fees and whatnot. And I understand the experience economy is very valuable and you want to attract weirdos, and that makes a sustainable practice. You can help people as much as you can. But if we put the fiduciary hat on, what do you think about, as fiduciaries. Because we're very fee sensitive. We're very fee conscious. The more you charge, the less the returns are, the impact that has on someone's economic future. How do you reconcile those too? So as fiduciaries we want to drive our fees as competitively and as efficiently as we can. But you're saying, "Well there's more value in delivering a better experience." Can you have both?

Yes. People will pay a premium when the offering is highly differentiated and highly relevant to them. So you can justify a premium fee by your approach to working with your client, and also by tailoring the information, vis a vis the experience, to the client. If you do what everybody else does, you can't even charge more for a better return. The experience has nothing to do with a good or service. But if you can charge for time well spent ... A loaded question I have is, so imagine having an event that lasted three days. Imagine inviting your clients to a client event. Instead, what do we do now? We try to have it on Wednesday. It's the middle of the week. It doesn't interfere with their weekends. And then we want to have it right at this time. We hedge our bets on rush hour, plus getting home for kid time. So we have it from 5:00-8:00, on Wednesday, in a central location. And we make it as easy as possible, services.

Imagine an experience where we say, "Oh no, it's on the weekend." And you show up on the afternoon and you leave on Sunday. And we have these three speakers and these kinds of group activities. And are you ready? You will pay a ticket to go. We're going to pay for some of it. But no. Whatever the rules might be. No, no, you have to pay $638 to attend this. That is where I see the future. They will pay a premium for transformation. They will pay a premium for things that go above and beyond financial. Just like you would pay a premium to join a golf club, to have access to the same 18 holes all year, which is ridiculous. Really what you're paying for is the association, the community, and the consistency.

I go to this because I get this. The last time I went, Cameron spoke for a while, Ben spoke for a while. I met one of their clients name Dennis. Fascinating. We talked about the experience economy for a while. It was great. I applied it to my business in town. That's what people will be paying for.

That's fascinating to think about, because in general we view privacy, between our clients ... We would almost not want two of our clients to see each other in our kitchen out here.

Right.

But at the same time, there's this community building around this podcast that's cool, and people are interacting. So I don't know if I have a question or not. Do you think that it will evolve to a point where the clients of Cameron and Ben want to hang out together?

I hope so.

And should we be facilitating that?

You should be making ... Okay, so here's the question you should be asking, everybody listening should be asking. Who am I connecting? Who am I helping my clients become and who am I connecting? Am I connecting my clients to other people? To solutions? To ideas? There's a joke, we don't even want our clients to see each other in the kitchen. What do you deal with, criminals? "Oh, sorry your honor." No. Are you crazy? I would love to be standing here, see some guy that comes in that I know. And the first thing I think is of course you'd be here. It makes perfect sense you'd like these two guys. It makes perfect sense to me. Of course you'd like these two guys. Why wouldn't you be here?

I got a guy I work with ... Okay, get this. His theme, which I said earlier is the conceptual of, it informs everything he does. Okay, you ready? And you never share it. So I'm going to share his, because he's not here to tell me not to. Overlooked and undiscovered. Okay. His niche market, niche market for your friends listening in the United States.

That's right.

Hang your jacket in the foyer. Reeling myself in. His niche market is business owners. I'm a business owner. You guys are a business owner. You know what we love? Cool ideas. We love cool ideas. We love different takes and interpretations on things. We love it when we see a guy with a clever idea. We love it. Ready? Overlooked and undiscovered. He calls three of his business owner clients. This is total experience economy. On the enticing stage is Cameron, Ben, Dennis. Meet me for lunch. He phones us, of course, separately. "Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Where do you want to meet?" Doesn't tell you where. He gives you an intersection. "Meet me on the northeast corner of Island Park and Richmond Road." okay.

So you show up first, Ben. Then a couple minutes later Cameron shows up. And there's another guy standing there. And when the light changes to walk, he doesn't. So the second guy says to the first guy, "Hey, are you here to see Bob?" "Yeah." "Oh, me too." Then the third guy shows up. Then Bob shows up, so to speak.

And he says, "Hey, you guys meet each other? Right on." And he points at, for instance, as I use that intersection, the gas station that's on the corner, Island Park Esso.

Know it well.

That guy is amazing. Did you know that he charges 25% more for gas than anybody in town?

I did not know that.

25% more for the most commoditized product in town. Okay. You know what you'll see if you go there right now, because it's still open? A line up. There's people lined up to get gas. There's people lined up to pay 25% more for unleaded fuel in their Toyota.

And that's the last place in town that actually-

Has full service.

Full service and cleans your windshield.

