First Friday Feedback: April 2026

In April's First Friday Feedback episode, Phil and Linda Eaton explore the "wealth tsunami" moving into the hands of Baby Boomer widows and why 70% of these women change advisors within a year of their spouse's death. They discuss bridging the gap between financial competence and confidence by moving away from academic jargon in favor of empathetic storytelling.

The conversation highlights a critical shift in communication: the necessity of listening to understand rather than listening to respond. By using the "TED" (Tell, Explain, Describe) method and the "CASE" storytelling framework, advisors can move beyond technical "table stakes" to build the deep, emotional trust required for multi-generational loyalty.

Resources:

Please send Comments, Questions, and Feedback to: mojo@cannonfinancial.com

Please send First Friday Feedback Submissions to: mojo@cannonfinancial.com

Transcript

Phil: Hi, I am Phil Buchanan with Cannon Financial Institute. We produce the podcast series Monday Morning Mojo, the Cannon Curve, and Cannon Connect. Each of these podcasts invites listeners to email or text their feedback, comments and questions. They are all answered right here on First Friday feed. If you're new to our podcast, go ahead and subscribe to all of four and get engaged by sharing your perspective.

Life is about the journey, so let's go for the ride.

Phil: Well, greetings Cannon Nation. It is Phil here with First Friday feedback for April, 2026. I have got my longtime friend, longtime colleague, and. Quasi mentor with us today, Linda Eaton. Linda is Executive Vice President with the firm. She is one of our most requested and most impactful consultants.

Linda, welcome to first variety of feedback.

Linda: Well, thank you Phil, and it's so fun to find out that your mentor thinks that you are their mentor.

Phil: Well, you know, we can we can sit here and have a mutual admiration society all day long. I'm not sure that our listeners would jump into that, but it is a treasure to have you here.

Linda, March, of course, marked Women's History Month. We were very active in, in profiling several exceptional individuals of all ages and stages in wealth management for the month. As we make the transition now to April, we are in financial literacy month. You know, it's, it's kind of interesting when you think about it, there have been.

Historically, so many barriers that women have faced as it pertains to wealth management, and that's both true for being professionals within wealth management, although that has certainly evolved a lot more, a lot more to go, but a lot of challenges for female clients as well. You have been.

Incredibly impactful in both raising the profile of women leaders within the industry and also in this business of financial literacy. So, Linda, give us your perspective where we are today, both from a women and wealth perspective, as well as financial literacy. How do you, there's a great intersect there, right?

Linda: Oh, there is, and on the one hand, we've made great strides. Phil, you probably remember that 11 years ago I was working on, on a book on advising women investors. And at the time, just as an example, 93% of widows changed their advisory relationships within a year of a husband's death. We've made tremendous progress.

It's now all the way down to drum roll, 70%. Now, I, I, I know that that. Sounds a little, I don't know, sarcastic, and I don't mean it in in that sense because that really is great strides, but there are, there's an enormous opportunity in front of us. Probably everybody listening to this podcast knows that there is the largest transfer of wealth ever in the history of money going on right now.

What a lot of people don't seem to focus on is that right now the majority of those dollars are going into the hands of baby boomer widows. And this is historically a group that has not been tremendously financially literate. Now as a as, as I said a minute ago, we've made great strides, but one of the things I think is really important is the ability to gauge fairly quickly where is a client, where is a prospect in terms of how financially competent and confident they are.

Phil: So competence and confidence. Let's unpack that a little bit. How do you assess without giving somebody a, a, an academic test on the, on the competency side and is on the confidence side, is that more intuitive? How do, how, how do we break that down?

Linda: Well, you know, you have done so many great podcasts on the value of really deep in-depth discovery, and when we ask the right questions and we ask them the right way, we get tremendous answers.

So in terms of competence and I, I think that maybe. Everybody ought to be asking in your family, how do you make financial decisions? One of the things that I've been really sort of keyed into recently is this tremendous sort of social divide that's going on in the United States right now. And I always talk to people about, find out who they read, find out who they're listening to.

Because if you're, you know, in one camp, you think that we're on the verge of the golden age, and if you're on another, you think that we're on the eve of destruction and that should give us. Some kind of real clue as to how involved is this person with financial literature, with, with basic news, for example.

