Transforming Client Relationships Through Mindset Assessments With Colleen Bowler

Colleen Bowler is the Co-founder of C&J Innovations, a firm that provides tools and assessments to help financial advisors build deeper, life-centered relationships with clients beyond just the numbers. She is the Co-creator of The Passport Package, a mindset-based assessment system bridging the human and financial sides of planning. As a Certified Financial Planner with nearly 30 years of experience, Colleen previously built a top-one-percent advisory firm managing over $500 million in assets and completed a succession plan in 2020. Outside of her business ventures, she has co-authored a book and remains committed to mentorship, generosity, and helping others achieve balance in business and life.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [2:22] Colleen Bowler discusses how C&J Innovations helps financial advisors connect the human and financial sides

• [5:11] Why questions and curiosity drive stronger advisor–client conversations

• [8:08] How advisors use the assessment results to open deeper discussions

• [9:51] Helping advisors ask better questions without feeling clinical

• [14:21] How assessments uncover client behaviors and emotional patterns around money

• [19:16] Colleen explains how the assessments complement financial risk tools like Riskalyze

• [25:23] The role of AI in freeing advisor time and enhancing human-centered planning

• [32:05] Differences between the Expansion Passport and Walk Away assessments and when to use each
  

In this episode…

Many financial advisors excel at the technical side of planning but struggle to deeply understand what clients truly value. Traditional discovery meetings can feel clinical, rushed, or incomplete, leaving advisors without the human insights needed to build stronger relationships. How can advisors uncover what matters most to clients in a fast, scalable, and meaningful way?

Colleen Bowler, an expert in mindset-based financial planning and client engagement, explains how helping clients reflect on their own readiness, wellness, longevity, and partnership mindsets leads to richer conversations and deeper trust. She illustrates how five-minute assessments give advisors immediate clarity on client priorities, reduce meeting time spent on basic data gathering, and spark constructive dialogue that might not happen otherwise. Colleen encourages advisors to use these insights to celebrate client progress, strengthen household communication, and shift from purely financial conversations to holistic guidance.

In this episode of The Customer Wins, Richard Walker interviews Colleen Bowler, Co-founder of C&J Innovations, about using mindset assessments to humanize financial planning. Colleen also discusses improving advisor–client conversations, uncovering emotional patterns around money, and using AI to free up time for a deeper connection.

Resources Mentioned in this episode

• Quik!

• Richard Walker on LinkedIn

• Colleen Bowler on LinkedIn

• C&J Innovations

• 10x Is Easier than 2x: How World-Class Entrepreneurs Achieve More by Doing Less by Dan Sullivan with Dr. Benjamin Hardy 

• Who Not How: The Formula to Achieve Bigger Goals Through Accelerating Teamwork by Dan Sullivan with Dr. Benjamin Hardy 

• Dan Sullivan on LinkedIn

• "How Salesforce Is Transforming Financial Services With Michelle Feinstein" on The Customer Wins

• "Cybersecurity Secrets for Financial Services With Paul Osterberg" on The Customer Wins

• "Humanizing Your Brand for Real Impact With Joshua B. Lee" on The Customer Wins

Quotable Moments:

• “We help financial advisors help their clients. It is the way that we have created a process.”

• “Advisors are so good on the financial side, and there are so many ways that they can use it.”

• “What I hope is they can build richer conversations with their clients and go deeper in a much shorter amount of time.”

• “It opens up like a longevity mindset; It opens up like, ‘Do you have a plan in place to be cared for? '”

• “I think the risk assessment is important, but I think that's still on the financial side.”

  
  

Action Steps:

1. Use brief mindset assessments before client meetings: These fast tools reveal what clients care about early so advisors can focus on meaningful dialogue.

2. Revisit client assessments annually: Tracking mindset changes year over year helps advisors show progress and strengthen long-term engagement.

3. Compare partner responses to uncover communication gaps: Reviewing results side by side gives couples clarity and helps advisors guide aligned financial decisions.

