063: more santa and less stalker | Matt Kocanda
In this episode, Deb Knupp sits down with Matt Kocanda, office managing partner for the Chicago office of Corient and, by Deb's own description, her collaborator in crime for more than ten years.
"It's inefficient, but relationships aren't efficient either." – Matt Kocanda
The subject is one most people would rather not discuss at all: sales. Matt did not arrive here by choice. He spent an earlier stretch of his career actively running away from it, and left a firm specifically because the next role was a pure sales job, the kind that asks you to push your interests instead of the client's. What changed was not his aptitude. It was a single reframe, the one Deb's work at GrowthPlay is built on: sales is at its best when the selling itself is an act of service.
Underlying the conversation is a claim Matt makes early and then spends the episode proving: in wealth management, and in professional services generally, nobody chooses you because you have the best widget, because you're the smartest, or because you outperform. They choose you because they trust you. Which means the work is not pitching. It is listening well enough to hear the actual problem, solving it even when solving it earns you nothing, and being honest when the answer is that you are not the right fit. As Matt puts it, the best business developer he ever watched spoke for maybe five or ten percent of a meeting.
Key Highlights
The washing machine. A widowed client called her advisor about buying one. The average response is "we'll send you the money." Instead he asked how she was feeling about it, learned she had never done it without her husband, and went to the store with her.
Telling clients the truth. One of the hardest parts of the job is telling someone their plan won't work. When a client asked an advisor to promise they'd never run out of money, the honest answer was "I can't do that," and that honesty is what builds trust.
The dad group. Matt is a father of three young kids, noticed that mothers have affinity groups and fathers largely do not, and built one out of clients and centers of influence. Busy, successful professional men always made time for an hour-long Zoom about how hard the dad thing is. Some became clients. That was never the point.
About Our Guest
Matt Kocanda is the office managing partner for the Chicago office of Corient, one of the largest private wealth management firms in the country, where he leads both operations and the firm's growth and sales culture efforts. He has spent his entire career in private wealth, across firms large and small, and describes the work as more than stocks and bonds: helping people take apart a difficult relationship with money and rebuild it into something closer to stewardship than control. He is candid that he once fled a sales role, and equally candid that learning to see selling as an act of service changed the trajectory of his life. Today he coaches junior advisors on the difference between the getter's game and the giver's game, builds community for its own sake and lets the business follow, and argues that the firms that win are the ones whose people believe what they do makes a difference. He is a husband and a father of three, and he shares a birthday with his wife, which he takes off every year.
Connect with Matt Kocanda
Matt Kocanda on LinkedIn
About the HX Collective
The HX Collective explores the human experience through three lenses: work, relationships, and self, through raw, authentic conversations rooted in human-centered design. Each episode offers gripping stories, thought-provoking discussion, and concrete tools that help you rethink your relationship with distress and strengthen your whole human experience.
