Hugh Massie With DNA Behavior

Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Atlanta Business Radio. Brought to you by On pay. Atlanta’s new standard in payroll. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:25] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Atlanta Business Radio, and this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, Onpay. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on Atlanta Business Radio, we have Hugh Massie. He is the executive chairman and founder of DNA behavior. Welcome to you.

Hugh Massie: [00:00:45] It’s great to be with you, Lee.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:46] I am so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about DNA behavior. How are you serving folks?

Hugh Massie: [00:00:52] So DNA behavior is a behavioral science technology business. We’re helping organizations, growth minded organizations build a people centered culture. And we’re very keen on issues in the workplace like psychological safety, you know, unlocking people’s talents, improving decision making, improving the workplace relationships and productivity.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:18] So how do you do that?

Hugh Massie: [00:01:20] So our recipe for it is all around understanding people. So we help individuals in the business starting with the leader. So it starts right at the top. Understand what their natural hardwired talents are, what their strengths and struggles are, and then work on how do you navigate all of the differences, because that’s where the problems come, but also where where the assets are as well inside the business. So it’s you know, we deploy essentially a, in simple terms, a psychometric assessment on every person from the from the top down and get an insight into how every person is wired up differently and then put the building blocks in from there.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:05] Once an individual has that information, is then is everybody kind of know what everybody how everybody is wired. And and then they learn tools to kind of communicate and to interact with them in the most productive manner.

Hugh Massie: [00:02:18] Absolutely. And you know, Lee, it’s it’s interesting you ask that question. A big part of our philosophy to this is that if if the employees are going to be profiled and put through, you know, the DNA behavior discovery, then the information should be shared and that should be shared from the top down. Uh, if the leadership is not prepared to be vulnerable and share who they are, what their strengths and what their struggles are. They should go no further, uh, because it doesn’t build trust at the end of the day. And, you know, really what people are looking for is authentic. Is authentic leadership. They’re looking for the leaders to be authentic. And and I think everybody knows no one’s perfect. And and you know, I think if the leaders start out with that and, you know, leaders go first, then you can start to build a more open workplace, a stronger internal culture.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:12] Now, does this work, I guess primarily internally within a group, or can it also expand outside of the group, like to the clients of those folks?

Hugh Massie: [00:03:24] Good question. So I love that question because the first thing is, is it’s got to work internally and, uh, you know, so that’s the first thing. But but we’ve always encouraged this is used with clients and stakeholders. We do a lot of work with financial services firms, you know, large and small. And, you know, we believe the financial advisory teams go through this exercise themselves. And then they can get every one of their clients and the families as well to go through the exercise. And that’s really what builds a truly client centered experience. So, uh, you know, you’re bang on with that question. That’s exactly what we want to happen.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:03] So you mentioned, um, kind of the financial industry. Why does it work well in that space?

Hugh Massie: [00:04:12] One of the reasons it works well in that space is because the financial services, uh, advisers, wealth managers are trying to build a long term intimate relationship with the client. And so, uh, you know, knowing who the person is over the long term, you know, whether, you know, the long term could be, you know, 3 to 20 or more years, the person’s going to go through life’s ups and downs and knowing how to connect and collaborate with them. But also, you know, money is something that’s highly charged for a lot of people. You know, it’s got a very strong energy, you know, in fact, in a lot of my work, I talk about the energy of money. And so knowing how knowing how to communicate with a person when a market’s gone down particularly or there’s been a life event is very important. There’s no good being the smartest cat in the room with the best solution or being able to, uh, you know, have a financial product that makes the greatest returns if you cannot connect with the person emotionally. It’s not going to work and there’s going to be no trust.

Hugh Massie: [00:05:18] And, you know, and I think that that trust is what this is all about, whether it’s with the employees and their teams and with the clients. And so, you know, I set out in the financial services industry to, to work on this and to to bring the client centered model through behavioral understanding, you know, into that, into that industry. Because that’s really where I started, uh, you know, my own entrepreneurial career was with a financial services business. Uh, prior to that, I had been in a, in an accounting firm, and I wished we’d had all of this in that life, too. Uh, but but li it works, really, in any business where the organization is seeking to build long term relationships with the client. So there’s no reason why it can’t work in, uh, some areas of legal, uh, it it can work in accounting. And I think definitely an area I see in the future is healthcare. It’s just I haven’t got there yet, but I’m working with people that we’re starting to do that now.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:18] Um, I’m particularly interested in the financial services industry because I’ve interviewed a lot of financial advisors over the years, and something that always kind of stood out to me is that. They tend to be focused on their client, and they tend to want to have wealthy clients, by and large, and they don’t care as much about the children of those clients. And and I think it’s because of, you know, their typical career path is that they have clients and then they retire and they’re usually around the same age as their clients. And then so when they’re done, they’re done. But as a firm, I would think that you would want to put things in place so that you have, you know, kind of the next generation or some plan to, um, connect with the next generation of people within that. And you mentioned family initially. And that struck me is that, I mean, to me, that’s part should be part of a financial advisor firm’s strategy is to, you know, trickle down to the children of the clients, not just the client.