4. Celebrate client wins within each mindset category: Highlighting progress reinforces positive behavior and builds trust while motivating clients to follow through on goals.

5. Leverage AI tools to free up time for human connection: Automating routine tasks gives advisors more space for deeper conversations and more personalized guidance.

   
   

Sponsor for this episode...

This is brought to you by Quik!

At Quik!, we provide forms automation and management solutions for companies seeking to maximize their potential productivity.

Using our FormXtract API, you can submit your completed forms and get clean, context-rich data that is 99.9% accurate.

Our vision is to become the leading forms automation company by making paperwork the easiest part of every transaction.

Meanwhile, our mission is to help the top firms in the financial industry raise their bottom line by streamlining the customer experience with automated, convenient solutions.

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Episode Transcript:

Intro: 00:02

Welcome to The Customer Wins podcast, where business leaders discuss their secrets and techniques for helping their customers succeed and in turn, grow their business.

Richard Walker: 00:16

Hi, I'm Rich Walker, the host of The Customer Wins, where I talk to business leaders about how they help their customers win and how their focus on customer experience leads to growth. Some of my past guests have included Michelle Feinstein of Salesforce, Paul Osterberg of Security Basecamp, and Joshua B. Lee of StandOut Authority. Today, I'm speaking with Colleen Bowler, co-founder at C&J Innovations and the co-creator of The Passport Package. Today's episode is brought to you by Quik!, the leader in enterprise forms processing. When your business relies upon processing forms, don't waste your team's valuable time manually reviewing the forms.

Instead, get Quik! using Quik!. You'll be able to generate completed forms and get back clean, context-rich data that reduces manual reviews to only one out of 1000 submissions. Visit quickforms.com to get started. All right.

I'm excited to introduce today's guest, Colleen Bowler, a CFP, is the co-founder at C&J Innovations and the co-creator of the passport package, starting at 27, is a divorced single mom with $50,000 in debt. She built a top 1% advisory firm, managing over half $1 billion before implementing a successful succession plan in 2020. Now, she's on a mission to transform how financial advisors connect with clients by systematizing the human side of financial planning through their proven, mindset-based approach. Colleen helps advisors deepen client relationships, increase engagement, and build practices that thrive on genuine human connection. Her philosophy keeps it simple, keeps it human. Colleen.

Welcome to The Customer Wins.

Colleen Bowler: 01:56

Hi Rich.

Richard Walker: 01:58

So happy.

Colleen Bowler: 01:59

Yeah. Very excited.

Richard Walker: 02:02

Okay, for those who haven't heard the show before, I just love to talk to business leaders about what they're doing to help their customers win, how they build and deliver a great customer experience, and the challenges of growing their own company. So, Colleen, let's understand your business a little bit better. I know the bio said a bunch of things, but in your own words here, how does your company help people?

Colleen Bowler: 02:22

The basic way that we do this is we help financial advisors help their clients. It is the way that we have created a process that connects the human side to the financial side. Advisors are so good on the financial side, and there are so many ways that they can look at things differently. But what about the human side? And so it's a way to really connect the two, because behind every financial decision is a human experience.

Richard Walker: 03:00

So when I started Quik!, I was a financial advisor and I had to make a choice. Do I want to stay in financial advisement and help a few hundred clients, families, etc.? Maybe a thousand, I don't know. Or do I want to focus on the software and help thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of advisors help millions of clients? And that's kind of the road I went down.

I was like, I'm going to help them get time back in their hands. So one of the questions I've been thinking about with you is if you give an advisor time through technology, what do they do with that time? How do they actually go win more clients and do they build themselves? What do they do?

Colleen Bowler: 03:35

Oh I hope. Do you want do you want to say what I hope? Because yeah. They get to do whatever they want to do. Through our quick five-minute assessments, what I hope is they can build richer conversations with their clients and go deeper in a much shorter amount of time so they can connect with others. I think what you're saying rich advisors have a waterfall impact, actually. Business leaders, you know, they and they are business leaders have such a waterfall impact that if we can get them out from running the company, which I think right now, 60% of advisors time approximately is spent running the company. Just think, if we can free up any of their time to be more forward-facing, to be more connected to clients, it's going to have a bigger and bigger impact.

