Bullshit on Stilts: Tackling the bullshitology of financial decisions.
Join two financial brains turned podcast hosts unleash their wit and wisdom drawing on vast financial backgrounds. Using highly-tuned bullshit sniffers they call out the clichés, crap spackle and flapdoodle spewed by so-called experts across the landscape of financial advice. Identifying as doctors of bullshitology you can count on your hosts to bring you a lively if not deadly mix of serious analysis, hijinx, and tomfoolery. All within a 99.1% bullshit free safe space.
Bullshit on Stilts: Tackling the bullshitology of financial decisions.
What's with the name?
Keli and Mark discuss where the name, "Bullshit on Stilts" comes from and share their perspectives on helping folks focus on money related decisions rather than products.
We love to hear your thoughts, questions, and ideas. Send us a text!
Developing your financial bullshit sniffer one episode at a time.
Welcome to Bullshit on Stilts, a podcast hosted by two guys with vast financial backgrounds and great bullshit sniffers who call out the cliche crap, spackle and flap doodle spued by so-called experts across the landscape of financial advice Identifying as doctors of bullshitology. You can count on your esteemed hosts okay, maybe knuckleheads, bullshitology. You can count on your esteemed hosts okay, maybe knuckleheads to bring you a lively, if not deadly, mix of serious analysis, hijinks and tomfoolery, all within a 99.1% bullshit-free safe space. Let's get after it. Let's talk about where the whole name Bullshit on Stilts came from. Right, it's a funny name, but what do you recollect? How did we come up with that to be the name for this podcast?
Speaker 2:Well, the original derivative of this was from an English philosopher by the name of Jeremy Bentham back in the late 1700s, early 1800s, who, in a scathing response to some legislation, came up with the term. Well, this is nothing but rhetorical nonsense nonsense upon stilts and so we took that in a conversation to bullshit on stilts as it relates to financial services.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we were. If I recollect right, we were talking about how, when you're in the world of finance and we view ourselves as coaches and mentors and we collaborate with people on decisions, when people find out you're in a financial service background or whatever, they immediately associate you with the sell side industry of financial services, including insurances. So and that sellside industry is a unique dimension of that industry this becomes more of how do we set ourselves apart? How do we tell people? No, that we're here to bring our experience, knowledge, know-how to the table to help them arrive at better decisions, not to solicit you a product, but for your ability to then go out and purchase the product that makes the most sense to you, given the brainstorming collaboration that was done with one of our facilitators.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so go forth and multiply based on your best interest is what we do, because we separate out sound decision-making from a product.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, so that's a big component of it. Why is that such a?
Speaker 2:big deal, though, because the usual way of engagement since the nineties, maybe even back to the eighties, was I'm here to sell you a product, and so everything is framed within the context of me using whatever I can bullshit, kinetics, meaning my body language, or the very words I'm using to rationalize a way for you to purchase this product and for you to say I want this product by the way you've described it to me. I want this product, which may or may not be right for me, which may or may not work out for me. That's where we get the term I was sold, because the engagement starts with the product and the end game is to sell you that product. Well, we start with what's all the thinking that needs to go into first determining what I need, what are the issues that I have, financial issues, how do we shake all of that out? And then what might be solutions towards correcting or bettering whatever my issues?
Speaker 1:are, yeah, the way you just described it. It sounds like every other financial firm out there. We talk to you, we help you figure your stuff out, we hold your hand through these things. We do all these things. We're part of the Better Business Bureau, so if you're saying what everybody else is saying, how does the consumer determine how we're at decision point?
Speaker 2:We're not full of bullshit, yeah the problem is that when we have that engagement, when we start that dance, we go over to the jukebox and we press BS and the same 45 record goes on. I'm here to give you sound advice, to help you arrive at. The products that I'm attempting to sell to you are exactly what you need, because I'm acting in your better interest. You can trust me, and we cow and snow the consumer who starts developing this skill set for shutting down, becoming defensive, developing biases that just don't arrive miraculously out of the seafoam. These are things that are acquired skills or reactions to the sell job, and so we start this BS already starting. They're starting to not really think through their biases, but they've been acquired. Why? Because they don't want to get sold. Because what are we doing on the sell side? The brokers trying to sell them, and we've got this really weird dance going. That's what we have, and so that's where it all starts, and so what we do is say stop. No, this is not the way this dance is going to go. Stop the music.
