Today May Be the Enemy of Your Tomorrow

Brad Johnson: Welcome back to another episode of Do Business. Do Life. I have Dr. Henry Cloud here with us today. Welcome to the show, Henry.

Henry Cloud: It’s good to be here.

Brad Johnson: I’m excited for this one. Michael Hyatt was the matchmaker and he’s also been the guy that first introduced me to many of your books, Boundaries, Necessary Endings. I know we’re going to get into a lot of that today. But before we hit record here, we were just kind of getting to know each other and I was like, “Okay. So, technically, you’re a clinical psychologist. And then how did you get into the book writing, the coaching side?” And you were kind of unpacking that story. So, I figured that might be just a good way to dive in for those that aren’t familiar with you.

Henry Cloud: Well, I was trained as a clinical psychologist, and when I went knocking on doors for my first job, I got hired by a leadership and consulting firm. So, they worked with CEOs and teams and companies and cultures and all that because, as we all know, leaders have issues too. They wanted a psychologist in the house. And so, I fell in love with leadership. And I was a clinician. Clinical psychologists deal with, basically, depression, anxiety, and fears and addictions, and relationship problems, and performance problems, and all that, and then on the organizational side with companies.

And so, I quickly found out that we’re not talking about two different worlds here. We’re talking about one because a person… In fact, it’s the title of your show, right? You’re talking about business and life. A human has to show up in this place called reality. And they’re going to produce results in their personal lives or not, and then their business life or not, but it’s the person and how they’re glued together and how they function that really do that. So, that’s kind of where I’ve hung out. And I’ve had really two parallel tracks to my career for decades. One is as a clinician but really more in the business and performance and leadership side of how that interfaces.

And then after I’ve been in practice while I started a company, I wanted to do a treatment center in a psychiatric hospital that I had control of and could do the programming and all that. The best way to have control of it is to own it so we went out and raised money to buy a hospital and ended up morphing the model to go into existing hospitals and do our units. But then that grew and I had 40-something treatment centers and hospital units in the Western United States. So, I ran that company for a long time. And so, that’s kind of where got the experience of being on the other side of the fence in leadership and having to run a big company. And then we sold it. And after that, I said, “What do I want to do? I love high performers.” So, now that’s what I do. I hang out with CEOs and high performers in different fields and their teams and cultures, and we look under the hood and kind of fix things. That’s what I ought to do.

Brad Johnson: Well, you said something. It turns out leaders have issues too. So true. I remember early on in my business career, you start to put yourself out there and join a mastermind or get a little uncomfortable. And I think any human that is honest will say they have a little bit of imposter syndrome where they’re sitting in the room and they’re like, “How do I deserve to be here?” And I think one of the most powerful things I got from my first experience was seeing other super-successful entrepreneurs that had issues. They were like, “I don’t have any friends. It’s lonely at the top.” And you’re like, “Oh, this is a normal problem to have.”

So, I’m curious in your journey because you kind of went from studying it, very similar to my track where I was coaching independent financial advisors prior to being an entrepreneur, and then you jumped in the trenches where you actually were an entrepreneur. My personal experience I found like it’s a lot easier to coach it when you’re not living it. So, did you find yourself actually reliving some of the problems that you were helping fix before when you actually became an entrepreneur yourself?

Henry Cloud: For sure. Because, yeah, well, I’m also an author of… I’ve written a bunch of books. My first line of books was as a psychologist and I wrote two parenting books before we had kids. And people would say, “How can you do that? You’ve never had any kids.” I go, “What’s going to equip you more, having a couple of kids or treating a thousand of them?” I’m kind of like, “I’ve seen it all.” Well, what changed was now the illustrations are very different because over here I talk about the parent that had trouble doing this, and now I’m that guy. And so, all these things we write about in business and whether you’re talking about, you know, I’ve got a model of what leadership actually is, how things move from here to there.

And everybody knows the first thing of leadership, which is after you define reality, where do we want to go? What’s our vision? All right. Well, that’s a deeply neurological process. The human being is the only species that has the capacity to see a desired future state that doesn’t exist, and then to marshal the resources to begin to move that to become a reality. Okay. So, let’s just take that one. And I talked about vision and help people with vision, this and the other, but now you’ve got to get out there and do it. All right. So, you’ve got to cast a vision. Let’s say you’ve been working for a company. You’ve got to start your own business. You got to go cast a vision to a VC firm for this company.

And you stand up and all of a sudden there’s a voice in your head that says, “Why are they going to believe me? Or that guy just frowned over there. He’s questioning my…” and all this kind of, “Oh, no. I dated his sister. I’m in trouble,” whatever the voices are that are in your head. See, we can know what… This is why coaching is so important. We can know what to do but surgery residents know what to do before they ever step in the operating theater. But they’ve got an attending and a coach there because we have to learn. We learn and new neurological patterns and behaviors are built in part through experience. And so, in some ways we can know but we don’t know what we don’t know until we know from doing it, too. And both are valuable.

I mean, there are great coaches who never started and run companies, but you learn some stuff when you, you know, I’m a competitive golfer and there are a lot of great coaches out there and all the pros have them. But stick any of those coaches out on number 18 in the final round of the US Open when he tied for the lead and that wind’s blowing, you got to hit that shot. It’s different having the spikes on. It certainly is.

Brad Johnson: Let’s dive into… I was trying to think, “Where do we start this?” and to me, Necessary Endings is where I want to jump in first. There are so many different ways this apply to financial services. And I know you’ve done a lot of work inside of financial services working with financial advisors over the years. Sometimes that Necessary Ending is kind of the one you mentioned, “Hey, I’m working for this captive firm. I’m going to go out. I’m going to open my own shop. I’m going to be an entrepreneur, an independent financial advisor.”

Henry Cloud: Or sometimes you may be an FA on a team and you either move or you go across the street to another firm or whatever, and now you get to build your own team. You’re almost building your own business within the business.

