Taking Advice with Moira Somers | E035

How to face the reality of your situation, in order to understand when and how to seek and take advice.

In this episode of Financial Planning for Canadian Business Owners, Jason Pereira, award-winning financial planner, university lecturer, and writer, interviews Dr. Moira Somers, a renowned psychologist in the financial services community, about the challenges that come with giving and accepting advice!

Episode Highlights:

  • 1:17 – Dr. Moira Somers introduces herself and her profession.

  • 2:00 – What is Dr. Somers’ professional specialty?

  • 4:00 – How did Dr. Somers start advising those in the financial services industry?

  • 8:58 – Why is it so hard for humans to take preventative action?

  • 14:18 – Dr. Somers talks about how different payment methods affect the different centers in our brains.

  • 16:00 – What are the commonalities that will hold us back compared to the ones that will lead to success?

  • 21:35 – Dr. Somers talks about the need to wear multiple hats to be successful in business.

  • 25:00 – Jason and Dr. Somers discuss the human reluctance to pay attention to the important metrics.

  • 32:37 – What are the first fundamental steps that people can take to start this conversation with business owners?

  • 37:00 – Dr. Somers talks about her ability to create a psychologically-safe advising space.

3 Key Points

  1. Advice givers tend to judge those that they are advising, even blaming them for their problems, causing advisees to default to the easy thing.

  2. Paying with credit, as compared to cash, actually removes the pain of losing the value that comes with giving up money.

  3. In order to intervene before the problem becomes too bad, people need feedback or assessment.

  

Tweetable Quotes:

  • “We all know what we have to do to be healthy...but this is a fundamental issue or concern of the human condition.” – Jason Pereira

  • “Unfortunately, the hardest advice to take is also preventative advice.” – Dr. Moira Somers

  • “It’s not only that we’re going to get better in spite of setbacks, it’s that the setbacks themselves will fuel us and make them stronger. That’s what it is to be anti-fragile.” – Dr. Moira Somers

  • “There are definitely periods of mandatory imbalance or inevitable imbalance in a business life...I don’t know that you can start out perfectly balanced.” – Dr. Moira Somers

  • “Always make a point of figuring out what is motivating a person to engage in this...what is fueling them through this...and lastly, have you worked with them to identify what’s getting in the way?” – Dr. Moira Somers

Resources Mentioned:

Transcript:

Producer: Welcome to the Financial Planning For Canadian Business Owners podcast. You will hear about industry  insights with award-winning financial planner and entrepreneur, Jason Pereira. Through the interviews  with different experts with their stories and advice, you will learn how you can navigate the challenges  of being an entrepreneur, plan for success, and make the most of your business and life. And now your  host, Jason Pereira. 

Jason Pereira: Hello, and welcome to Financial Planning For Canadian Business Owners. Today on the show I'm excited  to have Dr. Moira Somers. Dr. Somers is a renowned psychologist though she also spends a lot of time  advising the financial services community surrounding the concepts of advice and better delivering and  preparing people to take it. And I brought her on the podcast specifically today to talk about the  challenges of taking advice from others and how to best be honest with yourself in order to take advice.  And with that, here's my interview with Dr. Moira Somers. Hello, Moira. 

Dr. Moira Somers: Hello. 

Jason Pereira: Thank you for taking the time today. 

Dr. Moira Somers: I am so looking forward to talking to you. Thank you so much. 

Jason Pereira: [inaudible 00:01:08] but the feeling is mutual. I've been looking forward to this one for awhile. So, Dr.  Moira Somers, please tell us about who you are and what it is you do. 

Dr. Moira Somers: I am a psychologist and professor at the Max Rady School of Medicine at the University of Manitoba,  and I am a consultant to the financial services professions. I am originally an Ontarian. I grew up in the  Georgian Bay area and moved out to Winnipeg, Manitoba, because who wouldn't? And I've been here  for many years now with my husband and family. 

Jason Pereira: Excellent. So I'm going to leave the joke about moving to Winnipeg alone. I have friends there who I  don't want to ostracize. So you basically... Let's dive here. So you are a psychologist. So talk about your  specific field of practice and then I want to understand how you came to start advising people in the  financial services industry. 

Dr. Moira Somers: Sure. My area of interest has long been what makes it hard for us to follow sound advice? My doctoral  dissertation was on procrastination, and so that was a deep dive into why it is that we often can't even  meet our own deadlines, let alone other people's deadlines for us. And then as I moved into the healthcare setting, whether we were talking about preventative advice or corrective advice for people  who already had problems, people really struggled to do the things that are going to safeguard their  lives and create great outcomes for themselves, even when they're highly motivated to do so. And so  that's always struck me as one of the most interesting aspects of working with human beings is how do  we deliver advice more effectively when we're the advice giver, and how do we open up our minds and  our hearts to receive advice, and how do we structure our lives so that we can actually act on it? 

