“That’s where I realized that we have such a huge opportunity in professional advisory services. People are really trusting us, and they’re opening up and they’re sharing their warts and blemishes and family dynamics and hopes and fears. If we just stay at a surface level and only talk about their mortgage and their 401(k) and their Roth IRA conversion, we’re missing the opportunity to have a deeper, transformational impact on their lives,” said Seth.

Seth drew inspiration from the “conscientious capitalism” movement popularized by companies like Whole Foods, which include positive community impact as an overall business goal. That’s an appropriate model to consider when thinking about the future of financial advice, and the next generation of investors.

Values Are The Foundation

As both consumers and employees, millennials are attracted to companies that broadcast a mission beyond profit. They’re less interested in their money as numbers on a page than they are in knowing how their money can provide a better quality of life for themselves, and the world at large.

“Values are the foundation,” said Seth. “First, from the company cultural standpoint, we have a service-oriented and caring culture. We feel we can be the best in the world at our level of care for each other, for our clients, for ourselves, for the communities we serve. But, when we work with clients, we also help them identify their core values and then we look at how their lives, how they invest, their careers, and so forth, align with those values.

Seth is making a key point here. If all you’re doing is helping your clients make and save more money—without really knowing the values that underpin their money and life decisions—then you are truly doing a disservice to your clients.

To help make sure his clients’ plan is aligned with their values, Seth said, “We offer socially responsible investing for our clients. A lot of times clients will be really into volunteering and buying organic foods. Then we find out they own pesticide companies in their portfolio, and they own companies that are doing animal testing and things that their values wouldn’t normally be in sync with.”

Use Assessments

The secret to this kind of Life-Centered Planning is understanding your clients’ attitudes towards money, and reasons behind those attitudes. Some advisors use face-to-face conversation to get to these root causes. Others, like Seth, utilize assessments that help both advisors and clients rate and rank important money matters, and assess how satisfied their clients are about how they’re using their wealth.

“We will help clients go through the process of assessing their degree of satisfaction across 10 dimensions of wealth,” said Seth. “They will really reflect and ask, ‘Am I happy with the level of impact I’m having in the community or in the world at large? Am I happy with the depth and caliber of my family relationships? Am I happy with my physical health, how my body looks, feels and functions? Am I intellectually challenged? Do I feel like I have a growth mindset or am I bored?’”