“What’s the point of technically proficient advice if the client won’t act on it?”
I “borrowed” this line from Dr. Moira Somers in Sept 2019 at the XYPN Live Conference Tech competition. We presented and introduced Knudge to the financial planning community on the same day Dr. Somers was giving a keynote address at the conference. Having been a massive fan of her book “Advice that Sticks”, I thought I could use a distraction from my nerves for my upcoming presentation so I sat in on her keynote.
That line she delivered perfectly summed up why Knudge was created. So I used the exact line in our presentation (with full credit of course).
Fast forward two years later and I could not be more thrilled to announce that Dr. Somers is joining the Knudge team as our Behavioral Strategist.
You see, my original idea for Knudge was a little bit selfish; I couldn’t sleep. I was constantly worried about what actions I needed to remind my clients to take care of, nervous of anything falling through the cracks on my watch.
Knudge certainly solved that problem, happy to report I’m sleeping well these days!. But in using the tool for the past year with clients I have learned that it has the potential to do so much more. Knudge can help us be better advisors. Be better listeners. Truly learn what barriers to action our clients face and how to best help them overcome those. Dr. Somers is the perfect person to help guide us in building a tool to help you be a better advisor. She has dedicated her career to understanding people and how they behave with money and using that knowledge to help advisors learn how to deliver advice that sticks.
I am excited to see where Knudge can go with her expertise on the team. I love this quick clip with Dr. Somers helping us get rid of those energy vampires!
“Dr. Somers literally wrote the book on giving ‘Advice that Sticks’ highlighting the importance of giving advice that ultimately gets implemented.” said Dave Connolly, CEO of Knudge. “We couldn’t have found a more qualified partner to join the Knudge team & help us optimise the language, scheduling and cadence of reminders to help clients take action on the details of their financial life that typically get ignored, kicked down the road, or fall through the cracks.”
Brian Portnoy, one of the world’s leading experts on the psychology of money and founder of Shaping Wealth adds, “In the world of investor behavior and financial advice, Moira is a powerhouse thinker and Knudge is one of the most innovative technologies around, so this partnership makes all the sense in the world.”
When asked about her excitement in joining Knudge, Dr. Somers states “Anybody can keep a to-do list, and Knudge has a beautiful delivery system for your to-do list with a shared aspect that is critical. But, if we can develop some ways of really understanding the barriers to taking action and helping people get out ahead of them then I think that is the stuff that is going to be transformational”.
Somers adds, “I’m very keen on seeing how we can influence advisor behavior. So much money and time has been spent on client psychology, ‘let’s get the perfect risk tolerance profile etc.’ but everybody cherry picks what advice they are going to follow. Everybody does. So at a certain point you as an advisor are just left with one client in front of you who has asked you to help them accomplish some goals. I’m just thrilled that we have some ways of tracking and creating a big data set and getting into that in a tool that allows us to run experiments on “would ‘this’ or ‘that’ approach be more useful to clients?’. That’s really exciting to me”.
Learn more about Dr. Moira Somers: https://moneymindandmeaning.com/about-moira/