So asking, how do you make financial decisions? How do you get financial information? And I am, you know, this Phil, obsessed with what I call the magic follow-up questions. Why and what else? And tell me more. And you know, people kind of speak in layers and often the first answer you get is not the real answer.

So why and what else? And tell me more until you as an advisor have what you think is a, is a pretty deep and workable understanding of where they are in terms of their knowledge base. How much do they know in terms of confidence? What's been your history with making financial decisions? And, and I go back to those, you know, those legions of baby boomer widows.

I was at a wedding fairly recently with a recently widowed old friend whose husband had been a, a very, very successful physician. And this woman told me that she had never in her life written a check. Now that's somebody who is not financially competent and widowed and now in charge of a fortune. So you know, what's been your history with this in terms of confidence?

I think it's great to just outright ask how confident do you feel about your ability to make good, solid financial decisions? And then why and what else? And tell me.

Phil: Wow. I I love that. You know, you and I were, were talking in a meeting recently and we were talking about financial literacy month and didn't surprise me at all.

You did your Google search, your AI search, and you went to Mr. Webster in his dictionary, and when you read back to me the factual definition of literacy, you know, it, it caused me to step back just a little bit and say, wow, that, that. That is truly impactful. We all have a broad understanding of what literacy is, but, but give us the definition and what did you take away from those words?

Linda: This is a wonderful time to be alive. If you have thumbs, you can get tremendous information. So I've literally Googled literacy and this is what I got. Literacy is the ability to understand, evaluate, use, and engage with information. Now, this is the important part, I think, to participate in society, achieve goals, and develop knowledge.

And you know, once I read that, Phil, I was thinking I could actually picture sitting with a prospect or maybe a client reading them that definition and saying, where do you think you are with financial literacy? What your ability to engage, to make good decisions, to, to find the right information, to reach your goals.

But it was, I thought it was a really good definition.

Phil: No, that, that really is, you know, one of the things that I hear from many advisors is one part of their, the. Journey. One part of their role, their responsibility with clients is quote unquote, education. I had an advisor I love educating my clients on money.

And, you know, my, my question back to them was, tell me about that process. And one of the things that I've found is. The most successful and impactful. As a matter of fact, we did a podcast on this last month. The most impactful advisors aren't teaching the academic side of financial literacy. They are they're doing what families do.

They are. They are using stories. They're using parables. They're using narratives, examples to get points across. You are one of the. Greatest storytellers that I've had the opportunity to ever partner with. Is that an inherent trait in those who are, are great storytellers, or is that something that gets developed over time?

Linda: Well, in a way, Phil, I would say it's both. There are people who are just basically good at this, but it is a learnable skill. One of the things that we have taught a number of, of, of Cannon participants is how to create a good story that you need a character. The character needs to take action.

There needs to be some sort of structure to it, and then you wa wa wanna add in emotion. So think in terms of CASE, character action. Structure and emotion. I'll, I'll give you a simple example of this. It is easy for somebody in our profession to drown somebody in financial jargon. For example, well should you have this liquidity event and the poor, you know, maybe unsophisticated client now thinks you're talking about a water balloon fight, but you know, you think about passing assets through the generations, we can.

Talk till those proverbial cows come home about the danger of splitting, you know, your assets among a number of different advisory teams, for example. And we can get very, very sort of highfalutin in our language about that. But we could also simply tell a story. I had a client who, there's the character, I had a client who consolidated her assets as she got older.

There's the action to make it easier for her heirs. And there's the emotion. This was done out of love. And the structure is really, it just comes back to. Character, action and emotion. Yeah. And if you can think, because one, you know, this business draws people who like to talk. And one of the things I've noticed in coaching folks is that most of their stories are way too long.

What is the point that you wanna make? Character, action, emotion.

Phil: Yeah. I love that. You know, I, I think back to a couple of the, uh, couple of the podcasts that we had last month on, on this very topic. It seemed that again, these were very, very successful ladies. It seemed that for each of them, empathy played a huge role in how they thought about their journey and their success.

