Brian Haney is the founder of The Haney Company and a longtime financial advisor who understands the human side of money. Starting his career in banking, Brian has seen the full spectrum of financial behaviors and challenges that people face. He’s built his practice around cutting through the noise to help clients interpret information they can apply to their specific situations, empowering them to live rich lives without being held captive by financial stress.
In this interview, Brian shares his insights on how financial professionals can work together more effectively to better serve their clients.
- “I’m not the person to help you with that, or at least I’m not the best person to help you with that.” Learning to say this to clients isn’t a weakness, it’s the foundation of excellent service.
- Stop trying to be the expert in everything. Just like law firms have specialists, financial practices work better when you master your lane and partner for everything else.
- The million-dollar surgeon with terrible credit proves this truth: It doesn’t matter how much money you make if you don’t know how to handle it.
- When reaching out to potential partners, lead with curiosity, not your pitch. “I’m really interested in understanding what a day in your life is all about” beats any sales script.
- Blue ocean thinking: There are plenty of fish in the sea for all of us. Focus on adding value to the marketplace instead of competing for the same clients.
- Your clients should use you as a resource to find other professionals. When they call asking for referrals to specialists you don’t know, that’s a sign you’re doing partnership right.
- Four financial domains everyone needs help with: daily money management, major purchases, planning for the future, and planning for the unexpected. No single professional can master all four—and they shouldn’t try.
Brian Haney: I’ll start by walking through a scenario that typifies the power of partnership. Many years ago, I had a client that I had spent significant time with building out a retirement income plan. She was getting ready to retire, and we were working on how to put all of her retirement assets into the right places and turn on that income stream so she knew what she had coming in, how she could live, and support the lifestyle she was looking to enjoy.
We crossed that proverbial finish line with her, and she was retired. But six months into that part of her life, she really started to feel uncomfortable. It was tricky for me to try to figure out what was going on. There wasn’t anything wrong with what we had set up. She definitely had enough money. She had over-saved and underspent. She was not somebody who lived at her means—she was always below her means. We had built a very conservative income framework so she wasn’t allocated in any place that exposed her to risk that would have caused this consternation.
Finally, by really talking to her and listening to what she was describing, she just was really not good at budgeting and spending her own money. She had had a spouse who had handled that, and then kids that had helped her with it. She was finding herself in a place where she knew she needed to take more control and not rely on the help of others.
I said, “Well, I’m glad that we figured that out, but I’m not the person to help you with that, or at least I’m not the best person to help you with that.” We started to reach out in her network and ultimately found a financial coach that literally helped with spending. It wasn’t even just budgeting, because we did that piece in the income plan—it was literally just making sure she was comfortable spending, reconciling, and watching the money go in and out.
Within two months, this financial coach had her not just feeling great, but in a place where I could see her confidence and her joy. I could also then start to get her out of a place of just being at the ground level and get into more of the conversations: “Hey, you remember when we said you wanted to take this trip? You remember when you said you wanted to do this?” She was able to zoom back out and move forward.
What makes it successful is when you get what the need is right, and then you align the people that are the best at helping address that need.
Brian Haney: The initial conversation took a little bit of time simply because it was really important that we understood the problem and we talked through the emotions. Money has all these various layers and facets to it, and we tend to homogenize them together when we feel uncomfortable. It’s almost like if one of 12 things could be wrong, but it feels like all 12 are wrong because we don’t feel good about it. It compounds when we don’t know what we don’t know, and so we maybe don’t even know what it is that we’re connecting to, or what’s not working for us.
I knew her well enough to know that even as we were having that conversation, I was able to involve her children, who had helped her, a few times. So I brought people together to create the atmosphere that was going to be helpful for us to sort through this.
Essentially, once we really diagnosed, “Okay, you haven’t really done this before, and it sounds like you’re going to need some help with it, but you don’t want that help to come from the places that it has up to this point. Are you open to us finding someone who could help you with this?”
And because we defined that, and we determined exactly where she was at and what she needed help with, and I, throughout the entire process, was saying, “This isn’t something that I can help you do the way that you’re going to need the help. I want you to get the help, even if it’s not from me, because that’s what’s best for you.”
