Brad Johnson: Welcome back to another episode of Do Business. Do Life. I have Dennis Moseley-Williams here with us today. Welcome to the show, Dennis.
Dennis Moseley-Williams: Thanks for having me on, man. I’ve been looking forward to it. I’m a fan.
Brad Johnson: Well, it’s mutual. Sara Baker made the connection. She runs Triad Wealth, and I know she loves her conference or two. She’s been to a lot of them when it comes to a lot of the wealth conferences. And when we’re talking about the podcast, she’s like, “Dude, you have to have Dennis on the show.” And so, she connected us. I know you were kind of on the speakers’ circuit for a while, so we finally got a chance to sit down but, yeah, I just think we’re going to get into all things experience, experience economy today. So, as we kick this off, those that aren’t familiar, which might not be too many people in finance, but those that aren’t, just what is it that lights you up when it comes to dedicating your speaking, your book writing to creating experiences?
Dennis Moseley-Williams: Well, as a person, I love them and I’m always seeking them out. Okay. I love them. I like doing things more than I like stuff. Experiences sort of engage in apparently personal ways that can be transformational. As a business consultant, what I recognized 50 million years ago was that the economy had changed and that the predominant economic offering was experiences, not goods or services.
But from a business standpoint, I realize everybody’s barking up the wrong tree and with this realization is everything else like, “Oh, man, if you’re trying to sell experiences like their services and run your relationships that way, everything you do will feel like the right thing but in fact, it’ll be the wrong thing. You’re going to be doing it all wrong.” So, I’ve loved talking about it since 1994 and as recently as two days ago on a Zoom with a client, seeing him have the epiphany, it was so amazing. I called my business partner on my way home to tell him about it. But when I said this, and you should’ve saw the look on his face. We’ve been at this for so long and it still, of course, thrills us when we see it.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. Well, when it comes to Triad, so Do Business Do Life as you referenced, one of the things that Shawn and I were talking about, what should Triad feel like to our members. We started thinking about the words we use and ‘advisor agent’ sounds kind of transactional. We’re like we don’t want that. We don’t want transactional. We want members. Like, people want to be a member of something like a country club or a mastermind. And so, we started just changing the verbiage. And what’s funny is you mentioned experiences. You’ve dedicated a lot of your life to it. One of the things we say at Triad is we don’t want to do events. Events are forgettable. They all blend together. It’s like, “What hotel was that at? I don’t even remember.” Experiences, you said it, they’re memorable. You tie back to them. They’re life-changing.
And so, we’re like, “What if we crafted our experiences in a way that were transformational and memorable and created really cool connections?” So, selfishly, if I’m a financial advisor, you’ve dedicated a lot of your time to this, how do I go from events to experiences? What’s the different variables between one and the other?
Dennis Moseley-Williams: There’s this new economy that’s racing in quickly. It’s the transformation economy. Your clients now, when they are looking for value, when they are considering your value, the question that they ask isn’t, “How much is Brad earning me and what does Brad cost?” Those things, as we all say now, those are table-stakes things. Performance, investment, returns, and competitive rates, that’s just a given. The question all of your clients ask is this, “Who is Brad? Who is Triad? Who is he helping me become?”
So, this is what every advisor listening has to do. They have to stop. This is number one. Hey, stop being an advisor. Shift and become increasingly what I am referring to as a charismatic leader. Hey, you’re not a CEO. I mean, somebody is. I am, too, by the way. On the legal paperwork, that’s what my title was. You’re not the CEO. You’re just not. You’re a charismatic leader. Go to number two. You have a really big idea. Your idea is Do Business Do Life. Okay. Everyone listening, this is when you pause the podcast and think, “What the hell is my big idea?”
And if your big idea is, well, financial planning, you don’t want to run your money when you retire. No, that’s not a big idea. That’s just barely an idea. The big idea is bigger than that. And you will have to believe in it deeply. Now, go to number three. This is the idea of members. Niche. Niche. Weird. In the United States, you guys say ni-ch. I’m from Canada. We are French people. It’s ni-sh. I got to say ni-sh or I feel funny. Niche. Niche. Weird. Who’s the experience for? How are you using time?
