Insights
We talked with Jully about:
- Her story and how she got into investing
- The spark that launched her Investing Latina brand
- How she built the community behind Investing Latina
- How listening to her audience has been the key to her success
About Jully-Alma Taveras:
Jully-Alma Taveras, aka Investing Latina, is an award-winning financial expert who gained popularity through Instagram by sharing her personal story. Born in the Dominican Republic and raised by immigrant entrepreneur parents in New York City, she lacked knowledge about investing until her father’s illness sparked a change that started her transformation from shopaholic to savvy investor. On a mission to help first-time investors and empower those who have had similar life challenges, she teaches financial literacy through three pillars: overcoming credit card debt, stock market investing, and real estate investing. Boasting over 41,000 Instagram followers and millions of social impressions, Jully has become a trusted guide for her followers, teaching them to live minimally, spend intentionally, and build wealth through her authentic and relatable content.
Featured Resources & Shoutouts
- Jully’s Investing Latina Instagram Profile
- Jully’s LinkedIn Profile
- Jully’s “Minimalism, Mindset, and Money” blog on YouTube
- Jully’s Twitter Profile
- Jully’s Facebook Profile
- Jully’s Investment Workshop and Money Guide
Full Audio Transcript
Lauren (00:04):
Jully, welcome. Thank you for joining us.
Jully (00:08):
Thank you so much for having me, Lauren.
Lauren (00:16):
So I was sharing with you earlier, I was popping around on Instagram as we do, and stumbled onto your profile—not surprising us being in financial services; we get into all that—and I was like, holy smokes. I was like, you have a huge following for Investing Latina, to put the Instagram handle out there, and have such an awesome way of connecting with so many followers around personal finance. In fact, you're an award-winning personal finance expert. So I'd love to hear more, like how did you get into this space? Why Instagram? We can get into a lot of things but why don't you tell us a little bit more about you and how you got here.
Jully (00:51):
Yes, absolutely. I mean, a lot of my platform really is rooted in my personal story. And so a really quick recap of my story is I was born in the Dominican Republic and we moved here to New York when I was four years old, and my parents really didn't know the language. We were all first-time immigrants and they had to learn things as they went. And I remember they started a business a little bit after coming here.
I grew up in my dad's business. He had a grocery store, a bodega. And so from the age of 12, I was exposed to money in a sense. I started collecting tips from packing bags, and as I got older, I got more and more responsibility within the business. It was really interesting to have that exposure to a small business because there are so many here in the U.S. and even across the world and mom and pops, and it can be very challenging. And I saw my parents face a lot of challenges. There were good times, there were bad times, and in between and a lot of what they did and learned as they went.
We didn't really necessarily have a family or history of people who taught money lessons and they didn't know anything about investing. All they knew really, and all they really tried to figure out was how to earn money to support their families. So when I started working in the corporate world, I got a job that gave me access to a 403(b). So at that point, I remember signing up and I was excited about it. I didn't know anything about it. I didn't know the details or what it really truly meant but I knew I was getting free money.
Lauren (03:06):
It's a good start, right?
Jully (03:10):
Yes. So the HR lady was like, you'll get free money if you put money in. And I said, that sounds really good. So it's so funny because that simple way of her putting that really was what persuaded me to do it. Because when I went to my parents and told them I was so excited about it, Mom was like, don't do that. It's a scam. You're going to lose money. It's best that you just save your money under the mattress. And so it really stemmed from their fear in a sense, and not knowing and also being immigrants in this country, just really not having that access and that knowledge. And so I had already signed up and I know my mom was telling me not to do it.
Lauren (03:58):
Trying to watch out for you.
Jully (03:59):
Yeah, she was trying to protect me but at that point I had already signed up and I was like, it's only $25 per paycheck. It was so minimal and to undo it, forget it. And so I just let it be, and I kept investing. And at that time I didn't know, I didn't use the term investing for retirement. Now I am very proud to say that and I make sure I tell people when they're signing up for their company-sponsored accounts that they're investing, what we're doing. You have a lot of options within that but that's what you're doing. You're not just saving for retirement, you're literally participating in the markets. So that was the origin story of Investing Latina; I started investing when I was 19 years old, and I didn't know what I was doing but I learned as I went along.
Lauren (04:53):
And you started young. That’s key. You were 19 years old. I feel like a lot of folks missed that opportunity, right? That's great.
Jully (05:02):
I almost couldn't have planned it better, right?
Lauren (05:05):
Innocently even, yeah.
Jully (05:07):
I had no idea. I didn't have support. So I was lacking all of these things you would think you would need to get started and to start to build wealth. I didn't have any of that. And I somehow was able to do it simply because I started out young and I started out not knowing and being okay with not knowing.
As I went, because like I mentioned, I kind of learned that from my parents. You have to kind of learn as you go. You have to take risks, put yourself out there and keep going and keep learning. And so I worked in the fashion industry for a long time, 15 years. And so I was investing, and I went through a period where even though I was investing, I was overspending. So I was a shopaholic. I bought shoes every single Friday. I was just wanting to be the best in my industry and look the best but I had no control because I really didn't have the foundation of knowing how to budget, of really controlling emotions so I could stick to a budget.
And ultimately I didn't have a plan. I knew I was putting money away here. I knew I kind of wanted to save for a house in the future. So I had these loose ideas and goals but I didn't make them concrete enough to the point where I was motivated and propelled to keep going and to stick to them. And so I had many hiccups in my financial journey, so much debt I had to take myself out of. And then unfortunately, my father got sick and I mentioned they had a business, so they had to sell the business. Finances completely changed for them, and I'm his oldest daughter of three so the responsibility fell to me.
Lauren (07:25):
Yes.
Jully (07:27):
If my dad is no longer here with us, I’m the one who will be taking care of my mom and my two sisters, who were still very young at the time. And so that really flipped a switch. So that was pure motivation to get it together. And it took me a while. It took me about three years to get out of all the debt and put together that strategy because it's important. If you don't have that strategy, if you don't have that plan, it’s hard to decide which way to go. It's hard to make daily choices.
Lauren (08:06):
You just keep in those cycles.
Jully (08:09):
It becomes very difficult to make daily choices when you don't have an overall plan. And so I had a plan and I knew I just needed to get really financially stable. I hustled and excelled in my career in terms of getting new opportunities, working multiple jobs, doing consulting. So I just really kind of put my head down and got to work when my father got very sick. And then once I felt like I had this really great control, luckily he was stable and doing well and kind of on treatments and just in a good place. So we were no longer in sort of the survival mode that we were in for the first year and a half.
Lauren (09:05):
With so many unknowns, I'm sure.
Jully (09:08):
It was a little bit more stable, and I was financially in a good place. I took a break from my full-time work, from my career in fashion.I said I've been doing this since I was literally 13 years old. Oh my God. Because I've always loved fashion. It was inspiration for my mother. And I just literally said, I'm going to take a break and I want to kind of rethink what I want to do with my life. And I had that entrepreneurial energy I got from my parents. And when I took that break, about a year into that break from my old life and my first career, out came Investing Latina, and I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do with it but I just felt like the story was interesting. My story was interesting, and I also started to realize it wasn't a unique story. It wasn't just me.
Lauren (10:13):
Other people share parallels or still share pieces of your story that are relatable, I'm sure.
Jully (10:20):
Yes, it wasn't just me who hadn’t had any access to the stock market and not known about investing but had responsibilities and had a desire to improve and to build wealth. And so that's really how it started. And I just opened up an Instagram account. That was the channel.
Lauren
Like, I'm going to go for this. And then, okay, so how did you start? Was it videos? Or quick tips? How did you start to see there was traction here and other people had some sort of relatability to it? I’d love to hear more about where you saw that, oh, there's something here, other people need this. When did you start to notice that?
Jully (11:15):
Yeah. Well, I started, funny enough, as an anonymous account.
Lauren (11:22):
Oh, interesting. On Instagram.
Jully (11:24):
And I shared a lot of personal information.
Lauren (11:27):
Being super vulnerable.
Jully (11:28):
Yeah, super vulnerable in the sense that I shared all my details. I shared all of my budget, I shared all of my accounts. And I think that sort of vulnerability and that sort of openness definitely attracts people who are in a similar situation, looking to learn and perhaps struggling.
And that was really my audience. The people who were like, oh my God, I want to do better. And I relate to you because I see your post about how you spent thousands and thousands of dollars on frivolous things, and you don't have any money in a savings account, or you're not thinking about retirement or building for the future. It wasn’t like there's only one and you're putting it all out there. So it wasn't video or anything. It was literally a static post having details of, this is what my budget is this week, this is how I'm doing. And then people really wanted to come along on the journey. So I would make templates where there would be no-spend days, and on the first day of the month, I would say, everyone, here's a template for the month. Screenshot it. Let me know how the month goes for you. And I posted updates every day, and people posted their updates every day and were tagging. Oh, cool. So this is two-way interaction too. It's not just preaching or what have you. People were tagging me, and that kind of helped spread the word.
And before I knew it, the audience had grown, and I was like, oh my God, this is so cool. But I was also getting a little bit inundated with questions, and it was PM questions or comments or the whole thing, everything, comments, questions, and they're like, oh, this is my situation. What should I do? Okay. And the number one question was, I am starting to budget and now I want to start investing. And it was in my title, Investing Latina. So when people searched investing on Instagram, I would pop up. So it was that. And then the element of being Spanish speaking, being Latina, was also something that kind of helped niche me down in terms of the audience I was reaching. So I really got a lot of people who live in the U.S. but come from Latin American backgrounds. And it was really, really cool to just connect with people in that way, because again, my story wasn't unique. It was just a matter of I was in a position where I had already gone through a lot of things, learned a lot of lessons, and my goal was to pass those lessons down to anybody who would listen, anybody who needed it. And ultimately, that constant question of how do I get started with investing led to me creating my first paid program, which was the investing workshop. And when I launched it, the response was unbelievable. I had 300 people sign up.
Lauren (15:06):
So you had built your base, and you didn't only build the base but it was authentic. So it was like, wait, okay. Just to back up, when did you go from private, not showing your face, to making the turning point? Assuming when you launched that course you had kind of introduced yourself, is that the case or can you tell us when you actually said I want to flip the switch and then put myself out there so people can actually see you. You do so many videos now. So I'd love to hear about that transition and the why too, and then take it to the course.
Jully (15:42):
Really the timeline on it was probably a year, I would say maybe less honestly, because I got so much traction that I had a lot of media and reporters reaching out to me saying, I see that you teach this online. We have questions about this. Can you help talk a little bit about budgeting? Can you talk about credit? Oh, and I will say that from the beginning, even though I didn't have a true perfect plan for my business and the platform, I did choose three pillars. I wanted to talk about how to get out of credit card debt, I wanted to talk about investing in the stock market, and I wanted to talk about investing into real estate because that was what I had the most exposure and experience in. And it was also what I was most interested in.
Lauren (16:42):
Super authentic, passionate experience. And it all themed around this idea of investing, which goes back to your handle. So to swing back, there’s private reporters reaching out.
Jully (16:58):
At that point, when I saw all that traction, I said, oh my God, okay, so now they're asking for my name. And it became this sort of place where it was like, a little awkward, but ultimately I said, you know what? Oh, that's also when the type of content changed a little bit as well because I said I could make these posts, but they take so long. It would be so much faster if I just made a video. And so I started making videos and I would put them on Instagram, and I would also put them on YouTube. And so that was kind of a big motivator in terms of coming out or leaving that anonymous stage and moving on to showing myself. But that also came with its own challenges because I could no longer share as much detail as I did before.
Lauren (17:56):
That's fair.
Jully (17:57):
I wasn't really sharing the types of accounts I had and who I was banking with because it exposes you and you have to be very careful.
Lauren (18:03):
Yep, that's fair.
