When Your Client Leaves You Feeling This….

“David… Close your mouth, darling!”

I could still hear my Mum’s voice.
Even though she’d last said that when I was 10 years old.

Now, with 5 children of my own… I was listening to one of our extended family.
She was in her late 30’s. So, not exactly naïve.

“What the heck…” she said, (though “heck” wasn’t in her vocab)…
“…is Easter about anyway? Apart from chocolate and eggs!”

Mouth still hanging open, I stood, incredulous.

“Nah. Surely nobody could be that ignorant!
Could they?”

And then it struck me…

There I was… a very Christian sort of fellow…
In a very secular sort of England.

The world I understood…
Wasn’t the world she’d even considered as existing.

That’s exactly what I see in this business sector.
Particularly amongst the average-age financial planner… in their early 50s.

Experienced enough to lead.
But still carrying the weight of doing.
…
Bombarded by a tsunami of AI.
ChatGPT. Claude. CoPilot. Gemini.

Extraordinary power…
Used to produce reports faster.

(Like using a Lexus… to take rubbish to the tip.)

And if we’re honest…

That’s exactly what many of us are doing.

Because something deeper has become… unseen.
And it’s this:

The work of financial planning was never about The Report!

The report is merely a reflection of the quality of the relationship.
And of how deeply we’ve listened to what’s behind the words… what’s underneath the figures.

If the relationship is shallow…
the report is simply a more articulate version of that shallowness

You see, the most impactful, transformative planners today are those who – in the noise of change – haven’t lost sight of two capabilities…

• What’s needed to help clients feel significant… and live significantly. And…
• What’s needed to liberate the genius of every member of their team.

This “Significant” aspect is something few talk about.
Yet, it’s something we all crave in our life!

To feel significant. That we matter.

Penny Power OBE raised the question this week, in this way…
 
“We have entire industries built around personal significance, personal branding, leadership presence, visibility strategies. And they have their place.
 
But I wonder if the quieter, more powerful practice is the one we underinvest in…

becoming someone who makes others feel significant.
 
When you do this well, when someone leaves a conversation with you feeling more seen, more valued, more certain that they matter…
you don’t diminish. You grow.

Your own significance deepens precisely because you gave it away.”
 
Now THAT is a different way of seeing the world of our work.

Not…
“How do I feel significant?”
But:
“How do I GIVE significance?”

Because the planners I see struggling right now…
Aren’t short of tools.
They’re short of something else.
Something quieter.

The ability to make another human being feel:
Seen. Heard. Significant.

And here’s the uncomfortable question…

Do your clients actually feel that…
when they leave a meeting with YOU?

And I wonder…
Have we done to our clients…
What that conversation did to Easter?

Reduced something profound…
To something functional.

A report.
A meeting.
A process.

Instead of an experience that says: “You matter. You’re significant.”

Because when that disappears…
Everything else that matters about our work follows.
…
Using our professional skills and space… to GIVE significance to others.

So that when a client leaves your room…
they don’t just understand their plan.

They feel:
Seen.
Heard.
Significant.

And if they don’t…

Then no amount of technical excellence…
will ever be enough.

That’s the Soul Millionaire way.