How do, how did the better advisors convey and develop that? Again, it's not a, it, it's not a skillset, it's, it, it's a trait, an empathy trait. How do they develop and display that because again. Not everyone had the great fortune of growing up in the most loving environment where, as, as a family, they were very empathetic.

And so, some people come with, with that as a background, others don't or what do you say the best developing there?

Linda: First of all, let me say that for anybody listening, they should go back and look at some of the, the prior podcasts that you've done on, on these topics because they are so incredibly good that having been said, empathy can certainly be developed.

And it starts with listening with real listening, with active listening. You know, I said a minute ago that this. Profession draws people who are really good at talking. And you know, when you think about that, I, I have a 10 month old granddaughter. This a first time grandmother. It's the most exciting thing in the world, but she's just starting to kind of babble and you know what's gonna happen.

As soon as she says a word, everybody's gonna say, do it again. Do it again. Say it again. And they're gonna have the phones out and they're gonna be recording it. We get so much psychic, a approbation from talking. None of us really, were encouraged, I think as small children to listen. So as adults, as professionals, I think that it is worth doing some research on.

And we've, you know, at Canon we've got all sorts of resources on developing good listening skills. But to be empathetic, first of all, you have to hear what they're saying. And there's a real difference between listening to understand and listening to respond. And for those more seasoned professionals, you don't have to,

Phil: no, stop right there.

Repeat That? That is such a powerful statement. Say that one more time.

Linda: There is a difference between listening to understand and listening to respond.

Phil: That is so good. That is so good. Great. Got Didn't mean to interrupt you, but boy

Linda: that's strong. No, that's fine. I, what I was about to finish it up with was that most of the people who listen to our podcasts are.

They've been in the seat long enough that they should be confident about their ability to explain what needs to be explained or to say what needs to be said or to respond and can relax and really listen. Just one quick thought about this that I think is so intriguing when we are excited about what we're going to say and excited can be either positive or negative, but when we are just dying to like break in and give our like information, the experts will tell us that we stop breathing.

If you find that you are now listening to respond and not understand. Just breathe. Just breathe.

Phil: It is outstanding. Unpacking this a little further, I, I, I think about Nikki McElwain, an advisor that, that we interviewed, runs a, a very successful business, has, has grown that rather dramatically, has expanded her business practice from, uh.

Where she began of, of working with any and all scenarios, and as she has grown in her knowledge and her confidence and her competence, and she has built just a, a, a wonderful business of, you know, very, very successful clients, a lot of business owners, and she was talking about the fact that she had had to, obviously.

Expand not only her knowledge base, but her network, and as I talked to so many individuals last month during Women's History month. All of them seem to have had multiple mentors along the way. They seem to have cultivated a deep network of professionals within their organizations, outside their organizations.

And so I ask each of them for advice that they would give younger individuals coming into the business about the importance of that, and particularly younger women who today have better role models and examples of what. What can truly be a professional career? Any advice that you would offer to younger individuals getting into the business On, on the role of, of the network that they build and develop the mentors that, that they allow into their lives.

Linda: I love that question, Phil. First of all, if you think about the behavioral finance that we've labeled selective attention, that we don't see what's in the world around us, we see the things that we are looking for. The best way to begin to find a mentor is to look for one, to sit in with, with older advisors listening to what they do to that, listen to podcasts like this, to to really, you know, seek out those folks that you can emulate that, that have, little sort of bits of wisdom that you can then take.

Having said that. It takes, I think a fair degree of, and I'm gonna call it humility, to realize that no matter where you are in your career, there is probably somebody somewhere who knows something that it would benefit you to learn. And so I think that this search for the mentor. Is one of those ongoing things.

And sometimes you can get a whole, I don't know, like an encyclopedia of knowledge from one person and sometimes you get basically a paragraph, but it can be a life-changing paragraph. It goes back to kind of listening more than we talk, but I. Seeking out those folks who within, maybe if you're in a big firm or folks like, like our, our Canon peers who have been in the business for a very, very long time and truly love to share their expertise.

But I think everybody in this business should be on the lookout all the time for people who can help them get better at what they do.