Jully (18:06):
So very shortly after I was publicly showing my face, I was part of an article on 10 people you should be following. And the people that were on that list were Suze Orman, Tiffany Aliche “The Budgetnista”.
Lauren (18:31):
Oh my goodness. And you're like, I'm here. That was really cool.
Jully (18:37):
And it really actually propelled my brand even further. So I think ultimately it was because my voice was maybe a little bit different, and my background was a little bit different from everybody else who was on that list. And so that's ultimately kind of what really pushed me forward. And then shortly after that the awards came and the platform just continued to grow. I signed with an agent to start doing brand partnerships. So in the past, I've worked with so many brands. I've worked with Chase, I've worked with SoFi, I've worked with many brands, and it's just been really cool to share my perspective, the things I've learned and also learn from my audience because they're the ones who trigger the content I create because they're the ones who are asking me money questions, and my job is to answer them to the best of my ability and give them as many resources as possible. And I never shy away from questions. Even when I was getting tons and tons of questions every single day in DMs, I would sit down and answer all of them. I had very little sleep in the beginning. I love helping in general.
Lauren (20:10):
Right. So powerful. And before we started chatting, one of the things I really appreciate about what you've done is you've created a real platform. And like you said, you're helping people and you're helping to also—I mean, money affects all of us—but also just make it so much more approachable. And I love that you're also willing to take your time to be able to reach out and be able to support folks. So tell us a little bit more about your program. So you've got the investing piece you had rolled out some time ago, and that was the one that was an overnight success. Do you have other programs and things like that that folks can get involved with? Or how do you cultivate that ongoing training outside of the platform?
Jully (20:47):
So the investing workshop has been the one and only thing I've ever sold. I have a lot of free freebies. I have a lot of templates I create that people can just download. But the investing workshop was what I really wanted; it took me about a year to develop it before I launched it. People were asking for it for so long, and I kept delaying it, which I think as creators, we sometimes get into our own heads and we're like, oh, will people like this? Will it resonate? Is it something they're interested in? But I really just try my best to listen as much as possible so I can incorporate all the things they really need. So once I launched that, I've upgraded it and have different versions of it.
So from the first version, right now we're probably at version 10; you just keep listening, tweaking, pouring into it, and making it stronger. Same concept with the same goal. And it's for a person who really is starting from zero, wants to learn terminology, wants to get a grasp of the market, wants to understand the types of accounts, and ultimately get to the place where they're investing and they have at least the fundamentals to start putting together a plan for themselves. So an important part of it all is that it's not financial advice, not this is what you should be investing in. I really think first of all, it requires that you're accredited within the industry. It also can’t ever be done as a one-size-fits-all for people. And aside from that, I also think it never feels very great to get preached to.
So that's always been an important part of my content. I never want my audience to feel like I'm telling you to do this. If you're not doing this, you're dumb. You should feel, be ashamed, or duh, obviously you should be doing this. This is the best. I never want to have that energy because I feel like it turns people off and that doesn't allow anybody to grow. And so, yeah, I've had different versions of the same exact program. I've upgraded here and there, added more things, and I've done it in Spanish, which people loved. And so that was really successful as well. I don't currently have it in Spanish because it’s kind of double work in a sense. I have 10 versions at this point. To create the Spanish one, I would also have to have that same sort of cadence. And so you make choices as a creator and as an entrepreneur. And so right now, it's not something I’ve focused on but I'm really excited to create the next version in the future that can be available. And again, like I said, listening to the audience and making sure they're getting what they want, and looking at those demographics, you have to pay attention to those things. Who's following? How old are they? What's their language? I ask a lot of questions. I do surveys and things like that. So it really helped me get to know them. And so yeah, that's kind of how it's gone.
Lauren (24:58):
So many secrets to success I feel like you've just naturally leaned into. I feel like I've said passion 10 times, right? Just this idea of really listening and not trying to push, like you were saying earlier, but really to be able to add value and know who you're talking with. So I know we're wrapping up here but I’d love to hear what's next. Is there anything particular you want to highlight when you look ahead? Or is it really just ears to the ground listening to what's going on and letting that drive the future of the platform? I'd love to hear if there's anything in particular you see in the space that you want to highlight.
Jully (25:41):
Well, I still think my sort of program is really the bread and butter program in terms of my business. It's something that even as new generations come about, they're going to need. So it really is nice and important, I think, for me to just really hone in on that and focus. There's so many benefits to just sticking to a niche and not trying to do too much. Do I have ideas? Oh my God, I keep a huge list of ideas I've tried to organize, and every time I go through them, I organize it by month. So it says by year and then every month. And then every so often I'll go back to that list and I'll review the last couple and move some ideas up to a separate folder of really top ideas. So I do have tons of ideas for the brand but I also, again, want to make sure I'm accomplishing the mission of helping that first-time investor. So there's things I want to do. For example, I'll just give you one example. I have office hours. I did have office hours. I don't right now because I have a baby right now.
Lauren (27:18):
There's a lot going on.
Jully (27:19):
But I had office hours, and every single week we would go over a new company. We would review their financial reports, we would take a look at how their stock has performed. We would do competitive research. So these are all things I did for my audience. And they would come in, they would join, they would ask questions. So it was just kind of like a little class every single week. And so that is something that definitely will relaunch in the future. And also other versions of investing, for example, dividend investing, that was actually a workshop I did have that I will bring back again in the future. So there's just, I think the next level, once you've gotten past getting started, with your basic accounts, having good strategy, how do you deepen your relationship with investing and how do you grow it? And of course, the real estate arm, which is something that because there was so much demand for stock lessons, I didn't really create things for the real estate arm. And that's something I still work on and continue to do myself that I hope to help others and teach others the way I've done it, again, with the experience I've had and just pushing that forward.
Lauren (28:45):
So exciting. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to share your story and also your journey and that timeline, as you kind of alluded to earlier, of just this platform, where it's gotten to today. And I think just importantly too, like you said, really leaning into the mission and being a voice that helps cut through the clutter in this space. So what we'll do too is I'll make sure we link to your Instagram as well, and in the blog post and the video below, and then we'll make sure to also link to the investing class or any other resources that might be helpful. So thank you again for your time.
Jully (29:19):
Absolutely. Thank you so much. This was great.
Building a Community Around Your Story and Lessons You’ve Learned
We talked with Christine about:
- How she discovered “teaching” was her calling
- How having a bird’s eye view of the mortgage industry allowed her to stand out
- Why she designed her business like “a hospital and a drug store”
About Christine Beckwith:
As a leading and award-winning mortgage industry executive sales leader, Christine Beckwith pivoted from sales to coaching in 2018. She is now the president, chief operating officer, and master coach of 20/20 Vision for Success Coaching. In this role, Christine guides loan originators and others in the industry to be successful entrepreneurs by offering them the professional and personal resources they need.
Featured Resources
- Christine's LinkedIn page
- 20/20 Vision for Success Coaching
- 20/20 Vision for Success Facebook
- 20/20 Vision for Success LinkedIn
- 20/20 Vision for Success Twitter
- 20/20 Vision for Success Instagram
- 20/20 Vision for Success YouTube Channel
- Christine's Amazon Author Profile
- Women with Vision Magazine
- Mortgage X Podcast
Full Audio Transcript
Lauren (00:00):
Christine, welcome. We're so glad to have you here. So I don't even know where to begin because I feel like your bio is just so amazing. I mean, you're a coach. You've got your own podcast. You've written multiple books. Let's just start there. Tell us about how you got to where you are today. You have just had so much success, to be where you are right now. So I'd love to hear a little more about your story in the background.
Christine (00:27):
I grew up in central New Hampshire in this beautiful valley of the White Mountains. And I went off to college at 18 on a scholarship. So for me it was really, really important when I was young. I had to work really hard to get to school. And then while I was in school, I was the understudy of a female originator. And even though I was going to school for sports medicine and nutrition, I caught the bug for the banking industry. And if you fast forward 35 years, I've had a really incredible career within the mortgage industry and in the finance space. I would start out leaving college and not going into my field, going into the banking field, becoming a loan originator. I was processing and assisting loans, as I said, in my college years.
Christine (01:19):
And I just loved it. I was very competitive. And if you look under the hood of my career, I would become a branch manager, an originating branch manager, and then later a district manager. And at the time that I became a district manager, there were not a lot of higher ranking women. In fact, I worked for H&R Block Mortgage at that time. And there had been no women who had been at that level. I would go on to become the regional vice president. When I became the senior vice president, I really got notoriety. I would end up closing that division for H&R Block during the mortgage implosion, which was an act of preservation toward the shareholder price on Wall Street. And I would write a book that became a bestseller called Wise Eyes.
Christine (02:05):
I wrote about my way to success, including the sad part of that story, which is the end, the demise of that leg of my career. And then I would take about 50 people from that local market to go work at a boutique shop to kind of weather the storm. And I got another call from Wall Street and was asked if I would be willing to do kind of the Warren Buffet thing, which is to build another mortgage firm with some people I had worked with in the past and combine my boutique shop with their shop in Jersey. Then I went on another 12-year ride building AnnieMac Home Mortgage with Joe Panebianco and the managers there, Ryan Kuby, Jason Leibowitz. And that brings you all the way to 2017, 2018, when I ended up retiring from direct management within the mortgage industry.
Christine (02:59):
I was turning 50 that year and decided to do this, which was by the way not a surprise, because I had a 10-year business plan to actually do exactly what I did, which was to leave direct mortgage management and launch a consulting firm. Along the way I became a writer for the national mortgage magazines. I became a published author. I have won a lot of sales contests; I would say I'm a fierce competitor. So what you see out there is a lot of hype, I think, around awards I received for competing in the area of sales and that sort of thing. And I guess along the way, I also broke some glass ceilings, more or less accidentally, because I just really was always, I hope, the best person for the job. But I had to trudge some paths that had not been trenched by women prior to me.
Lauren (03:56):
So you mentioned this plan that was in the works to start, the consulting business you have now. Tell me a little bit more about that. And when did you know it was just that right turning point to get this business going?
Christine (04:09):
So in 2006, when the downfall of H&R Block was occurring, I ended up taking the summer off. I had a great severance after being with them for so long, 12 years. And it was a crazy time; the mortgage implosion was happening and I was a little unsettled by the fact that I had just thought three months prior, everything was great. And then all of a sudden the bottom had fallen out. I had a baby in 2006. So it was really a good time to be in a position to be able to stay home. And I literally rented a home. I was living away from where I grew up and I rented a home back on the lake where I grew up. And it was just this surreal time where I just spent the whole summer not working.
Christine (04:54):
My mother actually had a brain aneurysm that summer. She survived it, but she was in a forced coma for a couple months. So I was very fragile. I had lost a 12-year job, put myself outta work. I had a new gig called motherhood going on. My mom was sick. And I think all of these things and I wasn't working and I'm a workaholic. So like all of these things were all happening at once. And so what did I do every day to keep my sanity? I would write. I just started writing. I was afraid I wouldn't remember all the things that had made me successful. So over that summer, as I began to write, I had no idea that what I was writing was my first book. I just wrote. And I wrote, it was like Forrest Gump of writing was growing in my life.
Christine (05:37):
Like I had decided to go out for a small run and then I just tapped into some geyser of writing. And so I would write and write and write and write and write. And as that summer wore on and I wrote, most people who do write, it's really a cathartic process. And I discovered along the path of encapsulating my success over the prior 10 years that I was a teacher. I thought, God, that's my calling. I'm a teacher. I like building education. I have a distinct relationship with it. I admire it. I respect it. I think I'm a good teacher. I get good results when I do teach, which is great. I can engage people for long periods of accountability time, I discovered. And so all of these things led to me deciding, gee, maybe one day I'll coach or I'll be a consultant.
