February 2026
A monthly newsletter of the best behavioural resources from around the web. Enter your details below to start receiving our regular updates.
Surge Meeting Season
I am currently deep in my ‘surge’ meeting season, properly deep.
Back-to-back meetings, financial plumbing, admin, cashflow forecasts, beneficiary nominations, ISA top-ups, pension consolidations, insurance gaps, estate plans, school fee projections, the full works. The unglamorous bit of the job that no one posts about on LinkedIn. And yet, this is the bit that quietly reminds me what a superb position we sit in as Financial Advisers.
In any given week, we move from one family to another, working with a founder, a founder to a widow, a widow to a young couple, a business owner exiting soon and then a retired Army Major worried about too much money coming in. We see the full spectrum.
We see the real version of wealth, not as it's portrayed in the media.
We see the tension between saving and spending. The trade offs between time and money. The friction between partners who want different futures. The parents quietly subsidising adult children (this one is huge and most of the time very hidden). The children who have no idea how much their parents are worth. The entrepreneurs who cannot switch off. The corporate lifers who want out but cannot quite do the maths to make it happen, or who are really scared of losing their identity and purpose.
Every meeting in this season adds to your knowledge base. You start to see patterns. Behavioural patterns, spending patterns, regret patterns, and success patterns. What works, what doesn't, what people wish they had done five years earlier, what they are relieved they did ten years ago.
One client teaches you the emotional cost of retiring too late. Another teaches you the financial risk of retiring too early. One shows you the joy of gifting early, another the unintended consequences of giving too much too soon. One demonstrates the power of simplicity, another the curse of complexity.
We benefit from the collection of wisdom, which then compounds. Thousands of lived financial experiences, and the real magic of this job is that the lessons do not stay siloed. The information compounds, the outcomes improve, and our advice sharpens.
So yes, surge is admin-heavy and exhausting, but I think there are huge benefits to it. And it reminds me that it is a genuine privilege to sit at the intersection of so many families’ financial lives, and quietly turn the shared experiences into better decisions for all.
📰 Articles & Blogs
The Empathy Delusion: Why Many Financial Advisors May Be Making the Riskiest Bet of Their Careers [18 minutes]. Are we underestimating the current disruption?
Study Shows WHAT Clients Want Most From Financial Advisors [8 minutes]. Are you offering predictability, competence, visibility of actions, and client agency in decision-making?
9 Discovery Meeting Questions To Find Out What Clients Really Want From You [8 minutes]. These questions set clear expectations and foster trust from the very first meeting.
Do You Know the Difference Between Intel vs Intelligence [5 minutes]. Will there always be "experts"?
How Might AI Disruption Change Investor Behaviour? [6 minutes]. Will investors start to value real things a little more and ephemeral things a little less?
🎧 Podcasts
TRAP 91 - ROHIT VAISH FROM SATURN: AI: Revolution or Ruin for Financial Planning? [100 minutes]. The TRAP pack discuss the AI revolution.
Should Advisors Provide Opinionated Advice Or Coach Clients To Choose Their Own Path? [36 minutes]. Is it more effective to give clients clear, step-by-step guidance or empower them to become the heroes of their own stories?
📚 Book Recommendations
How They Get You by Chris Kohler. While still only available for pre-order, this looks like an interesting read on how the systems work and how to outsmart them.
👏 Encore
The Difference Between Defining and Delivering a Great Client Experience [5 minutes]
Waiting for Validation [6 minutes]
The next generation of AI businesses [2 minutes]