Brad Johnson: Yeah. 100%. I would say most of the listenership and the viewers to this show tend to be independent. They’re their own entrepreneurs that are kind of building their own business, which comes, as you know, with its own challenges because now, “Oh, there’s a personnel issue. Should I let this go? Wait, they’re a family friend,” and all of this kind of tug of wars that hit entrepreneurs. So, if you were just going to kind of start to dive into the teachings of Necessary Endings through the lens of a financial advisor, what are some things that you think would hit that a lot of advisors should start to think about?

Henry Cloud: Yeah. Let’s define what a necessary ending is first. You know, I chose those words, necessary and ending. And in the first line of the book, I think it says something like this, “Today may be the enemy of your tomorrow,” meaning that for the tomorrow that you desire to occur, something or some things must end that are going on today because they don’t fit that tomorrow. Now, everybody knows this unless you married your prom date. And in an audience, I always get two that raise their hand.

Brad Johnson: Hey, I actually did, by the way. I married my high school sweetheart.

Henry Cloud: There you go. The exception that proves the rule. But most of them didn’t. Life has seasons. Something that fits for a season doesn’t always fit for the next season or for the next year of life. And so, life is about endings. And the problem is that if we don’t have the capacity to end some things, you’ll never start that new business if you don’t walk away from the security of the one you have now. You’ll never get a performance out of that seat around the table on your team if you can’t fire that non-performer, for example. You’ll never be able to spend the time with your, most call them, top-tier prospects or clients if 80% of your time is being drained by other activities or by some clients who create all the drama and all their bands, and this that and the other.

I mean, it just goes on and on and on. Now, we know that. That’s not difficult math. But what happened, the reason I wrote the book is I just found myself over and over and over in conversations with really high performers. These are not wimps. I mean, these are people that make hard decisions all the time who had one little chink in the armor somewhere where there was something they just could not shut down, stop. There was an emotional attachment to that person. There was history. There was false hope that it was going to change. There was, you know, this business side will come back.

There’s a myriad of reasons, but they had nothing to do with business, nothing to do with objective data, nothing to do with what all the smart people would think. They were totally psychologically based that were keeping them from what they could be doing if they can let go of something. And so, I just did a deep dive into the dynamics of when is a necessary ending necessary. When do we think a necessary ending is necessary when it’s really not? This thing is fixable. How do you diagnose when to have hope with that person and when not to or that business line and when not to? When do you pull the plug? Okay. Then once I start to decide to do it and I’ve found myself hesitate, what are the fears that drive that, etc., etc.?

All these dynamics that fall into business fall into that category of what we call necessary endings, and it’s a tough one. You know, breaking up is hard to do if you’d be breaking up with a person or a dream. One of the examples I give is why did it take General Motors, why did it take a bankruptcy judge? Think about this. A bankruptcy judge shut down Pontiac. This is a brand that hadn’t made a profit in 40 years. Smartest car executives in the world kept it going. Could shut it down. Made no sense. Why? Because there’s emotional attachment there and there’s legacy and there’s history and there’s relationships and all that. And having the stomach to pull that off is a very tough decision. So, it’s an important issue.

Brad Johnson: All of it, so much of that hits home not just from the coaching conversations I’ve had in real life with advisors in the last close to two decades but my own personal story. I mean, I had a very successful career before this one where, I mean, I’m just a small-town Kansas farm kid. I was like, “Someday I hope I can make six figures.” And I was making more money than I ever thought I would in a lifetime but I had kind of reached my potential and I felt like there was something more. But that still took me three years to work through the emotional attachment. And I’ve heard it said the…

Henry Cloud: To let go of it?

Brad Johnson: Yeah. Paycheck is the most addictive drug in the world, that certainty and stepping into the unknown. But I want to revisit the quote that I wrote down. You said, “Today may be the enemy of tomorrow.” As you’re trying to work through your own human emotions, how important is it to not look short-term of like, “Oh, my gosh, I make this much money,” or “I’ve got this thing I don’t want to leave that I’ve been doing the last ten years,” versus that back to the vision and future casting like, “Hey, will I be lying on my deathbed regretting that I never took that leap or I’d never bet on myself?” Like, how much of that dynamic plays into working through that?

Henry Cloud: Well, security, it’s really interesting when you do psychological profiles of people. There really are two kinds of people in the world, and we can kind of change this and work on it. But take a snapshot, and one person defines good as not losing what I have. Okay. Another person defines good as getting more than I have today. Now, flip those. The first one is going to experience psychological pain if they’re threatened to lose what they have today. The other person is going to experience psychological pain if my balance sheet looks the same next year as it does today. I mean, that’s an awful year, right?

Brad Johnson: Yeah.

Henry Cloud: Well, I mean, we’re talking out of phase here. If you don’t understand, you’ve got two different kinds of clients you’re talking to. And they may not be 50/50 but you can’t assume everybody looks at the world the same way. And you have to kind of speak to their fears. So, back to your question…

Brad Johnson: And they might be married to each other, right? They might actually be married to each other, the two different types of thinking.

Henry Cloud: Probably more than might.

Brad Johnson: Yeah.

Henry Cloud: Because they were attracted to, “Oh, he or she completes me,” that ain’t no one is attracted to the impulse disorder, right? “You’re so creative and spontaneous,” and then they fight about that for 40 years, right? “Why can’t you ever be on time?” So, there is that. That’s so true. And when you look at the different psychologies of how we all approach that moment that you’re referring to, it’s important to grasp that. Now, we also have to work with who we are. So, if it’s somebody that’s really security-minded, you’re probably not going to just get them to jump out of the boat, right, and not have some sort of a track. We’ve got to be performing well when we move into change.

So, let’s lay down the track where everybody can perform well. And those are different. So, sometimes we may need to take those fears into account but here’s a problem. You’ve got to deal with the fears and resource for the fears and all the things you have to do with fear but you can’t let fear make the decision. You are going to feel fear. If you’re security-minded and you launch out on your own, you are going to feel it. Okay? Fear is a physiological thing where we could feel fear for a lot of different reasons. First, you have learned that fear has nothing to do with the reality. A lot of people are deathly afraid to get on an airplane. Airplane is not going down. It’s just not going down. So, you can’t listen to the fear and let it make your decision for you.

