Measuring Backwards at Adviser 3.0

I’m not the best at celebrating my successes. I usually operate on the basis of a brief pat on the back but now ‘on to the next thing’. That’s a flaw and it’s not something I’m proud of. I’m trying to get better at remembering to measure backwards and look how far I’ve come. Which is quite far really in 18 months.

Last week I delivered a a TED style talk - ‘The Relationship Is The Work: From well intentioned to well executed’ - on the Obsidian Tropical Terrace Stage at Adviser 3.0: ‘The Flagship Conference for Financial Advisers’. I argued that whilst pensions, portfolios and technical expertise are becoming commoditised, relationships themselves become the product that clients will value and pay for. I argued that whilst ever we approach client relationships informally, instinctively and implicitly we miss the mark. We need to move from well intentioned relationships to well executed relationships - based on an approach that is rigorous, that cultivates the skills and practices needed and that makes the value explicit and tangible. And we can use the psychotherapy playbook to do just that.

I shared some relational prompts which you can find here.

The day also gave me Morgan Housel and Greg McKeown’s brilliant keynotes, tasty food (not a trivial matter to me), and conversations with friends - old and new. And to close the whole day out with appropriate ceremony, a pineapple daiquiri.

Eighteen months ago, when I first started building Emotional Finance, I couldn’t have imagined I’d be on the stage at Adviser 3.0. So I drank that daiquiri with a sense of pride and celebration.