Hugh Massie: [00:07:24] Yeah. I think what I’m going to try to get to be very tactful with part of this response, I think financial services. Industry is still growing as a profession, and it’s been step by step moving from being highly transactional. So let’s say I meet a wealthy person or someone who’s just had a liquidity event because they sold a business. Great, great target client. I’ve got a solution for you. Uh, and the financial advisor makes money from that. Fair enough. There’s, you know, no reason. There’s no harm or foul in somebody making money out of out of that. But it’s it. And while they’re focused on the client. And keeping them happy with that. It’s quite transactional. And you’re right. What they haven’t done is the business building part of saying, okay, now I need to know the family and what’s the impact of this money on the family members? What’s the impact on the spouse? And a lot of, you know, when there’s a let’s say that. It is the husband or the patron? The male, uh, patriarch in the families made the money. It’s not always the case because there’s women who make the money too. More and more so these days. But if he dies, there’s a wealth transfer event. The woman gets the money and maybe the kids. Because they’ve got no relationship with the advisor. They go somewhere else. And, you know, uh, even though the, the, the female might have been or the wife might have been in some of the planning meetings because the good planners will have them in the, in the meetings. But there’s not the same level of trust being built. And, you know, this really gets to the advisory firms building the right teams, uh, you know, of different talented people serving, um, serving the husband and wife and then getting to know the kids and involving them in, in the discussions about money and their lives and their careers much earlier on.

Hugh Massie: [00:09:26] And, you know, I think this is the big miss for, for for a lot of advisors, you know, the topic that you’re raising is getting brought up more and more in the industry, but it’s got a long way to go. And this is really about the human skills. Uh, the money, the dealing with the money part is not the hardest part of financial planning. It’s the human side. And I think if you’re really interested, if you’re an advisor wanting to build a business. You’ve got to have the right team that can serve the whole family and recognize that you yourself are probably not going to be able to connect with the whole family. Because of different, you know, you’ve got your own style. You might be great at connecting with the entrepreneur who’s made the money initially. But it’s the rest of the family. Uh, and, you know, and there’s many, many different settings where money comes into a family, you know, through inheritance and, you know, and other events. And so I think that there’s so much work that can be done in the industry around this, and it is the human skills. And, you know, we all talk about communications being important, but not a lot is actually done to to really build it in an emotionally engaging way. The communication channels like it’s it’s fascinating.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:41] Yeah. And I think that, um, if the financial advisors really don’t lean into the younger, uh, people in the family, they’re going to miss out because the younger people are going to use a robo advisor, and they’re going to just bypass the financial advisor, uh, as a whole. So if the firm, uh, kind of holistically doesn’t have a solution, or even if the solution is a robo advisor, they should be making it part of the the services that they provide, because they’re, they they have to serve the whole family ultimately. I mean, if you to me, if you really want to serve, you’re not just serving that individual. And that might work for you individually as an advisor, but you’re not really serving the family.

Hugh Massie: [00:11:25] You’ve got to serve the whole family. And I think we’ve got to recognize in today’s age that with technology, uh, you know, the kids coming into the money are not silly. They know how to use technology tools and they can do some of it themselves. But at the end of the day, from the ones I know. They still want to engage with an advisor in the human conversation. When they themselves go through a life event, or there is a major decision to be made, and that decision could be around their careers, it could be that they’re going to get married. Uh, they’ve got kids to be educated, that type of thing. That’s when they’re going to need an advisor, but they don’t need the advisor holding their hand all day long, you know, for everything. Uh, and I think that’s where the some of the advisory models got to change as well and the thinking around it. But it’s also, you know, who you’re going to connect with if you’re if. And this is where I think that, you know, a lot of their financial advisors Li have got are, you know, the average age in the industry is around 60 now or 59, but just call it 60. You’ve got to have some younger people in your business, and a lot of them don’t want to pay for it. But that’s where you can build a very strong business by bringing in, you know, some capable 30 year olds. And, you know, and again, can’t put, uh, wisdom on a young head necessarily. But but, you know, with training, the education in this area is way better than it used to be with so many universities offering courses. There are. There are lots of kids out there or younger people out there want to be in the financial services industry. They should be brought into these practices to serve alongside the leader of the business or the financial practice. The whole family, as you say, it’s about building the right business model, I think, for this.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:17] Now, with your service, is it something that you’re you’re delivering some sort of an assessment or discovery you called it, and then are you also giving them the coaching to kind of make sure that they can communicate effectively, or is it just information because, you know, sometimes you need help and sometimes you need a helper.