Jason Pereira: Excellent. So I have the obvious joke of how long did you procrastinate in finishing your doctoral thesis? 

Dr. Moira Somers: You can do better than that, Jason, of course. 

Jason Pereira: Sure. 

Dr. Moira Somers: I finished it in record time. It was highly [crosstalk 00:03:13]. 

Jason Pereira: I'm sure you did. Sure you did because everyone I know who's ever done a doctoral thesis has ever said  they finished it on time. Okay, forget that I've taught in academia as well. I'm aware of how this works.  So I will find a better joke at some point throughout this, but I think, clearly, I think this is something that  frankly should resonate with everyone who's listening because it's the old fat smoker paradigm. We all  know what we have to do to be healthy, right? We all know we have to eat right, we have to work out,  we shouldn't partake in too much alcohol, tobacco, whatever it is yet. And if that happened, the  actuarial tables would look a lot more positive than they do, but this is a fundamental issue or concern  of the human condition. So before we dive into that, there's an obvious reason why you're working  within the financial services industry. Tell me how that consulting got started. 

Dr. Moira Somers: It got started because an organization in the US, a training institute there, the Sudden Money Institute,  expressed interest in my bringing the world of non-adherence research into the financial domain. So  until that time, I'd been working pretty much exclusively within healthcare and health-related fields, but  they thought there was going to be some applicability to the financial domain. And indeed there was.  One of the main reasons for that is that the best medical advice is like the best financial advice in that  it's preventative. The best advice that you will act on is the stuff that gets you into trouble that you  didn't even know you could have been courting had you not been there. 

Dr. Moira Somers: But unfortunately, the hardest kind of advice to take is also the preventative advice. And so it's the best  advice to receive and act on, and it's the hardest advice to receive and act on. And so that's how I got  started. Very quickly, I ended up... This was at a time when the NFL players were in lockout. Do you  remember that? That was-

Jason Pereira: It was a sad day for me. Yes, fair enough. Yep, totally sad. Nothing to watch on Sundays. 

Dr. Moira Somers: Yeah, and it was a sad day for a lot of the players too. So I was asked to come speak at the NFL Players  Association about the whole phenomenon of financial stress and the perils of pre-spending money that  you didn't actually have yet, and how to hold the boundaries against people who didn't have your best  interests at heart or against expectations of other people, even people who loved you, but nevertheless,  whose expectations could be quite burdensome or problematic. 

Dr. Moira Somers: And so those couple of initial events just led to lots of interest is what I would say, Jason, from the  financial community in various parts, both working with advisors who didn't know often how to work  with clients in various states of distress or excitability, whether it was a sudden money event, whether it  was something like a personal loss or divorce or a death or business challenges. 

Dr. Moira Somers: And so advisors asked me to work with the firms so that advisors could get better. Regulatory bodies  asked me to consult with them around what do advisors need to know to be more effective and stay on  the side of the angels in terms of working with people? And then those same advisors asked me if I  would speak or work with many of the families that they worked with. So the business, in particular,  business families who would working with challenges of succession planning and how to talk to their  kids about money, how to deal with some of the partnership conflict. 

Dr. Moira Somers: So I tell you, it's been a workout from both the business end of things, as well as the psychological  expertise end of things, because when money gets involved, emotions get involved and values get  involved. And it's not just... It stops being a technical issue long before advisors or accountants or  lawyers ever wish that it would have been. You cannot swing a cat in this realm without hitting on  deeply held values or easily triggered emotions. It's just the water we swim in, it seems. 

Jason Pereira: I included. We often asked the question early on about, when I see people struggling around the  concept of controlling their spending, a lot of times the question around what was money like as a child  and the family comes in, because I'm always trying to understand where they come from. And that's not  to say you are going to be infinitely better at this than I am. And I often say that quite honestly, one of  the biggest deficiencies in the training for financial planners is the lack of attention towards  understanding the psychological aspects of what happens with money. And we're not going to become  therapists and counselors ourselves, but frankly, a generalist or a generalized knowledge of how people  deal with these issues and how they deal with things in crisis, how they deal with crises. These are all  things like if you're there for more than just the money aspect of their lives, these are issues you have to  deal with. 

