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.

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 Evening, September 19 – Sunday, September 21, 2025
Friday Evening, February 27 – Sunday, March 1, 2026
Friday Evening, September 25 – Sunday, September 27, 2026

(Registration for future dates will open shortly after the conclusion of the current class)