Not everybody wants or appreciates the Starbucks experience. So, this is really important here. Write number three. Because something that everybody believes is that the customer is always right and I don’t believe that’s true. If somebody is in a Starbucks or somebody comes in and kicks the tires of Triad and they hear everything you’re about. And in the end, they say, “Look, I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but your whole sort of raise on debt thing, your whole reason of being, this whole thing you want to do, eh, it turns me off.” Is the person right or are they in the wrong place? They’re in the wrong place. Customers are not always right in the experience economy.
So, this is number three. The first is become a charismatic leader. Number two is build a business around the big idea. The big idea is transformation. For number three, a niche, niche, weird market if the smallest viable audience as Seth Godin says. And the second part of that of number three is you got to define some enemies, complacency, the status quo. In your case, Brad, people who don’t do business right or life right. All those people, I am not going to say they’re my enemy, but they frustrate me. They puzzle me. I think on them.
Brad Johnson: Do business, do business people.
Dennis Moseley-Williams: Exactly. It’s like I get it.
Brad Johnson: “I don’t care about my family. I’ll just work all night.” Not a fit.
Dennis Moseley-Williams: Yeah, precisely. I will reference Patagonia. Their CEO is charismatic leader Yvon Chouinard. What’s his really big idea? Saving the planet. Okay, cool. He didn’t know niche, niche, weird. He didn’t set out to sell a Patagonia hat to every cool kid in the world or a Patagonia vest to every man who works in financial services. Okay. He set out to solve a problem for a very tiny audience. He kept the secret. The tiny audience says he wanted to work with people that like the outdoors. That’s everybody who needs a pair of shorts. That’s everybody who needs a hat. No. Mountain climbers, that’s your first niche. Niche is outdoors.
Second niche is mountain climbers. I beg your pardon. What makes them weird? Who’s even weirder than mountain climbers? Ice climbers. He made a nice ax for ice climbers. That’s how he started Patagonia. He built the Patagonia around the idea of saving the planet. You’re a charismatic leader. Yeah. What’s your really big idea? Yeah. Who’s it for? Yeah. And how do you help those people identify with you? By identifying – I hate saying your enemies, but right now, I haven’t got a better way to say it – your enemies, complacency, do business do business people, people that don’t have a life plan. It’s not that they’re my enemies. I just can’t figure them out.
Your business of transformation becomes changing the way people think about themselves and what they do with their time, thinking, belief, and actions. The last three are easy. You need rituals, things that you always do for your clients that are familiar that they look forward to, such as always meeting them in the lobby when they come in. Always having something cool playing on the TV in your lobby. Whenever we go see Brad, he makes us wait in the, look, he doesn’t make us wait. We first sit in this amazingly comfortable cool space. We gather our thoughts, and he plays and we watch like a ten-minute TEDx Talk or whatever on something amazing. And that’s part of the Do Life part and things he sends and all this great stuff. You need gatherings.
I’m a big believer in client events. Part of experience staging is creating spaces in places where you can engage with the brand, where they can spend time with Brad digitally like we’re doing, which is amazing. It’s absolutely one of the little benefits that came to us all. I know you agree, from the pandemic. So, I’d never have done a Zoom call in my life before the pandemic. And now I can call my client with an idea and have a face-to-face in 10 seconds. I love that. Gatherings, physical spaces, digital spaces. And then the last one is every advisor needs an elaborate onboarding process. You’re welcoming someone into something, a membership. So, as soon as you say, “I like to think of my clients as members,” like, okay, right on.
In terms of staging an experience from a service to an experience, I would say stop thinking about efficiency. Look at all the things you do well, figure out how you can do them a little bit better. Eliminate all sacrifices the client has to make. But don’t just eliminate it. Replace it with something that’s meaningful and memorable. Personalize and customize the environment. Make sure a trip to your office is the trip at your office. It has to be admission-worthy, time, and photograph-worthy.
Brad Johnson: All right. Well, let’s dive in because I feel like you did a great job there, Dennis, just setting like here are the non-negotiables if you want to truly build an experience for your clients versus a transactional relationship, which nobody enjoys. And that’s the race to the bottom, to your point. Like, hey, if I do this thing for 1%, the moment somebody does it for 95 basis points, see you later. And so, you have been doing this for a while. You have also been very much entrenched in the finance industry. So, if we started to unpack some case studies here, I love the office experience because you referenced a few different things there. But what are some of your favorite?