Jason Pereira: And a couple... For those of you who have not seen the ESPN 30 for 30 called Broke, I highly suggest it.  It's all about athletes going broke. Highly suggest it because it is tragic and also amusing. But  nevertheless, when you start talking about athletes losing money, that's the first thing that comes to  mind. So before we... I actually just introduced the concept, but I actually brought you on under the  topic of being psychologically and emotionally ready to take advice and knowing how to absorb that. But  I just want to explore a couple of the things that you said before we get there, because a lot of what you  said was quite honestly, I think just talk random, and this would make for one of the most interesting  conversations I'm going to have. 

Jason Pereira: But I want to go back to your concept of adherence research, which I love the term, or not an adherence  research. I love that term. It sounds so beautifully technical. Why is it so hard for us to take preventative  action, right? Is it just because we can't... Is the payoff is such a distant concept to us? Why is it that we  are so bad at doing the right thing for us in the future today? 

Dr. Moira Somers: As you would expect when you ask an academic this question, the first answer is it's complicated and it  depends. As advice givers, we always tend to look to the clients and say, frankly, "What the hell is wrong  with them?" That's [inaudible 00:09:15]. 

Jason Pereira: I had this conversation the other day where someone said that I'm like, "Well, they're not listening  because you're not getting through to them. So start reframing the problem." 

Dr. Moira Somers: There you go. There you go. But because we do have specialized technical training that allows us to see  quite clearly a pathway, it's hard for us to understand why other people wouldn't just see it that way  also. And it is the tendency of advice givers to default to client blaming and to get caught up in  judgment. Whereas in fact, Jason, the research shows that there isn't such a thing as a globally oomph  person. Maybe some toddlers would fall under that category. But then you see 

Jason Pereira: Yeah, among them my daughter. 

Dr. Moira Somers: Yeah, most of us will stop at stop signs, most of us obey the laws, but we do cherry pick which kinds of  directives we're going to follow. And some of that will be predictable. Like we're going to be happier to  avoid advice that's painful, that's complicated, that's ongoing, even within the field of medicine. It's  really easy to swallow an antibiotic when we have a raging tooth abscess and there's pain to remind us  to do it. But as soon as it settles down, we often find a... We look at that bottle four weeks later and find  that there's five or six pills still in there because once... And it wasn't intentional, was it? It's just that  once the pain wasn't there to remind us, it literally was out of mind. 

Dr. Moira Somers: And so part of the problem with preventative advice is that we don't have pain motivating us. And  sometimes, if the advice giver doesn't do an adequate job, we also don't have insight motivating us. And  so we will default to the things that are closer in terms of time to where we are now. And we'll do the  easy thing and we'll do the pleasurable thing and we'll do the thing that is the default. And that's one of  the challenges for all of us is how much can we automate this stuff? Because once we check a box, man,  we seem to have an aversion to unchecking a box or to changing that check mark. 

Dr. Moira Somers: There's a reason why 97% of Canadians pay their mortgages on time every month. And that's because  the banks really understand defaults. They do not leave it to our memory to get that mortgage payment  out of us. It comes out the first day of the paycheck and it comes out automatically. And nobody has to  remember to do that transfer. They understand that. You contrast that, but the same group of people,  same group of Canadians, with our dismal savings rates, 97% of us pay our mortgage on time. The rate  of people who actually contribute to long-term and short-term savings and emergency savings is much  lower than that. And it's because often, we rely on having enough money leftover that isn't accounted  for and we'll get to it at the end of the month, or we'll get to it sometime. 

Dr. Moira Somers: Same thing with writing a will. We all understand that it needs to be done, but the majority of us haven't  done it or haven't kept it updated. If there were things that were nudging us that were capturing pre commitments so that when our ship came in a little bit more when we got that raise, if we'd already pre committed to that payment 

Jason Pereira: We'd save more tomorrow. Yup. 

Dr. Moira Somers: Yup. If for example, when a young person applied for a credit card, if they had to watch a couple of  videos, a couple of minutes of videos on how you can get yourself in trouble with credit and what is the  wise use of credit and just pass this little test before we give you the credit card, completely different  outcomes happen. But we learn about stuff in isolation, in silos at times when it's not necessarily  convenient or meaningful to implement it. And so we don't implement it. So that's just a smattering of  some of the reasons why we don't follow advice. 

Jason Pereira: It's interesting because so much of it is process designed, right? Like you mentioned the banks being  very effective at collecting mortgages because, hey, we know it's going to hit our account through the  month. The same concept of pay yourself first, right? And save more tomorrow. These are things I've  talked about on the podcast before are all finally highly effective. The credit card one, I often feel like if  you went to use your credit card and it's in your phone, smartphone asked for an authentication, and it  was like, "Are you sure you want to do this? You only have this much money left in your bank account.  This one's going to take you this long to pay it off. Here's the amount of interest." And there was like five  checkpoints that you have to get through before you could actually say yes to the transaction, I don't  think we'd spend as much on credit cards, right? 