Hugh Massie: [00:13:37] Um, so we we’ve got, uh, around our business, we’ve got a team of, uh, coaches. We’ve got some inside the business, and we’ve got a whole network of them outside of our business, you know that, I suppose, if you call it a more, uh, 1099 type relationships with us to, to help integrate the solutions. But, you know, we’ve also with technology, we’ve embraced technology very strongly in our business and. With AI. We’ve now got, uh, now our own, if you want to call it chatbot called Gene AI, that, uh, an advisor can ask any question they want to ask, and then they would know how to communicate, relate to their team, uh, how to relate to every client, to prepare the marketing scripts to, you know, we’ve got style matching tools in there. So which family member are you going to connect best with. And then and then you can look at how you’re going to adapt. So we built a lot of tools. To make this, uh, you know, sort of mysterious area of human behavior and behavioral finance. To make it very simple to use and accessible. Um, so, uh, if that, if that, if that helps answer that question. And if, if there are advisors listening to this, that this does not have to be hard technology now makes it easy for you, uh, to do.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:58] Now, why do you think that money is so emotionally charged? And why do you think that, um, this isn’t something that kind of taught like early on for with children because to me, money, you know, especially with the power of compounding that if you do some things right early, you can solve a lot of problems, you know, 50 years from that point.

Hugh Massie: [00:15:24] Yeah. And that’s the, uh, you know, li the very rational side of money. And I think the money has a number of dimensions to it. And, you know, I sort of talk about it having three and, you know, first one being money is a currency. And, you know, if you save money and invest it. It’s going to compound, as you say. And when I started my financial services business in Sydney in 1996, he always used to tell every person out there, money never sleeps. If you go and save enough of it, invest it. You’re going to naturally, over time, make more. And that’s where 50 years later, you make a great nest egg. My mother is a great example of and she’s 93 now of someone who’s done that. Uh, you know, all of her life. But money is also behavioral. And, you know, we’re all born, uh, with a certain behavioral style. And this is part of what got me into, you know, into this and that, uh, because of who we are and how we’re hardwired from early in life. We make this different decisions about money. So some of us just naturally are going to be spenders. Uh, probably the people who are the spenders are, you know, what I call outgoing, engaging type people. They’re great fun to be with. They usually dress well, uh, they like a nice car, but there’s nothing left over. Uh, and, you know, they’ll probably be be be always be your friends. That. But then you’ve got the, you know, the millionaire next door type person that’s very reserved, very task focused. They’re very much about saving retirement’s important. They fear not having enough money. But a lot of these traits come from from your life early on and who you are, and they’re to be worked on.

Hugh Massie: [00:17:15] You know, you don’t, you know, life. You can’t just save money and then not spend any of it because then it’s a pretty dull, uh, unfulfilled life. But then also you can’t spend it all. So, you know, this is the balance with it, but the but the part where money really gets interesting is it is an energetic force. It you know, one could say the thought about money is not with them all day long. Uh, in everything you do, it’s there 24 by seven. You go to sleep with it, you wake up with it. If you have thoughts about money when you go to sleep, you’re going to manifest those the next day or soon thereafter. Um, because it’s in our psyche. So it’s sort of like it’s it’s omnipresent and it causes a lot of stress. And Lee, this is where, you know, I’m very passionate about this area of behavior and money. It’s not just, you know, is getting people to communicate better is one part, but getting people to make better decisions, to think better about money, because money causes so much stress for all of us. You know, there’s there’s a stress level if you haven’t got enough of it to pay the bills. But there’s a stress level if you’ve got more than what you need, and then you’ve got relationship issues with it, or you’ve got a child that you worry about or what choice you’re going to make, money is there. And it’s something that’s got to be, you know, that’s got to be understood. Uh, you know, by each person.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:40] Now, how do you see technology helping in this area? Because I would think that in some regard, uh, a large, maybe not a large, but you would know the number more than me. But there’s a percentage of the population that just leveraging automation. Kind of can take money, or at least some of the stresses of money off the table just because it’ll automatically happen. Like you’re not having to think about every money decision, it’s just automatically happening in the background, whether it’s, you know, at least saving if your business or the place you work has a matching fund to just putting in the amount of the match so you can take advantage of that, or just, you know, some of these things that just take money out of your account every month and invest it into a variety of things, like how, um, how does that kind of help or hurt, uh, people with their money kind of thinking?