Richard Walker: 04:35

So that's my premise to and I love this industry because it's full of people who truly want to help others have that positive impact on their lives, their futures, their their wellbeing, etc. and I'm just kind of wondering, because I have never answered this question, I think there's this inherent kind of idea if I give somebody their time back, they'll do something to improve themselves. And I view what you're doing is one of those things of improving yourself. You're a better communicator and you have more interaction with people. So let's talk a little bit about your product and your process then. So how do you actually take that person interested in doing better?

How do you take them through a process to do better?

Colleen Bowler: 05:11

Well, it's through questions. And I think you and I have talked about how important questions are and curiosity in going deep in a client relationship, no matter who your client is. And that can be a team member or that can be a direct client. And so our quick five-minute assessments which you took. So that was exciting. I know it's fun. Yeah.

You know you saw it's about mindsets. It's about where we are where the prospect or client is in eight different mindsets. It's not about how much money they have or or what accounts they have, but it's about their mindsets, their mindset about caring not only as an advisor very concerned about where estate documents are and if they're even there. But what about passwords? What about all these electronic things that's become really very important?

And does somebody know. So it opens up like a longevity mindset. It opens up like do you have a plan in place to be cared for if something happens to you like a broken wrist. But if something happens and you can't work or you're older and you need long term care, what's your plan? Right.

Those are hard conversations sometimes for advisors. So if they can get a prospect or client to take a quick five minute assessment to say, here's where they are now, here's where they want to be in their future, you've just given the advisor back a lot of time because they themselves a prospect or client has told the advisor what's most important to them.

And yeah, I believe. You know, I was still a CFP, and I've been in the industry almost 30 years. I think we think we know what should be important to them, but we really don't. And so if we can get them to prioritize and then build a partnership together to get it done, how great is that?

Richard Walker: 07:23

Yeah. Well, and so people have a better understanding if they're listening to this. The assessment is a series of questions with ratings on various capacities of your financial life. And I don't know if I'm doing it justice, but it's asking you questions about how you feel about certain things, how you're doing certain things. And I admitted, like I'm low on the estate planning side.

Yeah. The password thing. I have that figured out. I have the backups, I have the methodology. Because I'm in tech, I have to write.

Colleen Bowler: 07:53

12 out of 12. Yeah.

Richard Walker: 07:56

So it's an interesting assessment because you're right. It's asking questions. But the advisor is not doing the asking. It's in the privacy of that person doing it for themselves. Right.

And now the advisor is getting that assessment back. Is that what's happening?

Colleen Bowler: 08:08

Yeah. The advisor gets the report back. The individual taking it does not. They have the report on the screen which gives them action items. I don't know about you.

I'm really tired of taking assessments that say, you know, thank you for your time when you're all done. And then they don't tell you anything, right? Yeah. So this comes up and it says, here's what you scored on where you are now and where you want to be in your future, but then gives action items and that actual report goes to the advisor. So the advisor or their team either sends it directly to the prospect or client, or they use it in the meeting and they can use those action items. We purposely put 8 to 10 action items on each mindset, which is way too many, right? But that's how the advisor easily builds partnership with the client by saying, Rich, okay, on this caring mindset, you know, your biggest concern is the estate. So what is it that we want to have happen in the next six months?

What can we support you with? What is it that you want to do right? So you take this from broad and make it very narrow, which is just divine, right?

Richard Walker: 09:27

I think if I'm intuiting how this works because I'm not a practitioner anymore, I don't have clients. So I'm thinking that this helps the advisor ask questions without asking questions. I mean, all the upfront assessment questions get asked and it doesn't feel so clinical, like, hey, you got to answer this and answer this and answer this instead. It gives them insights to ask better questions as they go through the process. Is that the intention?

