The Discovery Meeting Isn’t Broken.
It’s Misunderstood.

WHAT IF YOU COULD:

• Turn a first meeting into the most trusted hour of a prospect’s year? What happens when clients finally feel heard, not handled, and they start telling you the real story instead of the polite one?
• Spot the emotional cues prospects never say out loud—and use them to guide the conversation with precision? Every meeting becomes clearer, calmer, and easier because you’re finally working with the truth instead of the surface-level script.
• Create a discovery experience so collaborative that prospects lean in, open up, and start selling themselves on working with you? You stop chasing the close. They start choosing you.

TAKE CHARGE NOW

Discovery Shift is the advisor’s guide to upgrading the moment that matters most. It shows you how to strengthen your discovery meeting in a single afternoon by applying small, practical behavioral shifts that create real connection. You will see what actually happens in real advisor and prospect conversations and learn the habits that help clients open up, stay engaged, and feel understood.

You receive guidance rooted in what the Discovery Lab revealed: the patterns advisors miss, the blind spots that weaken trust, and the simple opportunities that often go unused.

You also get clear checklists that help you track your progress as you shift from talking to listening, from interviewing to collaborating, and from hoping for trust to earning it.

Discovery Shift gives you true control of the first meeting. Not through scripts. Not through pressure. Through awareness, presence, and better habits.

INSIDE DISCOVERY SHIFT

BUY
THE
BOOK

• The blind spot and why you’re not hearing what you think you are, page 3
• The habit loop of over-talking and why familiar patterns hold you back, page 18
• Breaking the cycle of conversational dominance, page 22
• Why change feels hard and how to make it stick, page 27
• Navigating difficult prospect emotions, page 45
• Why prospects don’t always tell you everything, page 59
• The art of asking thought-provoking questions, page 88
• Adapting discovery for different prospect types, page 115
• Redefining success in discovery, page 133
• The post-discovery process and how to move insight to action, page 142
• Helping prospects say yes to themselves, page 148
• How discovery drives referrals and retention, page 154

CHRIS HOLMAN, MCC

Chris Holman is the executive coach at Horsesmouth and a Master Certified Coach with the International Coaching Federation. He began his career at EF Hutton in 1981, cold-calling strangers with nothing but a phone, a script, and the stubborn belief that someone on the other end needed his help. He eventually became national director of investments for a ten-billion-dollar firm, guiding advisors and shaping strategies, but his real curiosity lived elsewhere. He wanted to understand what made people trust, what made them open up, and why some conversations sparked connection while others quietly stalled.

In the early 2000s, he launched The Prospecting Professor, one of the industry’s earliest blogs dedicated to financial advisors. It was part classroom, part laboratory, and part confession booth for the realities of growth in a changing profession. By 2007, he had shifted fully into coaching, working with more than 2,500 advisors and refining a simple question that still drives his work: What actually happens in a discovery meeting when no one is pretending?

That question led him to create the Discovery Meeting Workshop, the industry’s only research-based program built from real recordings, behavioral patterns, and the lived experience of advisors in the room. It also inspired the Discovery Lab, where dozens of advisor meetings were wired, recorded, reviewed, and dissected to reveal the habits that build trust and the habits that quietly erode it.

Today, Chris helps advisors rethink how they open relationships. He teaches them how to listen with presence, ask with intention, and create conversations that prospects remember for all the right reasons. His work blends decades of field experience with a coach’s instinct for human behavior, turning everyday meetings into turning points.

A San Francisco native and descendant of an authentic ’49er, Chris moved “temporarily” to Minneapolis in 1979, where he still lives.

SPEAKING, TRAINING, INTERVIEWS

Want your advisors to rethink discovery forever? Chris Holman brings a fast-paced, eye-opening program that shows audiences exactly why prospects hold back, why trust stalls, and how small behavioral shifts unlock big movement. His Discovery Shift sessions get advisors thinking, learning, and re-examining every instinct they thought was “good communication.”

If your firm or organization wants training that sticks, Chris teaches advisors how to listen with precision, ask questions prospects want to answer, and create discovery meetings that feel collaborative instead of scripted. His work blends behavioral science, decades of coaching experience, and insights from more than a hundred recorded advisor-prospect conversations.

Chris is also a go-to guest for podcasts, industry press, and media interviews. He connects headline trends in trust, consumer behavior, and financial decision-making with what advisors are actually doing in their conversations today.

For event and interview bookings, email cholman@horsesmouth.com or call (212) 217-1132.