EWA Principle: Having Uncomfortable Conversations Leads to Greater Success and Happiness

Jamison with EWA. Matt with EWA. In this video, we’re going to go over a firm principle that we follow. It’s going to be around uncomfortable conversations. So Matt, explain to us what we mean by that.

It’s a quote I’ve often related to, is success in life can be measured by the amount of uncomfortable conversations one is able to have. And I’ve found this is very true in the day -to -day work that we do for clients.

Awesome. I couldn’t agree more. Can you give us some specific examples of how we apply this? Yes, we find a lot of financial meetings. There’s a lot of talking just to talk. There’s a lot of reviewing just to review.

And then there’s a list of action items that we’ve seen when a client becomes a client that had been outstanding for years and years and years. So it’s an uncomfortable conversation. Could be around accountability and making sure a will and a trust gets accomplished, making sure that action items from the meeting are actually accomplished and balancing professional persistency without being annoying.

Ultimately, as our job is a CFO. But specifically for our clients, sometimes we recommend that they have uncomfortable conversations such as switching jobs or asking for a raise or negotiating their contract if they’re a physician.

None of these conversations are comfortable, ultimately could lead to a much easier and greater trajectory in their life and for their family in the support of ultimately their design of their life. Another example of this for us as advisors, as a relationship to clients, sometimes if the market’s doing well and everything looks great, it’s easy just to kind of give a wrap of oh or a hug.

But a lot of times we see that goals are out of balance. So for example, sometimes clients for peace of mind are spending way under the capacity of what they could and their goal is not to leave a big legacy on behind their kids.

So having the uncomfortable conversation of saying, you could be spending more, what’s the intention of this money? And really digging deep into that is ultimately you wanna get one shot at your financial plan. And then we wanna make sure the money is here supporting your life goals, which could adapt and could change over your lifetime.

Another example could be if there is marital stress around money and we’re able to feel that as an advisor is making sure that we get both spouses on the same page often uncomfortable, but can lead to a very great result if a family is unified on a financial front.

Awesome, I think another example is just from a professional level keeping each other accountable as a team and having those uncomfortable conversations if somebody didn’t get a task done or they’re underperforming just always being able to keep each other accountable.

Agreed, would you say an uncomfortable conversation last week was you and Chris beating me at Ping Pong and not ever stopping bring that up for the following 10 days? I was very comfortable, you might have been uncomfortable.

I was definitely very uncomfortable, but I’m gonna be working on my Ping Pong skills. So we’ll catch you in the next video. Thanks for watching.