Christine (06:34):
And I actually decided that summer what would be the name of my book. And I was spitballing names for my book and I was writing them down and I was testing them on Google and stuff and seeing what was out there. And then I did the same thing with a consulting firm. What would I name it? You know? And so I ended up paying for the domain vision of your success dot net. And I did not bring that website to life. I paid for the annual fees for that domain for 10 years before it would come to life. So true story, proof actually of that. And so everyone always says when the year 2020 came, everybody overused the phrase 20/20 vision for success. They're like, oh my God, like you named your company, because my company opened in 18 and they thought I was just on the bandwagon of what was happening.
Christine (07:29):
And I said, you know, I've always had this name and this name's gonna live way past the year 2020. I hope. And that's what I did. And so I just didn't know where it was. I had an image in my mind that maybe when I went to work for the next company, I would work for them for three to five years and then I'd start doing this. And then when I got to work doing what I was doing there, I thought, well maybe I won't be doing this till I'm 55. And then the perfect storm happened again for me in 2018 where I just really came to terms with it being the right time. And I will tell you, it was like a Seinfeld thing because I felt like I needed to go out on top. My career was still soaring. I was still winning. I was getting tons of accolades for my contributions to AnnieMac. I was winning industry accolades. I had won a top 50 women award from MPA magazine, which was prestigious. I had hoped to be there for 20 years in my career and to be named; I also knew I was coming of age at that point. So there you have it. I mean, that's kind of how it all came about.
Lauren (08:35):
Yeah. I liked what you were saying earlier too, about how you're able to work with people and coach them. On your website, there's some testimonials too about that, right? That you've got this real gift. And so that might, I don't know, I don't feel like that's something you can train. But I'd imagine that you've brought that into your coaching practice and helping people. I'd love to hear a little bit more about that too.
Christine (08:57):
Yeah. I mean, so all through my career, parts and pieces of my executive leadership, my regional district leadership, even branch manager is obviously speaking and training. And so I didn’t know I had a gift, I guess, for that until I would see the reactions of people when I would speak or do a class. And so by the time I would decide that this is something I was good at, I ended up really going through a process of evolution. The guys, you know, I was surrounded by 98.5% men for 32 years below me, beside me and above me. And as a result of that, I literally in the first decade of my career, was one of 178 originators and I was the only female. And one of 210 branch managers. And I was the only female.
Christine (09:55):
I mean, the numbers are staggering as to how few women there were in sales. If you went over to the operation side, closing, you know, underwriting, processing, the numbers were much better in those areas, but for sales, they were really stark. And the guys would say, oh, you're a cheerleader. I always seemed to have something; I was always quoting people. When I went to college, I wrote a thesis on interviewing Edgar Allen Poe. And I tutored in English and I was a young author too. I was published in Cricket, my magazine at grade school. I had an English teacher who thought I had good writing skills. So somewhere inside me, I felt like there was probably always that author, teacher, writer, trainer type of personality.
Christine (10:47):
I did the tagline for this company as emotional awakening through education. I believe that if you have an opportunity to sit down and teach a subject, you first have to provoke the audience into the belief of the subject that you're teaching. It isn't enough to explain what and how something works, but the why, why you should do it, and really tying in to what makes people soar. And so I'm a metaphoric teacher. I use tons of metaphors—it's in my regular language, my everyday language—to kind of get people out of their heads, out of their elements, out of their situations to sit in light of things that they're struggling with, like delegation and just scaling and all of the human evolution pieces.
Christine (11:44):
So it's not surprising, 20/20 Vision Consulting offers grief and loss counselors, health and wellness counselors. We're in the mortgage industry and we're doing financial forensics building out performers; we're teaching originators how to scale and be entrepreneurs; we're teaching formidable business planning, time management, economics, the whole gamut of banking and real estate finance education, but for a human. So we look at you as the pilot of your business and you might be going through something. And so we're gonna have the resources here to make sure you are healthy—mind, body, soul—as best we can. And then we'll get down into the tactical matter of running your business, because so many things that prevent people from being successful are the outlier type of things that are affecting them.
Lauren (12:34):
That makes so much sense. And when you're coaching these businesses, individuals, etc., are you helping to shape that strategy? Are you more trying to get down to the root cause of why, whatever issue, maybe it's a sales issue or personal issue? What kind of conversations are you having with folks?
Christine (12:55):
You know, it's funny, because when I started 20/20 and I started to really get closer to the day that we were going to open our doors, we spent 18 months prior building the first deck of curriculum. So we had some substance and content and I made it very tactically formidable, the entrepreneur that was building an origination system. I knew that's what would attract companies. I knew that's what would attract originating salespeople. It’s where I had spent most of my career. And I knew that my competitor very much had a box of training that they expected people to crawl into. And it had limits, like let's learn how to make cold calls. Let's learn how to convert leads. Let's learn how to talk to realtors. Let's learn how to do this. And it may have had a set or a couple subsets of educational tactical matter.
Christine (13:49):
And I thought, I'm not doing that. I'm going to build a college. I'm gonna build it on modern terms, meaning you can train anywhere in the world. The software that I would end up getting through LightSpeed VT is tagged the most virtual interactive training system on Earth, which is a bold statement. And it's the Lamborghini of software. And so I went for it. I'm like, this is gonna be a scalable company and it's gonna be customizable. And so I would tell you, we opened our doors kind of with the mindset that there are thousands of different types of people within our industry who are gonna walk in with a very unique set of health circumstances for their business. And we need to be a hospital and like a drug store at the same time.
Christine (14:37):
We're gonna have a resource center where we can send them to go get cold medicine and send them to get bandages and send them to get Tylenol. But we're also going to have on-deck doctors ready to work with those patients who have outlier conditions for their business. So we really do have a process. We figured it out. Clients come in and go through a formidable process of telling their story. Every person who comes here fills out something called the blueprint for success, which I authored; it's in my book, Wise Eyes, the first book I wrote. It has nine components of building out a business plan. And it's literally an eight and a half by 11 piece of paper. And when you're done, it’s a complete ecosystem look at your business.
Christine (15:22):
There’s a first coach who’s gonna review that document with you and they are then going to prescribe your first 90 days. There is formidable curriculum that's occurring. You do go through orientation. You are given a syllabus just like school. You are given an app on your phone and laptop that allows you to attend live classes—optional—during the week with real instructors. And then you have the ability to do your one-on-one sessions with your counselors. And so all of this is occurring and you are self-advocating yourself into the right places based on us saying, okay, this is what we see the priorities for fixing your business are X. If you don't come bearing a lot of problems and you're just here to be at the gym and get more muscles and get more strong, get stronger, well then that looks like a different path. And so we can write a prescription for literally endless amounts of people. Because what we did is we built an enormous resource center with all these professionals here and experts. And so the neat thing is people pay membership dues here. And then we write the checks to the doctors. So instead of you getting billed for every doctor you go to, you come here, you pay a membership and talk to the doctors and not be billed. And it's under your membership and we take care of it for you as part of your membership.
Lauren (16:38):
Did you just kind of figure this out by going through the process? I mean, it's one thing to start a business, right? It's another thing to be able to design it to scale and then build a team to do that and have the systems in place. How did you do it? I mean, you're at a place right now where you can tell that narrative, right?
Christine (17:01):
Some of it grew organically and out of us listening to what the clients’ needs were. And so, like I said, we had a subset of curriculum built and we started with a small pool of consultants. Then we heard, oh, they need this, we need that. And we'd bring in this and we'd bring in that. And we followed the markets because we are economic advisors and we followed the companies. And we just grew and stacked the resources. We still are. We believe that keeping memberships alive here is happening from our evolution of content. We have a syllabus of live certifications that go on by semester. So we're not teaching live business certifications in the summertime or in January. And so just like following a college, there are classes going on all year long and study halls, by the way, also going on.
Christine (17:57):
So communities of people are gathering in our Zooms and they're being managed by audio coaches to talk through points. We set the discussion points and we put guest coaches in, and they come in, but for the actual live semester of certification, we have a registration over the summer. We show the topics for the fall and you can opt into up to three of the certifications with your membership. You also can go to the study halls. You can go to the monthly masterminds as part of your all-access. And the virtual training has over 200 hours of formidable training. It's a culmination of over 100 executive consultants. And the libraries are rich. You could literally go find something on anything. I think at this point we have over 20 hours of digital marketing strategy. We have 40 hours of financial forensic strategy.
Christine (18:54):
And so it's like going to the library; what are you here for? What are you studying to be? And so again, I guess because I started from a place where I said I'm not going to be trying to compete with the one-man coaching shops, I'm going to be trying to create a resource center for professionals in our space. And I still think we're the best-kept secret in our industry. And we have grabbed so much market share from our competition and are still growing at a pretty big pace. So I feel blessed. It's been a complex puzzle. I would say the hardest thing is that I once again entered a male-dominated field, consulting and coaching. So like I haven't had enough challenges.
Christine (19:41):
I decided to once again opt into that situation, which is crazy, but I just haven't paid attention to the noise. I've always believed that we as women could do anything we put our minds to. I think we are the best choices for many things. And I just set the gender talk aside. I had many people say what are you doing? I had people who were really scared that I was making a mistake or losing my mind because I was leaving a really great income in my previous job after the mountain I had climbed to get there. And they were like, what are you doing? You know coaching is saturated, nobody needs more coaches. I'm watching coaches starve to death out there trying to make it; there's a gazillion people who think they're coaches.
Christine (20:33):
And literally when they said it to me, I'm like, well, you don't believe in me as much as I believe in myself, clearly in this conversation. I have something special and I'm gonna bring it and I'm gonna grow it. And whoever wants to come can come. But I always knew I had something and I'm not saying me personally, on an egotistical level. I understood the complexity in the mortgage industry and real estate industry. And I saw the holes. We do not have a school for loan origination. There are people who offer certain areas, but I just felt there's a need and there is a hole and I'm gonna go fill that. And so I just had a lot of belief in the idea.
Lauren (21:16):
Yeah. You had that bird's eye view. And so you could start to poke holes in it and see an opportunity for improvement. So, looking back, is there anything you would've done differently or even looking ahead, anything you wanna grow or expand?
Christine (21:31):
Yeah. So I'm still very strategic. I have always been strategic, competing in 12-month sales contests, or trying to be the best at something over a long time or win the number one spot or even the top 5% when they're giving out awards. And I would kill myself to get those, more because I wanted to test the limits of myself. I kind of consider myself kind of like a mountain climber. People ask all the time, why would you wanna climb a mountain? And I think I completely understand that mindset of like, I wanna know if I can do it, but it's scary. But I'm gonna learn everything I can. I just recently refurbished my great-grandmother's waterfall 1920s dresser. I know nothing about furniture refurbishing. But I knew this fragile piece, this dresser, which I have an emotional memory of my great-grandmother sitting in front of with her curlers and powder puff, big round powder puff thing that she had.
Christine (22:34):
I can just remember her sitting there making herself pretty and putting her lipstick on. And I was a little girl. And when she died at 86 years old, she left me this bureau. And so I'm saying this to you because I knew it deserved to have a shine put on it. And I knew it deserved an expert to do it. And I thought I could hire somebody to do it, but I could teach myself how to do it. And so I just YouTubed to death waterfall 1920 dresser remakes. And I watched about 10 to 15 hours before I made my first move. And then I started to do it and I'm gonna tell you, I have received offers. I also documented the process. I got on camera and said, I'm gonna do something I've never done. And I started posting on the weekends and people were tuning in.
Christine (23:17):
I had one weekend where I didn't post the progress over three months of this dresser. And I had people private messaging saying, are we getting an update on the dresser? We can't wait to see how it looked, and it came out incredibly. I had people make me thousands of dollars of offers. It has this beautiful 1920s woman on the front in stencil and it's mahogany and it's guilded. And I preserved the mirror. I took my time. So I say this to you, I digress, because I believe that I have the mind of a person who’s always examining and analyzing things. And I'm scanning. So right now, in 2022, we have a pivot in the market. We have an inventory issue on the purchase side. Interest rates have risen; we're at war. There's tons of equity.
