On the first day of Financial Planning's INVEST 2023 conference, one speech began with the story of a little girl trapped under a pile of wooden puzzles. She had tried to grab one out of the closet while her mom and brother were asleep, but instead sent the whole stack crashing down on her, waking up her family and inviting a scolding.
That little girl was Anne Lester, who went on to become the head of retirement solutions at JPMorgan Asset Management for 20 years. And if her story seems like an unusual way to start a talk about retirement savings, that's the point.
"I think we underrate, as an industry, the power of stories," Lester said in a half-hour session titled True Empathy: A New Approach to Drive Engagement Up with Your Younger Customers. "People don't connect with charts … but they connect with a story."
Today, Lester is one of America's foremost experts on retirement. In addition to her decades at JPMorgan, she's the co-founder of the
On top of all this, Lester is the mother of two children: one millennial and one member of Generation Z. And from both her personal and professional experience, Lester has noticed something different about these generations: They respond more to stories than to expertise.
"Gen Z and millennial audiences are skeptical," Lester said. "They've been marketed to since they were born, in a much more sophisticated way than I was as a kid when I was watching Kool-Aid ads on TV. They've grown up in an online, digital world that has been serving individually targeted ads since they first picked up a smartphone."
As a result, she said, many of these young Americans are wary of "official" experts and more likely to take advice from peers or social media stars. When it comes to personal finance, that can mean putting more trust in a TikTok "
Recent research backs this up. A
How can financial advisors bridge this credibility gap? The key is to "communicate differently," Lester said — and that starts with listening.
"Instead of starting from our comfort zone, from our place at the top of that mountain, comfortable with the certainty of our expertise, we need to flip the script," she said. "Instead of starting with what we want to tell them, we need to start with what they want to tell us."
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But in order for these young clients to open up, they have to trust their financial advisors. And that's where storytelling comes in. Many young investors trust social media celebrities not because they're experts, but because they tell relatable stories. Lester believes that's one area where wealth managers could learn from finfluencers.
"We need to make our conversations and our relationships safe, so that our clients feel comfortable opening up to us without fear of being judged," she said. "And that requires us to open up to them, like so many of their peers do on social media."
Hence the story about Lester falling victim to an avalanche of puzzles. But she also tells other stories, including ones that may be more embarrassing for a personal finance expert. When Lester was just out of college, she said, she spent every cent of her paychecks and then some, falling into credit card debt. Then, one day, she got an $800 bonus — but instead of using it to pay off her debts, she bought a baby grand piano.
"I felt such shame and fear over my out-of-control finances," Lester said. "And it made me feel exactly the same way as I felt sitting on the floor surrounded by all those puzzle pieces."
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Telling an investor such a story can be daunting, but Lester said it serves an important purpose: It humanizes the advisor, removes shame from the conversation and makes it possible for the client to open up about their own finances.
That's important, because many Generation Z and millennial Americans are falling short of their financial goals. A 2022
But these young savers still have one great advantage: time. And if they can manage to trust a financial advisor with real expertise, they can still piece together the puzzle of their finances. To gain that trust, Lester said, it helps to tell a story.
"Think about how you communicate," Lester said. "Are there stories that you can tell from your own life and experience that can make your clients safe in sharing their own struggles with you — so that they can tell you their stories without shame and without fear of judgment?"