At that point, she was open to just, “Yeah, okay, somebody can help me with this. Let’s find who that is.” And the rest of it just came together. In that stage of life, she actually had a friend group, and this person had worked with a couple other people, because, lo and behold, this is a common issue. So we found that person, we interviewed them, and they came in and did what they said they were going to do, and it all made sense. Everybody felt really good about the entire process.
Brian Haney: I’m glad you brought up the estate planner. If we’re really honest with ourselves and also honest with our practice and our deliverables, we know what we’re really good at, and we should also know what we’re really not good at, or what really isn’t going to be a core deliverable of ours.
It’s normal and natural for financial advisors or people running any kind of financial practice, whether it’s asset based, fee based, insurance, or a combination of all of the above, to partner in certain parts of the financial arena. Commonly attorneys and CPAs—everybody says, “Get an attorney and a CPA.” But that’s interesting. So let’s go to those. Let’s look at the legal field just as a great example. Not everybody that has a law license practices the same way.
If I’m running a law firm, I don’t just have every possible legal aspect and dimension of law under the sun available. I have people with very specialized, unique practice focuses, and we’re used to that. We understand that law is a very broad brush stroke that you paint, but you need very strategic legal help. You might need international law, domestic law, transactional law, estate law – so your expectation when you’re engaging an attorney is to find the one that fits the legal situation that you are trying to solve.
That logic applies to any kind of financial practice. And if you don’t have the capability set in house, because it’s not a core deliverable, then to be your best self and to deliver the best value, you find people to step in and help your clients in places where you’re not able to help them. It doesn’t matter what that looks like in practice. If somebody in my client base or frankly, my sphere in the professional world that I live in needs help, and I can deliver that party, and I know where to go or to find it, and I can bring that value, why wouldn’t I do that? I’m trying to take care of my client.
If you really want to increase your value, increase your bench. You will be seen as a much more credible thought leader and practitioner if you have high quality people you work with, not just an attorney and a CPA. I have an amazing mortgage professional who gives mortgage advice. He doesn’t just do loans. He’ll tell someone, “You know what? This is what you need to do. And by the way, I’m not going to do it for you.”
I love that my clients call our office to be introduced to or connected with somebody else. They literally use us as that resource, because they know that even if we can’t help them, we truly want them to take the next best step, and we will point them in the right direction. We’ll know somebody. We can send an email to clients to say, “Hey, we have another client who’s looking for this type of professional. Do you have anybody?” We can absolutely tap into our bench, our clients, all that kind of stuff. And I love the fact that our clients know us for that.
There’s a regulatory dimension that is very unique. If I’m supposed to act in your best interest and to help you when I’m engaging with you as a professional, regardless of the level of engagement or the type, this is part and parcel to that. It’s not just saying, “Well, I don’t do that, so figure it out on your own,” because I want you to take action, even if that action isn’t something that’s in my wheelhouse.
You need to take that next step, whatever that is, whatever that next financial thing that moves you forward is, and if I’m going to be a party to it, or if I’m going to continue to help you, this is all part of that value proposition.
Brian Haney: I’m going to tell you a little bit of my story here in answering this question. Most people may or may not know I started in the financial business in the banking part of the space. So I opened up checking and savings accounts, did credit cards, loans, a whole bunch of stuff. The benefit of that part of the experience is I saw literally the whole spectrum of all the things that come together when it comes to how any of us do money. I also realize what I am good at, and what I’m not.
Coaching, in particular, helps people do things that are executable, but require a high level of detail, granularity, and probably a predictable framework and rhythm that is very materially different than designing a portfolio. There’s granularity involved there, but there’s a lot more esoteric stuff that comes to the table. But it’s not like, “Hey, you’re going to see this and it could impact you on your bank account tomorrow.”
Coaches help really handle some of the most foundational components. That’s where so many people fall apart or never get it right to begin with. One of the early lessons I learned was it doesn’t matter how much money you make if you don’t know how to handle it.
I ran into a doctor, a very highly paid surgeon, making well over a million dollars a year, and I promise you, he didn’t know how much he spent at all, because his secretary did it for him. His credit was terrible because she never paid his bills on time, and he had next to nothing saved. He was literally making on an annual basis the equivalent to winning the lottery for most people, and he had nothing to show for it, not because he was struggling with earning, not because it was a portfolio issue, but literally because he didn’t pay his own bills and didn’t even know what was coming in or going out. I couldn’t even do a loan for him, because his credit was so messed up.