Jason Pereira: But a lot of what is designed to be bad for us is instantaneous gratification and the friction to getting  there often tends to be low, right? Like it takes nothing for me to swipe my card, right? Like it's takes  literally nothing, whereas... And I think there are studies that show that if you use cash, you actually spend less because visualized constraints, you have to manually count for it. Lots of things I'm sure you  could easily talk to me, teach me lessons about as opposed to be talking about. 

Dr. Moira Somers: Well, some of those things that are bypassed with the automaticity that marketers have figured out and  casinos have figured out, what we know is that they actually change how our brain processes the  information. So when we pay with cash for... Sorry, when we pay with credit card for something that  we... Some desired item, the pleasure centers of our brain light up. The anticipation centers of our brain  light up. We're just thinking about good things. When we pay with cash, those same brain centers will  light up on neuroimaging, but so will a center associated with pain and one associated with disgust.  Paying with credit literally removes the pain of pain at the neuropsychological level. And I am most  hopeful in the field of finance and how we run our businesses, I am most hopeful about any intervention  that sets up different kinds of defaults that provides just-in-time learning that allows people to bypass  the things that activate short-term emotion and that re-engage the things that activate long-term  emotion that is meaningful. 

Jason Pereira: So let's actually now curtail into the actual reason I brought you on the podcast, even though that was,  again, a conversation I could have continued having for God knows how long. And that comes down to  the concept of psychologically being... I think let's break this down to a couple of things, recognizing that  you need to take advice. I think most of us recognize we need to take advice, but then being  psychologically ready to take it and act on it. So basically, in terms of, I know everyone's different, best  practices or what one's mindset should be and what are the commonalities that will lead to success  versus what's going to hold us back from being able to do that? 

Dr. Moira Somers: It is hard to speak in generalities about this, but let me give it a try. Usually, when we start a business or  buy a business, there's a fair amount of confidence and hopefulness that goes into that. This notion that  I could do this better than I've seen it done, or I could do this in a way that would support the kind of life  that I want to have. I don't want to put it all on the altar of somebody else. I want to make this be for me or my family, or I want to do this technical thing that I do as an engineer or a software designer. I want  to do it my way. I want to run my kind of marketing firm, my kind of pie making shop, whatever it is. And  so there's... You have to have a fair amount of moxie to do that 

Jason Pereira: Or... 

Dr. Moira Somers: Or fervouration. 

Jason Pereira: Yeah.

Dr. Moira Somers: And so if you'd used to putting your head down and plowing through and a certain kind of  imperviousness to really depressing business statistics about how many are out of work within the first  five years, that's required. There almost has to be an antifragility of entrepreneurs to make it, right?  That it's not only that we're going to get better in spite of setbacks, it's that the setbacks themselves will  fuel us and make them stronger. That's what it is to be antifragile. And I think a lot of business owners  have some of that characteristic. But then by definition, it sets us up to be a little bit deaf to the  cautionary tale sometimes. 

Dr. Moira Somers: And so for me, one of the big differences that I see that separates folks in this regard is is this confidence  I'm seeing or is this hubris? Are you actually looking at your data or are you being avoidant? Is this all  bravado or is this based in data that we could all look at and agree on? So part of it is how reality-based  are you? How willing are you to look at the metrics of your own business? 

Dr. Moira Somers: So if we're talking about pundits, everybody could have different predictions, right? So it's one thing to  ignore industry leaders or people who claim that they know the future, but it's another thing altogether  to ignore your own metrics and your own data. So that I think to be successful in business, I'm working  with a women's organization right now. To be successful in business means that you have to look at  that. 

Dr. Moira Somers: And there's another interesting finding, which is that people who have three or four different types of  community support tend to do best. We do best when we have people who can connect us with other  people. We do well when we have mentors, people who've gone this road before us and can help us,  can put us on their shoulders so that we don't have to slog through the same mud that they did. We do  better when we have people who may not know anything at all about the business, but who just  encourage us, who believe in us as people. 

Dr. Moira Somers: And then it also helps, funnily enough, to have a few people who are kind of the negative nellies who  say, "You're going to have to prove it to me because I don't know that you got it." You don't need a  whole lot of those in fact if you go a long way. So to think about what kind of advice is it that you're  needing and what kind of emotional support or professional support are you needing along the way.  That'll vary from time to time. Sometimes you need to know how to do something, sometimes you need  to know when, sometimes you need somebody to tell you, as a LinkedIn article I just wrote today,  you've been shot, now fall down, dammit. It is time to rest and restore. 