So, that’s where coaching is really important and all the things that you’re talking about. So, we take that path differently. My main thing is if you have good reasons to do this, you can’t listen to your fear. Let’s deal with the fear. Go on the other side of the fence, I wish that second person had more fear because it’s really important cognitively, objectively, business-ly, financially, business-ly, that’s a new word, balance sheet, cash flow, all of that. There is a really good formula out there. It’s called ready, aim, fire. That’s where our brains work. And so, if somebody is going to launch, they got to make sure they’re ready to launch. And then they got to aim. Do they really know how they’re going to win? Do they know their strategy? Do they know the activities that are going to drive that strategy? Do they know what talent they need to bring to the table?

You got to know where you’re headed, right? And then you got to be able to pull the trigger. Well, ready, aim, fire. It’s really good. The first person is like ready, ready, ready, ready, ready, ready, ready, ready, ready, and they never can pull the trigger. The second one is like fire, ready, aim. So, we got to get around that person to get them to think before he jump, right? Because they loved it. So, it always is deeply psychological but it’s also deeply interpersonal because you got to do this in the context of investors a lot of times are boards and bringing people along, and all of that. And those dynamics are where it really gets fun.

Brad Johnson: Okay. So, I was having a conversation this morning. So, with your permission, we’ll just bring in a real-life case study, and I’d love to hear you kind of break it down. So, we’re talking about people or we’re talking about career changes but the other thing I’ve seen really get advisors stuck, and I’ll give you a little kind of setup here, a lot of our industry because it’s driven by product distribution when an advisor comes up in the Church of Finance, depending on the church they grew up in, it’s like, “Hey, I was trained that this product A is the best versus product B is the best. And so, now don’t buy product B, buy product A or buy product B, not product A,” depending on once again which church they grew up in.

And so, one of the things that we’ve coached a lot of Triad members our advisors to do, one of the big things we’ve seen is they kind of start to hit this glass ceiling of complexity where when the whole business is built on I and me, the constraint is you only have so many hours at some point and you’re tapping out. So, marketing, sales, more and more and more, at some point, we call it the red line of success. There’s no more of you to go around so now you’re sacrificing your health, your family, your marriage, all of that stuff. So, we talk about the green line of significance, which is building a business bigger than you, which takes a team, which takes a process that’s duplicatable, repeatable, scalable.

And what I’ve seen happen in this conversation this morning, one of our members, he wants to shift because he’s like, “At one point I was going to quit the business. I was so burned out. I was missing family dinners, all of that. That is not my definition of success.” So, he’s shifting down a different path to be. And one of the things as he gets away from a process he was taught on, sell a product, make the transaction, move on, and we’re training him to build a plan that empowers a retiree to live a life that they want to live in retirement, which takes much deeper planning and a different process, much more complicated.

Henry Cloud: By the way…

Brad Johnson: Yes.

Henry Cloud: Can I interject something because I don’t want to lose this?

Brad Johnson: Please. Yeah.

Henry Cloud: This is one of the most important things for FAs to learn. When you’re dealing with a client and they’ve got to make some sort of a decision, well, first of all, they’re coming to you already because they have some anxiety probably about their finances, how they’re going to retire, where their kids are going to go to school, will they run out, and all that. So, their brain is already activated to fight or flight or freeze. And so, they’re going to either fight you, push against your idea because they’re afraid or they’re going to pull away, take their money across the street or pull it out of the market or move away from you, or they’re just going to be paralyzed.

So, one of the things you’ve got to do in part of your strategy is you have got to get them to the other side of their brain. You’ve got to calm down that amygdala activity. I’ll just make one little pointer. There’s lots of ways to do this but one point that you just made. When you build a financial plan, what you’re doing is you’re tapping into other parts of their brain that have a long-term narrative and a story of where they want to be and how they’re going to get there, which takes them to another part of the brain and then the bad side calms down. Secondly, when you do that, you’re adding language and concepts to it, which is another part of the brain. And thirdly, you’re connecting with them.

But fourthly, and the big thing, or thirdly or fourthly, the big thing you’re doing is you’re adding structure. It’s just like kids. When you go into a classroom and they’re all crazy because it’s a substitute teacher and their principal walks in, “Okay. Everybody in their seats. We’re going to have playtime and this and the other.” People calm down with structure. When you structure somebody’s life over a long-term plan, it’s like a Netflix movie where you pause. They’re seeing this. “Yeah, you’re in this scene now but when we look at the whole movie, it’s going to be okay.” And they start to calm down and they sign, which is what you need them to do. It’s what they need to do.

I always say FAs are like pastors, really. I mean, when you’re in somebody’s wallet, you’re in every aspect to their life that matters to them. You’re in their kids, you’re in their marriages, you’re in their, you know, “Am I going to be homeless when I’m 73?” You’re in all the areas of their pain, really, and their fear. And if you’re not skilled at diminishing the pain centers of the brain in the discussion, it’s going to limit results. Anyway, I just wanted to thank you in there.

Brad Johnson: Please do that for the rest of this conversation when you have insights like that. So, what I heard you say there that makes all the sense in the world to me, but I never thought about it of accessing different parts of the brain or in this kind of fear, the fight or flight part of the brain. Now, we’re building a bridge over into the dreaming, aspirational, happy place that I could be if I just follow this process, everything.

Henry Cloud: And you’re giving them hope that it can be there because you’re defining the specific activities to become the steps to the ladder to get to the top.