Speaker 2:Here's how we engage. It's different. The prelude is even different. It starts with asking questions and then asking questions in a way to where you are saying that we are coming at this differently than the usual. I'm here to help you. It becomes apparent. We're here to help you because we've engaged in a different mode of dialogue and it's from there to where the consumer's defenses start to drop. They become more engaged, they are more receptive to the skill sets that we bring to bear on it and we start a new way of looking at. How do we constructively start looking at what we need to do to act more in our better interest and go farther than multiply our better interest? Because we're making better decisions, because we're coming at it differently.
Speaker 1:So do you think that, because the conversation evolves differently, that the experience is different, what causes that participant to have a sense of trust that this is going to be different? It's not going to end with a product, right?
Speaker 2:You know there's a very famous psychologist by the name of Carl Rogers who said when doing therapy, if you let the patient talk long enough and you just ask questions and sometimes they're challenging questions they kind of arrive at what the problem is and what they need to do about it. We kind of take that same approach. We're not trying to steer, we don't game it with certain questions or bring up fear or greed or other triggers that get them to start thinking a different way. And now we're off of rationality. What can I do to advance or protect my better interest? We're getting into the dance of sales.
Speaker 2:We've started into the sales process and we don't do that. It's more conversational. So we're able to plumb depths and often release a lot of the biases, pent-up decisions that need to be addressed. Because we create a space to where you're able to do that and we're starting to address all of these things that lie buried, unresolved, not thought about. The fear grows on it and we're just able to start through conversation, start getting access to really where the fears are, where the concerns are financially, and then start talking about way. Getting back to Carl Rogers so how do you want to come at this?
Speaker 1:So how important do you think it is that our process doesn't solicit products? Is that just a cliche or is it a fundamental differentiating? There's no longer a conflict of interest behind the door.
Speaker 2:Number three yes, and because there is not a conflict of interest or a reward financial reward for recommending a particular product. It does drop that. Even if it's on a subconscious level with us, it's dropped. If there is financial reward or a conflict of interest, however that plays out and manifests itself, you're going to skew your conversation. It's human nature. You're going to skew it toward that benefit that you want to realize. You're not going to do it any other way.
Speaker 2:And as soon as the other side knows that this is way it is, I'm here with my colorful brochures. You know where I'm going with this, despite what I say. So, yeah, a lot of us say the same thing and we say you know we're here, we're your stewards, we treat you like family, I make sure you understand everything that you're getting into. That's all blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Where we're different is we have no brochures, we have no products to sell. We're about resolution, bringing clarity and you having a better understanding of where you are financially and maybe there isn't a problem. So we're not going to create one where there isn't, because I've got a product solution for that. So just in the very nature, in how we engage, it becomes very clear and then the pattern just continues to where we're able to actually have meaningful conversations with individual that result in you resolving major issues financial issues and you understand that they are in your better interest and not because you were told they were Big difference. There's an underlying angst. Did I really need this?
Speaker 1:I I know I said I needed it.
Speaker 2:At the end, I nodded and I signed. But is this really what I, what I need, or was I that?
Speaker 1:snowed or cowed, and I think more people in that scenario, leaving the office having purchased x or y or what have you, they're not only asking themselves that, but they're also busy rationalizing why they just did that. So the intellect the technical side of the brain, saying why did you do that, or should I have done that? Is that a right thing? Will I regret this? The emotional side, which is probably where oftentimes some of these decisions come from, is busy trying to protect the fact that they help make that decision. That's the self-rationalizing. Everything's going to be hunky-dory, and so I think there's that twofold coming on, and maybe under another topic, we can jump into the fact that as individuals, we are the biggest bullshitters on stilts to ourselves.
Speaker 2:Indeed, we are. Yeah, good point. And a lot of that is reaction. It's a defensive reaction that sometimes you know what. Hey, I don't need to do that anymore. That's right you don't. So it opens you up to looking at other positive possibilities that before you would have shut down because how they were initially positioned. Yes, it's like the guy that grows up and he just can't go out with girls that are blonde. And the reason was is that when he was two or three and mom was sweeping the kitchen and he'd hide under the kitchen table every once in a while, under the tablecloth would be that broom and it had hit him in the face and it looked like blonde hair. That's how absurd it can be. That's hilarious, all right.
Speaker 1:Good stuff.