Christine (24:11):
There's 32 trillion in equity and mortgage originators are suffering because they've been shooting fish in a barrel for many years, with the rate rates being low and an inbound type of sale that was already warm, driven by the consumer, just because of market winds and the winds in the sails of the economic markets. And it's a pivot this year, a hard pivot. The loan officers themselves aren't quite sure how to have the economic conversation about taking equity, especially with people that don't have debt and maybe have to raise their interest rate. And so we are here at 20/20 to help those people across America have this conversation. We're in classrooms, practicing this conversation overcoming objections. And it means that my firm also has to steady and stabilize itself because our client is a person that's declining in income right now, which is a direct threat to my consulting firm.
Christine (25:08):
And so what do you do? You look ahead and you say, where is the wind going? And you turn your sail. And so I am turning the boat of 20/20 into the corporate wind. And I'm saying, hey, you wanna retain your loan originators, bring them the answers—we have the answers. And we're gonna just continue to be here with the lights on, because we know there's gonna be some ships that are sinking this year and so on and so forth. So I think I'm just gonna always be out here, with a passion, competing, proving that by example even when I opened my business four years ago, I had a no-fail option because I was ironically entering a field where I was going to business coach people on how to run, scale and have thriving businesses in a new market where my business had never existed in a fishbowl with a no-fail option, because if I can't build 20/20, sustain it, scale it, how on earth would you hire me to tell you to do the same?
Christine (26:14):
And so that is the pressure I live with, but it's a pressure I'm happy to live with. And I would say finally, I feel honored to live in my purpose. I feel honored when tested with the idea that giving education meant more to me than receiving a rich, rich paycheck. That I actually answered that question with the greatest thing I could give back to myself in self-confidence and ROI. And that is that I am a good person and that I do have my priorities straight. And I am an integral person and I don't know that I always believe that about myself. So I think it's been really good for me to do this.
Lauren (27:04):
So this is so fun hearing about where you are today too. And just have one more question for you to wrap up.
Christine (27:10):
Yeah. This is fun. I'm enjoying it. No problem.
Lauren (27:12):
A simple question. I don't know. We'll see if it's challenging or not, but you could give a sentence or two to define success for someone? What would be your number one tip?
Christine (27:24):
Yeah, that's a really loaded question with a company name, like Vision For Success. I'm gonna tell you that to me, I believe that if you seek happiness as your number one goal in life, you're going to find success. And I don't know what that is for people. And I will tell you, I chased a lot of things for a long time that I thought were my definition of success, but my greatest feeling of success has come from finding happiness and aligning myself with what it is that makes me very, very happy. I think you gotta find your purpose in life. And I think we can do it in the mortgage industry and real estate industry too. You know, it's still the American dream. There are countries we get to see, unfortunately in this war, a bird's eye view of the suffering that is happening in the world and beyond the lens that we're getting to peek into.
Christine (28:26):
There are countries where children are growing up and clothing and housing and education are things that they seek. And I think we have to remember that those principle-based things are what humans really wanna have at the end of the day. Security. They wanna feel good about themselves. They wanna further their minds and busy their minds. And I feel really good to be in a space where we're giving the American dream, which is the shelter factor. And today I'm helping people make their businesses thrive through education. And so I feel like I'm really aligned in the right places to be principally based. I think our whole industry is in fact. I think finance is a wonderful space for people to really find their purpose. And that's it, we forget that part. I think that's why people that I managed soared—because I always made them remember what we were doing, not how we were doing it necessarily. It was why are we doing this? And that purpose truly propelled people in my mind and still does.
Lauren (29:41):
Yeah. It's that team effort. So, I hear you.
Christine (29:46):
Awesome.
Lauren (29:46):
Well, gosh, thank you so much for your time and, and sharing a little bit more. I know there are so many resources and books that you've authored and other quotes we'll make sure to include them in the show notes below, but again, I appreciate your time. Thank you for all you're doing in this industry and helping to inspire people to take purposeful steps forward to success, which is great to see you not only being a part of, but you've built an entire company around it. So thank you for sharing.
Christine (30:14):
Thank you for having me. I always feel so appreciative to find other businesswomen like myself that are out there that are helping us all share our stories. And it's fun to be reminded of the journey and to have a moment to look back, which I don't get to do every day. So these moments allow me to be appreciative and leave with gratitude. So thank you for giving me that moment as well.
Lauren (30:40):
Oh, absolutely. So, thank you again, and we'll be in touch soon.
Identifying Purpose to Achieve Success with Christine Beckwith of 20/20 Vision for Success Coaching
We talked with Geoff about:
- How cybersecurity is becoming a bigger topic for advisors to deal with
- Why advisors should “trust but verify” when communicating with clients
- Getting back to the basics to ensure cyber safety
About Geoff Moore:
As Valmark Financial Group’s Chief Information Officer, Geoff Moore leads technology and cybersecurity for the home office and field advisors. Emphasizing the significance of staying proactive, Geoff advocates for staying ahead of cybersecurity challenges to avoid dealing with aftermaths like website hacks or data compromises. He shares tips for outsmarting cyber threats and discusses the importance of implementing key strategies, including setting up multi-factor authentication, ensuring regular system updates, and allowing for minimal permissions.
Featured Resources & Shoutouts
Full Audio Transcript
Lauren (00:04):
Welcome, Geoff. It's great to see you.
Geoff (00:06):
Good to see you, Lauren.
Lauren (00:08):
Well, I appreciate you taking the time today and I'm really looking forward to talking about cybersecurity. I feel like this topic has in the last, I don't know, 15 or 20 years, just really completely changed, right? Technology is changing so much, it impacts all of us in so many different realms of technology, insurance, what have you. So before we get into all the nitty gritty of it, let's hear a little bit about your role, what you do on a day-to-day, and sort of set the stage there. So I'll hand the mic over to you, so to speak.
Geoff (00:39):
Yeah, sure. I’m Geoff Moore, Chief Information Officer for the Valmark Financial Group. We're an independent broker dealer, RIA, and insurance general agency. We've got about 350 producing advisors scattered across the country. And I'm responsible for technology at Valmark, and that includes cyber for our home office and all the advisors out in the field as well. So cyber—definitely near and dear to my heart—is just something we have to deal with. If you think about our industry, it's just mostly data and as the hackers have gotten more sophisticated and we've become even more connected to each other, it's just become a more and more important topic to deal with for advisors.
Lauren (01:19):
Can you share a little bit more about when you're looking at, I'll say tech stacks or what have you, all the importance of just being safe, right? I know we talk about all different platforms from your CRM to your website to I'm sure just training and that sort of thing. I'd love to hear a little bit more about the importance of cybersecurity and how you all see it from a big picture.
Geoff (01:40):
Yeah, so one of the things we require of our offices is that if they're looking at a new technology platform, cloud, whatever, we have to approve it. So I get to see a lot of different fintechs and what they're doing, and a couple of things we look for right out of the gate is multi-factor authentication. So whatever system they're using, it needs to have where you put in your user name and password and then you get a little push or a text on your phone to make sure you're safe to log in. And you'd be surprised, there's actually a number of systems in our industry that don't have multi-factor authentication enabled. But that's kind of the first thing on the checklist. The other thing I find interesting is that a lot of people, especially if they're using a really big name brand—it's got all the certifications—I think just because they purchase that tool, they think they're safe. And what's important to know is just because you're using that tool, it's also about how it's configured. So you can use the big name brand, SOC 2 certification, all the bells and whistles, but if you have it misconfigured or it's not configured correctly, you could be in a lot of trouble as well. So it's not just enough to have the name brand tool. You also have to have it configured correctly as well.
Lauren (02:59):
So identifying maybe a new tech stack to add to your portfolio, or even it might be in addition to, right? You're part of that process of then being able to say, okay, here's the teams, the data for their criteria, they've gotten to this point, and then you're going through the bells and whistles. What kind of things are you looking for in addition to two-factor authorization? Is there anything else in particular, if it's certain apps or integrations? I'd love to hear a little bit more on that side of things.
Geoff (03:31):
Yeah, I mean, I think the trickiest one is typically when it's a startup, when it's a newer fintech. I've seen a couple kind of like I described before, they might be using Azure or Amazon AWS. They're on that platform and they think, oh, that's enough to be safe. But well, it's just the tool set. You have to have it configured correctly to be safe. But I'd say the biggest thing to look out for is MFA, and then what kind of personally identifiable information is going into that system. So just thinking really clearly about what's going into that system. And then the other thing with the cloud is everything's connected, right? I'm using this system, it might connect to this other system. What data is getting shared between systems and is there private information I have about my client that might flow into another system as well?
Lauren (04:18):
With that, are there any kind of best practices you've seen that are just sort of general best practices as a takeaway for even cutting off parts of systems? Like this group can only have access to this information, or they can have full access to this personal information for X client or what have you. I'd love to hear if there's any kind of walls or things you have put into place or your lessons learned over the years when it applies to that.
Geoff (04:44):
I'd say generally speaking, you should have only the permissions you need to do your job. So sometimes I think what we see is people get over-permissioned or especially somebody maybe if they have their own business, maybe they're in a role like an advisor but they also own the practice so they have administrative rights to that system. Well, you may feel a sense of safety, I own that, but actually you might be less safe because you can accidentally do something or enable some other service to have access to your system that you didn't intend to. I could get super technical with it and explain maybe why but just as a general rule you just want to have enough permission to do your job day-to-day and not give yourself any extra permissions, because if your account gets compromised or you make a mistake inadvertently, it's easy to do if you have too many permissions.
Lauren (05:36):
Yes, that's absolutely fair. And then it creates checks and balances for everything that's going on. So I'd love to hear, shifting topics a little bit, what are some of the top challenges you're seeing within the cybersecurity space? It's evolved so much over the years to where we are today, as has technology, and what are some of those snags you're running into or perhaps opportunities in the market to help make this space even stronger?
Geoff (06:04):
I think the biggest hole I see, if we think about security as a chain, and that involves your end client, that involves the advisor, that involves the custodian, kind of the whole chain of people, I'd say right now I feel like the weakest chain is our clients. I think about my own mom, she's 73, God bless her, she's a super smart lady but I have to help her with some of her personal cyber. And I think a lot of advisors might work with people like her.
And oftentimes they're the ones who are going to get compromised. So if you're in a business, you're hiring smart third parties to help you, consultants, etc., you're pretty locked down. But if your end client gets compromised—so what we could see is something like an end client's email gets compromised, a bad guy gets in there, he starts emailing the advisor or something like that. And then the advisor, wanting to give good service, be helpful to their clients, inadvertently makes a mistake because maybe they didn't follow their firm's procedures or rules and they just didn't do what we call out of band—making sure you're checking outside of that email you received, that it’s actually your client that's giving you some sort of instruction. The other thing we're seeing is the bad guys know our procedures. They know what they are with firms, they're familiar with the types of procedures, things we'll do. So we're seeing things like this. They're very patient, and they might do something like, let's say you call your client on a certain phone number, right?
They'll understand the first step they need to do is change the phone number. So they'll put in a request maybe to change their phone number, and then they'll wait a couple days and then they'll send an email that says, Hey, let's do something. And then the person calls on that number that was just changed. Well, that's not actually the client's real number. They're aware of the procedure; they want to change it. So I think the biggest challenge overall is just making sure to not trust the client and have some outbound verification. In fact, there was a recent Wall Street Journal article I posted about where people are doing the deep fakes with client voices to try and sound like a client when they're calling and speaking to their advisor or their banks; it's getting much more sophisticated. So having some sort of mechanism you can share with your client, like a shared secret, like a code word or something like that, that you can put in your CRM and you can say, okay, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, what's the code word? And they can say pickle sauce, and you're dealing with them.