Brad Johnson: Yeah. Okay. So, I want to get this. Is this a perfect setup? I want to get your take here. So, let’s go instead of the prospect to the financial advisor. Let’s actually go to the financial advisor’s brain that is wired the same way because we’re humans. And so…

Henry Cloud: Which is who you’re describing as a burned-out…

Brad Johnson: Yeah. So, this advisor, he’s got a model where it’s kind of transactional, sell the product, move on to the next one. And he knows that it’s holding him back like he’s very clear like, “I want to transition to a new model that’s different.” The analogy I make, it’s like they’re passing the first level of the video game and they’re bored with it. They’re like, “I could do this in my sleep. Boom. Time to build a business that’s bigger than me.” Now, there’s all these other variables I’ve never played, and it’s frustrating. And so, back to Necessary Endings, there’s the fork in the road where it’s Christmas time, December. Are you a movie, Christmas movie guy like Elf? Have you seen that with Will Ferrell?

Henry Cloud: Our family watches it, Thanksgiving evening, the extended family, every year. By and large, I like comedies. I just don’t watch them. I watch other kinds of stuff. But that movie’s really funny.

Brad Johnson: Elf is so good. So, here’s the analogy. You remember when he sees the escalator for the first time?

Henry Cloud: Yeah.

Brad Johnson: And he’s like scared to get on it and then he gets on it and he’s like in two worlds. He’s like going up the escalator but his foot stuck back on the ground. That’s like my best analogy of where a lot of entrepreneurs find themselves because they know…

Henry Cloud: That’s so great. Yes.

Brad Johnson: I know they want to go up but they’re scared to leave behind what they know. And so, back to the conversation this morning. Perfect timing. This advisor was trained in a model that said, “Hey, just pick up a sale.” So, he had a real-life client come in, a prospect I should say, $7 million of investable assets, which is a great client for just about any financial advisor in the world. And this, I don’t know the details of the full conversation that were had, but basically, the prospect pushed back and said, “Hey, why don’t we just start with 100K? Sell me this little product and I’m just going to dip my toe in the water and test it.”

And what I shared is I said, “Hey, if you’re truly committed to change,” like I’m going from selling products to building financial plans, “the best thing you can do in that scenario, whether it’s analogy or something else, is just say, ‘Hey, he has a really cool process, you know, kind of building a legendary retirement.’” And he said, “If you’re committed to helping that individual in that room with you build a legendary retirement, he’s asking you to do the equivalent of build his dream home with three 2x4s. It’s not even possible.” And so, I’m just curious because his natural tendency is he got resistance, so he reverted back to what he knew.

So, how do you battle through that messy middle there when you know where you want to go but it’s not always easy and it’s different rules to get there? Well, I mean, we all do that, right? I mean, you take a step. Think about a kid when they’re learning to walk away from mom or dad, just trying to go that way or swim across the pool. We keep looking back to make sure security is there. We all need the security to move forward so we have to change the security from being back there to where we are and out in front of us. So, first of all, I hope they’re not in that conversation because they haven’t gotten ready for that conversation. And if you’ve gotten ready for that conversation, you’ve done all of the work that helps you know not only why you’re not going back.

There’s real reasons you made this decision. Okay? But you also are very clear in your mind for every little yes that you make down a wrong road. You’re not going down the new road. There’s no such thing as a little yes on the wrong road that’s going to get you further down the right road. We were going down the wrong road of this transactional small deal thing. Well, it’s only one and I may get more or whatever. You are going down a road that you said you are done with. Okay? Necessary ending. And you’ve had advising. You’re ready to do this. You wouldn’t have done it if you hadn’t gotten ready. So, now I know I’m going to do it. The most important word to a strategy is not what you’re going to do to win.

I always think of strategy is, how am I going to win? What’s our strategy? Are we going to win with a passing game or a running game? Acquisitions or build our own? You’ve got to have a strategy. But the most important word for strategy is the word no. It’s saying no to everything that keeps you from doing what you know you’ve got to do to win. Now, that’s not only true for that client but it’s true for you. He’s not going to build his dream home with splinters. So, you got to go into that conversation already ready for that. And you might have to have a sandwich. You call your coach, right, before you have that conversation. “What do I do if he offers me $100,000?” Well, you say no. And then you do it and you call your coach after and say, “I did it. I said no.”

So, then once you’re clear, then if you know that’s not what you do, then the job finally becomes what it should be, which is about bringing the client over to the same side of the table that you are. You can’t bring a client to your side of the table and the problems on the other side of the table if you and yourself are on opposite sides of the table. If you’re going in that conversation and you’re not sure this, that, and the other and you’re arguing with yourself, there’s no way you’re going to convince somebody of something that you’re not even grounded in yourself. So, once you get all that, then the conversation begins to change and, ultimately, it means a lot of steps to get there in the conversation and building trust and how you do that.

But it’s going to sound at the end of it, not the beginning, at the end of it, it’s going to sound something like, “Well, what I do is I build mansions in the sky for my clients, their dream. And I know how to do that and I can’t do it that way. So, that’s really not what I do. I’m probably not the best person for you.” And not only that, they’re not the best person for you. Now, everybody knows there’s a crawl, walk, run, and you get more wallet, there’s a term I use a lot, as you go on. But it sounds like the scenario you’re describing is if you’ve already got some no-go criteria and this is something that you just don’t do. And there’s nothing more powerful to somebody than being with somebody that is clear about what they want to do.

And when you say, “You know what, that’s not what I do. There are people that do that, I can refer you some even in this firm or across the street.” But my clients and I, we look at a plan and get a strategy, and the steps are going to get us there. And I would never put that step into that strategy. So, I can’t do that.

Brad Johnson: The words that are coming to mind for me, Henry, is like, first off, a belief of like I believe this, I’ve committed to this but also to say that that statement that you said, it’s a certain level of inner peace and confidence. And I’ve seen this over and over. It’s like a movie I’ve seen on replay the last two decades. The moment that financial advisor does not need the client and commits, it’s like so counterintuitive. Because the moment you don’t need it is when they all start pouring in because you’re like, “Well, that’s not what we do here. I’m happy to refer you. There’s three guys that do transactional sales, if that’s what you’re looking for. That’s not me.” The moment they say that with confidence, literally, they double, triple, quadruple.

