Tuesday Email: Velocity Over Volume

Happy Tuesday!

Every Tuesday I'd like to offer strategies for the week ahead and a thought to fuel your action.

I'm standing at baggage claim carousel 7 in Atlanta, watching the minutes tick by on my phone.

17 minutes since we landed.

18 minutes.

My black roller board appears through the rubber flaps, and I feel this unexpected surge of—I don't know what to call it.

Relief? Gratitude? It's absurd, really. I'm thrilled that an airline did exactly what they promised.

But that's not quite it.

What I'm actually feeling is the absence of something.

The absence of that low-grade anxiety that usually accompanies baggage claim.

That mental calculation of whether I'll make my next meeting.

The resignation that I'll be standing here for an unknowable amount of time, watching other people's luggage circle while mine remains trapped in some airport purgatory.

Delta's "20 minutes or sky miles" promise didn't just deliver my bag faster.

It eliminated the uncertainty. And in removing uncertainty, it created something more valuable than the bag itself: uninterrupted momentum.

I grab my bag and keep moving, and somewhere between carousel 7 and the parking garage, a question surfaces that won't leave me alone: How often do I create that same anxiety for my clients—not through what I deliver, but through how long they wait for it?

Three months earlier, I'd sent a detailed financial plan to a client who'd asked about taking early retirement.

It was thorough—68 pages of Monte Carlo simulations, tax projections, and healthcare cost analyses.

It took me two weeks to complete because I wanted it to be perfect.

When we finally met to discuss it, the first thing she said was: "I was starting to think you'd forgotten about me."

Not "thank you." Not "this is comprehensive."

"I was starting to think you'd forgotten about me."

The plan was technically flawless.

But in the two weeks it took me to deliver perfection, she'd spent 14 days wondering if she'd made a mistake trusting me with something this important.

The anxiety she felt waiting for my response consumed whatever value the thoroughness provided.

I'd optimized for depth at the expense of momentum.

There's a concept in behavioral economics called hyperbolic discounting—the tendency for people to prefer smaller, immediate rewards over larger, delayed ones.

Give someone the choice between $50 today or $100 in a year, and most choose the $50.

But offer that same person $50 in five years versus $100 in six years, and they'll wait for the $100.

The difference? When the reward feels far away, patience is easier.

When it's close, urgency overwhelms logic.

Our clients live in the first scenario.

When they send us a question about their financial future, the clock starts ticking.

Not on the technical accuracy of our response—on their peace of mind.

Every day that passes without an answer is another day their anxiety compounds.

That "perfect" financial plan delivered in two weeks becomes less valuable than a directionally sound response in 12 hours.

Not because the quality matters less, but because the waiting creates its own cost.

Domino's Pizza understood this instinctively.

They didn't dominate 15% of the pizza market because their pizza was exceptional.

They dominated because they solved the problem of uncertainty.

"30 minutes or it's free" wasn't primarily about speed—it was about eliminating the anxiety of not knowing when your food would arrive.

The pizza quality was good enough. The certainty was exceptional.

I think about that moment at carousel 7 more than I probably should.

What Delta actually sold me wasn't faster baggage handling.

They sold me freedom from a specific kind of anxiety—the standing-and-waiting, the checking-my-watch, the wondering-if-I 'll-make-my-dinner reservation anxiety that turns a simple bag pickup into a source of stress.

And I wonder: what if financial advice worked the same way?

Not faster because faster is inherently better, but faster because waiting creates its own tax on the relationship.

Because the moment a client hits send on an email asking about a major decision, anxiety starts setting in.

And every hour that passes before they hear back is another hour they spend wondering whether they've made a mistake, whether they're bothering you, whether they should have gone with a different advisor.

The technical quality of your eventual response might be perfect.

But if anxiety has already set in, the response lands differently.

The frustration of having waited overshadows the relief they feel.

I'm not suggesting we sacrifice depth or quality for speed. The goal isn't shallow answers delivered quickly.

The goal is recognizing that in financial advice, timing and quality aren't separate variables—they're interdependent.

A comprehensive analysis that arrives after anxiety has taken root is less valuable than a sound directional answer that comes while the client still trusts the process.

The big financial planning mistakes—selling everything in a market downturn, withdrawing from retirement accounts to pay off a 3% mortgage—these don't require weeks of analysis to identify.

They take minutes.

Sometimes seconds.

What takes weeks is perfecting the presentation of what we already know in the first five minutes.

I still think about that client who said, "I was starting to think you'd forgotten about me."

She didn't need a 68-page plan. She needed to know that I'd heard her, that I was thinking about her situation, that she wasn't alone in making this decision.

The depth could have come later.

The acknowledgment needed to come immediately.

Standing at carousel 7, watching my bag emerge at exactly 18 minutes, I understood something about value that I'd missed in a decade of trying to perfect my process: The absence of anxiety is as valuable as the presence of expertise.

Maybe more so.

Because expertise without urgency leaves clients in limbo.

And limbo, it turns out, is where trust erodes.

Not from what we fail to deliver, but from how long we make them wait to find out.

The best is ahead!

-Matt