Colleen Bowler: 09:51

Yes. And as they learn, they get. And we have all kinds of things that, you know, that give them other questions to lay in as they're having their meetings. But as they learn, I was just talking with a group of advisors. There's a readiness mindset. You and I know readiness as an emergency fund.

Where are we? And we have a scale of 1 to 12. One says you know nowhere. 12 says I got that handled. Where are we now and where do we want to be?

So that the client, without any conversation with the advisor, as you said, they decide they pick the number. And so this group said, you know, there's a bunch of our clients that have come back, ten 1112 in readiness because, you know, we've had them for years.

And their clients, they're following the advice, right? Yeah, they. Follow our advice. An emergency fund is important. And I'm like, and they're like, we don't want to ask that question anymore. I go, that's a choice. You could choose not to or you could choose to, number one, continue to celebrate that they're doing so well.

And then number two, readiness mindset then shifts from what we know as emergency fund to opportunity. Are we ready for opportunities that come our way? And once we've got that emergency fund bucket ready, we can shift, right? That mindset can shift to opportunity for what I want to plan in partnership with my advisor? Maybe it is to go on a sabbatical.

Maybe it is to open a different brokerage account. Maybe it is to help grandkids with college funding. Maybe it is to help an adult kid. Maybe it is to travel. Right?

Big travel so you kind of can shift it. So that was a really fun conversation with the advisors about. Bases are covered, let's be sure and celebrate like a caring mindset because our coaching is that you have your clients take these assessments every year, five minutes quick every year. And then you can compare, you know, 2023 to 20 24 to 2025. We give them all their return on investment.

What about what are we giving them for return on involvement on the human side? Right. It's so good to give them feedback on the human side. One of the mindsets is wellness. And one of the things we saw, you know, we rolled this out in 2020.

And to a small group, Covid average weight gain was £29. Wellness number. Yeah wellness numbers went down.

Where they are. Now, right? So it is a way that they self. You know, they self select where they are. Now you're not telling them which is great. And then where they want to be you can build that in partnership. So if you see a lot of that don't you think you might start including some wellness tips in your newsletter so it can help with marketing as well?

Richard Walker: 13:12

So there's something in there that you were talking about that I mean, maybe it's just personal to my wife and I. Is that a readiness idea like we have readiness covered? I know.

Colleen Bowler: 13:22

Yeah.

Richard Walker: 13:23

But see, there's a different challenge in that. Like, I think any extreme, there's something driving that extreme. And so not to pick on my wife. I love my wife. She is an excellent saver.

But her idea of safety is to have a ton of money set aside, ready to be used. And it has taken me years to get her to realize she has way more than we need. Set aside. Side not earning not earning gains like it could be not invested. Well because it's her security mindset.

Like readiness is a fear. It's a blanket. And so I think it might even expose certain dynamics in how clients work or think that you can pinpoint and say, I remember when we had a client who was in retirement and would never, ever spend all their money, their behaviors, to get to where they were weren't changing.

Colleen Bowler: 14:11

Yeah.

Richard Walker: 14:11

So I'm curious. I mean, are you seeing advisors have those types of conversations? Are they changing the dynamic of how people treat money and deal with money because of those assessments?

Colleen Bowler: 14:21

Yes. And I love that, I love it. One of the things that we put together is a partner recap. So it would be your wife and you, you'd show the numbers side by side, right? I will tell you, one person in the partnership tends to need more money in cash reserves than the other. That's normal, right?

That's normal. And that allows the advisor to get in there and unpack that with a lot of questions to get to a number that both agree upon. Right. It's very fun. It's magical.

Wellness is another one that tends to have one partner be more wellness-focused than the other. Longevity. That tends to be women because women tend to do the majority of the caregiving right. They're taking care of their parents. They're taking care of young kids.

I can't tell you how often I've heard that. I don't want my sons or daughters to have to do what I'm doing for my parents.

Right. The men are not as concerned about that. Maybe it's because they've heard so often that they're going to die first. I don't know, but. But I think it's because.