But the hard part is to get there and to make that turn. It’s all up here. It’s like since we’re using movie analogies, Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade, that last step, The Invisible Bridge, it’s like you step out and you trust, but you’re kind of scared you’re going to fall down into the little valley there. But the moment you say something like that, it’s crazy. It’s like the people with $7 million are like, “Well, that’s exactly what I want. I want a financial plan. I’m committed to that. Let’s go.” That’s from my experience. I don’t know if you’ve experienced the same.

Henry Cloud: 100%. I mean, it’s the dynamic of life. Anything of value has value because it isn’t cheap. I mean, those are our polar opposites. And so, if you’re telling them, and I don’t mean cheap financially, I just mean that it costs something and when you’re telling…

Brad Johnson: You get what you pay for. We’ve all heard that saying over and over, what you pay for.

Henry Cloud: Right. And it’s not only money, it’s time. It’s psychological investment. It’s all this. And if you’re telling this person, look, I’m not cheap. I require certain things, certain value to come to me. And the value is I only work with people that are willing to do my deal, do my program.

Brad Johnson: Commit to a legendary retirement. I’m here for people that want to commit to a legendary retirement. If that’s not you, that’s okay. I’m just not the place.

Henry Cloud: That’s fine. Your value just went up. Okay? Anything we can get for, I think I’d throw 100 grand each year, whatever. We know intuitively, just look at, it is life. I mean, go back to high school. And you see men or women that just put up with all sorts of behavior by the people they date. They’re never the ones that end up with the good one, right? You get what you tolerate in life.

And what happens at the biochemical level is when somebody is, and I don’t mean playing hard to get, I just mean defining what it takes to get you. Those are very different. One’s a game. One is just solid. And so, if somebody didn’t have to behave in a certain way to have a relationship with you, that’s ultimately what we’re talking about. Then they feel no gravitas and they feel no need and they feel no… we move on needs where we feel like the other has something to give me. They can help me in some way.

If somebody is too weak, I’m not going to feel a need or desire unless I’m having a need or desire to help them. We’ll do it that way. But you’re exactly right, I’m just talking about the dynamic of when you don’t need somebody.

Brad Johnson: Yeah. And I think, growing up in financial services, I think a lot of people are like, oh, here’s a sales training, and it can kind of come across as insincere or kind of gaming the wordsmanship of relationship which is…

Henry Cloud: That’s what I meant when I say you’re not playing hard to get. We don’t really need to be.

Brad Johnson: Yeah, and that’s what I love about this conversation. Like, if you’re truly committed to helping a retiree build a better version of their retirement, it’s actually not a takeaway clothes. It’s no, I’m actually committed to doing the work we designed this firm to do. And I feel like there’s always these power dynamics, and what tends to happen is financial advisors that have a set dialed-in process, let’s say they have a three-appointment process, the moment the dollar goes up, that goes from like maybe 100k to seven figures, a million or 5 million or 10 million, they throw the rule book out and then they’re like, well, this guy has 10 million, so I’ll just bend over backwards and do whatever they say, where in reality, you almost need to reinforce the rule book more because that individual typically is used to kind of throwing their money around and getting their way. And when you kind of draw the line in the sand and say, “Well, that’s great, but that’s not how we do it here. If we’re going to commit to this, here’s kind of the process we’re going to need to follow if this is going to work.”

And I have historically seen the person that is typically a business owner has done really well for themselves. Like, oh, it’s kind of how I run my business, okay, that makes sense. I’ll kind of step in line, for lack of a better term.

Henry Cloud: Well, if you are drowning in an ocean, would you want a lifeguard to save you that you could drown? I mean, you want to sense strength for your vision. And what you’re saying, I mean, it’s very much like my work, because I work with some extreme high performers and a lot of times, that gets into some team dynamics, for example, or a lot of times, what’s going on in their family is going to be affecting their performance. And I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed this, but sometimes high performers can develop a sense of entitlement, kind of everything revolves around them.

Brad Johnson: A little ego.

Henry Cloud: That’s right. And a lot of those scenarios, I’ll enter into. And they’ll start to try to tweak the program, And I feel like they’re trying to maneuver me. And just early on, I say, “Dude, no, I don’t do that. No, I’m not moving that. No, I’m not doing this or I’m not doing that.” And also, stand up to them. These are the people that they are not treating well because if I’m going to serve them well, I’ve got to change their behavior, right? Or help them change their behavior. And if I’m going home, what if they find me, I don’t need them. I can’t help somebody I need. I can’t. I mean, think of parents who need their kids approval. They’ll give them anything and they raise compulsive disorders or addicts or whatever. So, you’re telling a very important dynamic.

Brad Johnson: I can’t help people that I need. I’ve never heard it put that way.

Henry Cloud: I mean, it’s a little absolute, but…

Brad Johnson: Yeah. No, but it makes all the sense in the world. And that is where, back to where advisors get stuck that are trying to change the blueprint they’re building with, it goes back into, I really need to pick up this deal, this revenue, this sale, and all…

Henry Cloud: But let me focus on that. You need to pick up a sale, not this one. Those are very different worldviews. You have gotten fixed on this sale. Now, once you think it’s this one, I got to have this one, my life depends on this one, you have gone into a dependency dynamic that is only appropriate for one kind of person in the universe, and that is an infant. An infant’s world depends on one person, their primary caretaker.

And once they get past infancy, now, they’re in a family. They got more than one relationship. Then they go to the schoolyard and they have other people. But if you’re seeing this deal, if your survival depends on this deal, probably the worst thing that happens is you get that deal, I mean that.

Brad Johnson: It just reinforces the bad behavior or the behavior you’re trying to change, right?

Henry Cloud: Or now, you’re safe and happy. And what happens when they get lured away? You’re right back in the same place. I remember one time, it was in ‘08. Remember ‘08?

Brad Johnson: I remember ‘08.

Henry Cloud: You’re in the business in L.A.

