Illustrating man: Adviser gaining fame as sketchy character

It’s not always easy for advisers to illustrate financial concepts for clients. That’s where Carl Richards comes in.

Mr. Richards, who runs Prasada Capital Management in Park City, Utah, a fee-only practice with about $30 million in assets under management, draws simple pictures that deftly explain difficult investment concepts. He also blogs about personal finance for the New York Times and will publish a book based on the blog early next year. In addition, Mr. Richards gives talks about personal finance and investing on a regular basis.

But financial advisers increasingly know of him because of the drawings, which he makes freely available on his web site. Over the years, a growing number of advisers have regularly downloaded the illustrations to put up in their offices or give to clients.

“I had one adviser tell me he had a prospective client in for a meeting, and my fear and greed sketch was out on his conference room table,” Mr. Richards said. “The client looked at it and said: ‘This has been my story, and you need to figure out how to help me stop doing that.’”

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Mr. Richards said people like his drawings, as well as his finance blog, because he has a knack for taking left-brain subjects like money and investing and translating them into consumer-friendly messages that recognize the feelings involved.

One fan is adviser Greg Phelps, president and wealth manager at Redrock Wealth Management LLC, in Las Vegas. “People are very visual, and it opens up conversations,” he said in an interview.

They are also thematically suited for an adviser’s office, he says. He has three prints framed on his office wall, and clients frequently notice them either on their way into, or out of the office. “They will stop and ponder them, and you can see the wheels turning in their heads as they process it,” he said.

Mr. Richards understand the process. “We have emotional and behavioral issues around money that involve the right side of the brain,” he said. People can connect with those behavioral issues when they understand how it all fits together, he noted.

For instance: one adviser told him that a client looked at one of his drawings and blurted out: “I get it now!”

Mr. Phelps recalls one client who gazed at the fear and greed drawing (pictured above) for a few moments. He then turned to Mr. Phelps with an anxious look on his face.

“‘That’s not what we’re doing, right?” the client asked. A moment later, the client slapped himself on the forehead as though he were saying ‘Duh.’

“It hits people over the head like a brick,” Mr. Phelps said. “That is the beauty of some of his drawings.”