Richard Walker: 15:43

We're hunting and gathering right now.

Colleen Bowler: 15:46

Yeah, I think that just opens up a lot of conversations. The other one that's interesting is partnership. I'll tell you a story. A good friend of mine, who's been a colleague for years, called me and said, there's something wrong with this assessment because I had the couple take it. And just like you said, they each took their own.

And the woman who I don't really feel connected with rated me as an 11 and wants to be a 12. And the guy that I have such a great relationship with, he did a four and wants to be a 5 or 6. You know, this is ridiculous. It's not accurate.

I like. Okay, well, you know, he's like, I really get along with it. And I was like, okay. I said, this is just a great place to ask questions. So go into the meeting and when you get to the partnership mindset, ask her, you know you rated where you are now as an 11 and you want to be a 12. Tell me what it is about that that got you to an 11.

And she said, you know, I know if something happens to him, I pick up the phone and I call you, and you and your team will just wrap us in everything we need. I don't, I don't, I'm not worried at all. And she and he goes, you know, he took a deep breath and I think he said that that was lovely. And he said, what else could we do to get to a 12? And she told him a couple of things that, you know, needed a little tweaking.

And he was like, I just so appreciate the feedback. And then he turned to the husband and said, you know, so tell me. And he goes, I really don't care about any relationship with you. You know, what I really care about is the return on investment. And you.

You've done a good job for me. So that's it. And if something happens to her, I'm. You know, I'm fine. So, no, I don't really need to be in partnership with you. And so doesn't.

Richard Walker: 18:00

That implies he was 12? I mean, he just.

Colleen Bowler: 18:03

No, it implies. That he's a four because all he required was return on investment. He didn't want anything connected. And when they got divorced, guess which side he kept.

The wife. Because she wanted to be in a partnership.

Richard Walker: 18:25

Yeah.

Colleen Bowler: 18:26

Got it right. Got it. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah.

Richard Walker: 18:28

When you asked that question, I thought you meant which side the husband kept. And I was confused for a second. Yeah. Yes. The advisor kept a relationship with them.

With my wife. Wow. I mean, I think what's really amazing here is that your assessment is creating opportunities to have conversations that you wouldn't know how to start. Wouldn't know to start. And how would you even come up with this?

I mean, how would you dive into that except in happenstance? So that's really amazing. I'm curious about something else. Colleen. In this industry, I think everybody knows the risk number.

Like I had Aaron Klein on here to talk about Riskalyze turned into nitrogen and all that stuff. How do you think your assessment is different or compares to, or relates with, or complements the risk number that so many people have been focused on?

Colleen Bowler: 19:16

I think the risk number still focuses on financial. Our assessments focus on the human side. It's just two different things. Do I think the risk assessment is important? Yes.

And there's just a lot of financial tools. And Riskalyze is one of them that does a really good job on the financial side. But as I said, on the human side, we really have very few things to look at. And so they can be woven together easily. They can be woven together.

And I'm just trying to think of it.

Richard Walker: 19:56

Well, I partly asked. Because when you talk to somebody about risk, especially the person who's not as financially savvy, I think it opens up a lot of conversational opportunities as well, because you start to address, oh, well, how do you think about money and risk or time to market all those types of conversations? So I've always thought of the risk number as starting conversations too. But I think what you're doing is taking it to a whole nother level.

Colleen Bowler: 20:22

Yeah, I think the risk conversation is very important, but I think that's still on the financial side. I think the human side conversation, opening it up, first builds that foundation and then talking about risk and talking about their current portfolio and talking about all those things. What I love advisors to do is lead off with the assessments, lead off with opening up the conversation, and many advisors will tell us that they barely got to the financial side. You know.

We're not talking about people who don't know what they're doing, right. These advisors are the best of the best that we work with. So they've got the financial thing. And so when you can open this up, the other thing, which is, you know, 20 years ago, there was a lot of training in the industry to learn how to unpack questions and ask questions and, and listen, there's not a lot now. So if a senior advisor can work with a junior advisor on something like these assessments, it really helps them get up to speed quicker and also builds a really strong base for a succession plan.