Lauren (08:40):
Yes, that makes sense. I know a lot of credit cards will have that four-digit code or something of that sort. So sort of similar procedures.
Geoff (08:49):
Schwab does that with their custodian. That's one of my good tips. They don't really advertise that a whole lot but if you want some extra protection on your account, you can request to use a code word with Schwab so even if you enter all your information, you still have to use your secret code word with them to talk to them about your account.
Lauren (09:06):
That's a good tip just for any of that. So crazy. I think sometimes you think cybersecurity and you think it's an automated sort of thing but what you're communicating, it's becoming much more sophisticated and much more.
Geoff (09:21):
Yeah, and you know what? I was on another podcast with somebody and they said, you know what I want with my cyber? I just want it to be something I don't think about. And I'm like, well, actually, I kind of want the opposite. We do monthly training, and the whole reason we do it monthly is it's always got to be a little bit top of mind for your team. So anybody in our network, they're getting monthly training. And then for our developers, we even do some additional training on top of that just to keep it top of mind and make sure we're staying current with what's happening in the industry.
Lauren (09:52):
We have some firms we work with where they actually offer cybersecurity training for their clients, and they'll send out emails with just reminder tips for certain times of the year or what have you. That's awesome. Annual piece, especially when you've talked about elder abuse and just different folks who are not as technology tech savvy and even folks who are, I mean, like you're saying, it's getting more and more sophisticated. So interesting. So with that, is there anything from the professional side of things? I know you said it's on the client side of things as well. Is there anything you think professionals should be doing to make sure they're doing the things they need to do to protect themselves? I mean, I guess that could go from the individual professional but even from the firm level, I'd love to hear a little bit more on that. You mentioned trainings, things to keep yourself and your clients safe.
Geoff (10:43):
So I think sometimes there's this idea that we have to do something really out there, cutting-edge or something when it comes to cybersecurity. And really a lot of times it comes down to just doing the boring basics unfortunately. So it's having—the first thing I talked about—MFA everywhere, make sure you've got MFA everywhere, whatever that means to you, your phone app, whatever training we talked about. The other one that I think is starting to change, I think everybody knows they're supposed to do patching and updates. Make sure your systems are updated. Now, years ago, kind of dating myself, 10 years ago if you patched within nine months, 12 months, you were fine. There were studies that would show most people who were compromised, their vulnerabilities were 12 to nine months older. We're not seeing that anymore at all. We're seeing a much shorter time frame between when a vulnerability is discovered and when someone's trying to take advantage of that. So if a provider's coming to you and they're telling you they want to do some new technology to help them patch faster, that's the reason why. Or even for yourself, even on your home system. I think it was like a month ago, Apple released an emergency update that was basically like, you need to update your iPhone today.
Lauren (12:04):
ASAP, yes.
Geoff (12:05):
ASAP. And that was really scary and no joke. So I think the biggest thing is just making sure you're doing automated updates wherever you can and making sure they're patched.
Lauren (12:15):
Yeah, I mean, that makes sense. And then are there any tools you see out there to help educate? So let's say your firm, you're looking to be able to educate your team about cybersecurity. Are there any kinds of trainings or third-party tools or things you feel are valuable? Of course there's Google, right, a wealth of knowledge into itself.
Geoff (12:39):
There's a couple I've used before for years. One is KnowBe4; it’s a big industry player, and I think its training's really good. It's usually very short, and it incorporates phishing—trying to simulate an email compromise attack for you, and giving you reporting on top of it so you can see where your firm is, and then benchmark against the industry as well. So for specifics, that would be one I would look at for sure.
Lauren (13:09):
Okay, that's great to know. I mean, cybersecurity is scary, right? It's potentially one of the biggest threats for various companies.
Geoff (13:16):
It can be, especially in financial services. I mean, depending on how you interact with your clients. I mean, if you get it wrong, if you get it really, really wrong. I'm sure some people, firms, they're dealing with more than a billion dollars. They may have an individual client with $10 million plus, and if somehow one of their accounts gets compromised or messed up, and somehow you get yourself in the middle of that, it could be a death sentence. So I guess the other thing I would say is make sure you have cyber insurance and make sure you're doing everything in the policy that will cover and protect you. That would be the other thing too. I think most people know that by now but if you're running a business and you don't have cyber insurance and you're handling people's money, you absolutely need to get it.
Lauren (14:02):
I've also seen, I don't know if it's something your firm does, but I've also seen companies where they will send out, I think it's through a third-party tool, but they'll send out basically emails that look like they're phishing emails but they're not really phishing emails. And then individuals will get a score if they clicked on them or they didn’t, and how they sort of responded to it almost like it'll catch you off guard, right? You're not in the mindset of taking an exam. And I think that's kind of an interesting way to just make sure to remind people, to keep them on their feet. Is that something you have done?
Geoff (14:36):
Oh, yeah. And KnowBe4 that I talked about does the same thing. So yeah, really the phishing is kind of a way to, I'm sure you've maybe heard the phrase like trust, but verify. People are taking the training, they're seeing it but that's really kind of the proof in the pudding. And I've certainly found some people are better at it than others. So we've put in a couple escalation steps for those who might need additional training guidance or if it gets really bad, they get a one-on-one with me.
Lauren (15:06):
Yes. Just go through the basics and help to point it out. Sometimes you need that. We all need that in-person experience to talk through stuff sometimes.
Geoff (15:16):
And just to reiterate that it's important.
Lauren (15:22):
Yeah, that's key. And then just out of curiosity, so we just talked about email as a platform. Are you seeing this on text messages? Are you seeing it mostly in tools like Salesforce or other things like that? As in you seeing it aggregated in one particular medium?
Geoff (15:36):
I think from what I’ve seen and talking to others, I think business email compromise is probably the biggest, one of the biggest areas we see people trying to attack, especially if they're on a big platform like Office 365 because they've just got millions and millions and millions of users. So I guess one tip I would have is if you are using a system like Office 365, they have their web version. If you're not using the web version, you're using Outlook, I would just go ahead and shut off the web version, just shut it off. That's probably one of the biggest vectors attackers use. And also it's not perfect, but shutting down overseas access. So if you only deal with customers in the United States and there's no reason for anybody overseas to reach out or you don't travel internationally, you can restrict access to your account to only be logged in from the United States network.
Lauren (16:32):
How about VPNs?
Geoff (16:33):
They could bypass it. They could bypass it but I'm surprised how many people still try to log in or attack networks without a VPN. They're still coming from Africa, Europe, China, wherever.
Lauren (16:50):
That's fair. Super fascinating. Any other tips you think could be helpful to share or kind of insights you've seen over the years?
Geoff (16:59):
If you want to get really nerdy.
Lauren (17:01):
Let's do it.
Geoff (17:01):
You want to really nerd out. Okay. This thing is called a YubiKey.
Lauren (17:06):
Okay, tell me more.
Geoff (17:07):
So you have your two-factor authentication, so most people are familiar with your phone, you get a text number or whatever; this is next level. I can't actually log into certain accounts unless I have this physical key present on me.
Lauren (17:24):
So sort of like your government ID card, but a little bit different.
Geoff (17:28):
That's a great way to think of it. It's physical. I actually have two of them because if I lose one it’s game over, I can't access certain accounts. So I always keep one on me and one in another safe location in case something would happen. So that's like if you really want to go next level and you want to protect the nuclear codes, you can get what's called a YubiKey and there's a number of sites that support a YubiKey.
Lauren (17:56):
Then that's something a company would purchase. They would essentially authenticate it and they would distribute it across the board. And then that would basically be to log into what? Is it to your computer? Is it to Microsoft 365?
Geoff (18:08):
It's the whole thing. You can use it for all of those. You can use it just for your laptop. It just kind of depends on where you want to configure it. There's a lot of people who'll work with a YubiKey mostly if they want to have a Google login, Microsoft 365 or password manager is a big one, where to use it if someone's using a password manager; that'd be another thing I guess I hadn't talked about yet at all, is making sure you use a password manager.
Lauren (18:32):
No Excel sheets, please.
Geoff (18:36):
No Excel sheets. And then I haven't dived into the nitty-gritty but a lot of my friends who are bigger nerds than me in the cybersecurity space, they really recommend against saving your password in the browser. So a lot of browsers will allow you to save, and most of them would recommend against doing that and use more of an official password manager.
Lauren (19:01):
That makes a lot of sense to be able to have that added layer of security. I know we've worked with some companies too where we've been issued laptops and stuff and there's a separate ID where you've got to log in through your phone and it's a face verification. It's a whole thing. So it's just part of it but it's a good thing. So crazy. It is a good thing. Extra layers like you said.
Geoff (19:24):
Yeah. Extra layers. Especially when you think about the kind of data our clients are entrusting to us. We have to put in the extra steps.
Lauren (19:33):
Even vendor management. I see that too. Just to throw that out there. I'm sure you all have formalities around that. And even issuing communications as reminders. We see that on our end too, just given the nature of our work.
Geoff (19:46):
Yeah. I'd say the regulators too, this is definitely an area of interest for them as well. They're asking more about what firms’ processes are around vendors. How are you onboarding them? How are you checking to make sure they're still doing what you think they're doing? And then how are you properly offboarding vendors?
Lauren (20:02):
Yep. Makes sense. Just keep it clean. Well, thank you so much for your time today. I appreciate you sharing. Any final thoughts? I don't want to cut you off there too soon.
Geoff (20:15):
No, I'm great. Thank you. Thank you for letting me come on today, Lauren. It was great getting to talk to you.
Lauren (20:20):
Oh, it's fun. It's a great topic to talk about and it's super important, and I think it's one of those topics where if you don't get ahead of it, it will get ahead of you. And I feel like you've got to put those processes and procedures in place, and unfortunately we see them sometimes after the fact. So it's nice to have this conversation to start to think about those things and identify opportunities to be able to help do that education, put those processes in place, and I just also really appreciate hearing your expertise and lessons learned over the years. So thank you. Awesome.
Geoff (20:53):
Thank you, Lauren.
Cybersecurity: How to Proactively Outsmart Cyber Threats For Your Financial Services Firm
We Talked With Karen About:
- Why your Linkedin profile matters and how to best position yourself on the platform
- Insights on fostering team participation and cultivating a Linkedin presence for your firm
- Intentional steps you can take to develop business relationships and increase qualified leads
About Karen Yankovich:
Karen Yankovich, hailed as the “LinkedIn Queen,” stands out as a digital strategist extraordinaire. With a proven track record in online marketing, Karen’s mission is to empower professionals to leverage social media as the gateway for cultivating meaningful connections and standing out in the crowd. Throughout her career, Karen has honed her focus on LinkedIn, guiding clients to navigate the platform with finesse and build their brand for future success. Her philosophy revolves around authenticity and the cultivation of a simple, powerful, and intentional strategy—a blueprint for creating a unique “brand of you.” The outcome? Her clients learn how to effectively foster relationships, create connections, and actively engage with the people they want on their calendar to increase qualified leads.
Featured Resources
- Karen’s LinkedIn Profile
- Karen’s Facebook Profile
- Karen’s Twitter Profile
- Karen’s Instagram Profile
- Girls Get Rich Podcast
- Take the Assessment: Discover Your Marketing Success Style
Full Audio Transcript
Lauren (00:04):
Karen, welcome.
Karen (00:06):
Thank you. I'm so excited to be here with you, Lauren. Thanks for having me.
