I think one of the biggest things that we tend not to do as financial advisors is to surround ourselves with people who are going to be supportive of however the business evolves, and we had done that. When we reached 10 employees in Asset-Map and thousands of subscribers, it was looking like I was going to have to run Asset-Map full-time, and would need to take a hiatus from my managing roles in the practice. This was the big leap and not one that I made easily.
As a professional we make obligations and commitments to our clients to be an advisor and an advocate in their financial journey. Those relationships run deep and it’s personal. The same holds true for my partners who made real sacrifices in their own plans to support the Asset-Map endeavor. The key was to be open and communicate and be honest that this is going to be a real change to our worlds for some time, and building the support of the team around you, including family. Having support of all the stakeholders was essential for me.
Hortz: How does Asset-Map help advisors ask the right questions that, as stated in another testimonial, “uncovers unexpected opportunities every time”?
Holt: There are a couple of things that are really obvious when you look at a visual diagram of a client’s current financial decisions. You see visually where things are over weighted. You see where there is no attention in certain areas, like in savings, insurances, cash flows, or assets for that matter. There are structural distinctions that are obvious and common sense kicks in when you can see all of this laid out. For the expert eye, even more becomes obvious like legal and tax ramifications to the current financial structure.
Once the consumer is able to see visually what was going on in their life, they are able to then communicate their issues, concerns, and fears about these different choices that are represented on the Asset-Map in a way that most advisors are not able to elicit just with verbal communication alone.
We also built an innovation called Stencils, which comes from the experience and data from the hundreds of thousands of households now in Asset-Map, to learn what a client's peers also have. We've been able to overlay on an Asset-Map other types of concepts, techniques and strategies that others might be using in similar situations. It allows me to show the client ‘these are the types of things that your peers have and are contemplating—now do they make sense for you?’ In doing so, it enables more productive and effective conversations that quickly get to resolution.
Hortz: Are there ways to quantify how using visual tools and processes add impact and effectiveness?
Holt: There's a study that has been used in the marketing world forever, which claims that 65 percent of the population are visual learners. It makes sense because most people’s initial experience with their world is an immediate visceral reaction to what they see. That image is either going to be appealing or unappealing so the key for displaying information visually is to create something that can be appealing and digestible by any person in order to keep them engaged long enough to achieve a new distinction and learn from the graphic. We all know that "a picture is worth a thousand words" but when you’re able to capture a complex subject like financial condition in a picture, it’s worth a whole lot more than words.
Hortz: With your tagline “Less tech. More you,” you seem to seek and like to occupy intersections and are trying to engineer unique balances within them. Can you share with us your thinking and activity behind your tagline?
Holt: It's interesting that you picked that up….There is a concern that the current path of advice, and especially FinTech in its delivery, is ignoring one of the biggest components of financial advice. In the world where we're all saying that the “robo-advisor” technology is going to be good enough to provide the advice, we think that’s missing something. What we're trying to do is recognize that most individuals who want financial advice actually want a human to apply their knowledge, confidence and intellect to their situation. When financial decisions are complex and/or there's a high cost of being wrong, people want other people to help them make tough decisions. That emotional need is not going to change quickly.