Join us for a deep dive into what’s happening to the right, left, and underneath the active dialogue, and learn how to transform stop/start planning into momentum-driven implementation.
This program is designed to help you hone your counseling skills and maximize your financial ROE² (Return on Expertise and Effort).
The journey to mastering Counseling and Partnering begins with introspection and insight. Develop and test the tools and skills on yourself and fellow attendees before counseling and partnering with prospects and clients through a combination of:
- Deep-dive self-reflection exercises,
- Role plays utilizing two distinct counseling card decks,
- The critical role of thought,
- Practice management tools, and
- Self-developed personal and business tools and action lists.
We suggest that the planning conversations everyone thinks they’re having aren’t the full and true dialogue. It’s in those missing elements of thought and reasoning that progress stutters, stops, and often fails. Together we solve for those missing elements by honing your skills in two key areas: Counseling and Partnering.
| COURSE DETAILS | |
| DATES/TIMES: | Friday, March 20 – Sunday, March 22, 2026 |
| STYLE: | In-person |
| PRICE: | $1,600 (discounts available for SCI Academy members) |
| VENUE: | SCI 6256 Greenwich Drive San Diego, CA 92122 |
| WHO IT’S FOR: | BTC program was designed to help professionals in our industry hone their counseling skills and maximize their financial ROE² (Return on Expertise and Effort). |
Become a Certified Founders Group Associate (CFGA) by attending all 3 days of the
Behind the Conversation program.
The CFGA program is for advisors who would like to partner with the Founders Group to help successful business owners in conflict who desire a resolution, and a path forward.
CFGAs may receive 20% of our Relational Counseling fee (typically $52k) by introducing your business owner clients to the concept and playing a supporting role (2nd chair) in one of our 2-day retreat programs.
Value to CFGAs:
• Help your clients in a way other advisors can’t
• Elevate the level of clients and COIs you attract, engage, and work with
• Receive 20% of Founders Group Counseling fee (typically $52k)
• Develop a much deeper bond with your clients by attending the 2-day retreat
• Participate in creating the solutions and a “path forward” on the 2nd half of day two
• Increase your confidence to approach conflict situations
• Internalize the difference between advising, engaging, and partnering
• A Firsthand Guide to the Founders Group Resource, Tools, and Strategic Relationships
Combine your previous training, unique skills, and technical acumen with our relational counseling and business succession resource tools to deeply bond with your clients and help them find resolution without taking the risk of being the counselor.
Day One Curriculum – Counseling Skills: Gift by Gift
The Receptivity Meter & Relationship Tending
Great advisors are effective trust builders, yet early trust doesn’t have enough fire power to keep clients engaged through the minutia of complex planning. When a client’s receptivity is low, they can’t absorb new technical information, and their emotional commitment to planning will ebb and flow. First, we must assess where they are on the continuum from Ease to Friction to Conflict to Toxicity – personally and with the family members affected by the planning.
- Learn why logic alone will not get the deal done – and what to do about it.
- Learn how to move clients from lack of hope to inspired possibility.
The Receptivity Meter lets you assess the client’s status quo in the moment. Relationship tending invites them to listen and process, and stay engaged in their planning journey.
Day Two Curriculum – Counseling & Partnering Skills: See Past the Line
Slow down to move fast: clarity of problem, clarity of potential solutions
Advisors can find themselves misguided by a Placebo Yes. The client appears to be tracking and moving in the right direction, so the advisors keep moving too. In reality, there’s a firework show of confusion, doubt, and distraction racing through the client’s intellect. Sometimes we have to slow down in the short term in order to move fast in the long term.
- Clarity of problem: invite them to borrow your expertise
- Clarity of possible solutions: invite their innate wisdom to partner with yours
Day Three Curriculum – Counseling & Partnering Skills Continued: Ready for Who
Counseling to Commitment: clarity of implementation
Closing is not about persuasion; it’s about continued counseling and partnering. If you’ve ever had a client say yes, and you find yourself holding your breath waiting for checks and signatures, you’ve used persuasion. If you want the deal to close itself, master the art of counseling and partnering.
- Absorb: discern between a conceptual yes, and a fully absorbed conviction-driven yes
- Allow: empower the client to make their own choice, and be involved in the choice-making
- Activate: owning solution development means they own the action required to solve the problem
Finally, there’s a forum to address the true, underlying obstacles to doing this important work. Learn game changing insights from industry leaders who not only teach it, but attract, engage, and work with business owners and their families to solve their succession planning needs every day.
BTC Future Dates
Friday, September 25 – Sunday, September 27, 2026
(Registration for future dates will open shortly after the conclusion of the current class)
This program is offered by the Southern California Institute