Phil: You know, I, I you saying that takes me back to two conversations that I had last month. One with Terry Carlson, who is chair of the CFP board, and then with Melissa Holding, who is head of Wealth for Huntington.

And both of them are exceptional leaders. I mean, they've been there, they've done that. They have a tremendous level of loyalty. They talked about the role that they see in leadership is. Coaching and to provide honest feedback, but developable feedback, meaning that, people can take it and go and do something with it.

Again, I've worked for a lot of leaders. You've worked for a lot of leaders, some better than others, but when I think back on those that are exceptional, that's exactly what they did. They were able to provide that, that level of coaching is that. Again, an inherited trait. Is it something that you learn and develop over time?

Because that's such a, such an insightful piece, your thoughts?

Linda: Yeah, and again, I'm gonna say that there are people who seem to be natural coaches, but if you look at, you know, the world of sports, if you look at ob, obviously our, our profession, the people who have taken the time to develop the skill, and again, coaching, coaching, somebody who's coming up in our business is almost like dealing with a client that when we listen more than we talk.

When I can, you know, take the time maybe to sit with a younger advisor. One of the things I've seen with the advisory population is often they'll do a very, very good job in discovery. They'll, they'll create real rapport. They will listen carefully to the client, and then they will craft an appropriate solution and go in and explain it to that client.

Just the way they explained it to everybody else, whoever came through their office, it's as, as though they didn't even learn, learn what they learned in. The discovery process and coaching is very much like that. So often people think, well, you're here to hear, you know, to sit at my feet and, and sort of soak up my wisdom.

I first wanna know about you. I wanna know where you think that you're strong and where you think that you might need shoring up, and what you think the future holds for you so that we can coach to the individual as much as the role. You know, so much of what we do always comes back to what we've talked about already, empathy and listening.

Phil: Lauren Davis, who with Bessemer Trust in in their Atlanta office. Almost said those exact words because I asked her, for key learnings that she had had she's not early career. She's not late careers. Guess mid career would be the right way to define it. But she taught about the fact that it was those communication skills.

And developing and honing that had accelerated her growth much more than the mechanics of how trust or investment strategies or tax strategies. She said, you know, you can, you can find those pieces. Those are table stakes, but that, that. That communication piece is so important. Great insight. I wanna go back and I suppose it's this intersection that you talk about between, between confidence and competency and really thinking about.

Any client really that, that has a challenge. You talk a lot about ensuring that people feel heard and it ties into listen more than you talk. What changes in the emotional state in the level of trust that a client or a potential client has in their advisor? When that client or potential client feels heard what changes what happens to their psyche?

Linda: We all know now, thank goodness for behavioral finance. We know for sure that clients make financial decisions from the emotional part of the human brain. And anybody who's listened to these podcasts knows that we talk about this all the time,

Phil: right?

Linda: But so understanding their emotions and. Asking questions.

One of the things that people will often do would say, well, how would you feel if you, you know, ran out of retirement funds at, you know, age 72 or whatever? And how would you feel? We wanna know how a client would feel, but it's a terrible question.

Phil: Right.

Linda: And the reason it's really kind of funny. How would you feel.

Is an evil, sneaky, closed end question that masquerades as open-ended, because when you think about it, there are only two possible answers, good or bad. And, and, and now it gets worse. One of the answers is almost always stupid. So if I say to you, how would you feel if you ran out of funds? Well, obviously you're gonna feel bad.

And if you tell me. That I haven't learned anything. So when we get clients to tell us stories, and we talk about this a lot, something I learned from of all places, the FBI was that when the FBI trains agents to interview witnesses and suspects, they want the whole story. And so they have begun to teach their agents something called the TED Talk.

Tell me, explain, describe. And when you think about that, I was on a, a panel several years ago with Mitch Anthony, who has written, you know, a number of books on client care, our industry. And one of the things that he told that group that's really stayed with me was he always asks every new prospect who looks like they're going to become a client, tell me your first experience with.

He's got some great stories about this. One man said, let me think about this. I'm seven years old. I'm sitting on the couch and it's kind of strange 'cause the couch is in the driveway and we're being evicted now. That's the kind of thing that most. Advisors never hear from a client because they don't ask those kinds of questions.

