SUMMARY
In this episode of The Rare Advisor, Aaron Grady shares a powerful yet simple framework that financial advisors can use to build deeper, more meaningful relationships with their clients: the acronym FORM. Short for Family, Occupation, Recreation, and Money, FORM is not just a clever way to remember key client information — it’s a relationship management philosophy that, when applied intentionally, can transform the client experience and create powerful advocacy without ever needing to ask for referrals.
Aaron begins by addressing a common flaw in many advisory practices: the tendency to collect personal details only for administrative purposes. Advisors might gather information about a client’s family, job, or hobbies while filling out paperwork, but they rarely put that information to work in an intentional way. As a result, what could be the start of a meaningful relationship often remains surface-level. FORM is designed to change that. It offers a structure for connecting with clients as people — not just as portfolios.
The four categories within FORM—Family, Occupation, Recreation, and Money—represent the pillars of a client’s life. “Family” refers to what matters most at home, such as relationships, legacy goals, and succession planning. “Occupation” is less about the client’s job title and more about their vision for work—especially as it relates to achieving a “work optional” lifestyle. “Recreation” includes passions, hobbies, travel dreams, and community affiliations. And finally, “Money” goes beyond account balances to uncover how clients philosophically view money as a tool to support their values and goals.
While most advisors already touch on these topics during onboarding or goal-setting meetings, Aaron emphasizes that the value lies in how these insights are gathered, stored, and used. It starts with being genuinely curious. FORM isn’t a data-mining tactic—it’s a practice of meaningful engagement. The best advisors ask open-ended, value-based questions and dig deeper with follow-up questions that show they’re truly listening. Referencing a Harvard study, Aaron notes that it often takes three layers of questioning for someone to feel genuinely heard. This level of attentiveness builds trust and signals authenticity.
To help structure the gathering of FORM information, Aaron recommends tools like FORM-based interview templates, “What’s Important to You?” worksheets, and client profile summaries. These resources aren’t meant to script conversations but to create a consistent method for capturing insights. A simple best practice is to include “FORM updates” as the first item on every client review meeting agenda. This not only reinforces that you care about the client’s life beyond investments but also invites them into the process, giving them language to share what’s important to them.
But collecting this information isn’t enough—it has to be stored and shared within the practice. Too often, Aaron hears advisors say, “Oh, I know everything about my best clients,” only to admit that all of that knowledge exists solely in their own head. That’s a problem. If the advisor is away—or eventually transitions their practice—those insights are lost. Aaron encourages advisors to treat this information as firm-level intellectual property. When captured and systematized, FORM becomes an asset that adds enterprise value and strengthens the continuity of client relationships across the team.
To make this actionable, advisors should use their CRM as a true relationship management tool. That means creating custom fields or tags for each FORM category, logging details consistently, and dating the entries to show recency. The most recent notes should appear at the top of each client’s record so the team always knows what’s current. Anecdotal notes, such as a child’s graduation, a recent vacation, or an upcoming surgery, should be captured with context and relevance. These notes help the advisor and their team show up prepared and thoughtful in every interaction.
This shared information enables the entire team to provide a highly personalized experience. Imagine a client calling in and, before being transferred, a team member takes a moment to say, “By the way, how was your daughter’s wedding?” That tiny detail makes a massive impression. When clients feel seen, heard, and remembered, it builds emotional connection—and that’s what creates advocacy. They begin talking about how their advisor makes them feel, not just what they do.
Beyond everyday conversations, FORM can be used to elevate meetings, gifting, and follow-ups. Advisors can start review meetings by referencing previously shared interests, or simply asking, “What’s new with the family?” These small moments create space for trust and real conversation. FORM details can also drive meaningful gifts—a favorite bottle of wine, a small keepsake from a place they mentioned, or a handwritten card referencing a personal milestone. These thoughtful gestures don’t just show appreciation; they demonstrate attentiveness.
Aaron also encourages advisors to make use of “FORM calls”—brief, unscheduled check-ins between regular meetings that are purely personal in nature. These aren’t about portfolios or markets—they’re about life. A simple call to say, “Hey, I was thinking about you—how was that trip to Colorado?” goes a long way. While these calls may feel spontaneous to the client, they’re often scheduled on the advisor’s calendar with intentional timing. These touchpoints frequently uncover what Aaron calls “moments of truth”—seminal events in a client’s life that could have major financial or emotional impact, and which the advisor wouldn’t have known about otherwise.
