The Power of Listening: How Mindfulness Can Transform Your Practice
About Planning & Beyond®
Planning & Beyond® is a podcast for financial advisors who want to go beyond the numbers and build deeper, more trusted client relationships. Hosted by Ashley Quamme, a licensed therapist and financial behavior specialist, the show helps advisors better understand the psychology, emotions, and behaviors that shape client conversations — covering topics like discovery and prospect meetings, difficult money conversations, client psychology, trust-building, and applying behavioral finance strategies in real advisory work.
The Three Domains of Freedom
In this episode, George walks through the three domains of freedom that form the backbone of his latest book: each moment is yours, your life is yours, and civilization is yours. These domains give advisors and their clients a framework for thinking about freedom not as an abstract ideal, but as something that can be actively practiced moment to moment, across a lifetime, and at the level of society as a whole.
Mindfulness as a Professional Skill
George explains why mindfulness isn't just a personal wellness practice — it's a professional skill that helps advisors listen more fully, show up with greater authenticity, and create a space where clients feel safe enough to share what they really want. Without that safety, George argues, advisors are often only getting a partial, guarded version of what a client actually needs.
Why Presence Matters in Financial Planning
Ashley and George discuss why simply being present — rather than mentally rehearsing the next question or the next recommendation — changes the entire dynamic of a client conversation. Clients can tell the difference between an advisor who is truly listening and one who is waiting for their turn to talk, and that difference shapes how much clients are willing to reveal about their real financial and life concerns.
How Life Planning Helps Clients Move Toward the Life They Truly Want
The conversation touches on how the life planning methodology helps clients articulate goals they may never have said out loud before — and how, once articulated, those goals can be translated into concrete financial strategy rather than staying as vague aspirations.
Why Advisors Need to Know Themselves Before Guiding Clients
George and Ashley discuss the importance of self-awareness for advisors themselves. An advisor who hasn't done their own inner work, George suggests, will struggle to help clients do theirs — presence and self-knowledge go hand in hand.
Beyond the Individual Client Relationship
The conversation moves beyond the one-on-one advisor-client relationship and into the wider role advisors can play in creating a more trustworthy and human financial system. This includes what it means to bring fiduciary responsibility into more areas of life and business, and how financial advisors can take their influence seriously — not just with clients, but in the broader systems they participate in.
About George Kinder
A renowned financial philosopher, entrepreneur, trainer, and designer of relationship- and leadership-based programming, George Kinder is known in the financial industry as the Father of Life Planning. The Harvard graduate has been at the forefront of the financial services industry for decades, spearheading the financial life planning movement that identifies clients' dreams of freedom and then delivers them with entrepreneurial energy.
He founded the Kinder Institute of Life Planning in 2003 after 30 years as a practicing financial planner and tax advisor. George now leads a Fiduciary In All Things (FIAT) movement for corporations and society through his global, London-based startup, The Moules. The Moules launched in 2025 to engage whole companies in the utilization of deep listening skills and fiduciary engagement, bringing as much energy to businesses as life planning brings to advisers and their clients — leading to more productive, collaborative, happier, and profitable workplaces.
Who This Episode Is For
Ashley notes that this conversation is especially useful for advisors who want to bring more depth, presence, and humanity into their work — whether they are early in their careers or decades into practice.