Jason Pereira: That did an excellent job. And it's amazing how much of that resonated with me personally, from both  my own experience and also from the experience of just mentoring a lot of other people in this space  and clients, right? Like the combination of clients and other advisors. So I always say the same thing. You  have to be a never-ending optimist to basically start a business, right? As you said, the failure rates, and  I always point to the episode of Seinfeld with the spot of death restaurant, where it's turned over. The last eight guys who basically ran a restaurant here, they didn't know what they were doing, but me, me,  I'm going to make it work on this one location. 

Jason Pereira: I always say to myself like, "Oh my goodness, if five other restaurants failed, it's probably not just the  restaurants. It's probably something to do with location too." Right? So you have that. And then I always  say that the other problem when it comes to entrepreneurship it's the most bipolar thing you could ever  subject yourself to because things go well, you're on top of the world, this is going to work. And then  inevitably, you have the periods of dark periods where money's tight, where you're dealing with staffing  issues you never thought you would deal with, creditor concerns, whatever it is, and you worry about  losing your mortgage, losing your home, right? Like you just you worry about that sort of stuff. 

Jason Pereira: And I think one of the reasons why I work so heavily with entrepreneurs is because I feel that I've felt  that. I know what it's like to go through that, but it's interesting when people haven't. And I think to the  young advisors I've mentored where they've had an opportunity to go independent or to basically start  off an independent shop, buy a practice, whatever it is. And to me, it's like, "Yes, this is the opportunity  you do this." And the look of panic on their faces at the idea of it. And I have to refresh my memory that  this is not an entrepreneur. This is a person who's not used to this world. So it's such a challenge, but I  also want 

Dr. Moira Somers: And speaking of support, as you talk there, I'm thinking of the book, The E Myth. 

Jason Pereira: Well, you referenced the pie shop, so I knew you were going to [inaudible 00:21:29] The E Myth. 

Dr. Moira Somers: Right. Yeah, and just it talks about the various hats that you have to wear in order to succeed in  business. And most of us start out wearing a technical expert hat, right? I'm going to do this business my  way. Then we learn about how we need to fill out T4 slips and all those beautiful things about business  management. And those two things ultimately can be outsourced. They don't actually need you in the  long run. But the piece that can't be outsourced is that vision piece. What do you want for your life from  this business? And that requires you to be fully present. 

Dr. Moira Somers: And I think that's one of the most helpful categories of counsel or of coaching that people can bring into  their business periodically, every few years, or to go on a retreat with yourself and some key people to  say, what's next? What do I want now? You can't outsource that. Life will just have its way with you and  your business if you will not actively pick up the GPS unit and type in where it is you want to be going in  the next little while. 

Jason Pereira: Yeah, and so often, entrepreneurs end up, it's not the business enabling their life, it's the life being  sacrificed for their business, right?

Dr. Moira Somers: Yeah. 

Jason Pereira: And I could see how that would be incredibly a credible factor for helping people move past the I've got  to do it all. I've said this before in previous podcasts, there's the hubris that does come into play where I  need to do everything because I do it the way I like it and that's it, and then not think that there's  somebody else who could basically do it better than you, or advise you on how to do it better and more  efficient. It's just hubris. It really is. And we need to open ourselves up to it. And I think what you said  there, prioritizing the life outcome ahead of the business outcome, the only way we're going to get to  the prioritization of the life outcome is if we changed the business behavior, which we're only going to  change if we take in advice from others in the first place because if we didn't... We wouldn't have an  imbalance in the first place if we were doing it right. So I can see how that would be powerful. 

Dr. Moira Somers: You think so, Jason? I don't know. My sense is that there are definitely periods of mandatory imbalance  or inevitable imbalance in business life. Like when you start up, you're gung-ho. And thank God you are  because that's what you need. I don't know that you can start out perfectly balanced. 

Jason Pereira: I don't think you can, but I also think that depending on what life stage you're in, your life is more  conducive to not being balanced, right? A lot of businesses get started when people are unmarried,  when people are early on in life, right? 

Dr. Moira Somers: Yeah. 

Jason Pereira: If you need to work 60 hours a week, no big deal, right? It's just you're not going out and hanging out  with your friends as much. But eventually, that price is paid. But as you said, the entire... When they  have that crisis moment, maybe that's the catalyst or maybe it's not. And as the previous interview with  Dave Sinclair, he had his crisis moment. It came after retirement. Maybe if he had taken the advice or  been better at, and he talks about this himself, if he had been better at listening to others around him  on other aspects of his life, he wouldn't have had that crisis to sell the business and then hit the wall  after he did that. So what I'm getting from you is there's no panacea. So there's no pill than this, right? 