Lauren (00:09):
Oh my gosh. Yeah. So in the crazy world of LinkedIn, of course, which you are more than an expert and all-star in, is where we connected and I couldn't help but reach out and just wanted to dive into this world of LinkedIn with you. We have so many clients asking us about social media platforms and how to use them and get others involved, and LinkedIn is such a goldmine. So let's just start with you. Why LinkedIn? How did you find yourself here? Tell us a little bit more before we get into it.
Karen (00:44):
Yeah, so my background predates social media a little bit. I was kind of raised in old-school marketing, right? Timeless marketing, relationship marketing. And when social media became a thing, it was a lot of fun because I really love the right brain, left brain approach to that. There's a huge relationship, right? Brain left, but also left brain. What's the strategy? How does this work? What's the tech, all that other stuff. So right up my alley. But what I found pretty quickly was I was always driving people back to LinkedIn because at the end of the day, the further we get in the world and history, the more people want to know about you. They want to know about the people they do business with, right? About 50 years ago or 40 years ago, people didn't care about the guy who sold them copiers and who he was and what he did. The guy just came in, sold them a copier, but now we care. Now we're googling people, we're checking people out before we work with them. So I was finding myself driving people back to LinkedIn because there was a time that social media in general was a big thing. It still is, obviously but when I would ask people, where do you get most of your clients from? About 99% of the time they'd say, referrals. I got my biggest accounts from referrals.
Karen (01:59):
They're spending all their marketing dollars and all their money on Pinterest or TikTok or something. And I'm not saying don't do that. I'm saying, well, let's shore up this referral thing first. Let's make sure we're getting all the juice we can out of that, and then let's expand from there because I think we can get caught up. Or I could get caught up in shiny object syndrome, and I found a lot of my clients were doing the same thing. So I started to just keep bringing people back to LinkedIn and say, okay, well first let's talk about you. Let's talk about who's on your calendar. Let's talk about the biggest opportunities, not the $5 thing to the $50 thing to the $100 thing but what's the $50,000 thing? What are the biggest opportunities? And those conversations were happening on LinkedIn. So over the years, I really niched down even further to really be able to support people with that, because I think there's a big misconception out there that LinkedIn is just the place for your online resume. Your resume is all about who you want to be. The world we live in now should be the brand of you and you should be portraying your brand into the future, dressing for the job you want. So it is really a shift in thought in the energy of how you approach LinkedIn, from it's a resume and I just shove it in front of people to this is where my personal brand lives and who are the people I have. I want cool people on my calendar. How do I make that happen? And that all happens on LinkedIn.
Lauren (03:23):
So tell us more about that, right? I feel like sometimes it can be intimidating to people. I don't even want to put myself out there. What do I even post about? Why should I post? And also privacy issues too, right? I mean, how are you helping folks to put themselves out there to get the right people on their calendar? And could you share a little bit more about that as a lead gen tool?
Karen (03:46):
Yeah. Well, first and foremost, there's a lot of people out there, and I'm sure everybody listening is shaking their heads right now going, I can get you leads, I can get you leads, I can get you leads, I can get you leads. And at the end of the day, of course, who doesn't want a magic wand to get us leads? But at the end of the day, that's not where the value is. Random, unqualified people on my calendar do not help me. So I want to just ignore that and focus on the reality of, again, back to who are the people you want to have on your calendar. So how do you take control of that? Well, the first thing you can do is take control of your brand with your profile. Having a profile that positions you as if you’re peers with the most influential people in your industry. And so many people underestimate themselves when one of the things my company does is write LinkedIn profiles. It's the first thing we do when we work with people. It's hard to write your own profile. We'll do it.
Lauren (04:41):
You're in the forest. Yeah.
Karen (04:43):
Yes. It's something you can do because when people google you and they are searching, we'll just use the word search. No matter what search engine you're using, people search if they're going to invest in you in any way, shape, or form, even if it's 10 minutes of their time to get on a call with you, they're checking you out first. And you can control what they see by creating a LinkedIn profile that positions you as somebody who they're like, wow, I really do want to get to know this person. And it's not about bragging, it's more about owning all the things you've done. So many people I speak to come to where they are today with many, many years of expertise.
But often they're in a new thing, maybe it's a new job, maybe they were incorporated in, now they're starting their own consulting firm or something. So they don't necessarily feel like they have the experience or they don't necessarily feel like they have, maybe there's a little imposter syndrome, but they've got that expertise that doesn't go away. So we help them craft a profile so they're leaning into that expertise and showing they're worthy of these conversations. Because before you can be worthy of people's investment, you have to be worthy of the conversation, right? So being really, I like to call it micro-targeted with that, not 100 times, five maybe a week.
With five people you'd love to see on your calendar by the end of the month, and reaching out to 20 people to see if we can get five of them on the calendar. Never in a cold calling way, oh, there's never a reason to do cold call with this. It's just shifting your strategy from throwing a lot of spaghetti at the wall to seeing what sticks, to just taking a step back, taking a beat and saying, well, how do I get to this person? Who do they know that I know? Maybe we went to the same conference. Maybe for example, Lauren, maybe somebody has been listening to your show, connect with Lauren on LinkedIn and say, Hey, Lauren, loved episode 52, blah, blah, blah. Loved me talking about this or not. That's such a great way to build a relationship with you if they think you are somebody they want to have on their calendar. So find ways to do that but you'll take them more seriously if they come to you with a profile that's been done first.
Lauren (06:52):
Yes.
Karen (06:53):
Otherwise, if it's like dust bunnies are on it, you're not going to be so quick to say, sure, let's talk. You're going to be like, no.
Lauren (06:59):
That's right. If it's cold, even if it's a warm outreach, people are going, wait, who is this person? Is this the right fit? That's such a great point too. I feel like there's the immediate, we have to fix our website, we have to do all these things but as someone who's potentially doing business development and using LinkedIn as a tool, I don't want to call it an easy quick fix but I liked what you said earlier about you're really owning it, right? And you're really putting that energy out there to really show off what you've done. But then this idea of giving that facelift to your profile, if you will, but then really doing that warm outreach, it's not about this massive piece.
Karen (07:33):
But also Lauren, it's really important to remember too that when you're creating your profile and the brand of you that you're projecting into the future, people don't really care about you. They care about what you could do for them. So an example I use, and those of you who are listening who have licenses around this are going to say, I can't say that, but I'm going to say it anyway. And you modify this, but if you say, I'm a financial planner and I've got all these great letters after my name, you are just like everybody else on LinkedIn. But if you say, I'm a financial planner with all these great letters after my name, and my goal is to help more women over 50 create enough wealth to retire at 60, right? You're telling me the same thing but you're telling me about you, but you're making it about me. That's right. And now you're going to be like, okay, tell me more about that. Right? You're standing out from the crowd, and in this world that we live in right now, it's so noisy. The digital space is so noisy. If you don't stand out, you're invisible. So you have to stand out. And one way is by thinking about the people you want to attract to your profile. What do they care about? And that's what I want you to put forward when you're creating the profile; you still make it about you but couch it in a way that it's telling me why I should care about that.
Lauren (08:41):
Yes. So it sounds like that's an opportunity for improvement you're seeing as a common thread. Are there other things you see as common tripwires folks are coming into when you're looking at their presence on LinkedIn and opportunities for improvement?
Karen (08:56):
Yeah, yeah. Well, it's interesting. We've been algorithmed to death, right? The algorithm changes what we post, we post 100 times, we post, and I don't know it somehow all gets melded in this, what is an algorithm placed in this cloud in the sky, right across all different profiles. The thing about LinkedIn that has been consistent, and it can change the minute these words come out of my mouth but the thing that's been consistent about LinkedIn is the algorithm favors people who have a more focused approach to their content.
In fact, if you post more than once a day, LinkedIn will reduce the reach of your posts. So don't worry, don't overthink this. It's all part of being genuine. Just be genuine. You don't have to have this big complicated posting strategy. If you have a piece of content you could publish every week or whatever that looks like for you, talk about it on Monday, talk about it on Wednesday. On Tuesday, put something out there that says, have we met yet? Let's talk. Let me tell you more about me on Thursday. Maybe post a question. And that's it. You're good. You don't have to have this really complicated content strategy on LinkedIn. You want to have an intentional content strategy on LinkedIn but it doesn't have to be complicated and extensive. It can be simple and powerful, and you can now schedule a post directly into LinkedIn. So you can pick a half an hour once a week and schedule a couple posts and you're done for the week. And now you just go in and be you and engage and start to build relationships.
Lauren (10:35):
Can you talk a little bit more about the engagement piece? What are you encouraging folks to do? Is it direct messaging that's authentic? Is it just engaging on posts? I mean, of course I would assume it's driven by the end goal but I'd love to hear a little bit more about that and what advice you're giving to folks.
Karen (10:53):
Well, I mean, listen, imagine yourself in a room, like a networking room. This is networking. So if you're in a room and you're networking and all you're doing is standing on stage with a microphone saying, listen to my podcast, watch my thing, nobody's listening. After a while they're like, oh, here she comes again. She's going to tell us about a podcast, more noise. Nobody wants to talk to that person, the people who are interested in them. So schedule some content and then engage with the people on that content. But at the same time, again, I talked about being intentional. If you've got a list of five people you want to talk to before the end of the month, make sure that you're like, there's an opportunity. Everything we'll talk about here is in the free version of LinkedIn. There's an opportunity in the free version of LinkedIn to ring their bell.
And what that means is there's a bell underneath my headline, and if you click that bell, that means anytime Karen posts, you'll be notified of that post. So if those are five people you want to get on your calendar, then ring their bell so when they post, you're notified of it and you can jump into those conversations and you can just be a part of their world and provide them value and support them and share their stuff and engage with them. When you're doing this, if you think of one great opportunity for yourself, just one great opportunity, let's say, I'm not even going to pick a dollar amount but let's say it's a $10,000 or $100,000 opportunity, something juicy. Just think of like, okay, that's it. I'm solely focused on that. Who are the people I need to get that and then land that and then do it again?
Do you know what I mean? So you don't have to talk to a thousand people to do that. You just need to think about who very specifically are the right people to speak to about this? Ring their bell. So you get notified when they post and jump into those conversations. And if the people you want to speak to are not on LinkedIn, find new people. Know what I mean? There's plenty of people on LinkedIn. So people say, well, my people aren't on LinkedIn. I'm like, how many people do you need? There are a lot of people on LinkedIn.
Lauren (12:46):
There's a lot of people. Yes.
Karen (12:48):
Wait, find new people. Find the people who are there and are active and be a part of those conversations. And that right there is probably a big key to success. And being a part of those conversations doesn't mean saying “great post.” It means saying, you know what? I never thought about what you talk about in the second paragraph. Never occurred to me. I think of it this way. You do it that way. That's really interesting. I'm going to try that next time. Something like that is a true conversation. And again, you're looking to build actual relationships with people who can give you referrals. And by the way, when I say I want you to get on the phone with people, sometimes you're engaging in conversations with people who when you get on the phone with them, the conversation you want to have is, here's what I do.
Because now that's where this strategy becomes magnetic, right? We're still doing outreach but we're doing outreach to people who can send people to us because that then is slam dunk opportunities as opposed to cold pitching and cold objection handling and things like that. So conversations around, listen, you got an audience of these kinds of people, I'm looking for these kinds of people, do you have anybody I should talk to? And by the way, who are you looking for? Let me see if I can introduce you to anybody. This is world-class networking, and this is what people who are multiple seven-figure business owners are doing. They're not throwing spaghetti at the wall and talking to 100 people hoping one of them is going to be a client.
Lauren (14:19):
So with that, we've got some of our clients where it's mostly folks who are in the C-suite and they say, you've got a great sales team but we want to encourage them to use LinkedIn more. Some of them are using it, some of them aren't. Some of them really don't see the power of it. What advice would you give to that audience to be able to help encourage their team to be able to better utilize it?