Aaron also shares a pro tip: use AI note-taking tools (with permission) during meetings to capture small but meaningful client details that may otherwise be missed during casual conversation. This allows advisors to stay present during meetings without worrying about taking perfect notes, and ensures that no relationship-building opportunities fall through the cracks.
Ultimately, FORM isn’t about gathering information—it’s about honoring it. It’s about making sure clients feel valued beyond their financial accounts. And when used correctly, it doesn’t just deepen loyalty—it creates advocacy. Clients who feel seen and understood are far more likely to refer their advisor, not because they were asked, but because they genuinely want others to experience that same level of care.
To bring it home, Aaron challenges advisors to take a close look at their top 20 client relationships and ask: “What do I really know about these people? Where is that information stored? Does my team know it? Are we using it to create meaningful experiences and deepen the relationship?” The answers to those questions can reveal major gaps—or major opportunities.
FORM isn’t just a tool—it’s a mindset. A culture of curiosity, care, and consistency. It’s about showing up with intention and building something that lasts. As Aaron closes the episode, he reminds us: “When the why is clear, the how becomes easy.” In the world of financial advising, FORM is a powerful way to clarify the why—and in doing so, elevate the how of every client relationship.
TRANSCRIPT
Aaron Grady, Advisor Consulting Director at USA Financial - Welcome back to The Rare Advisor. I'm your host, Aaron Grady, and today we're talking about one of the simplest but most powerful tools in your relationship management process, the acronym FORM. Now, on the surface, it seems pretty simple and intuitive, and quite frankly, it is. But so often, many advisors miss out on what FORM truly is. The idea of getting to know your clients on a deeper, more personal level. And see, now, most advisors do a pretty good job of learning personal information about their clients as a part of their procedural job. You know, gathering information to fill out applications or set up accounts, you know, doing goal planning to determine income streams in the future. But they often fall short of being able to effectively use this information to deepen relationships and ultimately elevate the client experience. And so by using a simple acronym, it allows not only you and your team to be present of mind and intentional about gathering this information, it also gives you a way to share this with your clients. And we use the idea and the concept all the time of when the why is clear, the how becomes easy. And so by making your clients or prospects part of this process so they understand that the reason you're gathering this information isn't simply so that you can fill out an application, but because you want to know them on a deeper, more personal level, they seem to open up and be more apt to share outside the bounds of filling out a date of birth or maybe an anniversary date. And so really understanding form, the acronym form, it's F-O-R-M and it simply stands for family. What's important to them at home? This is legacy and succession issues. Occupation, it's less about what they do, but more about achieving that work optional lifestyle. We talk about recreation, it's what do they do when they're not working? What are their passions? What are their hobbies? What organizations are they affiliated with? What alumni associations?
It's that recreational bucket list of items that they work so hard in their career to save the money or make the time or they strive for this in the future. So their recreational bucket list. And then money really that's more about, know, most advisors do a good job of gathering the assets and understanding, you know, where the money is. This is more about their philosophical goals and where they view their money in the context of their life. And so the F, the O, the R, the and mainly for the sake of what we're talking about today, we really focus on the first three, the family, the occupation, and the recreation. This is really true the crux of how can we harness this information to continue to grow and deepen the relationship. Now understand, form in and of itself, this is not a data mining tactic. This is not about let's see how much data we can get on this person and how we can get into their deepest, darkest secret. It's not about that. It's about meaningful engagement. It's about showing that you care about the person beyond the portfolio. As we start talking about more and more about creating client advocacy, the being a good advisor and getting a good rate of turn is table stakes at this point. It is what is expected, it's what they pay you for. And so anything you can do to continue to set yourself apart and create professional contrast, to create an opportunity where the client wants to talk about not what you do, but how you make them feel is really what we're striving for. And so let's talk about the process. So we're really gonna focus in a couple different areas. So we're gonna talk about how do you gather form.