Brad Johnson: My mom didn’t really know what I did, and obviously, the financial world was crashing. She’s like, “Are you okay? Are you going to have a job?” And what was crazy is we were focused on safe money, retirement products. I was like, actually, business is really good because everybody’s scared of the stock market right now. So, yeah, I remember ‘08 well.

Henry Cloud: Okay. So, I was working with one of the big firms and the CEO said, “I got, what, 8,000 or 10,000 in a place out there that are getting hammered by their clients. And you’ve ruined my life and they’re getting blamed for this and they didn’t cause it. Can you help them?” And so, we put together this big project to go help them. And that’s it. But also, I want to help them with the client because the client’s in a trial state. So, I need to help the financial advisors, help the client get back down to earth.

So, I remember one conversation I was having, and it’s back to this dynamic, if I need this deal. I was actually in Manhattan with 20 of the highest performers. And these are really, really high performers. And this is at kind of the end of ‘08, when thinking of Bear Stearns had gone down, Lehman Brothers had gone, everything had… auction rate securities had started. It was just, you know how that was.

Brad Johnson: Chaos.

Henry Cloud: Remember McCain wanted to postpone election. It was so bad. And so, we’re working with these FAs and one of them says, “Alright, I can’t pick up the phone.” I mean, I go and I sit in my desk and I can’t pick up the phone. I said, “Why?” And he said, “Because all my clients hate me.” And I said, “All your clients hate you?” He said, “Yeah, I mean, they’re all mad at me. They think I…” I said, “Literally, that’s what you believe that all of your clients hate you.” He goes, “Yeah, they all hate me.” I said, “How many clients do you have?” “I can’t remember that. It’s like 300 or something.” And I said, “And they all hate you?” He goes, “Yeah, they all do.” I say, how many clients you think there are in New York City? Not yours, but how many exist in New York City?” And he gave me the number, how many it was. I said, “Dude, you just won the lottery.” He said, “What are you talking about?” I said, “Okay, if all of your clients hate you and you didn’t cause this, then we had a couple of million clients out there that hate their guy.” So, now, we’re going to… because you just won the lottery. All of those are up for grabs.

So, I’m going to give you two questions. Next, when you go to the soccer game tomorrow, or the PTA gathering, or the cocktail party or whatever, and you’re at the punch bowl and you meet somebody, you say, so are you happy with the financial results you bring in this year, just ask him that question. There you go. Well, no, it’s been hard. I’ll say, well, tell us, and I’ll be glad to give you a second opinion if you want it.

All of a sudden, I need these clients to be happy with me, which was a weird fantasy anyway. They did not all hate him. We actually did objective data on that. They were actually needing him to call them because they’re afraid. But all of a sudden, the world became abundance again. And then his whole performance, I mean, he just couldn’t wait to go talk to the next person because everybody wants a second opinion in those days, right? But if you get too dependent on thinking, I have to have this deal, you’re probably going to not make the best deal, even if you make it.

Brad Johnson: I love that story. Thanks for sharing that. It’s like this, the age old glass half empty, glass half full, scarcity versus abundance mindset, it’s really hard to coach and lead people to the Promised Land if their story, their narration in their head is scarcity, scarcity, scarcity. So, I love that, yeah.

Henry Cloud: Do you know that a lot of people think, whether or not somebody reaches a goal or not is based on how motivated they are? Motivation is way down on the list of what actual goal achievement. The number one factor on whether or not a goal will be reached is not motivation, but the belief that it can be reached as the number one factor.

And you just said it. If you question whether or not building the book of business of $1 billion is possible or not, you’re going to be less apt to get there then. And here’s the good news, here’s the great news for everybody and we’re talking to today, the number one factor in reaching a goal, you’ve already solved. I doubt, anybody listening to us today has maybe one or two, has a goal that somebody has not done before.

Somebody in financial services has done whatever your plan and dream says that you want to do. So, we can check that one off our list. Now, it’s just figuring out how they do it or how do I do that? But if you question that abundance security and then like you’re saying, that voice in your head is, well, this isn’t possible. It’s a different time now, blah, blah, blah, good luck.

Brad Johnson: So good. All right. Well, you’ve written way too many books to not get into more of them, Henry. So, we could just stop right now. And this has been a stellar conversation, but I know we have a little more time. So, you mentioned earlier, Do Business, Do Life. And I know Michael Hyatt, his version of that would be the Double Win.

And I think, in today’s day and age, like, maybe if I was working in the office in the 1950s, it was a lot easier to separate business from life because you take the briefcase home. You get home for family dinner. You don’t have a cell phone. You don’t have an iPhone with scrolls and texts and everything that we have constant…

Henry Cloud: Simply say we had the natural boundaries that are built into the universe, time, and space. So, you had the time boundary, I worked 8 to 5. And you had the space boundary, I worked there. And you couldn’t really do the other. But then with the Internet and cell phones, the time and space boundaries were disintegrated. Now, your boss or the work can find you anytime, anywhere. So, if you don’t have the capacity to build the time and space boundaries, it’s not going to happen.

Brad Johnson: So, let’s talk about that in the time we have left. So, Do Business, Do Life, we say that a few different ways, but build a business that blesses your life, that doesn’t become your life. And I’ve seen this, not just in financial services, I think in many entrepreneurial circles, we call it the Entrepreneur Live, like I’m building this business for the family. Don’t they understand? Where in reality, all they want is you at the dinner table or at the ball game. So, if you were going to start to talk…

Henry Cloud: That is the biggest crack most times when you hear that come out of somebody’s mouth.

Brad Johnson: Well, how do you… because I’ve never, actually, I don’t know that I’ve met anybody that’s like, I don’t care about the family. I’m just going to work. Typically, there’s this guilt. There’s like, I’m actually not performing at the office and I’m not performing at home. And I feel like I can’t perform anywhere, which then leads to all these addictions and self-medicating behaviors that typically aren’t good. So, what tips, like in our time we have left, would you give a financial advisor that really wants to like, hey, I want to prioritize and create boundaries so that when I’m home, I’m home, when I’m at work, I’m at work, and I can win in both domains?