Hugh Massie: [00:19:37] Well, I think that technology makes it easier to deal with. With the money itself. You know, the fact that all of us now can go online, as you’re alluding to and buy exchange traded funds, you know, you can just essentially buy the market. And if it’s money that you, you know, you want to save and to, you know, to grow for your retirement or to, you know, meet a specific goal. Uh, technology makes it very easy to do that. It’s relatively safe. You don’t have to go and, uh, trade the markets like you once did. Which of itself is a stress? Uh, but you nevertheless, before you get to the technology, you’ve got to make certain decisions about how much you’re going to save. You’ve got to tick the box. If it’s, you know, you want to do the matching and you want to save. And that gets down to your fundamental attitudes about money. And I don’t know that technology can necessarily help with that. I think underneath all that, you’ve got to have the right relationship with money, which means you’ve got to have the right relationship with yourself. That comes with self understanding, uh, you know, knowing what you’re more about, what your identity is, where you want to be in the world. Uh, what drives you, motivates you once you’ve got that, once you’ve got that sorted out, so reasonable level of self knowledge, then the technology can make it a whole lot easier for you to, to, you know, to fulfill those dreams and to fulfill the life mission as, as it were. Uh, and, and so that’s, that’s how I would frame that.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:11] Now, in your work, are you primarily working with kind of enterprise level organizations, or does your work trickle down to individuals?

Hugh Massie: [00:21:20] I don’t deal with, uh, sort of the retail consumer walking in off the street to us directly. Our, our business is we work with the financial advisory firm. So we’ll work with, you know, a large, uh, organization like Fidelity or Schwab. And then we will work with their advisor advisory network and get them to, to be working with their clients that are at the consumer and retail level. Now. I will do we do do some work with families directly that want to address those communication issues. What are we going to do for the children? You know, we will do some of that work as well, or we’ll help. Uh, you know, we’re doing increasingly, Lee, interestingly, we’re helping more business leaders, CEOs out one on one address the money issues for themselves, uh, as the CEO, because, you know, some of them are making a lot of money. They’ve got complicated lives. So we do we do help there, but also how the money actually flows and, uh, into, in the business, because the energy of money itself, it affects a lot of behaviors inside the business and the corporate culture. So we’re doing a lot of work, uh, you know, with it at that level. But but it’s really our, our, our partners that use our system are helping the consumer on the street. And, you know, a big area we’re doing going to be doing a lot more work on in the in the retirement space because the gig economy is going to become a bigger thing. People are going to live longer. And, you know, you can’t just retire at 65 and do nothing. You’re going to live, you know, if more and more of us are going to live to 100, we’ve got to do something and we’ve got to make our money last. And, you know, the financial longevity of money is as big a issue as the longevity of our health. And so, you know, we’re working on some of those solutions with our partners at the moment.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:16] Now, why is the organization Boys Without Fathers important to you?

Hugh Massie: [00:23:22] Yeah. This is this is my, uh, very deep rooted, uh, passion project. Uh, I, I was a boy without a father, and my my father died when I was one. My mother was pregnant with my brother. And so she brought us up, uh, gave us a wonderful life, and. But what? You know what I learned. About three years ago doing podcasts with with our clients, just like I’m doing with you. Essentially, Lee is I did six in a row. With our clients, and I didn’t know this part of them, but they. But what I discovered was they were all a boy without a father. And one of them had done a doctorate in this in this area. And what unraveled was all these issues, you know, around literacy, uh, social difficulty, obesity, aggression, which could lead to, uh, you know, going to jail, uh, basically from a lack of boundaries. But, you know, there were there were 5 or 6 things that, uh, a boy without a father, particularly if the father leaves the home when or, uh, you know, leaves the home completely in some way. So mine was through, through through a passing of my father. Others. It’s the father just leaves or there’s a divorce. When the kids are younger, these problems are there. And and, you know, I want to help other kids to understand the environment that they, uh, have have, you know, existed in, in some way to get past it and not be a victim and to show them other men of influence who have.