How do you store form? And then how do you use it to deepen the relationship? So on the front end of this, how do you gather form? So what I would encourage any advisor is don't force it. Form details naturally come up when trust is present. And so I would encourage you to use open-ended questions. Use value-based questions. Be interested. There was a Harvard study that was done that shows that typically you need to ask three back-to-back questions. Dig three layers deep and the idea of really when you get to that second and third question, what it's showing the other person is that you truly care. It's not a passing platitude where you're asking a question like, how's it been? Or what's the weather like? Or how are the kids? It's when you ask that second and that third question, you're signaling to the person on the other side of the table that you truly are invested and you truly do care. So build trust, use open-ended questions, value-based questions.
Be intentional. Create a structure around it. There are tools like the form gathering template, which gives you a way to organize what type of questions would fit into gathering information about the family. What kind of questions would fall under the occupation or the work option of lifestyle? What are the ones that would fall under the recreational bucket list? You can use resources like the What's Important to You resource to find out really what drives them or what things keep them up at night.
And you can use simple client profile summaries. All of these things can be used during the new client onboarding process. These can all be used when you're first starting a new client relationship. And for those clients, once they're onboard and they're clients, going forward, year after year, every time you get in front of a client, have an opportunity. I would encourage advisors that on their strategy and tactical agendas, their review meetings to have the very first bullet at the top of the agenda to say form updates. This is an opportunity, know, some advisors say, you know, a meeting overview, form updates. This is again an opportunity to remind your clients that you care about what's going on in their life outside of their portfolio. And by using the acronym FORM in front of them, helping them understand and contextualize family, occupation, recreation that those things are important. Those are the whys around financial independence. Money is important, but money is simply a tool and a resource that makes their why happen and makes it possible for them to focus on things like their family, their work optional lifestyle, their recreational pursuits. And so continuing to keep that idea and concept in front of them is important because now they become part of the process. They're living it alongside of you. Now, pro tip for all of you listening is use an AI note taker. At this day and age, it's pretty much, you know, they're all out there. There's lots of, I use an AI note taker in my meetings with clients. And it is amazing the amount of detail that you miss during small talk and conversation when you're trying to think about, I need to remember to do this, or you're trying to write something down. Using the AI note taker, make sure that you don't miss the small things that are actually some of the biggest things that are most important to your clients. So use an AI note taker, but make sure you do it with permission. Make sure that they're okay with you having it there. gathering it, make it simple, make it structured, make it intentional. Then how do we store it? So here's really the tricky thing. Too often I hear from advisors or from their team that, yeah, we know tons of information about our best clients. Well, where's that information at? Well, it all resides in the advisor's head.
Don't rely on memory. The best advisors turn their insights into data that's searchable and actionable. If it's in your head, it's knowledge. If it's down on paper, it's an asset. When it's an asset of the firm, this goes on to build value in your practice. If you're going to go sell your practice at some point or you're going to go through succession, that knowledge of your best client relationships is something that cannot be recreated by another advisor who's going to try to attack those relationships with products pricing and performance because you're insulating your clients with your philosophy, your process and your planning strategy, but more importantly, by the unique relationship that you've built with them. And once you've built that relationship and you know all this personal information and you have a personalized experience, now you've really dug that mode. make sure that it's not just you, the advisor, that your entire team is able to use it. So easiest way to do that is go ahead and create tags. inside of your CRM. Use your CRM as a relationship management system. Create fields or tags for family, for occupation, for recreation, and start being intentional. As you gather this information, after every single meeting you will have with the client, make sure that that information is passed on to a member of your team and is then added to the system. Now, here's where it gets even a little next level. Include anecdotal notes and relevant dates, birthdays, kids, kids' graduations, trips.
