The financial plan is neither a printed document nor an abstract. YOU are the financial plan.
"The medium is the message."
Marshall McCluhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, 1964.
Clients often won't understand you. In the arcane, navel-gazing world of personal finance advice, where we operate under legislation drawn up by civil servant bureaucrats who never played team sports or had many friends at school and who actually enjoy wearing face masks, it is easy to get lost in the weeds of detail.
Inadvertently, you will use a piece of appalling tech speak such as "PCLS" or "benefit crystallisation event". Reprimand yourself and move on.
The very worst advisors have every qualification under the sun bar the one that says "Post-Graduate In Getting People To Take Action". Sorry to break it to you but, in this game, if you cannot communicate you are useless. Move to compliance - you'll be far happier.
On the assumption that you can communicate arcane financial principles in a way that resonates with Mr and Mrs Everyman, then you have the secret sauce:
Use humour.
Curse occasionally (newsflash: clients swear).
Doodle or draw ideas. Pictures over words, whenever possible.
Tell stories and parables. Use analogies.
In essence, get out from up your own arse. Put the qualifications away and become a master communicator.
Do this and clients will believe you and what you're saying, for no other reason than it's you saying it. And if they believe you, they will trust you, and if they trust you, they will do what you advise them to do.
Thus the medium becomes the message.
YOU become the financial plan.