July 16

Breaking Down the Code

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OK I've been thinking a lot about communication, and part of the reason of this Coffee with Mike series is really trying to try to communicate, trying to be simple in our communication. I think that we get caught up in our professionalism and I think we begin using a vocabulary that's really a code.

Have you been- you're in the house with your family and someone says, “Hey, where's the thingy? The thingy! The thingy! Where’s the thingy?” For some reason, we can't say, I don't even know what it is. What is it? The remote, yeah the remote. See, you know what I'm talking about right because you know me. But you know that with the people you know and care about, spent a lot of time with, talk in code like that. You kind of know you can figure out what they're talking about. But replace that person with someone you’ve never met before and they started doing that, you have no idea what you're talking about.

 So every family has a code. Every industry has a code; they have their own lingo. Attorneys all of a sudden start talking in legalese and you have no idea what they're saying. I read these documents and it takes me forever to figure out what the heck is this document saying! Then you have doctors and they have all these words for certain- the simple thing: bruise. What's a bruise; it’s a contusion. I'm trying to think about the words, but the point is that they have their own vocabulary. All of a sudden…


 -They have their own language- 

…right their own language. So I think that's the key: that people think that's the key to their financial success, to their industries success, is if they create their own language and no one else knows what they're talking about, then you need, you at least need an interpreter. Well they’re the gatekeepers at that point.

So what's the point of our financial planning business? It’s to simplify the code, right, the financial planning code. What does it really mean to have a financial plan? What does it really mean to be financially strong? What does it really mean to have a strategy? I mean just certain things that we talk about the people are kind of scratching their head; they’ve heard the words before but they're only what it means to them in the context that we're talking about. 

I think that's really important for us to be able to do, is simplify everything. So we’ve worked hard on simplifying our financial plans, we've worked on simplifying our investment strategies, we've worked hard on trying to communicate our expertise in federal benefits. That's what the website is about- the All About website that we put together- and it's also about this series.  

"...people think that's the key to their financial success, to their industries success, is if they create their own language and no one else knows what they're talking about..."

We talk about these things, as they are important, and I think that we need to recognize where we're talking in code and no one else knows what we're talking about and realize that that's happening to us; not just through us, but to us, and make sure that we get the code broken down. That we really know what someone is talking about when we just sit there and go “OK, OK,” and we really don't. It's not OK, we have no idea what you're saying. 

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