Episode summary
Is It Ever Appropriate To Engage Clients With Fear Of Adverse Outcomes? - Kitces & Carl Ep 194
Financial Advisor Success (Kitces)
· · 38 min · Hosts: Michael Kitces · Guests: Carl Richards
Summary
The conversation centers on whether advisors should use fear, urgency, or emotionally loaded examples to get clients to act on planning gaps. Michael Kitces raises a real-world example from another episode: an advisor using vivid, gendered storytelling about remarriage, children, and a “gold digger” to motivate estate planning updates such as QTIP trusts. Carl Richards says he can see why it works, but he is uncomfortable with fear-based persuasion and with reinforcing stereotypes, even if the tactic produces action.
Richards draws a line between helping clients clarify their own values and imposing a planner’s values through manipulation. He argues that advisors should help clients implement what they already care about, not manufacture concern through loaded scenarios. At the same time, he acknowledges that neutral explanations often fail to create enough urgency, and that clients commonly delay hard decisions unless something breaks through inertia.
The discussion ends with a practical tension rather than a clean answer: urgency may be effective, but Richards prefers positive urgency, clearer questioning, and value-aligned persuasion. He is willing to use selling techniques only when they help clients reach self-defined goals without making him feel inauthentic.
Key takeaways
- Carl Richards says fear-based selling can work, but he is not interested in using it because he wants his methods to feel authentic and value-aligned.
- Kitces notes that the advisor example was effective because it turned an abstract estate-planning issue into an urgent emotional concern.
- Richards argues an advisor’s job is to help clients implement their own values, not impose the planner’s values through provocative language.
- Both speakers agree that neutral, technical explanations of QTIP trusts and estate planning often fail to move clients to action.
- Richards says the real challenge is finding persuasion techniques that create urgency without crossing into manipulation.
Notable quotes
“I have no doubt that that stuff works. And we see it all over the place and urgency”
“I would rather if I'm even if I'm going to use urgency, I'd rather use urgency towards helping somebody reach their goals”
“As a financial planner, it is it is my job I can decide if I don't agree with the values enough that I don't want to be involved in the planning”
“it's manipulation when you do it in your interests. It's persuasion when you do it in their interests”
“I just don't I just love it in a way that makes that I love doing it. I just have to be very careful about doing it in a way that doesn't generate inauthentic behavior that I feel bad about”
How the episode opens
Well, good afternoon, Carl. — Greetings, Michael Kitces. How are you? — I'm doing well. I'm doing well. I'm I'm I'm excited to get into today's episode though cuz I dare I say like it it might be a little bit edgy. We're going to get into a tough topic. And I'm really like genuinely curious what your thought thoughts and view and positions going to be on this.
Now I'm I'm semi excited and semi nervous, which means that something good might happen. — Okay. Okay. I would say I'm that may not have been the best way to set it up to draw you into an interesting conversation. So So here's the situation context. So obviously we do this Kitces and Carl podcast as many folks know. I have a second podcast I do called Financial Advisor Success where we invite out advisors that have been doing this over the many years to talk about
The other podcast.
The other podcast that that which otherwise shall not be named. And they and it's advisors that come out and basically tell the story and journey of how they built their advisory firms and like the the things they did that made them successful. And so we had a guest out just a couple of months ago earlier this year named Aaron Botsford.
The episode was 483. So if people actually want to go look it up, it's kitces.com/483 uh for the episode. And like if I could kind of sum it up in a word or two, the the essence of it was that Aaron was kind of trained in the methods around if you want clients to create act to take action, you need to create urgency.
And urgency is driven by emotions, often fear.
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- fear-based client communication
- sales urgency
- client values vs planner approach
- growing an advisory firm
- action-oriented planning
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Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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Financial Advisor Success (Kitces), this episode and its artwork belong to Michael Kitces. Octagon is not affiliated with the show; this page is an independent summary.
