The Legitimate Limitations of Speaking Financese and Legalese to Clients [Episode 3]

Key Links

• Carl Richard's Website
• Malcolm Gladwell book which profiles Tom Gau: The Tipping Point

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During the episode, host Matthew Jarvis supplies us with nine crucial rules to follow regardless of if you are an advisor, CPA, actuary, or if you are just concerned with imparting understanding and reassurance in the minds of clients. These nine rules range from the necessity of practice to the headache-inducing method of trying to shrink a whole financial plan onto a single page.

Using the metaphor of speaking a foreign language to someone who doesn't know the tongue, Matt communicates just how difficult it is for common people to understand the financial and legal nomenclature so easily referenced during consultations and financial-advising meetings with clients. He gives the advice to simplify speech, not as a tool for talking down or belittling the client, but to cover all bases during the consultation. One wouldn't talk down to an English-speaking tourist vacationing in China for not knowing a wide range of Mandarin.

Matt also draws from a lot of biographical experiences where he was forced to act as a translator because the financial experts who were involved had a hard time self-censoring the depth of the language they used. In other words, it is very easy for smart, technically-gifted people to have a hard time not using their specialized jargon—terms that would confuse the average person (of any levels of education). Matt says this confusion should not be there, and he teaches listeners of this episode how to prevent most language barriers from forming.