Dr. Moira Somers: Well, I think if there is a panacea, it's staying grounded and being willing to look at your metrics and  understanding the basic principle that we get further with help than on our own. Those are two guiding  principles. 

Jason Pereira: It's funny. I love that you went through the metrics, not just because I'm a math junkie, but also because  when other advisors and business owners start talking about like professionalizing or moving to the next  level, my first response is almost always like, "Okay, how often are you looking at your financials?" And the response is, "Eight out of 10 times when my accountant hands them to me." Right? Like if you get to  a certain scale of business, that's not the answer. But if you're a professional or a sole practitioner or  maybe you have one employee or you're an advisor, the answer is almost always when the accountant  hands it to me. And then they look at me kind of coily saying, "Is that okay?" I'm like, "Do you think Tim  Cook looks at them once a year?" 

Jason Pereira: The reality is that it's not a burden, it's an asset. And if you can use that information, it's only going to  inform every aspect of your business. And I think the being objective about the numbers, it's going to  point to the weaknesses where we know... Where we suddenly... I'll share a personal story. So a part of  my practice got transitioned to another advisor, and he was so just focused on retaining the clients and  trying to... The first time he was focused on retaining the clients than he was worried about making the  payments. And he had this large winning payment that was coming, that he had basically almost  panicked himself about. And at the end of the day, when we actually did the reconciliation, enough  clients had left that most of that payment was not necessary anymore. And he had no idea because he'd  been paying no attention to the numbers. He'd just been so busy trying to drive revenue. 

Jason Pereira: And I said to him, "Think about the level of anxiety that you caused yourself for not objectively  identifying where the problems were in the business. You could have instead of worrying about making  this payment that never had to be made, you could have focused on just improving on areas that would  have actually bettered your business in the first place." And I think hopefully that was a wake-up  moment for him that he realized that, "Okay, I completely did this backwards, but we'll see." 


Dr. Moira Somers: And it's interesting because you've pointed out there different kinds of metrics. And he just didn't know  which metrics were the most important. And I want to say that because you and the business are  inseparable much of the time as a business owner, there are relational metrics and there are health  metrics. And often, we don't care to ask those questions. We don't say to our spouse, how are we  doing? We don't ask our kids, how could I be a better mom? We don't go for the checkup. We don't step  on the scale or we don't check the blood pressure. We actively avoid some of those metrics too. It's not  just the financial ones. We don't put it through the filter of, am I having fun yet still? 

Jason Pereira: Way of life. 

Dr. Moira Somers: Because once positivity starts eroding or there's just so much stress in your day that you've got to plow  through, the positivity ratio starts to shift in favor of more negative than positive, you know that you're  on a downward spiral and this business is not going to do well and you are not going to do well. So there  are different kinds of metrics that we need to look forward to. The article that I, or that we need to do  the examination of, the article that I posted today on LinkedIn was about this very real problem which is  that as we grow depleted, neurons in our brains start slowing down and this very organ that's  responsible for insight becomes compromised, gets worn out. And so you just keep slogging on because  that's what you've been doing until you can't slog anymore. So if we could learn how to be a little bit more proactive in stopping and asking the right questions and talking to the right people, I think we're  going to find yourselves fairing better. 

Jason Pereira: Yeah, it's interesting because several things there reminded me of various other guests or the things  that I've done in my life. Dr Randy Knipping, who runs a place called the DeerFields Clinic, he used to...  It's a private clinic. And he started that clinic because he said, "The other clinics I worked at, executives  would come in once a year and you just chart this downward progression." Right? 

Dr. Moira Somers: [inaudible 00:28:41]. 


Jason Pereira: It's like he'd be like, "Hey, do this and whatever." And then they come back the next day and it was  worse. And he's like, "No." So there's programs for intervention and for constantly staying on top of...  It's talking to them at least every three months to actually measure the metrics. And also the point  about the neurons not firing the same way because you've reached a point of just you pushed yourself  too far, one of the things that Dan Sullivan, a strategic coach talks about, is flipping the paradigm on  that. We burn ourselves out to go on vacation and then we come back, we're highly productive, and  then we burn ourselves out again, and then we need a vacation. And this entire stance says, "No, no, no,  take the vacation to allow you to work highly productively. And before you burn out, take the next  vacation because the time off will be made up by the productive." 

Jason Pereira: And ask for your feedback when... I'm not sure if you've ever heard this one, have you ever listened to  Tim Ferris? He talks openly sometimes about a friend he has who's a, I don't know what he is, but I think  he's a highly successful entrepreneur is what it sounds like, but he has his wife give him a scorecard once  a month and she grades him on various criteria. And those criteria are, I think if I remember correctly,  provider, partner, lover, father, and I can't remember the last one. There was like five. 