Karen (14:44):
That's a good question. It's such a good question because I work with corporations and I've had corporations hire me where I've literally said no, I want to take your money but this isn't enough if you are not the company. It starts at the top. The company has to model this behavior. They have to invest in the profiles. They have to be engaging. And by the way, when I say invest in the profiles, I mean all the way down to the inside people, not just the outside people. If you're a company and part of your success is your collections, if your accounts receivable person has a great LinkedIn profile and is connecting with the people, your customers on LinkedIn, it’s a lot easier for her or him to collect that money. If they have a personal relationship. So this is what I mean by diving deep. And when companies embrace this thing and companies are coming around to this but there's still companies out there going, well, why would I pay for my team's LinkedIn profile? They're all just going to go get new jobs. That is not how this works anymore. If you invest in your team's LinkedIn profiles and make sure everybody's showing up like rock stars and they all get new jobs, it isn't because of their profiles. You know what I mean? There's something else you need to look at when you are investing in this and helping them build relationships from this place of wanting them all to be rock stars.
I believe if you focus on the company brand, of course that's important, but when you focus on the brands of the individuals in the company, it immediately elevates the company brand and they're all attached to the company page on LinkedIn. So it's not just about encouraging your people to use LinkedIn, it's about creating a company standard, maybe a company policy that says, here's what we're looking for. We post on our company page once a day, and we would love you to share two of these posts a week with your audience but with your perspective, with your point of view, encourage your clients to come to our events and use it encouraging all their employees to connect on LinkedIn with all their customers. This is how it's best used, not just use LinkedIn to get more leads.
Lauren (16:56):
Right? Yes.
Karen (16:56):
It's to deepen the relationships. You get more referrals.
Lauren (16:59):
I hear what you're saying too. We were on a chat the other day with one of our clients, and he dropped this great line that was just basically, we're all in sales. It doesn't matter if you actually are in sales but everyone on the team represents the ethos of the company and the brand to a certain degree.
Karen (17:16):
So true.
Lauren (17:17):
Especially when you're in customer service, when that's part of your core differentiator. So I feel like it's inspirational. You say it's not just about the salespeople and about sort of that face but it really is this effort across the board of how we show up and the brand consistency. But I think part of the key to that is the authenticity you were alluding to earlier, because people aren't brands. We're each an individual person.
Karen (17:42):
Exactly. And each individual profile is going to be very different from the next person's, even if they're in the exact same role because they have different experiences. So I have a quick funny story about what you're talking about with everybody in the company. Years and years ago when I owned a company, one of my clients was Aerosol shoes, and they were in New Jersey and their company policy is we sell shoes. And every time you went there, the minute you went in, the receptionist said to you, how many pairs of shoes do you need today? When you went to get to the C-suite, you had to go through the warehouse to buy their shoes. Every single person's first thing on their task list was to sell a pair of shoes today. Do you know what I mean? No matter who they were. And I've never forgotten that.
Lauren (18:24):
Interesting.
Karen (18:24):
Because to me it was, I mean, they're still in business how many, it's probably 30 years later, they're still in business. So it's so true but sometimes we can get in these little tunnels and forget what's at the heart of business.
Lauren (18:38):
Yes. And I mean, I feel like it goes into bigger conversations around just communicating the company ethos and brand and upsell; I mean that happens across everyone you would interact with. So I hear you in using LinkedIn as a platform to really show up in those ways across the board, not just from that inbound lead, and then being able to have that conversation.
Karen (19:03):
And we have this tool now that we didn't have 20, 30 years ago. People will leave the company they're at, go to a different company and then come back to you and say, hey, I worked with you guys when I was at ABC company. I'm now at XYZ company and they need to know how great you are. But that will only happen if you're connected, if they know if you're communicating. And honestly, you have to do it from a place of confidence in your team and the people who work for you. If you do it from a place of, I'm afraid they're going to leave and do something else and bring my clients with them, that's the wrong energy.
Lauren (19:39):
Yeah, I hear what you're saying. It's the wrong place to be operating from.
Karen (19:42):
Exactly.
Lauren (19:43):
So to sort of deviate the conversation a little bit, we talked a little bit about the algorithm, and I feel like so many folks have questions about that, and I absolutely hear you on being authentic. Is there anything, just to help folks understand the algorithm about how it works, are there any differences you could talk to from the company page versus an individual page or anything like that? Just because it is a beast and it sort of feels like a very black box. So I'd be curious to get your thoughts on that and if that impacts any ways people show up or don't to gamify it.
Karen (20:16):
No, no, I get it. So there's your company page and then there's your personal profile, right? I teach this stuff. So I happen to have a lot of connections on my personal profile because I teach this stuff, right? Let's say there's like, I don't know, 15 or 18,000 connections I have on LinkedIn. Personally, I don't have 500 on my company page.
I say that because a lot of people put a lot of time and effort into their company page, say, how do we make it work? The vast benefit of LinkedIn is the personal profiles, the relationships. It doesn't mean you don't want to use your company page—you absolutely want to use your company page but you need to manage your expectations around what you're going to do with that company page. The company page is great to be the hub of content for your team. It's a great place for all your team to be connected so all your employees can be found through your company page and things like that. So you want to set it up properly. You can use your company page to advertise. There's now an opportunity to boost posts of the employees and their personal pages if they choose to allow it. So there's a lot of interaction between the two. But understand the vast benefit comes from the personal profile and the company page. You've got to really be careful too, because you don't know who's posting on the company page. If you give access to the company page to everyone, you don't know who posted it.
You just know somebody posted it. So you have to be careful with who you give access to that to. And I speak to nonprofits and things that might have a board and give access to a lot of people. And then you're like, wait a minute, what are they posting on this page? This is not really relevant to what we do. It's more relevant to their personal thing.
So just be really careful that you have a strategy around the company page and post there consistently. You don't have to post there regularly but post there consistently so it looks like people know you're active. You probably can copy and paste from your website to get that set up. If you haven't set it up yet, you absolutely want to do it. But then your strategy really is around and how do we use the information there? How do we have the people use the information there? Because if I post on my personal page, potentially those 15 to 18,000 people will see it. If I post on my company page, the most potential I have is that couple hundred people on it are going to see it. So if you've only got 25 people on your company page, you can post there all you want but nobody's going to see it besides those 25 people unless your team is sharing it and you're trying to grow the visibility of that page.
Lauren (22:40):
Yeah, such good advice. Appreciate that insight. It's great. I know we're wrapping up here. I feel like it's just flown by. It always does. This is a great conversation and I'm excited to continue to follow all you've got going on. I know you talked recently, I think it was at Finovate, the conference, was it a few weeks ago or so? And then I know you do, is it your Thursday LinkedIn, the miniseries?
Karen (23:04):
That's been daily. I've been doing it daily for September, October. It's a new thing. I'm always testing things so I can share. So I decided I wanted to do some daily videos. I did one every day in September, and now I'm doing it every day in October. Well, we'll see how long it lasts. But it's been a lot of fun and it's been an interesting experiment for me, and I'm really loving it in a lot of ways. I don't know that I would recommend it. It's certainly not something I'm going to do forever. It doesn't make sense. But I'm always testing, again, testing the algorithm. And I think the benefit of that is going to be less about the daily posting and more about having that daily list of content. But I do have a weekly podcast also. Good Girls Get Rich.
Lauren (23:47):
Oh my goodness. So fun. So with that, I know we mentioned right before the call that you also have a LinkedIn marketing sort of personal style assessment for how you would personally be a good fit to what's the right style for you? Is that right? For how to engage?
Karen (24:03):
Yeah. So what I found was sometimes we don't realize we're speaking in a silo to the same people. And the people who listen to my podcast or the people who are in my world right now, they kind of already know how to get started on LinkedIn. They've been following me. So I really wanted to have something that people who are just like Karen, I know there should be something I could do but I don't even know where to start, so I just do nothing. So we created an assessment very recently over the summer in 2023 to help you get started. Some people are more analytical and they're more comfortable talking about white papers and other people are more relational, relationship based. So we created a What's Your LinkedIn Marketing Style? assessment you can take. And it'll give you some tips on things to focus on that are your strengths but also maybe some things to watch out for that might be your weaknesses. And just to get you started, I want people to just dip their toe in. I know at this moment in time, this is where the opportunity is in digital marketing, and it breaks my heart a little bit how many people are leaving money on the table; they don't know where to start. So we created this assessment to help you understand how you can take the first couple steps and just tiptoe into it and see how you're feeling.
Lauren (25:14):
Oh, great. Well make sure to include the link below in case folks want to check it out. This has been really fun. Thanks for giving us a sneak peek into your world and sharing knowledge about this platform. And there's some really great takeaways—just looking at your profile and making sure you're owning that platform. So thank you again.
Karen (25:36):
Exactly. And on my podcast and on these mini marketing minis I'm doing, there's tons of free tips for your profile there.
Lauren (25:42):
Perfect. And for those of you who are listening, we'll make sure to include those links below, and we'll include Karen's LinkedIn profile as well. Thanks again. Awesome.
Karen (25:50):
Thanks, Lauren.
How to Use Your LinkedIn Profile to Build Your Personal Brand and Connect with Clients
We talked with Stoy about:
- The need for financial education and how that conversation empowers people
- What a modern family office provides and what people really want in a financial planner
- How to get involved to educate the public on financial literacy and education
About Stoy Hall:
Stoy Hall founded Black Mammoth in 2020 with a mission: end financial illiteracy in the general population. Drawing from personal experiences and insights gained while working at the Boys and Girls Club, he established a modern family office to guide clients in financial planning and understanding the emotional aspects of money. Stoy urges us to amplify the conversation around financial education, advocating for increased engagement, teaching, and support to collectively address the financial education gap.
Featured Resources & Shoutouts
- Stoy’s LinkedIn Profile
- Stoy’s Facebook Profile
- Stoy’s Twitter Profile
- Stoy’s Instagram Profile
- Black Mammoth website
- No B$ Wealth Podcast
- How Social Listening Drives Results
Full Audio Transcript
Lauren (00:05):
Thanks for joining us.
Stoy (00:07):
Well, thank you. It's always great to have another Drake alum to speak to.
Lauren (00:11):
Yes, I know when we started going back and forth, I'm like, holy smokes, we’re both in financial services. And I was like, wait, you went to Drake too? So it's a really small world. It's good stuff. Always.
Stoy (00:26):
Representing, always.
Lauren (00:27):
Yes, that's right. It's a great place. So I'm thankful for the opportunity to chat with you today and also share that space in financial services but also your interest in financial literacy. So before we get going, let's just start with you. How did you get into those worlds? Where did you get to where you are today? Tell us a little bit more.
Stoy (00:47):
For sure. I'm born and raised from Omaha, Nebraska, and from a split family. I grew up realizing money was a factor, not only for my own family but everyone around me. Money always seemed to be a stressor and an issue, and growing up my mom always gave me gifts. That was great but we never were getting ahead it seemed like to me. And so growing up I knew, hey, the only way out for me was sports. I was a baseball player first but ended up being better at football and that's how I ended up going to Drake—to play football. And so I knew, hey, I want to get involved with money. And everyone starts with accounting. I don't know why we all do that way. My first accounting exam with Professor Hillman, Accounting 40, there's a blank piece of paper and I froze like you're supposed to do balance sheets and income statements, and I'm like this is blank. I need something. Give me a guideline somewhere.
