March 2026
In this thoughtful conversation, host Chris Galeski and Executive Vice President Eric Selter explore the value different generations of advisors bring to client relationships and why age alone doesn’t define wisdom. While life experience offers perspective that can only be earned over time, younger advisors contribute deep technical knowledge, fresh thinking, and tech fluency. Together, they share that Morton’s true strength lies in its team-based approach.
Tune in if you’re interested in…
Watch previous episodes:
Ep. 175 Weaving Resiliency with Gold in a Volatile World with VanEck
Ep. 174 Finding Opportunities in Real Estate with KCB
Eric, you and I were talking the last couple of weeks about the value different generations of advisors offer to clients, we have a wide age range in terms of advisors. And sometimes clients can look at that age as experience. And they're not wrong. There's life experience that is very important in terms of being able to know what advice to give.
But inside our walls, we're all kind of working together to help solve client's problems. Like we just got out of our weekly advisory team meeting where all of the advisors are in the room sharing successes, challenges, and interesting questions. Clients bring up the problems that we're trying to solve, and having the whole room sort of chime in on different pieces of advice.
So I know we look at it a little bit differently, but I was in a prospect meeting a week ago, and I was telling these prospects about another advisor that I was going to have joined the relationship to help support it, and they wanted to make sure that this person has been around a long time, you know, has had some life experience, be able to give advice.
When you think about the value that maybe you or myself or Ian can give our ages range, you're on the young end.
And some of us have the silver hair.
Some of us have the silver hair, and I think that's important. But we also can add value in a number of ways. So like share with me from your perspective, how a younger advisor can still add a lot of value in a client relationship, even though they're relatively new to the industry compared to somebody like Bruce, who's been doing it for decades.
And has silver hair.
And has silver hair.
Yeah, well, I think first, that many clients don't recognize or I should say know that this truly is a team effort. You know, we talk about it, but it really is that way. Like you said, we sat in an advisory meeting and everybody's sharing those experiences and dealing with it so that everybody is still learning and no one is making a decision.
Just, oh, I'm just going to make the decision. I'm going to throw a dart at the board. But the younger perspective is just as important as the older perspective. I sometimes say, I'm going to go into a meeting and say, you do the talking and I'll do the color commentary, because as our founder used to say, I want to be paid for what I think, not necessarily for what I do, but it just it hearkens back for me two years ago, we used to have when we were much smaller, we used to have our meetings in our Casablanca conference room, and Jeff was leading the meeting, and there was everybody was there.
And he asked a question, and a young intern raised his hand and he said, I'll answer that. And I'm looking at the guy like, what is this young whippersnapper doing? He's gonna answer the question. And he gave an incredibly thoughtful answer, one that from my more mature perspective, I would not have seen it from that way. And it made me realize that everybody has a perspective.
Everybody has their unique way of looking at something. So it's good to have that younger generation and them offering for the newer type things and things that are more, more today type of thing. But then it's also good to have that combination where we combine and we get a sense the client gets the strength of both.
Yeah, I remember it was a few years ago. I was talking with Bruce, who's been in more of an investment advisor the majority of his career, helping somebody with investments. Now, Bruce has a lot of life experience, has helped navigate a lot of challenging conversations and decisions people have had to make. But he was telling me a little bit about his situation, something going on for him.
And I said, oh, Bruce, you should do this. And so I was even able to add value into something that he was thinking about for himself, even though he has decades of experience. But it brought me back to when I first started in this industry. It was back in . We were sort of coming out of the financial crisis.
It didn't feel like it at the time. But when you look back at sort of the chart, it looks like we were coming out of the financial crisis and one of the guys on my team, he was in his late s, a very smart guy. He had been investing other people's money for a very long time, and I remember a couple of years into me working with him, he came to me one day and he just looked really stressed out.
And this was back when, you know, between and , they were talking about a double dip recession. The markets were down % in August of , the Federal Reserve was going to open up their piggy bank and print more money and do something called quantitative easing. And I'd never seen him so stressed out. He'd always, you know, calm, cool, collected.
And I said, what's going on? And he told me, he goes, Chris, I don't care if you've been doing this for four minutes or years. We've never lived in a time like this, and no one knows what to do at this time.
Wow.
And that really struck that gave me a little bit of confidence that, you know, a couple of years in, I didn't really I didn't have the confidence that maybe I do today, years later, but it at least helped me realize that, hey, we're all in this together and we're living through this world that's a little bit unknown.
And so we can still help people even though we haven't lived through something like this before.
Right. And that unique perspective of his, he didn't feel like he necessarily could say, I can give you the answer, but I've been through here. So let me tell you how I would deal with it. And it's really important that people understand that your method of dealing with things and the way you look at it is going to be changed by numerous perspectives, and you just got to be able to assimilate all of them, not go down with blinders, but say, I'm going to look at the whole picture right now.
Yeah. And that's one of the things that I really enjoy about our weekly team meetings is we come to those meetings and we say, hey, I've got a client that XYZ is going on for them, you know, how would you approach it? What are your thoughts? Am I missing anything? And we have the whole team sort of talk about different strategies or things to consider to kind of help us reassure that, oh, this is the right direction for them to go.