Jason Pereira: And the deal is he's allowed to have... His average score has to be a letter grade I think of like least B,  and no score can be below like a D or something like that, whatever it was. And that is his... It's funny  people laugh at that, but I look at that and I've actually, at one point I told my wife that I'm like, "Okay,  give me a favor. Give me the exact." So from time to time, I've actually asked her to do the same thing.  And I think it's important because how many relationships get to the point of no return where it's just  like, maybe if you could have intercepted it at the C before it got to a D and then an F, you could have  done something, but knowing 

Dr. Moira Somers: Or the N/A. 

Jason Pereira: Yeah, exactly.

Dr. Moira Somers: Not applicable. 

Jason Pereira: Yeah, and it's like, what is this all for in the end if it's not going to make our personal lives more better?  Right? At the end of the day, at some point, whether it be horizontally or vertically, we're going to retire,  right? And I would prefer for it not to lead to the horizontal situation. And I would prefer that when I do  retire vertically, that essentially, I have something, a meaning in my life beyond what was the business.  So it's, again, I feel like I could talk to you all day about how to get around these things. So, I love what  you have to say about the objectivity of this all about, I think if anything you said, if I could sum up the  different kinds of aspects of what you talked about by face the truth, face the truth, we're not good at  facing the truth. You need feedback, whether that be quantifiable numbers or assessment. And then you  can intervene because that's going to point to the problems, or you can continue to bury your head in  the sand. That's the case. 

Jason Pereira: And one of the other last interesting stories before I ask another question, number one client came in  saying, "I've cited this financial plan. I'm glad we're doing it." And my friend asked me, "Why in God's  name would you want to do that? Why do you want to know how bad it is?" And I thought to myself  like, "Wow, that person first off assumes your situation's bad, but like how bad is their concept of what  their personal situation is, and to the point where they won't allow someone to even assess if it's a bad  situation?" Like the level of fear of their own lives they must be living in is just, I can't imagine what the  impact of that is. 

Dr. Moira Somers: Yeah, that's shocking. 

Jason Pereira: It's shocking, but I'm sure that if some people were more frank about why they haven't done financial  planning when they've been approached about it, I'm sure that that's probably not far off is I don't  necessarily want to know just how bad it is, unfortunately. So, wait, before we wrap up, I first of all not  only want to through thank you, are there any final thoughts around how people such as advisors can  help business owners? Because especially, everybody faces these challenges in life, but I feel like with  the business owners, it's at another level. We're responsible for so much more than just our job. We're  responsible for typically the people we employ, the demands on that life are typically a lot harder than  the average employee, I will say, then I will live and die by that because I've seen it. But besides the  objectivity, what are the first fundamental steps that people can take to enable this conversation to  happen? 

Dr. Moira Somers: The first is to reign yourself in as an advisor. Often, we are so concerned for the people that we're  advising or we're so excited about their prospects, or we are so full of ourselves and confident about our  own state of our own knowledge and wisdom that we just pour it out on them like a firehouse. And we  don't truly stop and listen for what it is they're asking for, nor do we pay any attention to the signs that  they're giving us around readiness, willingness, ability. Every one of us has competing demands on our time, energy, and money. And to be a good advisor means that you first and foremost, the first thing  you do is find out what does this person want from me? What kind of advice are they looking for? It may  not even be the thing that I think is most needed, but let me tell you, you get way more uptake in the  long run if you start with what they've got the juice for, what they've got the mojo for. 

Dr. Moira Somers: And implementation begets implementation. People look to advisers. They look to experts for advice for  many, many different reasons. And one of them is in order to get into action because they become  discouraged or they become stuck. And if you can help them build, get out of park and start moving  immediately, that's great. It doesn't matter if it's not the absolute perfect thing. If that's what they've  got the juice for, let's go with it. 

Dr. Moira Somers: The other thing that advisors need to do is to take a page from the book of a medical school research,  which is always make a point of tapping into, like figuring out what is motivating a person to engage in  this? If they actually have agreed that this is what they want to act on, what is fueling them through  this? And is it sufficiently deep? And lastly, have you worked with them to identify what's going to get in  the way? Because if both of you are whistling Dixie around the fact that there's somebody in their life  that's going to be really peeved at them if they do what you say, who has the most contact with them?  Who's going to win the day? It's probably not going to be you. 

Dr. Moira Somers: The standards for financial professionals in Canada, in the US, and even international standards now for  CFP professionals are that the advisor is responsible for implementing. Implementation is part of the  advisor's job. It's not just a hit and run. Here I've delivered my commandments to you like the Lord  Almighty on Mount Sinai, and you just scurry off and do what it says, please. No, it says we have to be  there in the trenches. And we have to co-determine with them, whose job is it to do this part and this  part and this part? 

