George Kinder has a question that's changed thousands of lives: "If you had all the money you needed, what would you do with your life?"

It sounds simple. Almost too simple. But for more than three decades, this single question, and the two that follow it, has transformed how financial advisers work with their clients across thirty countries. Now, the internationally recognised "Father of Life Planning" has brought that same philosophy to the UK, not for a quiet retirement, but to spark a revolution in how businesses treat their people.

The story behind The Moules, George's newest venture, starts with something most of us have experienced: the soul-crushing gap between what companies say they value and how they actually operate.

When Values Are Just Words on a Wall

"Too many companies struggle with disengaged teams and values that don't translate into action," George explains, settling into a topic he's clearly passionate about. After revolutionising financial services by teaching advisers to listen, really listen, to what matters most to their clients, he's seen a pattern. The same disconnect that existed between advisers and their clients exists between businesses and their employees.

His solution? The Moules: a training company that helps mission-driven businesses put people genuinely first. But here's what makes it different: this isn't about adding more rules, more compliance measures, or more HR policies. It's about something far more fundamental.

The Three Questions That Changed Everything

George's approach to life planning centres on three questions he developed through decades of practice as a financial planner and tax adviser. The first asks what you'd do if money wasn't an issue. The second: if you had only five to ten years left to live, how would you spend them? The third is the most powerful: if you discovered you had just one day left, what would you regret not doing, being, or having?

These aren't theoretical exercises. When financial advisers learned to ask these questions through his EVOKE® Life Planning Training and truly listen to the answers, it transformed the entire relationship. Suddenly, financial planning wasn't about portfolios and returns. It was about helping people live the lives they actually wanted.

"When you understand what someone truly cares about," George says, "everything changes. The numbers become tools to achieve dreams not ends in themselves, both clients and their advisers become inspired to deliver those dreams into the world in short order, often with entrepreneurial energy."

The Moules applies this same principle to entire organisations. What if businesses listened to their employees the way George taught financial advisers to listen to clients? What if understanding what people genuinely wanted wasn't considered 'soft skills' but the foundation of everything?

Citing a 2017 Bain & Co study that reveals inspired workers are 125% more productive than satisfied workers, George says, “We build this productivity into businesses, establishing a trustworthiness within them that inspires their workers to be more engaged at work by becoming more of themselves.”

Training That Builds Trust, Not Compliance

The programme focuses on experiential training in listening skills and emotional intelligence: the same immersive approach that's earned the Kinder Institute's Registered Life Planner® (RLP®) designation recognition as the international standard of excellence. It's not about teaching managers to tick boxes or follow scripts. It's about creating workplaces where employee aspirations become genuine business assets, where people want to contribute because they feel heard, valued, and connected to something meaningful.

"Trust and engagement are authentic expressions of how people naturally want to work and grow together," he explains. "You can't mandate trust. You can't compliance-check your way to engagement. But you can create the conditions where both flourish."

The approach rejects the typical corporate response to problems: more rules, more monitoring, more control. Instead, it works from the inside out, building cultures where people genuinely want to be.

From Harvard to Hampstead Heath

George Kinder's credentials could intimidate. Harvard graduate, author of multiple foundational books including The Seven Stages of Money Maturity® (1999), poet, photographer, mindfulness teacher who's taught for 35 years. He earned the Bronze Medal in Massachusetts on the CPA exam in 1975, founded the influential "Nazrudin Project" think tank in 1994, and established the Kinder Institute of Life Planning in 2003 after three decades as a practicing financial planner. The institute has since trained thousands of professionals globally, with the RLP® designation now held by advisers around the world.

But speaking with him, what comes across most strongly is his genuine optimism about people and organisations.

When he and his wife Kathy decided to retire in the UK, they discovered the Innovator Founder visa was their only pathway to settlement. Rather than seeing this as a bureaucratic hurdle, he saw an opportunity. If he believed businesses could transform by putting people first, why not prove it?

"The regulations made it quite challenging," he admits with a laugh, recalling the adventure of incorporation, banking, and getting a UK phone. "But I love nearly everything about the UK, even the weather!" London's museums, parks, theatre, restaurants, and diversity have captured his heart, as have family holidays in Cornwall with Kathy and their twin daughters, currently in college.

His plan for the next three years is refreshingly straightforward: introduce The Moules first to the financial community already familiar with his work, then expand to B Corporations and other mission-driven companies. Success means both business growth and something more personal: settlement near Hampstead Heath as the business becomes sustainable.

A Bigger Mission

But The Moules is about more than business success. George sees it as a practical application of something larger: his FIAT (Fiduciary In All Things) proposal. The concept is radical in its simplicity: require all institutions, whether corporate, nonprofit, or governmental, to place the interests of stakeholders, truth, humanity, democracy, and the planet above their own self-interest.

"As corporations scale globally, their negative externalities have scaled more rapidly than we can respond," he explains, listing climate change, extreme inequality, and misinformation among the threats. "We need institutions we can trust again."

For George, who's raising twin daughters in a world grappling with existential challenges, this isn't abstract philosophy. It's personal. The Moules is his way of proving that putting people first isn't just good ethics, it's good business. And that the path to trustworthy institutions starts with how we treat each other every single day.

Why It Might Just Work

In an era when corporate trust is at historic lows and 'purpose-driven' has become dangerously close to meaningless marketing speak, his work presents something different. Not cynicism or destruction, but a return to something fundamental: the idea that businesses exist to serve people, not extract value from them.

The innovation isn't in some complicated system or technology. It's in remembering that the person sitting across from you, whether they're a client, employee, or colleague, has dreams, fears, and aspirations that matter. And that when you build a business around that truth, everything else follows.

Whether The Moules will transform UK business culture remains to be seen. But if George Kinder's 35 years of work have taught us anything, it's that asking the right questions and genuinely listening to the answers can change everything.

One conversation at a time. One business at a time. One person at a time.

Want to learn more about George's work? Visit kinderinstitute.com, georgekinder.com, https://www.themoules.net/ or fiduciaryinallthings.com