We should look at these things as well, maybe rewrite a financial plan. So I like the fact that as a team, we're all working together. One of the things when I think about younger people in the industry that are maybe newer advisors, they are so skilled from a financial planning standpoint. Right. They're just coming out of one of the hardest designations to get in our industry, which is a certified financial planning degree.
It's like basically an MBA for our financial planning side of the business, where they go a mile wide and a couple inches deep on so many different categories. So if you're talking with one of them and you're in, you're talking about a concept or actual numbers, they can recite it left and right. I mean, they know exactly what the K limits are, what the HSA limits are, whether or not you can do this versus that.
I mean, they they have that knowledge and it's right there. Whereas you and I, we know that information. It changes every year. Sometimes I try to remember what it was a few years ago. And so it's nice having the younger people in the team that are going through that, that have that fresh knowledge with new updated information to be able to add value.
Right. And here's the beauty of it. With my experience, they've got that information. So now they're presenting something. And I say but let me ask you these questions. Those are questions maybe they didn't think of because maybe they were looking a little more black and white. So they're able to now say, oh, okay, let's assimilate that into the whole picture.
And at the same time, that's how they learn and that's how they get experience, too. I mean, you can listen to Talking Heads all day on television, radio, etc. but the reality is that until you've been through the experience and you have a chance, like with your guy saying no one knows what to do, now say, but I know how we want to approach it.
I know how we want to think about it. And so the beauty of our younger generation is that they're learning that because they've got the the, I'll call it the black and white knowledge. And now we all kind of mesh that together and we make a team.
We do make a team. And I think that that's a really important point of how we design things. Most other firms your advisor is your person. They're not really collaborating with very many other people or other advisors to kind of give you that advice. But here we have that team approach, and we purposely ask people like you and myself to be mentors and partners with our younger team members to help, how do you think our younger advisors can help build confidence in, in the clients that they oversee?
Well, I think them being, first of all, completely honest about when they're dealing with the client. I've always said to people, if somebody asks you a question you don't know, it's okay to say, I don't know, but I'll find out. So I don't expect a younger generation to know everything and nor their experience to hit upon it. But again, because of our teamwork here, they have that ability to say, I'm going to go talk to Eric, I'm gonna go talk to another few of the advisors.
And that's the beauty of us sitting in our in advisory meetings. We said it when, as you said this morning, we're a couple of these questions came up from from experienced advisors. And there was a myriad of different responses. Yeah. And from that, we all took from it what we think is going to be best for that client.
and go back to that client and say, here's what I think is the best answer for you, because it's a conglomerate of all of our answers.
Yeah. We discussed this as a team. And here are the best solutions for you. I mean, not only tapping into advice or strategy, but even just our networks. I mean, you even came to the meeting this morning saying, hey, I've got a client that's looking for a CPA. Here's their situation, and our whole team is going to look at their Rolodex to give you a few options for you, to you and your client to consider.
Right? I mean, it's a big roundtable.
You shared with me a story about flying a plane one time, and I think the person that was supposed to put gas in the plane forgot to put gas in a plane. You flew it up in the air. You realize you didn't have any gas. You turned around and landed it, and you went to that person and said, hey, you forgot to put gas in my tank.
Not cool. But from now on, I want you to be the person to put the gas in my tank. Right? And he was shocked. But your reason for that was because you knew that he was never going to mess up your plane again.
Well, and and I love that story. And it really wasn't me. It was actually a famous pilot by Bob Hoover, I believe it was. And the plane crashed because they put the wrong fuel in, and the linemen thought he was going to get beaten up by by Hoover. And he says, you'll never make that mistake again. You just learned something.
Yeah.
And those kinds of life lessons. But believe me, in flying, there's a lot of life lessons you learned when you're out flying and say, I'll never do that again.
And when you share that story and you bring up the fact that the younger person might have the courage to say, you know what, I don't know, but I'm going to find out. That's that's sort of the same thing. They're never going to forget that answer because they help solve that problem. And I just think of that as a beautiful thing as it relates to our team, their growth, their learning, and then how they serve clients.
Being able to have the confidence say, I don't know, but let me go ask the team and then figure out the answer. And I've lived through it, but we're all working together consistently.
Absolutely. And not only that, but they're going to continue to grow with that client and probably, maybe the client's next generation when I'm not around. So I'll look to them to .
The other part that younger generations can have an edge over even some even even myself, is the technology aspect. They are so good with technology and, you know, having different calculators or access to different things to help solve problems that I didn't even know existed.
That is true and not for everybody, because I must admit, I'm kind of a tech geek and I really love technology. That theory at my house is that if I ever die, my wife will never watch television again. But. But it's true. They do have. And then they also bring you perspective. The whole thing. Now with the ChatGPT and all the AI.
I mean, at first I kind of resisted it. Not that because I didn't know how to use it. I didn't like the idea. But now you realize sometimes it's okay to go ahead and use that technology and kind of see another perspective again.