But when you think about that, do you suppose that that experience at age seven had anything to do with how this now adult person makes financial decisions? I, I'm, I'm pretty sure that the answer would be yes. So asking some of those questions that are maybe we, we considered to be a little further afield, but really get to know what is their relationship with money.

You know, we come back to what we've been sort of dancing around here in terms of like competence and confidence and. Basically, everybody that we talk to will fit into a kind of matrix here. If you think about somebody who is, you have discovered, who is both confident and competent, they've handled money before, maybe they've run a business, they just, from their very, you know, the questions they ask you, you understand that they are both the.

Confident and competent, then who do we then become as the advisor? Then we need to partner with these people and I see, you know, advisors who just kind of are who they are. When you've got somebody who is highly competent, but they don't quite believe it, maybe they haven't really handled money in the past, but they're well educated and well read.

I'm thinking about these baby boomer wi widows who maybe don't wanna partner as much because they're not confident. They wanna a coach so that they can become confident. When you've got somebody who is neither, they haven't handled money, they aren't confident about it, these people need a guide and we need to literally tell them what to do and then they will appreciate that.

This is the kind of person that you don't wanna give three options to give them only two, so that they feel. Again, that they can handle it with the person who is not competent but confident. Now, I just wanna repeat this. The person who is not competent, but they are confident, they have really misperceived their own ability to manage money.

These people need a protector. And you know, sometimes, and, and again, they're, they're a little bit rare, but when you do have somebody like that, where we see this a lot is, for example, in heirs. People who have inherited significant wealth, who think they kind of know everything and really know very little.

We have to protect them. We have to protect them from themselves, and sometimes we have to protect our practices in our firm. But when you just think in terms of how confident is this person in his or her ability to make financial decisions, and then how competent are they, which is sort of based on what they've done in the past, you can.

Really channel your ability to help them into the right sort of mean, if you will.

Phil: We are gonna put that, that tho those four scenarios, we'll put those in the show notes because, you know, as I was sitting here listening, I was like, this is more solid goal. We will put that in the show notes so that people can go and review that.

Well, Linda, in, in wrapping up, I think, think back again as we, we started we're coming off of Women's History Month, we're now entering into financial literacy month. And it, it's, it's really a beautiful intersection because we have come so far in both working with female clients and female colleagues and, and making this industry much more professionally attractive as a career for young women who are, are thinking about this as an industry.

We've got great tools and resources to, to provide the financial literacy. But all of this really comes back to communication. It

Linda: does,

Phil: it comes back to the ability of, of engagement of communication. And so if there is if you think of, of one, one thought, one idea that you'd wanna leave with listeners as we're at this beautiful intersection of recognition of both literacy and, and women's role in, in finance what's one thing you want listeners to take away from this intersection?

Linda: Money is so intimate. You know more about your client's financial situation sometimes than their spouse, certainly than their siblings or their best friend. And understanding that these decisions come from an emotional basis, the biggest advice I can give to anybody is listen more than you talk.

Phil: With that.

I'm gonna call that a wrap because I, I have listened to, again, solid goal for the last 25 minutes. I hope our listeners have, have gotten a tremendous amount out of this. I know that certainly I have. Linda, thank you for all you do, both in the work in the industry of helping advisors, male and female, be more impactful with their female clients, and especially for the work that you do on.

The literacy aspect of, it's not about the technical, it is about the emotional connection that you develop and how you communicate with your clients, both strong, strong pieces. Linda, thank you again for being part of First Friday feedback.

Linda: It's a privilege and a pleasure. Thank you.

Phil: First writing Feedback is a production of Cannon Financial Institute, executive Producer.

Our first writing feedback is Sarah Jones. Editing and mixing is done by Danny Bruner. A special shout out to Kieran Abbott, an intern here at Cannon who has put forth a tremendous amount of effort. In bringing Women's History Month to life and has shepherded all of the podcasts, she's our unsung hero for the month here, and thank you for all you do.

So on behalf of my guest, Linda Eaton and all of the faculty and staff here at Cannon Financial Institute, wishing you a fantastic month of April. We'll see you in May.