Maybe you’ve got some clients that have like completely revolutionized their client experience or the in-office experience or maybe they’ve done some really cool not events, but experiences. So, if you were to just riff on some of your favorites you’ve seen over the years, kind of the before and afters, what would those be?
Dennis Moseley-Williams: Okay. Do you want to do like physical space stuff?
Brad Johnson: Sure. Yeah, whatever. Like, one of my favorite sayings is the good stuff sticks. So, whatever is like at the top like, oh, this was a game changer.
Dennis Moseley-Williams: What I always say?
Brad Johnson: Yeah.
Dennis Moseley-Williams: And in some cases, I’m proud to say, “Well, this story is like 20 years old.”.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. Cool.
Dennis Moseley-Williams: You don’t have a more recent one? It’s like always got recent ones, but the ones that really hit home sometimes, like, nobody’s done it since, a million years ago. Okay. So, right now and I mean this like, I’m half joking. Right now, I just watch people do my old gig from 20 years ago all the time. “Thank you for leading the charge.” I’m like, “No, I wrote a book about it.” Well, I don’t know. You got to lead the charge. But a long time ago and this is the case with every great idea, when you have a great idea and you tell 100 people, 90 people are going to tell you they don’t get it. Right? “I don’t get it.” They never heard it before.
Brad Johnson: Or they’ll tell you that’s a great idea and then a year later, it’ll be a great idea. Two years later, it’ll be a great idea. And they never actually did anything with it, sadly.
Dennis Moseley-Williams: That’s it. So, this story happens way, way back. I’m in Carlsbad, California, I believe. I can still see the hotel and the room. It’s so long ago. I was working for ING. I don’t think they’re around anymore. So, there I was. And this guy comes up when I finished speaking and he’s an old fellow. So, this is like 20 years ago and he was in his 70s then and he had been at it for a long time. And he waited to talk to me, waited, waited, waited. Then there we are and he goes, “This is really good stuff. You keep going. This is really brilliant stuff.” And it meant a lot to me because even to this day, what I’m presenting, there is a demographic that is not as into me as some others.
So, getting an older veteran to say to me way back when, “You’re absolutely right. This is the way to go,” and here I’m telling people experience is different than service. Nobody heard anything like it. There were no books on the Starbucks experience, yet. There was no Ritz Carlton experience. There was no, you know, unreasonable hospitality, no social media that’s spreading these gurus around. I was like alone fighting this fight. This guy says to me, “I do this with my clients. It’s all about transformation. Since I host an event, it’s called The Art of Retirement. Contrast this with the Retirement Income seminar.” I get it as a subject. It’s important to have that conversation in my office. I couldn’t imagine trying to strike, oh God.
Anyway, this is how he did it. People would go in around the room. When you arrived, there were easels turned away so nobody could see what you were painting. He would separate couples. All the supplies were there. And while you painted, I’m not a painter, and that’s the whole point. He would walk in the center of the room and he would just talk about the real crisis of retirement. Identity. No plan. The need for adventure, to contribute, all this great wonderful stuff. Your job was while you were painting, you had to paint your inspiring vision of your retirement. And within the painting, the hidden monster you were afraid of. So, he tells me that. I go, “That is the greatest idea I’ve ever heard.” And he says, “I regularly have people cry in these things, which I’m not necessarily sent there to make people cry, but I am setting up to transform them.”
And number two, he says, “I regularly have couples there,” because he separates them. “Oh my, I had no idea you felt that way. That’s what you’re afraid of.”
Okay. Now, I want to tell you about a conversation I had with a client of mine, if I can be that convenient, two days ago.
Brad Johnson: Okay. Yes. Let’s do it.
Dennis Moseley-Williams: So, my client, John Forbes, let me tell you who he is. Forbes Financial. He’s a beautiful human being. He deserves a shoutout. What he and I worked at in this transformational framework is deeply, deeply personal to John.