Henry Cloud: Well, let me go back. I just want to explain that that’s the biggest crack. I mean it when it’s said a certain way because certainly, people do go to work for their family. There is no doubt about that. I wouldn’t pooh-pooh in that.

But what I’m telling that is when you’re in the conflict, and the wife and the family is not feeling like they’re getting from you what they need and you say, “But I’m doing this for you,” you got a gap in there of they’re not feeling the love. Okay? And you said it well, but what they want is they want you to be at home. They want you there.

So, let’s back up for a second. I really, really believe, and it starts at the top if you’re talking about family, but single people should be doing the same thing as well. But it starts at the top. And what a couple has got to do together is they’ve got to create their vision for their family and what they want and what matters to them. Now, when you start there, then that vision, like any other vision, that’s got to be resourced. Okay? But there’s a lot of different resources that go into a vision. Certainly, there’s money. That’s an easy one. But there’s time. You’re not going to create a vision of building this if you’re not investing not only the money, but investing time.

Thirdly, there’s skills and competencies and experiences that have to be invested to create that vision in the family. So, we got to have a plan. And then what we’ve got to do is we got to bring the stakeholders in and let them speak into that. One of the things, for example, we would do, we had two girls. And we’re empty nesters now, they’re 22 and 24 because I travel a lot in my work. But what I would do when they got cognizant enough to, where is that kind of thing, we would have family meetings.

And periodically, we try that family meeting every Sunday night. We almost feel like a team meeting in a company is really fun. It’s great for kids. But one of the things, generally, kind of at the end of year, there’s always planning next year, let’s call it that. We’d sit down, I’d say to the kids, “So, girls, how many nights? How many nights a week? If I’m gone, does it kind of not matter? Or how many do you start to feel it?”

You start to think about that. Well, one night, they’re going to be on a sleepover maybe, or it’s normal for parents to be at a PTA meeting or one or two nights, that’s life. It’s got all these moving parts. But then they said, “But if it’s more than that, I don’t like it.” So, I said, “So what you’re talking about is somewhere, because it varies, week to week. Some weeks have not gone. Some weeks, it’s a three-night or four-night trip, or whatever.” So, I said, “What you’re kind of talking about is six to eight nights a month. Is that right?” They’re like, “Yeah.” So, everybody signed off on that.

Because for us to have other things, the stakeholders who get fed in other ways were realizing we’re all in this together. And so, we’ve said, “Yeah, we all agree.” And I think what we came up with was 5 to 7-ish or something like that. And it would vary. It’s a rolling average, right?

But everybody is the stakeholder in how we spend our resources. So, when you start to say to a kid or to your wife or husband or whatever, well, I don’t want you around so much, and you go, well, okay, I could not go do that, or I could even change track. Here’s how it would impact us. We all share in that impact, I can not go do that, but that means we’re not going on vacation this year or we’re not moving, whatever it is.

Once you begin, see, when I was an accounting finance major, the big thing I learned back to me, the rest of my life, life is double entry. And many times in these discussions, people only look at either the benefit or the costs. Always both. So, we got to get everybody involved. And when we say we, I’m doing this for the family. No, we’ve decided this is best for the family. They will cut down on a lot of it. And then from there, it’s planning and empowering. So, I would say hard choices, empowering choices.

Brad Johnson: I love that double entry. That makes all the sense in the world. To me, that’s tradeoffs. And then what are the agreed upon non-negotiables? And it’s not like you’re, I mean, I’m sure some families do write-up contracts, but I know one of the ones that’s worked for my wife and I for a number of years is Brad’s home by family dinner time at 6:15.

And where I’ve screwed that up because I have is, oh, something ran a little late at work, I didn’t give her a heads-up. So, she’s got dinner ready, family’s ready, 6:15, Brad’s not there. And what I have found is, occasionally, if something goes late, as long as I’m proactive and say, “Hey, honey, something’s running real late, I’m not going to be home till 6:30. Is that cool? Do you want to start dinner a little bit earlier? Are the kids hungry? Or is that okay to push it back 15?” If I’m proactive, I found most times, that goes really well. If I’m reactive and surprised her, that’s when things don’t go well.

So, what’s your grace factor in there? You’ve kind of got some standards you start to set. But what’s the grace factor where you’re not just completely blowing through non-negotiables and it’s just life and life happens?

Henry Cloud: Well, the biggest thing, I say the biggest thing, there’s a lot of the factors, as you say, that are part of that, but one of the biggest is the difference between a problem and a pattern. Life has problems. We all have problems. Something comes up. You’re not going to make it at 6:15. That’s a problem.

We solve problems, okay? When we solve a problem, the problem is solved and it goes away. When we don’t solve it, it happens again. Now, we don’t have a problem. We have a pattern. You’re not the guy that didn’t get home at 6:15. Now, you’re the guy who doesn’t make it home by 6:15. You’re talking about the grace factor.

If you start a meeting at 9 a.m. at your office and Susie’s not there, everybody’s going, “Where’s Susie? Is she okay?” Five after nine, she’s not there, “Somebody call Susie.” Why are they thinking that way with compassion towards Susie? Because Susie’s always there at 9 o’clock. She has a pattern, a track record. When she’s not there, it generates a totally different response than when there’s a pattern of that.

Now, Joey doesn’t show up at nine. He’s out there about five after nine. Okay, let’s get started. Where’s Joey? You go, “Who knows?” We’re not waiting on Joey. Because Joey’s got a pattern of not being there. So, we build mental maps in our minds by our last experiences with people. So, that’s what we really got to look at. It’s like that with your clients.

I wrote a book called Trust with these trust factors in it. And your clients are building mental maps of you of every interaction. When they go into that interaction, do they walk out of it in a different state than they went into it? And if you can create those transformational moments where they were confused and then they walked away with little clarity or they were hopeless and they walked out with a little hope, they were, whatever, and there’s a track record of, gosh, every time I talk to Brad, I feel better about where we’re headed in this, I know that I’m going to keep calling Brad. See, that’s a glue. But those, we build track records by how people experience us. So, that’s what’s really important to think about us. You don’t want to let a pattern start.

