Adviser draws on creativity to illustrate financial concepts

It isn't easy for advisers to illustrate financial concepts for clients, but Carl Richards does just that. 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. But financial advisers increasingly know of him because of the drawings, which he makes freely available on his website. Over the years, a growing number of advisers have 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 that people like his drawings and his finance blog because he has a knack for taking left-brain subjects such as money and investing, and translating them into consumer-friendly messages that recognize the feelings involved. “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, Mr. Richards said. For instance, one adviser told him that a client looked at one of his drawings and blurted out, “I get it now!” Mr. Richards gets it, too. “I think of my drawings as tools for advisers to have better conversations with their clients about issues that matter,” he said. 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.  Mr. Phelps has three of the prints framed on his office wall, and clients frequently notice them 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. One client gazed at the fear-and-greed drawing for a few moments, then turned to Mr. Phelps with an anxious look on his face. “"That's not what we're doing, right?'” Mr. Phelps said the client asked him. A moment later, the client slapped himself on the forehead as though he were saying, “Duh.” Email Lavonne Kuykendall at [email protected]