So, what we did was we talked about these eight, protecting John’s intellectual property here a little bit, these eight principles of living an incredible life, eight things that you would have to do. And we laid out over the next two quarters, or two years, I beg your pardon, and eight quarters. And remember earlier, I said you build the experience around the transformation schedule, not around review meetings. This is for everybody who has to hear this a few times. It’s not about ABC clients and who gets your time. It’s about members, which is a very specific group of people. And how we engage with them to change what they think, what they believe or what they do. If not to change to at least create within the client the opportunity for change.
So, we laid out an elaborate onboarding process where this thing that I just told you is actually the secret. But he will only reveal to them after eight lessons have been learned. Something to read and view, immerse yourself in, listen to, and experience reflect on. He is developing the rest of this whole reflection and exercises to just help you be more mindful. And he’s introducing to these clients the idea of the personal manifesto, helping them have one. Like, I went through a process to get to the serious shift. I went through a process to find my life’s work, my purpose. You started with it. Why the hell are you so crazy about this? And you obviously went through a process, a transformational process that got you to do business do life. I’m sure there was a version one. There was something. I’m sure you could even say, “Part of this like it’s traced all the way back to how I want…”
Brad Johnson: The hike in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains actually and a conversation I had there.
Dennis Moseley-Williams: How old were you? How old were you when the very first little kernel of this started?
Brad Johnson: 40. Actually, no, I take that back. It was a month before my 40th birthday. So, I was leaving a 13-year career and I was turning 40. I had my 15-year wedding anniversary and I was leaving a career of 13 years. And I wasn’t sure what I was going to do next, but I had an idea for what I wanted and what I didn’t want.
Dennis Moseley-Williams: There you go.
Brad Johnson: I didn’t want to do business do business, which had been a, I’d say, a lot of seasons of that prior with a lot of sacrifices around family time.
Dennis Moseley-Williams: So, what I’m saying is the value for your clients is to have them go through the same process you went through without the misery of the career change, etcetera, right
And as a consequence, I hear things like that email I shared with you earlier and/or, “Hey, Dennis, if it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t be spending as much time with my kids as I would.” It’s like that’s why I’m into it right there and I could do it forever because of that. That’s the inspiration versus the motivation, I guess.
Brad Johnson: So, let’s dive deeper there, Dennis. I love what you said about the big idea and being authentic because one of the common themes I see in finance is the often duplicate, “Oh, that looked really good on that other advisor’s website. I don’t really want to think about it. I’ll just copy-paste.” “Oh, I went to this conference. This guy kind of said this zinger. I’ll just start saying that too.” But what I find from close to two decades of conversations with independent advisors now, what happens when you do the rip-off of the big idea, it’s really hard to be authentic about it because you know you’re just borrowing somebody else’s words. Maybe there’s pieces of it that ring true with you, but it’s actually somebody else’s big idea, right?
So, how do you go about kind of the ideation phase of how you arrive at your big idea? Because the other thing and I’ll just layer one other thing on this is, oftentimes, even when you get there, it feels like hollow because you’ve never said it before. It’s like going on a first date. It’s like, “Oh, like I said it, but like did that sound good?” They get in their own head a little bit, you know? So, maybe a two-part question. How do you arrive to the big idea or what are some ways that you can distill that out of you? And then once you get there, how do you like put it into motion?
Dennis Moseley-Williams: Yeah. How do you find the big idea? You’re creating something that you’re not doing, what do you call it, rip off and duplicating. You’re not trying to do something that somebody else has done a little bit better. Sometimes you just have to try different. So, this is an answer. It’s in you. So, here’s a question for you. What I’d do is I’d say, “Every financial advisor believes _____.” I think they’re crazy. Okay. And then the next sentence is, “I believe _____ and _____.” Everybody thinks I’m nuts and they’re wrong. Okay. Start with that prompting question. My daughter recently told this is, you know me I’m telling you. I’m telling you this. My daughter told me the last six months she wants to be a commercial airline pilot. And I was very impressed at how much investigation she had done into the career and the schooling and the benefits.