A coach that helps that element, and then, frankly, some of those other foundational building blocks of what does it look like to access credit, or what does it look like to build, to spend, to plan for things, and to have a bit of a framework where you’re piecing these things together—this is all parts of a puzzle that must come together. In the absence of these critical elements, honestly, the stuff that I do and some of the other people do is not going to be nearly as effective, because you’re missing a foundation.
Brian Haney: One of the things that I’ve held true that has helped me my entire professional career was quantifying what I call the four financial concern areas. If I’m to sit down and think about what are the four big building blocks that come together, this is what it was:
Daily money management is one—everything that we just talked about. Planning for major purchases is another. We think of major purchases as car, home, second home, things that are big ticket items. But you know what? There’s a lot of little big ticket items that we spend haphazardly on that frankly, add up to more than some of those big ticket items.
Planning for the future is that third domain, and that’s literally anything you can save money for, not just retirement or something more strategic—anything you set aside money and give it a purpose for. And then planning for the unexpected. How do we make sure that when life doesn’t work out the way we thought it would, or hoped it would, something’s in place that protects us and those we care about.
You’re going to have to have each dimension figured out, and you probably should have professionals helping you with all of them. And it’s probably not going to be one person.
Brian Haney: It would be remiss if I didn’t say that you stood out the first time we met at FinCon, however many years ago that was. But there was another coach as well, his name’s Adam Kol. He focused on the dimension of emotion, the psychology behind money. It just resonated with me so much.
I majored in journalism, minored in psychology, and the psychology part of my educational journey is the one that I’ve tried to continue to beef up my entire adult life, because to be good at any of the deliverables in this space, I really need to know how people think and make decisions. When we look at that, how we think and make decisions is far more emotional than it is logical. So I’ve always tried to have as good of a talent set as a professional in that arena.
To have somebody else come to the table that way with a similar love for that in a different part of it, it just resonated so strongly with me. Because across the financial industry in general, we suffer as an industry from that aspect of training and development. We’re all really good at the functional capacity stuff—insurance, investments, even budgeting, all that kind of stuff. But understanding emotions, human behavior, and just being able to hold space for people and recognize that emotions are a part of this process. Most of discovering the issue was an emotional conversation in my initial example. It wasn’t easy just to go in and look at her bank accounts or this or that. That wasn’t the issue.
Brian Haney: For all coaches, you need to know this. If you’re trying to reach out to financial professionals, especially if they run really good practices, they are already approached by a lot of people we call wholesalers—people like, “Hey, I represent Fidelity Investments. I want you to do Fidelity Investment stuff.” They’re going to take you out to a nice restaurant too, and spend money on coffee or lunch, and it’s always steak, because apparently, there’s not another variety of food that exists. I’ve had enough steak to last me 10 lifetimes.
What really stands out, and frankly, the wholesalers or partners that I work the best with, is more a conversation about, “Hey, I’m really interested in understanding what a day in your life is all about,” with no other agenda. “You intrigue me, what you do and this and that, I’d love to hear more about it.”
Just literally, if you’re approaching me to learn about me and to see what it is that I do, I’m a lot more willing to share that than if you’re approaching me for what’s in it for you, when you don’t even know if there is anything in it for you and you’re not interested, and you’re bypassing me to get to what’s in it for you.
I don’t do that as a professional myself. I’m not out there in the marketplace just trying to get people to come and say yes to me because I realized that approach doesn’t work, and it doesn’t line up with my professional values. I only want to add value once I know I can and once there’s the opportunity for that conversation to take place. So it’s foolish of me to approach things with the assumption that you’re going to be a right fit, or a client, or there’s all this magic that can happen.
Being inquisitive, being legitimate in your interest—learn, understand. Why do people work with you? Sometimes that’ll tell you everything you need to know as to whether or not you should consider a partnership. If an advisor can’t give you a really compelling value prop, because some of them struggle to do that, that should tell you something as well.
Once you’re understanding a practice and also having an equal conversation where you get to explain your role, then it’s easier for the two parties to see if there’s fit, synergy, and decide if there’s ways to work together or not.