Dr. Moira Somers: And how can I help this client who may have said, "I've never been able to do this thing that you've  asked me to do. I know I need to do it well. The spirit as willing here, but I've never been able to do  that." Then it's not sufficient for you to say, "Oh, okay, I guess we can ignore that." Right? A great  advisor will say, "Let's start getting really granular here. Where is it that that breaks down? Does that  break down because you don't trust lawyers? Does that break down because you don't know a lawyer?  Does that break down because you break out into a cold sweat every time you think about dying or does  that break down because you and your wife are, or you and your husband are in conflict around who  should be the guardian for your children? Where exactly does it break down?" 

Dr. Moira Somers: And so when you do factor analysis on why people don't follow advice, there are five domains that  followed pretty much every time, but it turns out that mistakes made by the advisor, Jason, account for  more of the variants and nonadherence than what clients do. That's shocking to me. 

Jason Pereira: That is [inaudible 00:36:37]. 

Dr. Moira Somers: That I'm responsible for more of things not happening than the client themselves. Oh shoot, that just so  gets in the way of my blaming. 

Jason Pereira: Well, it's funny because that supports one of my statement previously about like, no, yeah, they're not  listening to you because you're not getting through to them, right? So that is wow. I would love to see  the research on that because it would not overly surprise me. It really would not overly surprise me. But  that's 

Dr. Moira Somers: So one of the... As much as that makes my cheeks burn every time I come up on an article that says,  "Yeah, it's all about you, Moira," it also is hopeful in the end, right? Because that is something that I  have a profound degree of influence over. I can ask somebody in a meeting, "Is there anything that I said  today that you didn't really get?" I can ask somebody, "Could you tell me in your own words, what we  agreed would be the next best step and why?" I can ask somebody, "Is there anything I said today that  upset? Anything that I've said that just is not going to work for your life or business right now?" I can  create the kind of psychologically safe advising space so that people can surface that and know that it  really matters that it's welcome and that it's important that that stuff come in. And then they can watch  me pivot instead of me insisting that they get squished into this hole that I want them to be in. 

Jason Pereira: And it's... I often, again, I'm going to relate to personal experience on this and just watching people's  body language and the information I get from that, sometimes when they're having those moments  where it's like, "Okay, I clearly said something to you that actually made you back up. Where did I make  you... What's the concern? Was it me? Was it just a topic?" And the thing is I always find with that is that  the sense of appreciation for the fact that you're willing to course correct in front of them. After you  tried to pair back that, if you can actually start to find the topic or the reason for that reaction, there's  like a, I'm really glad you stopped there. I'm really... 

Jason Pereira: Like everybody wants to feel heard and respected. And too often, as I say in this industry, people talk  past their clients. I am a genius, listen to me. I am like... You're just the person sitting there and I'm just  like the fire hose just spewing stuff and you just need to drink it in. And I don't think that works for any  of us honestly. So Dr. Moira Somers, I sincerely thank you for this. Again, sometimes these podcasts, an  hour is not enough. But this is definitely one of them. Before we go, where can people find you to learn  more about your work and follow your continued teachings? 

Dr. Moira Somers: They can find me on LinkedIn, Dr. Moira Somers. My website is moneymindandmeaning.com. And I have  just put together an online course for advisors in particular about how to deliver advice more effectively.  And you can find more about that at moneymindandmeaning.com, or at arlan, A-R-L-A-N, academy.com.

Jason Pereira: I know what I'm signing up for very shortly. All right, thank you very much, Moira. 

Dr. Moira Somers: Thank you. 

Jason Pereira: So that was my interview with Dr. Somers. I hope you enjoyed that as thoroughly as I did. I found that  deeply fascinating. And I highly encourage you to follow her and look into the various different  endeavors that she has, because frankly, we could all get better at doing what is right for us and taking  the right advice. So with that, as always, this has been Financial Planning For Canadian Business Owners.  I'm your host, Jason Pereira. If you enjoyed this podcast, please leave a review on iTunes, Stitcher, or  wherever else you get your podcasts. Until next time, take care. 

Producer: This podcast was brought to you by Woodgate Financial, an award-winning financial planning firm,  catering to high net worth individuals, business owners, and their families. To learn more, go to  woodgate.com. You could subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, and  Spotify, or find more episodes at jasonpereira.ca. You can even ask Siri, Alexa, or Google Home to  subscribe for you.

FPCBOJason PereiraFinancial Advice, Mindset