So, one of the things that she mentioned to me is how much an Air Canada pilot gets paid with X number of years of seniority, which isn’t particularly long. My daughter, like 18 years old, 17 years old. So, it’s like, “Yeah, I become a pilot. Within 15 years flying this machine, they would pay me and it was over $300,000 a year.” So, I said, “Well, that’s better than the kick in the fanny, isn’t it?” And she said, “Yeah.” And then my daughter said, her name is Ella and she’s lovely. Ella said, “Yeah. Well, of course.” She goes, “I want to be rich.” Okay. Pause. What? Okay. I’ve been richer, I’ve been poorer. Richer is better. And a lot of money can buy you out of a lot of trouble and inconvenience.
Right away, I, of course, use this as an opportunity to have a great conversation with my daughter about what wealth really is. I’ll spare you all the exceptional examples of exceptional dadding I did that day. But basically, I drove my daughter’s attention to what wealth really is, “This thing I got with your mom. The fact that I never complain about my work, that I have things I love to do that I’m passionate about, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada.”
How do you come up with your big idea? It’s something you believe. It’s a hill you die on. And I know this to be true. Don’t get lost to owning a business. Life is brief. It’s all over before you even know it. You’re not going to be lying on your deathbed wishing you made another thousand bucks. Learn to live with less. Make some compromises here and there. Get the summer off. Live your life. Don’t work with people that are toxic. Don’t do things you don’t enjoy.
Brad Johnson: Well, we just flipped over the Do Life side of this, which I respect and appreciate. It kind of goes back to the authentic piece. I think one of the best compliments you can get in life is, “I appreciate how you show up. It’s real.”
Dennis Moseley-Williams: Yeah.
Brad Johnson: And I think many of us in life are guilty when we’re younger of trying to be somebody we are not to honestly impress people at the end of the day we really don’t care about for some reason. But it’s kind of that coming-of-age part of life. So, what are…
Dennis Moseley-Williams: It stays with us forever.
Brad Johnson: What’s that?
Dennis Moseley-Williams: It stays with us forever.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. What are some tips you have, Dennis? Because you’ve walked I’m sure at this stage many of your clients threw the big idea and then translating that to the authentic representation of that. And maybe this is the ringing hollow at first and then actually being it once it settles in. How have you seen that play out or what are some tips you would give?
Dennis Moseley-Williams: I’m not sure if I understand your question. I apologize.
Brad Johnson: So, once you get to the big idea.
Dennis Moseley-Williams: There it is.
Brad Johnson: You’ve played around with it, you’ve played around with it, and now you’re like, “Here’s how I want to authentically represent that in this client experience and my onboarding process,” and whatever it is that you’re diving into. What are some ways you’ve seen that play out or how advisors get there?
Dennis Moseley-Williams: Okay. So, how do they shift from, “Yeah, I think this is going to be great,” to actually finding the courage to share it?
Brad Johnson: Yes.
Dennis Moseley-Williams:
We’re afraid. Fear of missing out becomes fear of loss. “I’m afraid I’m going to offend somebody. I’m afraid they’re going to find it too different. It’s going to be this. It’s going to be that.” No, they’re going to love it. None of your clients will ever punish you for trying harder. And you have to accept that every time it’s new, whatever it is, we usually know 60% or 70% of the things to do. We don’t know 30% or 40% of those things. And those 30% to 40% of those things usually stop us from leaving at all or starting at all.
Here’s number two. Only work with people who are already convinced. Don’t spend all your time trying to convince people who aren’t convinced to pay attention to you. Matter more to the clients that you have. Share with them your big idea and the story as to why it’s a big idea. Tell them why you want to share it. Service is what you do. Experience is how you do it.
Really, really good financial advisors work hard and they worry about their clients way more than their clients would ever believe, truly, like middle of the night staring at the ceiling, worried about what I would call nothing. They worry about their clients. They worry.
Exceptional financial advisors, they worry about something else. They worry about the things their clients never mention. They don’t worry obsessively about the assigned work. No. They worry, “What the hell was Brad not sharing with me? What else is on Brad’s mind? And how can I help them?” So, this thing you believe in, go make it for you, this big idea. What would you be looking for? And then commit to that idea. Plant a flag and roll it out. Become a charismatic leader. Own this idea. Do business. Do life. Own it. Own it. Own it. Own it.