And not just full service. You know that I talked to his kids one day? Now I got to get back to my story. The only time I don't go for gas there, when I don't have money in my car. I got to tip them. If I can't hand that kid $5, I can't even look him in the eye. So that's the only time I don't go, if I, "Oh darn, I don't have $5 or anything." Then I go pump my own gas. When I have $5 and I want to hand it to them.

So I've been trying to get ... John Newcombe, is the owner of that place. I've been trying to get him just to talk to me, on tape sometime, because I love what he does. I pay him all kinds of compliments. His kids tell me that when there's no business, they play games and he participates, timing each other in how quickly they can do stuff. "How quickly can you run to the pumps? How quickly can you do this?" John Newcombe is a beautiful man, a white haired fellow. He's been pumping gas there for a million years.

He doesn't have the price on the sign, nothing. Now get this. The advisor, overlooked and undiscovered. He points out to a bunch of business owners how cool this place is. Then he walks them down the street for lunch. There's a seat left at the table. Who comes and sits down? The owner of the gas station. And he shares with these other business owners, who could come from all different walks of life, the three truths of his business that apply to every business in the world. Okay. Right on.

Then my friend, the advisor, makes a point of leaving first. And he lets you guys remain and become friends. And as he said to me, he goes, "Come on, eventually some guy's going to be at a party and say, 'How do you guys know each other?'" And they'll say, "We both have the same financial advisor." Connect them. You should totally socialize with your clients all the time. I would, in a minute. Get them all in here, or somewhere. Teach them something. Show them something. Have an experience together. Change together. Be incredible.

I got one more question.

All this stuff we just talked about, all this stuff that we have talked about is great, makes sense. Sounds fantastic. It also sounds really hard to scale. Cameron and I are sitting here and we have clients who we provide a great service to. We also have people who are interested in becoming clients. And I don't think that's going to stop happening. How do we scale this?

Got to be careful. Right. Starbucks is having that problem. They got so popular that all of a sudden now they've got the Starbucks app and it's causing a problem within their store. Their whole business is about experience. They kind of devolved, almost became a drive through window. Now people come in, their coffee's waiting for them on the counter, already paid for with their app. And Starbucks is losing that in-store connection. They responded by scaling down, by closing stores. And now they've opened up the Starbucks Roastery, which I've seen ... Where did I see one or I experienced that? In Ann Arbor, Michigan. It was pretty cool.

So the short answer is, carefully. But you have to really be mindful, because you don't want to start coming out with a bronze, silver, gold offering for your experience. So here it is. In the service economy we say you can't be all things to all people. But it's followed by an immediate wink. "Can't be all things to all people, uh uh." Okay.

In the experience economy it's this, "You can't have those clients. They don't fit. You can only work with a certain kind of client." So take my business, I basically have one offering. I can work with 12 people a year. That's it? Yeah. I have a really tiny business. What do you want me to tell you? Well couldn't you do this? No. Couldn't I water it down and come up with something that costs 10% and put it online and let you have it? It's not my experience. It's not what I do. It doesn't sit well with me. And I don't care. And I've had plenty of them say, "That's worth this. We could do this and that's worth this." Because a big motivator for me, frankly, is getting off the road. It's a lovely job I have. I'm so grateful to have it. But I pay a tax. I fly a lot.

So any time I've ever hired anybody to help me, invariably they always come up with, "I don't know why you don't do this and do this. And that's worth X. And that's X number of flights you don't have to take." It's like, "Because I don't do that." Because I don't do that. So you got to live within the business you can have.

So our favorite question we always end with, and I know a lot of people look forward to these answers. How do you define success in your life?

Oh wow. How do I define success in my life? I am content. I have no place else I would rather be. And time is moving slowly. That's today. That's pretty much consistent, but that's the most honest answer I can give you right now. Today, I'm feeling very successful. I've been looking forward to seeing you fellas and be here for this. I'm in my office for a week. I'm not on the road. So I feel like I'm on vacation. My little daughter climbs in to my bed at night. I love it. I go home, I eat in my own house. I'm seeing a friend this evening. That is success. I'm happy with ... there's no place I'd rather be, no regrets. And time is moving slowly. Success.

I like that answer.

This has been an amazing, amazing time. So fun to do this face to face too.

Yeah I know. It is fun. Thanks, both of you. You know what's really crazy, is this is the first podcast I've ever done where I've been in the room with anybody.

Wow.

Yeah it's crazy. So normally it's all audio and I make the same joke all the time. I go, "Yeah, I really like what you've done in here."

Yeah, I heard you on one podcast talk about most people think you're American.

Oh yeah.

It was kind of neat, we're all in the same town here in Ottawa today.

That's the craziest thing. What's crazy is your name has been brought up to me by my clients in the states more than one occasion. And as you know, we have a couple of different connections. So it's like, "Yeah, I know that guy."

We have a lot of common friends. This has been a true treat. So Dennis, thanks very much.

Right on, man. Thank you, gentlemen.