Hugh Massie: [00:25:04] Lived with being a boy without a father and stepped out, overcome the barriers and been very successful. And so what we’re doing with boys without fathers is training. Men of influence out there. We’ve got a goal to train 100,000 men of influence by 2030. We’ve built the programs to do it and then to and then on the journey to be mentoring other boys. And, you know, and while I talk a lot about boys because this is my that’s my journey, the same thing has been done for girls without fathers. Uh, girls without mothers and girls without and and boys without mothers as well. You know, I think at the end of the day, the issues for them are different. But they’re there. They’re got equal in importance as well. But we but we know that there’s, you know, a lot of issues that out there with, with men because of not having had a father fatherly present in the home presence in the home. This caused certain behaviors that, you know, they need to get past and to develop, and this makes society better.

Lee Kantor: [00:26:10] Now, does your background, uh, you know, in behavioral insights, is that are you helping to kind of create this playbook for an individual so they can see who they are and seeing?

Hugh Massie: [00:26:22] Yeah, that’s what we’re doing is we’re using all the behavioral science, uh, that that we’ve created in DNA behavior. Plus also the, you know, the research, you know, for example, like, uh, Doctor Greg Spencer, who’s done the PhD work in this area, there’s other research studies, you know, we blend that together, you know, using our behavioral understanding to, to to provide the, the program and, and the training and the coaching and mentoring to deal with this.

Lee Kantor: [00:26:53] And the mentoring goes beyond like financial conversations. This is over.

Hugh Massie: [00:26:57] Beyond financial conversations. This is about life conversations. And, you know, is teaching resilience not how not to be a victim character, uh, how to make good decisions, uh, how to connect to the right people. You know, we’re talking foundational life life principles here.

Lee Kantor: [00:27:15] Now, before we wrap, can you, uh, share some maybe actionable advice for some, uh, some listener when it comes to, um, optimizing their financial behaviors? Uh.

Hugh Massie: [00:27:30] So though the. I think the most important thing is, is, is savings. Now that is a word that for at least half the population is sort of, uh, alien. Um, it’s a word that no one wants to hear. So if you think about it as a spending plan, but at the end of the day, the key to your future is to be able to save money. But it’s also to be in, in a role or a work that you that you love to do. That that is something that is important because, you know, using your talents is where you’re going to create money. Uh, and then, you know, it’s not to take risks that you can’t live with and not to do things financially that you don’t fully understand. I think that’s where people get lured into transactions. Uh, investments into things they don’t understand. And then they are very upset, uh, when it doesn’t work out. But it starts with savings. And then it’s, you know, at the end of the day, I suppose it’s making sensible decisions and things that you understand. But, you know, for people, what I would say to Lee is for people that need to, to change their life in some way, you know, to, to address savings, maybe it’s not the first thing isn’t always just to go and do a budget.

Hugh Massie: [00:28:50] You know, what I found with people is go and change a habit in one area of your life that you really enjoy, and it might be doing something that’s health related, sports, physical related. And then once you’ve mastered that and you mastered the habit change, it’s amazing how the rest of your life, uh, starts to to change. And you change a whole lot of other habits. And along with that, you’ll change the spending because you’re going to have a new life and you’re going to realize, uh, that you’ve got to have, you know, money for that and you feel more comfortable. But but if I just tell someone, just go and do a budget and stick to it, they’re probably not going to do it. But if you change a habit in another area, it’s amazing how you get the long term result. Right.

Lee Kantor: [00:29:38] The ripple effect of that decision.

Hugh Massie: [00:29:40] Yeah, absolutely.

Lee Kantor: [00:29:42] So if somebody wants to learn more about DNA behavior or, uh, boys without fathers, what are the websites for each.

Hugh Massie: [00:29:49] Yeah. Please go to for DNA behavior. Go to DNA behavior comm. And then for boys without fathers it’s boys without fathers.org.

Lee Kantor: [00:29:57] Well, you thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work, and we appreciate you.

Hugh Massie: [00:30:03] Thank you. Lee, it’s been great to spend time with you.

Lee Kantor: [00:30:05] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Atlanta Business Radio.