Brad Johnson: Well, Dennis, number one, this time’s flown. So, I appreciate all of the ideas that we’ve thrown about. As we get close to the finish line here, you mentioned Family Feud earlier. Are you up for like a little rapid fire like where we go? Because you’ve mentioned like rituals. You’ve mentioned kind of this membership mentality. You’ve mentioned an onboarding experience. Could we just like rapid fire a few of those where it’s like, “Wow, this was one of the best onboarding experiences I ever saw. This was one of the best rituals that this advisor created that had this membership sort of feel”? You up for that?
Dennis Moseley-Williams: Yeah.
Brad Johnson: What’s your favorite membership experience you’ve seen that an advisor created where somebody didn’t feel like a client but a member?
Dennis Moseley-Williams: Okay. Because you want financial services or outside?
Brad Johnson: Wherever. Yeah, it can be anywhere.
Dennis Moseley-Williams: Okay. We’ll do financial service because it’s for everybody listening. Even though the whole point is you should be able to go to an ice cream shop, be blown away, and identify what that person did.
Brad Johnson: For sure. Bring it on. Yeah.
Dennis Moseley-Williams: Okay. So, the coolest one I ever saw was an advisor in San Diego. I spent a day consulting with them. This has got to be over 20 years ago. So, I work with them all day. A saying that I repeat much all the time is, “All work is theater. Every business is a stage.” So, after I sit with them all day, he says, “Hey, go out to the lobby and we’re going to road test this whole thing and show it to you.” So, you know, I’ve been there all day, so I’m kind of familiar with the audit office and the place. I got to the point where I can get up and just kind of walk around and nobody’s looking, “Who the hell is this guy?” You know?
So, I get up and as I walk through the offices to get to the lobby like I work there, one of the people in the team has secretly run up another hallway so that when I get to the lobby, they’re waiting for me and they’re going to role play it like they’ve never met me. Literally, we’ve had lunch together. We’ve been together all day. She says, “Mr. Mosely Williams, how are you?” Of course I go, “Really good.” And I’m going to tell you this honestly, Brad, it was like, “(panting) How are you? (panting)” And she just like ran up the hall. So I go, “I’m really, really good.” She goes, “We’re so happy.” She says this nice stuff. She says, “Before I bring you to meet the team, I want to show you something.” Brings me over to the windows to the office tower, and she’s pointing out interesting features of downtown San Diego.
And then she says to me, “You’re a Canadian, aren’t you?” I said, “I am.” She goes, “Well, this might interest you. You see that red bridge over there? That’s the bridge that goes to Coronado. And that’s where Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip would vacation when they were a young couple.” And I will admit, I was like, “Get out of here. I didn’t know that.” She taught me something. Education is one of the four realms of experience, by the way. So, I was like, “Oh, neato.” I’ve gained and the meeting hasn’t even started. Now she said, “Let’s go meet everybody.” She introduced me to the receptionist. We go down the hallway. For anybody who maybe pays attention to me, if I can flatter myself, I’m a big fan of meet all your clients in the lobby with the whole team. I think it’s a really powerful thing to do.
So, this is a one-off meeting one person. They bring me down the hallway. They bring me down the hallway and she’s standing outside with her hand on the doorknob and she says, “Are you ready to go in?” And I say, “Yeah.” And she says, “Okay.” And she rattles the handle like this. Rattling the handle is a signal to the people on the other side of the door that the show is about to begin. “You ready to go in?” I say, “Yeah, absolutely.” The door is open. Everyone’s working like this (typing on computer) and they all go (look up and smile). And they stand up. And all four of them come over and stand in front of me and tell me these beautiful things, who they are. “Thank you for coming down. We’re ready. We’re prepared. We’ve been looking forward to it.” Yadda, yadda, yadda.
After they all say hello, two of them go this way. Two of them go this way. And standing right in front of me is the advisor whose name is AJ. He’s standing there. And he walks up to me and says something like, “We’re humbled. We’ve been looking forward to this meeting. This is going to be a great investment of your time today. You’re going to learn some things today. And I want you to know that you’re just here to meet us and learn about the changes that we help our clients make. And today, you’re not thinking about being a client. You’re thinking about whether you could be happy here at a later date. Please, don’t think about anything like that. Just come in with me.” I go into his office. The person who had guided me to his office who disappeared now reappears with this beautiful silver tray and puts it down.