And, and you having the years of experience, you you can put the right information in or set the right context to get the answer that you want. If you just kind of go in blind, you got to be careful. I made a mistake earlier this year with the One Big Beautiful Bill act. We were going to do an episode on the changes for that bill, so I leveraged Google and ChatGPT and some other resources that I had been sent on the one big beautiful bill, and I threw it in there.
They kind of give me a summary to figure out which bullet points I wanted to bring up for the episode. Well, there was a lot that changed in that one big, beautiful bill from March to April till it finally getting past it was pulling information from prior to the final bill, and so the information that I originally had, it was actually wrong.
And I think it was Ian or Beau. I think it must have been Beau that realized that you have to go into the and just say after this date, April of , what were the final things that came from it to give us the accurate information?
Well, let me let me give our audience a little advice. Listen to your Uncle Eric. Just because it's on the internet doesn't mean it's true. So take everything with a grain of salt, as you should with everything in life. Look at the whole picture. Yeah, gather all the information, including the younger folks, the older folks, and then you can ultimately make an informed decision.
I like that, all right. You want to play a fun game? Optimist or pessimist?
Most clients now expect digital tools or mobile access and instant communication. Are you optimistic or pessimistic that technology will strengthen advisor client relationships?
I'm probably I'm probably a little bit in between on that one. I'll be somewhat probably lean, optimistic. It's just that it's another tool for me and for everyone else here to communicate with our clients. It is a rapidly changing world. I was sitting in the doctor's office the other day. Everyone in that waiting room was all sitting there staring at their phone.
So we're like, tied to them and I and I honestly, I can't stand it. Yeah. But if that's the way that everybody needs to communicate and we can do it rapidly because we're in the service business, then I'm not. I don't have a problem with it. So I'm probably a little bit more optimistic than pessimistic.
I'm optimistic that the tools that we can use can add value and help give answers. I'm pessimistic is whether or not it builds a deeper relationship. I think relationships are built on meals and experiences and conversations over just, you know, texting something, you know, via chat or getting, you know, quick information. And in order to best give advice, we need to understand all of the the context behind the decisions that somebody's trying to make.
So I don't want to remove completely the human aspect of it because we're all we all make psychological decisions. Sometimes some of us have a scarcity mindset towards money, some of us an abundance mindset towards money. We have to have that context in terms of making certain decisions and having a partner say no, you really you really need to pull back or no, you really should try to do this because if you don't spend this $, in the family trip, are you going to look back and regret that you didn't have that experience with your family?
I don't disagree with you. I would say, though, that that type of response, if it was that kind of question, is not going to be done via text or a quick email that's going to be in a phone call or we have a more in-depth discussion. But I do think the technology for the things that, hey, by the way, do I have enough balance to do this?
Can I send the can I send a check out today? I'm going to do that. The basic things that's going to be important because people in this fast moving world would like an answer now, because then they need to move on to whatever the next thing they have to do. Yeah.
So here's an interesting one. Again on the AI technology.
AI tools can now build a basic financial plan in minutes. Are you optimistic or pessimistic that human advisors will remain indispensable in the age of automation?
I'm. I never take this with a grain of salt. I don't know if you know this. I'm in the advisory business, but I'm completely optimistic that you will still need the human element. And I think if anybody who came to our symposium knows they did a great they did a great session on that where I answered the other question to build.
I kind of build the plan and then, our partner, Mike riddle got up there and said, I have a lot of questions to ask you. Yeah. I it does not know you that that that's, that's not going to be able to I don't think is going to be able to replace or make that personal thing all that knowledgeable about your kids and about your health and about it's just not going to be there.
So if you want to just build it, you know, you got to a very small amount and you just want to build a basic what's a good allocation? Fine. I could see you doing that. Yeah. But if you really want financial advice, you really want to get the most life out of your wealth. You really need to have an advisor that's going to be there and saying, I know you, you know me.
We're going to do this together.
I, I couldn't agree more with you that sessions is going to be released here, I think, in the coming weeks. I'm really excited for the people who missed it to be able to see it. So it kind of goes back to our conversation earlier today when we were even talking about running a financial plan or projection for somebody, and one of the advisors in the room says, I think all clients want to see the blue bars go up, meaning that their wealth grows over the course of their life.
And a lot of us actually question that. Like we actually disagreed in some respects, saying that having the blue bars go up over time wasn't didn't mean that you won. Having them not run out while you're still alive meant that you won. But if you spent an extra $, a year taking family vacations or helping out your kids, or paying for your grandkids college, and you had less money at years old, then not doing that, you would still find success if those were the values or the things that you wanted to do.
Right? It's definitely about those values. Yeah, but I is not going to help you get there in my opinion. It's going to say, here's the black and white of it. Now we got to talk about what are your values. How do they fit into your money. Those are important conversations to have.
Eric, thank you so much for joining me today and talking about the different generations of advisors and how they can add value. Obviously, life experience is extremely important, but having somebody young, eager, and hungry is also extremely valuable too.
Couldn't agree more.