Certainly, if you have a client that has a need and you’re wanting to interview potential candidates on their behalf, that’s another good approach. I’ve approached partners that way as well. I’ve had clients where for a period of time, I didn’t have great CPA relationships, but I had a lot of clients that had needs, so I took it upon myself to say, “Hey, I’m coming to you. I want to know what you do. I probably have people I can send to you, but I can’t send them to you until I know it makes sense.” That’s another approach that works. Because, again, it’s the same thing. I want to hear about you. If somebody asked me, “Tell me about your business. I’m really interested in why you do what you do, what you do,” I am absolutely willing to take that call to have that meeting.
Brian Haney: 15 to 45 minutes. I can share really quickly, and if somebody’s really interested at a high level, if there’s more rapport building, I’m happy to go for longer. That’s the other reason why I don’t like when people ask me to go get coffee or lunch. I don’t even care who’s paying for this. That’s a lot of time. It’s a lot of time out of my office that isn’t productive. It’s not generating revenue, it’s not helping clients. So it’s a huge conversation without first knowing if you’re a good fit for each other. You have to first establish, are we a good fit? Is there even a starting off, a jumping off point here?
Some advisors will never, ever refer to a financial coach. They’re never open to it. And that is totally fine. That is their prerogative. And then other advisors are really open to it, having that relationship, having that partnership. And similarly, some financial coaches believe that financial advisors should not exist, or clients should never refer to financial advisor, or should never work with financial advisors. It’s important for them to own that as well.
So you’re really finding the people who are a good fit for you. And I don’t mean just business set up. I mean values, the way they treat their clients, the way they think about their clients, the relationship they have with their clients, the relationship they have with their partners. I don’t want to partner with somebody where it’s a tit for tat. If I refer to you, you have to refer to me. It is not about that. It is meant to be whatever is best for the client. So if we have six months where I’ve referred you three clients, but you haven’t referred me any, that’s totally fine. I’m not taking it personally. It’s just that’s the need right now. That’s where we stand.
Brian Haney: Here’s what I would love to see – my unicorn vision. And I think it is happening on some levels. Producer group models, similar to a law firm, where you’ve got a lot of specialists under one roof. I think that that’s a great potential fit, especially in personal finance.
I think it’s great to have these producer group model approaches where a firm can provide – there’s a person in every kind of seat that someone might need to avail themselves of. How you do that is up to you, whether you literally have everybody on salary, or whether you do it through partnerships or whatever. There can be a lot of ways to accomplish that deliverable, but I really think that that makes so much sense, because it’s really what a lot of people actually need.
They’re going to walk their financial life and need help at different places and stages. And if you’re able to just say, “Look, doesn’t matter where you are on your journey, you can come work with us. And we have people that will be able to help you, meet you where you are, and then advance you.” That’s a great model for the marketplace, because it’s really hard when you realize – which is what’s happening right now – you’re going to people and they either you think they can do more than they can, or they give you the impression that they can do more than they can, or both. And you end up feeling like you’re getting some help, but not all the help, and nobody’s really trying to figure out what’s still missing.
I want there to be an understanding that you can come somewhere, and it doesn’t matter, you don’t have to, you don’t even have to know what you need. But you can come and find that, “Okay, we’ll figure out what you do need, and now we have a way to deliver on the steps and put a plan in place and put the parties involved to move you forward.”
That’s my unicorn vision, and I think parts of that are starting to come together. I hope that continues, and I hope that more people are interested in making it easier for those types of relationships to be formed, whether they are in partnership form. There’s a lot of ways to do that, but it’s a good thing for the industry.
Brian Haney: Just as I’m sure you’re well aware, it is a hard title, because there’s a lot of people vying for it. The World’s Most Embarrassing Dad takes a lot of energy, takes a lot of effort, a lot of consistently embarrassing things that I refuse to give up. It’s not a show up one day and take the title. You got to persevere and consistently make sure that you are known as an embarrassing human being.
There were a couple of highlights to that journey. Particularly it was a Halloween during the pandemic, where I literally had an entire costume with a big sign and the gold chain, that was “World’s Most Embarrassing Dad.” We were outside, because social distancing and all the other stuff. We live in a downtown area, so it was on an intersection where cars are going by, and I was waving and being loud. That was probably the most heinous and embarrassing moment of her entire life. So that solidified it, but it’s still, it takes commitment. You just gotta keep it up.