Harmonizing cues, we’ve talked about them already. It was fruit and healthy things. Life, vibrant, natural, good nature like all this wonderful stuff. There was a table in the corner that had a tablecloth on it. Flatware. AJ doesn’t sit down. I sit down. He says, “You’ve come in, you’ve done this, you’ve done that. I want you to just take a couple of minutes and collect your thoughts. And then I’ll come back and we’ll begin.” And he closes the door. And when I’m sitting there, I’m looking at everything in his office and everything are pictures hinting subtly at what he’s all about. Live life large. There are people smiling at me and pictures that I don’t know, many of them with him, sometimes not. Clearly, I’m looking at people on vacation living lives and making memories.
And then he came back in and sat down and started his discovery conversation with me. And it was all about me and just reassuring me. “Let’s just be here together. Let’s not be worried about whether or not we want to do business. That will become evident to both of us. I want to know what’s going on in your life and what got you here. Who are you? What’s going on in your life? What brought you here today?” And then he wanted to talk about who he was, who he helps, and what change he helped to create. And he got into wealth and well-being and lessons from great leaders on what’s important and all this fantastic stuff. And at the end of it, I was literally like, “I wish I lived in the United States so you can manage my money because I want to have a conversation with you.”
Brad Johnson: Take all my money, right?
Dennis Moseley-Williams: Take it all and promise me the next time I come here that we’re going to talk more of this. More. Yeah. It was the best thing I’ve ever seen.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. Thanks. That’s awesome, Dennis. I was like, as you were telling that story, I was just like going on that journey with you. And you think about the intention that that was crafted with. You think about the care. I mean, to even craft a journey like that, the first thing that has to start is you have to care. You have to actually care like, “Okay, we’re not going to do what everybody else does.” So, just the intention in that has to be felt. We’ve got like one more. So, what about rituals? And I remember reading an article a long time ago. I’m also a parent. I have three kiddos and my wife and I, one of the big things that we think about so we have a 14-year-old, a 13-year-old, and an 8-year-old, and we think about how do we create an experience in our home where when our kids leave, they actually want to come back. They don’t feel like they’re forced to or guilted into it by mom and dad.
And one of the things that this article talked about is the closest families typically have rituals around the holidays, around dinner time, family time. I know Sara’s family growing up, they always had her dad was a fireman and one night a week was pizza night where he’d go get the pizza and the whole family was there in the living room. And so, what are some of your favorite rituals that you’ve seen? Maybe one or two since we don’t have a ton of time left, because I feel like that has to work the same way in finance that it does in families when you create these rituals for your clients.
Dennis Moseley-Williams: So, the coolest ritual and the most impactful ritual is have your entire team always receive the client. Meet the client in the parking lot if you can, meet them in the lobby if you can, and have someone bring them in like they do at the Four Seasons Hotel. A moment ago, I said, “You should be able to see an experience somewhere and duplicate.” The Marriott sends you a text the day before you check in that says, “Do you want to check in now? We can do it all through your phone and your phone becomes your room key.”
They’re saving you time. It’s a service. And in the process of checking in early, by the way, they also introduce the transaction. “Do you want to for an extra $50 get some more square feet to sleep in?” But the Four Seasons, the Ritz-Carlton, they don’t do that. They meet you outside and they walk you in to the front desk where they introduce you and then the check-in begins. My favorite ritual that I’ve ever seen a financial advisor do was that one person and that person’s job is to walk you in and walk you out. Okay. I love it. You could go into all kinds of other ones. That coffee thing and then you get your own mug at the place they hang on the wall. There’s 50 million but my favorite ritual ever is and if it’s raining with an umbrella. Okay.
Brad Johnson: So, they’re legit that there’s somebody situated in a way or there’s a camera where they can see you. They just pulled into the parking lot. They are meeting you at the door. If it’s raining, they’re bringing an umbrella and shepherding you in to the entryway. So, basically, it starts as soon as they arrive wherever that may be.