Richard Walker: 21:41

Yeah, well, because you have a methodology that you can keep using and keep training with. All right. So maybe you kind of talked about this. I'm not sure how advisors fare when they take the assessment for themselves.

Colleen Bowler: 21:56

I wish I knew. Most probably wouldn't tell you the truth. I worked with a lot of top advisors when I was a top advisor. And. There's just sometimes the cobbler doesn't have shoes, and sometimes the financial advisor doesn't do the things that they're, you know, how many have life insurance, how many have disability insurance, how many have their estate plan completed?

How many updates are there every year? How many look at it? Right. Because they're. So busy. Helping other people. So what we say is take it as you think a prospect coming into your firm would do. So I don't really know the answer to that question other than I hope advisors are. Looking at those action items as they're reviewing with clients and taking some of them themselves.

Richard Walker: 22:57

I asked the question for two reasons. Because I remember it's 20 plus years ago. So many advisors did not have their own retirement plan. They didn't have their own life insurance. I also knew the ones who were the junkie of every product or like every product, they were invested, every product.

I mean, it went both ways, obviously. But the other reason I was asking this is because I have been an advisor. I never got to the full CFP. I got halfway through and that's when I built my software. But I took this test, you know, partly because I was an advisor and I scored high on certain areas, but I didn't score high on certain areas too.

Colleen Bowler: 23:32

Right.

Richard Walker: 23:33

And it's like, oh, I thought I knew what I was doing, but I wasn't actually thinking of all the pieces that you lay out in front of us with the assessment. So it is eye opening in that regard to write.

Colleen Bowler: 23:42

And don't get me wrong, there are a lot of really great financial advisors out there. They are. There are so many, and there's a whole bunch of them that I always say, we've got to eat our own cooking. Yeah, right.

But when I like life insurance, the average age of a widow in the US is 56. My dad died when I was 16. My husband's first wife passed away in her mid-40s. I mean, we have it all around. Yet if I raise, how many have enough insurance, that's something that everybody needs to pay attention to, right?

Yeah. So all of us and I go through these assessments every year myself like the estate plan. I know there's something. It's in the back of my mind that Peter and I need to update our estate plan, and just doing that assessment is like, oh yeah. Oh, and the passwords. Oh yeah.

Did we both update them? Right. So these are ways advisors add value in their client's future with very little effort. But man the return on involvement is huge. Yeah.

Richard Walker: 25:03

So where do you fit in this evolving age of evolving AI. And everybody's focused on I'm going to get my time back. I'm going to use this thing and it's going to make me faster. I'm going to have so many more clients or I'll have more time. Where do you fit into all these mindsets where AI is coming out?

Colleen Bowler: 25:23

I love AI, I think AI, I always said in our practice, if it isn't in our CRM, it didn't happen. Or if we're not using your system, I mean, what are we doing with our time, right? So in this age of AI that can give us back our time to spend more time on the human side, I think that's magical. I think allowing more people to be in conversation, like using the time to spend an hour with the assessments. One of the advisors I was talking to yesterday was like an hour.

I can't, you know, I got ten minutes on my agenda for this. I'm like, okay. Spend ten minutes. And then he called me and he was like, okay, we took an hour because that's where they wanted. That's where they wanted to talk. Right? And they're like, can we just pop on the phone with you to do the financial stuff?

Right? I always had an agenda. We always had an agenda. And the first thing was questions, comments, concerns. And I would say, Rich, it is so good.

I'm so glad to see you. It's always fun to see you. Before we get started, remember this is your meeting. We have this agenda over here and we have this all done. But you come in here with a lot of different things.

What is it that you want to make sure we talk about today? Write your questions, comments and concerns should run everything that we do. And that's kind of what the assessments do. It does it in a quick, easy, scalable way like Riskalyze is scalable. This is scalable.

The passport package is scalable. Yeah.

