The Juxtaposition
Early in his career, Kyle Van Pelt — co-founder at Milemarker and host of the Next Mile podcast — heard something from a mentor that stuck with him: "There is undeniable, unmeasurable value in financial planning, but there is very little value in the financial plan."
It's a disorienting idea at first. The plan is the artifact. It's what clients take home, what advisors spend hours preparing, what firms have historically used to demonstrate their value. So how can it contain so little of that value?
The answer is timing. The moment a financial plan is printed and handed to a client, it begins to go stale. Life has already moved on — a raise, a new expense, a change in goals that came up on the drive home. The document captures a snapshot of a conversation that was itself only a snapshot of a constantly shifting reality.
The planning — the process, the relationship, the ongoing conversation — is what endures. That's where the value lives.
From Green Books to Interactive Screens
Anne McPhail, Managing Director at Novare Capital Management, describes exactly how this insight reshaped the way her firm delivers planning.
For years, Novare prepared comprehensive financial plan books — their "green books" — and walked clients through them page by page in client meetings. It was thorough. It was professional. It was also static the moment it left the printer.
Younger advisors at the firm pushed for a different approach: put the plan on screen. Present it interactively. Let the meeting itself be the planning session, not just a review of what had already been planned.
The difference became immediately apparent. When a client pauses midway through a meeting and says, "Oh, I forgot to mention — we're taking a $100,000 trip to Africa next year," the interactive presentation allows the advisor to update the assumptions in real time. The client watches the plan adjust. The conversation deepens. The plan becomes a living thing, shaped by the meeting rather than reviewed in it.
That shift — from document delivery to collaborative exploration — is what separates firms doing planning from firms delivering plans.
Planning Integrated Into Everything
Novare's philosophy isn't just about how plans are presented — it's about where planning sits in the overall client relationship. For Anne, the answer is: everywhere.
"Investment management is important, but the best firms are rooted in integrating planning with investment management." — Anne McPhail, Novare Capital Management
At Novare, planning isn't a standalone service or an annual event. It's woven into every client interaction. Cash flow planning, estate plan review, tax coordination calls with clients' CPAs — these aren't add-ons. They're the fabric of the relationship.
Anne puts it plainly: "You cannot manage a client's money if you don't understand their goals and objectives." Investment management decisions divorced from planning context are just guessing with sophistication. The portfolio exists to serve the plan, not the other way around.
This integration is also what makes client relationships durable. When planning is woven into every touchpoint, clients don't experience their advisor as someone who manages assets — they experience them as someone who understands their life. That's a fundamentally different and much stickier relationship.
The Worst Client
Anne is candid about which client relationships are most fragile — and the answer is instructive for any firm thinking about how to position itself.
The worst client, she says, is the one who engages the firm "simply for portfolio management." Not because they're difficult people or bad clients in any personal sense — but because the relationship has no foundation beyond performance. When markets cooperate, the relationship is fine. When they don't, there's nothing else holding it together.
A down quarter — or even a down year — shouldn't be an existential threat to a client relationship. But it is when the relationship is only about returns. The client has no other reason to stay, no other dimension of value to lean on.
When planning is integrated, a rough market period becomes a planning conversation: "Given what just happened, let's look at how your timeline and goals are affected." The advisor's value is visible precisely when markets are making everyone uncomfortable. That's when the relationship gets stronger, not weaker.
What This Means for Your Firm
The distinction between financial planning and the financial plan isn't semantic. It's architectural — it describes how planning fits into the firm's operating model and what kind of client relationships the firm is building.
- Make planning interactive and dynamic — Present plans on screen, update them in real time during client meetings, and let the conversation shape the output.
- Integrate planning into every client touchpoint — Don't silo planning as a separate service. Cash flow, estate, tax coordination — weave these into the regular relationship cadence.
- Ensure planning conversations include both spouses — Plans made with only one partner present are incomplete and often don't survive major life transitions.
- Use planning as the anchor of the relationship — The plan isn't a deliverable. It's the ongoing reason for the relationship.
- Audit your client mix — How many relationships are portfolio-management-only? Those are the ones most at risk when markets turn.
The firms that thrive through market cycles, through wealth transfers, through the inevitable changes in any client's life — are the ones whose relationships are built on planning, not just portfolios.
From the Next Mile Podcast
This article is drawn from a conversation with Anne McPhail, Managing Director at Novare Capital Management, on the Next Mile podcast — hosted by Kyle Van Pelt, co-founder at Milemarker. Watch "Serving Clients in Life's Most Difficult Moments with Anne McPhail" on YouTube.