Dennis Moseley-Williams: Correct. And they bring you in and they don’t just bring you to an empty room. If the meeting’s at 11 a.m., what time are they pulling up outside? You don’t even get to the camera. Just keep your eye out there. They’re going to show up at about start looking at quarter to 2. Just look. You’ll see them. Make sure you’re out there. And then just like the office in San Diego with AJ, “Places, everyone.” Because when I walk back in, I want to walk them back into a receiving group in the lobby, not a receptionist. I want to see the team and then I want to be led down the hall, past the pictures of Brad, past the other harmonizing cues, the quotes on living life, the pictures of clients, the inspiring things. “Brad, do you mind if I just take a picture of this? I love this. This quote is amazing.”
That person brings me in and they’re that continuity. “Hey, Dennis, good to see you.” “Thank you.” Person who brought him, dot, dot, dot, and that person is there at the end of the meeting to walk them right back out. Yeah. The first guy that I met that did that, that person would also part of their job is to ask for a referral. But I don’t like to do that. But they did. And that was their job was to remind them. But this is how I look at referrals. No. You should be getting referrals all the time. Your experience should do it. Don’t ask for them ever. They just happen. If I check my inbox right now, there’s two. I’ve been on the phone with you for an hour. There’ll be two.
Brad Johnson: Well, on that note, it has been a great hour-ish, a little over an hour together. So, thank you, Dennis, on your side. I mean, that was rapid-fire a ton. I know advisors were out there taking notes, probably rewinding pieces of this so really appreciate you playing all out as I come to believe you probably do everywhere you go. So, my final question here, we’ve hit all over it during this conversation is what is Dennis’s definition of do business do life?
Dennis Moseley-Williams: To be free from… On business is this. I just do things I enjoy doing. I delegate everything else. I work for people that I admire. And then the last piece is I have as much fun as I possibly can along the way. I learned a long time ago what enough was. So, here’s a sacrifice I’ve made in my life. One of my nephews once said, “Where’s your Porsche 911?” I guess I told him I was going to buy one at a certain point. And then he answered this question. He goes, “Too much money?” He was just a young fellow at the time. And I said, “No, they’re not actually that much money, but they cost a lot of time.” They cost a lot of time. That’s what they cost. So, this idea of enough, I guess you can always go make more. You can always go make more. What’s enough? Okay. How much do you have to roll in the front door before you would agree, “That’s a hell of a lot of money”? Okay.
And if I can’t live more than happy on that, if I can roll that in the door and I never need to worry about what something costs with Asterix but you can’t drive a 911. No, because if I drove a 911, I probably have to do a few more gigs a year. And it’s never a few more gigs. It’s three more gigs. It’s at least six, eight more flights. Sometimes it’s one night. Sometimes it’s two nights. Sometimes it’s… And it becomes like, wow, that stupid thing that just cost you two weeks. It’s like, yeah. So, for me, doing work I love for people I admire and the cash rolling in the door isn’t the best part of the job. It’s the afterthought if I even think about it at all. And then on the live life, it’s this. As I get a little older, I’m 68 years old, 53 years old. As I get a little older, learn to enjoy mastering a few things completely.
When you’re young, life’s a smorgasbord. We’ll taste it all and figure out what you’re into. Well, I have less time in the tank than I do having been spent already. So, now it’s family, downhill skiing, and playing guitar. Those are the three things I’m going to master from now until I’m dead. That’s it. Everything else, it’s not. Those are my passions. That’s how you live your life right there.
Brad Johnson: Love it.
Dennis Moseley-Williams: Right on, man.
Brad Johnson: Well, until next time. So, really appreciate it, Dennis.
Dennis Moseley-Williams: Thanks, fellow.
Brad Johnson: By the way, when you’re down in Kansas, say hi if you ever make it through.
Dennis Moseley-Williams: Oh, I’m going to. We’ll be seeing each other, I’m sure.
Brad Johnson: Let’s go. Let’s go.
Dennis Moseley-Williams: Okay, brother.
Brad Johnson: All right, We’ll see you.
Dennis Moseley-Williams: See you, man.