Richard Walker: 27:11

No, I love that because I fully believe that, like I do more of a sales process than a service process. But even when I'm meeting with customers to talk about what their plans are, what's going on, it's always about what is, what's going on for them. And even in the sales process, my introduction could have been, oh, they're interested in x y z. No they're not. I found out they had a totally different agenda, totally different interests.

Colleen Bowler: 27:35

And to me.

Richard Walker: 27:35

That's one of those human connection parts. Like, you really have to have that curiosity of what's going on right now. Well, in fact, it's one of the things I do in my own podcast before we started. I asked you, what's top of mind? Yeah, right now that's going on, that's current that we should talk through. Do you see, do you see either your firm putting AI into your product, or do you see customers taking the outcome of your product and combining other information with AI to do any kind of analysis or insight or sentiment or anything else?

Colleen Bowler: 28:06

Interesting. We have AI in our product. The back end is all integrated and woven in with that. My co, creator of the passport package and co-founder of the firm, Jeannie Hurlburt, is a PhD sociologist, assessment guru, 25 years at LSU doing nothing but that and teaching it. So the AI integration is woven into it as well. If you're an advisor on our platform, you know, we can push a button and you can see.

Every client that's taken it, their averages so that you know your right fit client. If these 50 clients are your right fit clients, if we take it and push a button and get their averages for you, you can say, gosh, the majority of them are really concerned about wellness rather than do a quarterly update on the financial market. Why don't we get an expert in on, you know, exercise, snacks or something like that where it really benefits what they're telling you is most important to them. So it is woven in. We love it.

The human side. On the front side. AI can't take that. I mean it, it can't take that away. People are wanting more and more of that human connection as they utilize process driven systems.

I love Isidore Sharp from the Four Seasons. Systematize the predictable so you can humanize the exceptional. And it is all about. Nobody needs to figure out how to make a bet at the Four Seasons, but they can see that Rich, your button is missing on your shirt and they replace it for you, right? Yeah. Yeah. Right. So.

Richard Walker: 30:10

So one of the things that I do with AI a lot is I take conversations and have it analyze conversations. For me. I mostly want to improve me.

Colleen Bowler: 30:20

Like, how.

Richard Walker: 30:21

Could I have handled this conversation better? Or if I'm interviewing candidates, what did I do? Well, what did I do poorly in this interview process? And so I'm kind of thinking, as you humanize or help people ask these questions, what if they took their meeting transcript with this analysis and got a feedback loop of like, how did you do? How well did you get the customer to open up and talk about the problems?

What was not said was that, oh, this is a fascinating thing. Like what was not said in a conversation. AI is so interesting to come up with answers about what was not said, like the underlying tone and things like that.

Colleen Bowler: 30:55

I love it. I love the idea and all I'm thinking about is privacy. As long, of course. Yeah. As long as it's in a closed loop thing with privacy, I think that's I think that's a I think that's magical. I love that, thank you. Great idea. Well.

Richard Walker: 31:12

I hope it inspires me. It's been helping me improve tremendously over the past two years.

Colleen Bowler: 31:16

Yeah. Yeah. It's great. Yeah, absolutely.

Richard Walker: 31:20

Awesome. Well, man, we're already running out of time. So before I get to my last question, what is the best way for people to find and connect with you? Colleen?

Colleen Bowler: 31:30

Well, LinkedIn is a great place. Colleen Bowler b o w l e r my email is colleen@candjinnovations.com. That's also on my LinkedIn page. You can go to the passportpackage.com and click on the link and take the assessment and pop on the schedule and talk to one of us for 15 minutes. We'd love to.

We'd love to share that with you. So real quickly, actually.

Richard Walker: 32:01

Let's clarify this. There's two different assessments. What are the differences with the two?

Colleen Bowler: 32:05

Yeah. Where people are in their life. So the expansion passport those would think of accumulation is for those 45 and under where they're into that accumulation mode 40 above age 45 is called walk away to walk away from what you don't love to do. What I found working with a lot of high-net-worth people later in my career. Very few of them actually retired. They didn't even like the word.