Make sure there's a date on there. The reason why the date becomes important is if your entire team has access to information, now they can know is this old information, is this new information? And when new information comes, make sure you date that too and you keep the newest information always at the top of the fields. There's some best practices where we also can create a important information field where the most recent bit of information, because I mean, you're going to get years of data. You want the most recent information at the very, very, very, very, very top so that your team can leverage that. And so let's talk about that. Let's talk about how do we, how do we use form to create advocates in your firm? Well, you know, the old adage, know, the whole, the old cheers song, everybody, you you want to go where everybody knows your name. Creating a personalized experience can be simply a way of being intentional about sharing this information back with clients. It shows that you paid attention, that you listen. When inbound calls come in and it's one of your best client relationships and your assistant picks up the phone and they're saying, yes, I will get you to the advisor. And then that breath between those moments, they take a moment and they look at that form information and they realize, wait, they just took a trip or they just had a new grandbaby and they can say, hey, by the way, how is that little one? How was your trip to Hawaii? When people feel seen, when they feel heard, when they feel special, that's where the times for advocacy really raise their hand. And then they're like, these people care about me more than just about the money. And it's a simple thing, but it can be done with intention. You can also use it for pre-meeting prep and in the meeting. So make it easy for yourself to use this information to kick off those meetings. As we said, having that bullet on the front of the agenda that says form updates, you can use bits of information that you've already gathered to start the meeting and then "Hey, is there anything new I need to be aware of?" You can use form for other meaningful touch points. This is something that I think oftentimes advisors really miss this as an opportunity. I have advisors that will, they know that a client maybe likes wine. So you may have read an article about a Napa Valley wine tour and you say, hey, you know what? I thought of you after our last conversation and I wanted to send you this article. There are easy ways where you can automate some of that, where you can actually set RSS up so you can actually look on the internet for these topics. You can pull magazine articles. You can send handwritten notes. Hey, the other day I was traveling and I saw this and I thought of you. I have an advisor who had a client who really, really liked certain types of teas and the advisor was on a trip to Colorado and happened to be in a shop and saw some of these teas and then packaged them up, put them in up with a postcard and sent them to the client.
You can use this as an opportunity to do what we call form calls. So between your strategy and tactical meetings, there's an opportunity to pick up the phone on a scheduled basis. Now, perceived to the client, it may come off as off the cuff or out of the blue, but on your end, it's calendered on your schedule to fall roughly sometime between your strategy and tactical meetings. For you to simply pick up the phone, and it's not about the portfolio, it's not about the markets, it's about "Hey, Bill, Nancy, last time we talked, you shared with me that this was going on. I just wanted to circle back and see how life's going? I was thinking about you today", and whether you catch up on the phone or you don't, the value in saying that, I care about you enough to pick up the phone and give you a call is immense, and it's genuine. For your best client relationships where you start to get to know them, and this helps reinforce it for you and for your team, those things that are most important to them.
Now, on a side note, what I will tell you is what we've learned from the advisors we work with is on these form calls, these personal calls, nine times out of 10 when you actually do have a conversation with a client, this is where you're going to learn about what we call those moments of truth. These are those seminal moments in a client's life that can have serious ramifications for their plan or for their financial future or for their family future. And this gives you an opportunity to take action and actually show that you care and to acknowledge these moments of truth in a client's life. Understand that form deepens the loyalty. It makes interactions memorable and referable. And there's more than that. What you also should understand is there's a multiplier effect. When a client feels genuinely seen and understood, they become an advocate. Not because you asked for referral, but because you earned their trust. And so understand that form isn't just a tool. It's a mindset of curiosity and care.
So what I would challenge you to do as an advisor, and I would tell you that I did this myself when I first got introduced to the concept and it was quite revealing, I did actually did it with some of my very close friends and I was shocked to see how much information I knew. The problem was it was in my head. And so what I would challenge you to do is review your top 20 households, your top 20 clients, and then ask yourself, what do I really know about them? What do I know about their form? And then say, how much of this information has been integrated into our system?
How much of this information does our team know? And are we actually leveraging this information to grow and deepen the relationship and build client advocates? And so I would encourage you to start beginning to integrate this information into your CRM and creating team discussions to make sure that you're getting the most out of this information. And so if you like what you heard today, as always, like and subscribe. And as we always say, when the why is clear, the how becomes easy. And so never lose sight of your why.
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The RARE Advisor is a business model supercharged by Recurring And Repeatable Events. With decades of experience coaching successful advisors, your host, along with other leaders in the industry, discusses what it takes to grow a successful practice. With the aim of helping financial professionals and financial advisors take their business to the next level, this podcast shares insights and success stories that will make a real impact. Regardless of the stage of your practice, The RARE Advisor will provide thoughtful guidance, suggestions for developing systems and processes that work, and ideas for creating an authentic experience for your clients.
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