Brad Johnson: Well, Henry, I have a feeling this could be a three or four-hour podcast. Unfortunately, we don’t have that time booked. And this time has absolutely flown, and I have enjoyed every minute.

Henry Cloud: Well, I love your industry. I love what you guys do for people. Can I tell one quick story?

Brad Johnson: Please, please.

Henry Cloud: We have a client family that we’re close to and they have a son who is in his, he’s just starting out his career. And he loved the markets. He went and served for a while in Iraq a few years and saved some money while he was there. But he was investing and he did well and he loved the markets. He came back. He went into sales and retail. And this room, we lived in L.A. is in Beverly Hills. He was just killing it in clothes and jewelry and high-end clients.

And I looked at him, and I knew financial services really well. And I said, “You are a financial advisor. You have got to go into financial advising. You have the people skills. You have the relationship skills. You love the markets. You love…” And so, I talked him into it. So, I won’t name the house, but he joined one of the big houses, right? And so, they’ve taken him to their training program.

And after about, I don’t know, however long it was, when they get into this stuff, he called me and said, “I can’t do this.” I said, “Why?” And he said, “Because it kind of, it’s like turning all my friends into prospects and looking for leads and everybody.” And he said, “I feel like a snake oil salesman. I just can’t. It feels crazy. I just hate the feeling.”

And I looked at him, I said, “Dude, you are not a snake oil salesman if you go to this industry. You are an ambulance driver.” He said, “What are you talking about?” I said, people are lying awake at night obsessing over their future. They’re worried about are they going to have enough to make it? Or is this business going to fail? Or where do they find the capital for this? Or what about their entitled kid because they made so much money and how do they raise them to not ruin them with it, but they want to provide with it? They didn’t want their kid to have to do what they did, but they don’t want to… And what about this? And what about that? You’re the ambulance driver and you’re coming up and you’re going to go into that mess and you’re going to give them the ability to sleep at night. That’s what you do.

So, we started on his head. I think he just made number five in the nation. And you know the firm, it’s one of the big ones. But he loves what he does now. And to me, when I think of financial services, that’s what I think of. What y’all do for people is you give them peace of mind. That’s what you do.

Brad Johnson: Definitely the best in our space have made it not about themselves but about serving, and I couldn’t agree more. I love that story. And what a testament for you to like lead him down a path. You saw a future for him he didn’t see for himself.

Well, Henry, as we wrap, this is Do Business, Do Life, we’ve got pretty good context and you’ve written books that are all over the topic, Necessary Endings, Boundaries. You kind of heard my definition, build a business that blesses your life that doesn’t become your life. But I would love to hear Henry’s definition of what does Do Business, Do Life mean to you?

Henry Cloud: Well, I’m a person of faith. And in fact, I just wrote a book about my faith. I never had written anything about… Yeah, I write business books. A lot of what we talked about today is from my book, Trust, and also Boundaries for Leaders. But I wrote a book on my faith called Why I Believe. And yes, I say that just so people know where I come from.

But when, in a way, Jesus was asked that question one day, he said, “What does it mean to you, do business and do life? And he said, all of everything. And this whole thing we called, it all boils down to two things, to love God with all your heart, mind, and soul and to love others, treat them as you would want to be treated.

And when we talk about love, there’s a lot of different dimensions to it. But basically, it is about getting past our egocentricity and self-centeredness and seeing the value and meaning of life in our relationship to others, first, God, and I believe for a thousand, million reasons, that’s the most important one because if we don’t have something bigger than ourselves, we all know where that ends up. And he provides strength and guidance and power in ways and teaching and all of that. I depend on him deeply.

And then also, that’s to be lived out with others. And each day, think if we wake up and say, how can I think? What would God want me to do here in my business and my life? And what were the people that I’m closest to and my stakeholders in my life, my girls, my friends, my teammates, what would they want me to do? Am I taking them into consideration here? That ends up being pretty rich for ourselves in the end. And so, that’s how I think about it.

Brad Johnson: I love that definition. There was a few bracelets that were roaming around for many years, WWJD. They kind of embody that thought. And I’ve actually used that myself where it’s like, whether it’s Jesus himself or it’s people that you respect and aspire to be like certain characteristics, like what would such and such do in this scenario? Like, that can be a really cool filter to look through in life.

Henry Cloud: It really is. I mean, it really is. Humans are imitative creatures. We learn language, we learn walking, we learn performance by watching somebody do it first. It’s the way we’re wired. And if your FAs would go into their meeting today, wherever they’re going, and they kind of picture Brad, how would he handle this conversation? What would he do here?

And all those things that they’ve heard from you, then that will go a long way in guiding their behavior because this modeling thing, they can be present or not present, the other one is. When you’ve decided to be a certain way, for instance, there’s a lot of research on this. And we talked earlier about the guy who’s going to offer you $100,000 to invest and you’re looking for him to invest this whole pile. If you picture, I’m going down a new path now, what would the new me say in that meeting?

And your new you becomes your model. What would the new me say instead of how I feel today? Then that’s very powerful also.

Brad Johnson: Well, that’s a great way to end, my friend. So, Henry, this was our first virtual meeting, but I feel like I know you after this conversation. And so, thank you so much for carving out the time, sharing your wisdom, your knowledge. And welcome back any time. And if you make it to Kansas, swing by.

Henry Cloud: I would love to do it. Again, it’s been great. It’s been great hanging out with you. And I love what you’ve built, peruse around a little bit in the… just the division of the… It’s so deep and it’s so rooted and grounded in what matters. And that’s when people hop on and join something that’s rooted and grounded like that, it’s really, really good. So, way to go.

Brad Johnson: Well, I appreciate it. Appreciate it. All right, my friend, until next time.

Henry Cloud: Okay. See you next time. Bye.

Brad Johnson: We’ll see you.