So we didn't want to use it. We used Walk Away because some of them stayed. And they just gave up parts that they didn't like. And some of them did walk away to something different. So it is just getting us ready for that.

Richard Walker: 32:51

Got it. All right. Cool. So here comes my last question, which I always love to ask. Who has had the biggest impact on your leadership style and how you approach your role?

Colleen Bowler: 33:02

Biggest impact would probably I'd say Dan Sullivan. Dan Sullivan is the founder of Strategic Coach, and for the last 23 years, on the side of my planning business, business and also now C&J, I have been a coach for them at strategic coach part time little gig, but all of us. What I love about it with it's an program for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs. Anyone who's in the front of the room and there are 17 of us, I think, as well as Dan, we all have to be in our own workshops. We all have to be entrepreneurs.

We all have to be walking the talk. I can't even tell you how many business schools I've been to about entrepreneurship, that I've been the guest. And they're like, what would you like to talk about? And I asked the professors, none of them have ever been entrepreneurs. So it is a great program.

And I sit in my workshops every quarter, just like our clients do. And Dan has had an incredible impact on both my business and scaling the business, but also scaling my personal life. So I love that. And the other thing is just learning. I happen to be a voracious listener to podcasts, which I love your podcast and thank you.

Reading. Right. So between podcasts and reading that learning has had an incredible impact on my leadership.

Richard Walker: 34:41

Man. So, you know, Dan Sullivan, so many books, right?

Colleen Bowler: 34:45

Yeah.

Richard Walker: 34:47

Who not how is one of them I believe huge impact on me last year and this year Ten-x is easier than two x.

Colleen Bowler: 34:55

It is.

Richard Walker: 34:56

Profound impact on me.

Colleen Bowler: 34:57

Like yeah.

Richard Walker: 34:59

Both of these books I was like am I really going to get much out of these books. Huge huge impact on me. So that's amazing that you know him, get to work with him, get to be part of his organization.

Colleen Bowler: 35:11

Yeah.

Richard Walker: 35:11

To you.

Colleen Bowler: 35:12

Yeah. Yeah. And actually how we created the assessments are basically. From coaches. Our factor question. You know, where are you now? Where do you want to be in your future?

And we've just created it around their mindsets. Dan has the saying, the only place you can create value is in someone else's future. And what the assessments do is open up the ability to you to easily find out the future that someone wants. And the question is, do you want to be in that future? You know you've earned the right to pick and choose your right fit clients, right?

So it is. It goes both ways, right? I love it. It. Well, and it's.

Richard Walker: 36:01

And it's an amazing benefit when you're working with the right client, you get to deliver the most value. It's the most fun for both of you.

Colleen Bowler: 36:07

Yes. It's magic.

Richard Walker: 36:08

It's total magic. Yeah.

Colleen Bowler: 36:10

I get so excited about it.

Richard Walker: 36:11

Certain customers I start working with. I'm like, oh my gosh, I can't wait for them to go live. This is going to be so big for them.

Colleen Bowler: 36:17

And how.

Richard Walker: 36:18

Different it's going to be for what we're doing, etc.. Oh my gosh, we could keep talking about all this, but I do have to wrap up the show.

Colleen Bowler: 36:24

Okay. All right.

Richard Walker: 36:25

I want to give a big thank you to Colleen Bowler, co-founder at C&J Innovations and co-creator of The Passport Package for being on this episode of The Customer Wins. Go check out Colleen's website at thepassportpackage.com. Try out that assessment. And don't forget to check out my Quik! company at quickforms.com where we make processing forms easier. I hope you've enjoyed this discussion.

We'll click the like button, share this with someone, and subscribe to our channels for future episodes of The Customer Wins. Colleen, thank you so much for joining me today.

Colleen Bowler: 36:55

Thank you Rich. I just so appreciate it and appreciate you.

Outro: 37:01

Thanks for listening to The Customer Wins podcast. We'll see you again next time, and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.