I ended up getting a 40% on my first accounting exam. So I said I’m no longer going to go the accounting route. I want to get into more of the financial side of things. And so I did and got my degree in finance focused on the personal side of things, and then my minor in business law and insurance. And so I worked off-campus four and a half years at the Boys and Girls Club as well. And that's where it started to hone into me that we don't have financial literacy, what I call education nowadays, but we lack it from a very big global perspective. It was not in schools back then. And no one really talked about it. We didn't have a lot of resources or information. And so I knew I wanted to help start my career in insurance but like a lot of us do, quickly realized insurance sales is not for me. I'm more of a holistic financial planner, like a big picture thinker. And so in 2017 I left there, joined a firm that's out of Houston, helped them grow the firm up here in Iowa. And then in 2020 I launched my own firm, Black Mammoth. And the reason for that is I started to hone in on what I wanted to do. And that is more of a modern family office, because a lot of people 1) don't have the education, and that’s probably what we're going to speak a lot about, and 2) they want to have a team and someone they can just trust. They don't really care about investments. That's something driven from us in the media.
Stoy (03:14):
They just want to know, am I good? That's it. Am I good? Am I good to do this?
Lauren (03:18):
But peace of mind, right?
Stoy (03:20):
Yep. Peace of mind. That's really as simple as it is. And so that's what Black Mammoth is. We're a modern family office. We could do tip to tail—everything for you—or as little as nothing for you but ultimately we're here to be a part of your team and kind of guide you through life, through the journey of wealth building. And so that's kind of me. My background, I have multiple other firms too. We do estate planning. I used to have a commercial real estate business. So I've got a lot of experience in doing a lot of different things.
That's where my skill comes from is knowing things other people don't think about. And it's kind of a really cool little, I guess skill. I don't know. I think I've always had it right in football. I always had a high IQ figuring out what's going to happen or reading defenses or offenses. And in life now with financials it's the same way. I can see things others don't see and that's really what my clients love the most.
Lauren (04:15):
Yeah, I always hear the term thrown around in the space of an advisor being your financial quarterback but you've had the opportunity to tap into these different sides of it, not just sort of tease it but just kind of explore it. To actually be a part of, like you said, insurance and these other sides, I could see where that gives you a wider lens to be able to lean in and support further. So I'm really curious to talk about the idea of a modern family office—maybe we'll swing back to that—but I do want to hit on this idea of financial literacy, financial education. And where did that spark for you? Was it the work at the Boys and Girls Club? Was it just all along the way? What are you doing and how have you identified that as really a core focus area for you?
Stoy (05:02):
Yeah, it really hit when I was at the Boys and Girls Club; I always knew there was something but when I started to work with the teenagers, my title was Professional Teen Development Officer. I was a babysitter for the teenagers. But I started to understand they don't know about money and then their parents don't know about money and their parents don't talk about it. We have this huge, huge cycle heavy in the minority side of things as well with it. And so I started to recognize we have an issue and that issue is people just don't talk about it.
And we had curriculum at the Boys and Girls Club, we had curriculum with my insurance company and I spoke to every school department and head of things I possibly could to try to get curriculum into schools. And they wouldn't budge. They wouldn't do it. They didn't want to spend the time to have their teachers learn the curriculum to teach it. They didn't think it was important. And all these things kept spinning. And I realized that in our society, that's the issue. Not necessarily saying everyone should be fully educated in all the knowledge we have but a baseline of something.
Lauren (06:14):
Would be great for all of us.
Stoy (06:16):
Right? Money is the one thing we all deal with every day. I don't dissect frogs and sharks anymore. I did that in high school but that was part of science. I deal with money every day now at my job but we all do it. So that's really where it started and kind of grew from there and recognizing the fact that there weren't many options back then. Now that's only 12 years ago that I started. We've come a long way since then though; it is in schools a lot more.
Lauren (06:44):
I've seen that, which I'm like, yes, extremely pleasantly surprised, but keep going.
Stoy (06:52):
That means we're progressing. Everyone always asks, when do you know when you've reached the goal or whatever? We'll never reach that goal. I'll never reach the goal of ridding the world of financial illiteracy. However, these cool steps are happening. One step is it's in schools. Second step is even with my own content, people are wanting to have an open dialog and conversations. Regardless if I never reach the other goal, if this happens I’m going on a month's vacation and I’m just smiling for a month.
Ideally it would be math, science, history, English and financial education or whatever they want to call it. If it's part of our core understanding and learning of life then I know we’ve done something very well in our industry.
Lauren (07:43):
When you talk about that, are you talking about the high school level?
Stoy (07:46):
I'm talking about everywhere, pre-K through normal living life adulthood. So from regular school to college it should be required within our employer stuff and learning. It should be a lifelong education system because it's a lifelong journey within wealth, and it's something you'll never reach the end of because when you die, it just passes on for a legacy plan. So you need to understand it's a lifestyle and it is also something that takes your entire life to accomplish.
Lauren (08:19):
And on a day-to-day, are there things you're personally leaning into to help see that come to fruition? I know you have podcast content as well, and having conversations, are you still involved with the Boys and Girls Club or other organizations? What kind of things are you doing to lobby these efforts, for lack of a better word, to be able to really push this agenda? I mean, it takes a force, right?
Stoy (08:49):
I used to, for about a decade; I stopped about two years ago. I would be actually lobbying and would be speaking to the governor. I would be part of different nonprofits and starting nonprofits and really trying to push the direction from more of the political side of things because that's what they tell you is the way to do it. Since then, I realized it's not my lane. I don't like it. I'm not comfortable. I don't like it. It's just not fun for me. What's fun for me and what my passion is is having the podcast and having open conversations and hard conversations
Lauren (09:22):
With?
Stoy (09:22):
Literally anyone but a lot more so on social media. Everyone loves going to the comments. I love going to the comments and having an actual conversation regardless because people are watching. And that's something we as advisors, planners, and everyone in our industry need to understand as people are watching us more so than they're commenting. That's true. And so when they hear us repeat the same things they're learning, that's our job. That is our duty in this profession is to be involved and to be heard out there.
Lauren (09:54):
Yes, I feel like because I've got the marketing lens on, and I feel like folks don't always realize that too. It's like I'm putting stuff out there but I've got just five folks who are engaged and I'm like but so many people are watching and they're not watching just that. They're watching the comments, they're watching the other things that have come in and people are right. It's part of the process and that's why it's so valuable. So I appreciate that you're not just sitting on the sidelines but actually engaging with what's going on. So we did an article in Advisor Perspectives around social listening and just all of that. So kind of fun to hear you say it from that perspective and the role you feel you play to be able to really make that change and be a change agent here.
So tell us a little bit more. Are you seeing that there's any particular challenges that need to be addressed in this space? I know you talked about it being in schools, other places. Are you seeing it from a top to bottom side of things? Does that need to be in, for example, in even your role day to day and how we engage with folks or on the banking side of things or offerings? I'd love to hear more about how we can reach more people and educate more people. And if the vein is just through school or if there's other opportunities to be able to reach folks.
Stoy (11:19):
It's really all of us collectively. I talk about this all the time. There is no competition when it comes to being a planner or an advisor. Why? Because there's millions and millions of prospective clients out there, and there's only 20,000 CFP®s. So the numbers are skewed drastically. The other way, just why don't they have one? Because they're not being heard. They're not being seen. Our industry has been really, really cool at providing investments in ROI and focusing just on people with money to make more money when that's not what financial education or financial planning is about.
It is about the core and that core is that person. If we don't start talking more about the emotional side of money and decisions and really understanding our clients, then this whole thing will fail.
Lauren (12:09):
Right?
Stoy (12:09):
Ultimately. And so it starts from the top, it starts from all of us involved in speaking more to the person and relating to them and understanding who truly they are. Then we can take that step and involve the numbers because numbers are numbers, one plus one's two, whatever your numbers are, we know we can do something. It’s facts. That's a number. However, that doesn't go into what you’re doing and how you feel about what's happening. And I use this knowledge all the time. It's like when we all go on the diet fads, whatever that diet fat is, we have a goal of losing weight and thinking it'll change our life. And it might in a very short period of time, a year or whatever. Once you get bored of it, guess what, you go right back and put on that weight. It's the same thing with your wealth building. And by the way, wealth does not equal money. I'll get to that in a little bit but it's the same thing, your wealth journey, it’s a lifestyle change. And if you don't understand who you are, what trauma you've been through and the emotions that come up when you make decisions, then whenever we do a financial plan or a budget or whatever it is, it's just a fad.
You can understand and tie who you are to the plan, then it's a lifestyle and that's when you actually see massive change and success in people.
Lauren (13:31):
Okay. Go back to what you were saying before. Wealth does not equal money.
Stoy (13:34):
Yes, wealth does not equal money. Okay. That's true. Wealth, money, and being rich are the same. So rich equals money. Money doesn't equal happiness but happiness equals wealth. And so everyone uses the terms of wealthy people, and I even do it. Wealthy people are actually the people who care more about themselves, their families, and are able to give back, not the billionaires or trillionaires who have all the money. And that is a difference in people.
Lauren (14:10):
Different mindset.
Stoy (14:11):
What really hit me was actually at Drake in May 2011 when we went to Tanzania and spent two weeks there. When we first got off the plane, first of all, they gave us the greatest opening and arrival thing ever. But as we're driving through the village, I just notice all the women are sweeping their mud floors, mud floors, to realize they're sweeping mud floors. You even sweep your own floor all the time. No, and we have really nice floors but they were so happy and so humble throughout that trip. And I recognized at that point in time, that's what wealthy means. Wealthy means you're happy, you're good with whatever you have, and you're able and wanting to give back to others regardless. That is being wealthy.
The Tanzanians I met are way more wealthy than almost any American I've ever met in my life, and that's because they understand that core value part of it. They don't have money. They're not rich but they are wealthy.
Lauren (15:12):
So well said. I appreciate you sharing that story. So in your day-to-day practice for what you're doing, you talked about this idea earlier of this modern family office. What does that mean for you and how are you helping to have those conversations around that rich versus wealthy, if you will, or even just being able to help educate folks or even to help those conversations domino throughout generations to you? Is there any specific methodology or anything you're doing that you feel like is kind of that modern bend to your approach to working with your clients?
Stoy (15:47):
Yeah. First, when we start I always ask everyone the same question, what's your first money memory, right? We've got to figure out where it all started and what you think of money. So all my clients, that's the first thing we do. We spend about an hour, hour and a half, on just like, what's money mean to you? If you have trauma in life, how were you raised? We get a baseline of why they're making decisions in what they're doing in today's world. So that's first and foremost. But the term modern family office, and most people don't know what an actual family office is but it is taking that traditional sense of family office, being able to take care of your legal stuff, the lending stuff, pay your bills, travel, so that way you can focus on your family in whatever money making thing there is for you. We modernize that because usually you have to have $25 million or more, and it's a big ordeal. I've recognized you can whittle that down to a business owner who can basically gross about $300, $400,000.
When you whittle down that concept, we're able to still do the same things and outsource it. So a prime example, I had a client, she's older, got in a car accident, called me a couple days later, and I was like, well, first of all, are you okay? Yes, thanks for telling me, but are you good? And she was completely fine, but the car was totaled and she was dealing with the insurance side, and was like, I need a vehicle. I have a business to run. I need a car now. And I was like, okay, what do you want? She told me what kind of car she wanted. I called dealerships; I got a test drive scheduled. I called the lender, got the lending done, and I said, if you love that car, you can leave today with it or at least pick it up tomorrow. She spent a day figuring it out, did the test drive the next day, went and picked it up. Lending was done. All she had to do was sign a piece of paper. So that's the family office side of things. That's us taking more of that quarterback role and saying, I understand where you're at, the situation. I'm going to get everything done for you. All I need you to do is show up and see if you like or love it. And that's what we really want as people. We want to make sure, 1) am I good? And 2), do I have someone behind me who can support me if things don't go right? And that's our job. That is our duty as financial planners, in my opinion, to do that. And for me, that's more of a modern family office feel, aside from just focusing on investments or creating a financial plan, handing it to 'em and saying, good luck. It takes way more intuitiveness and way more being deeper in their lives. And that's why I've deemed it modern family office.
Lauren (18:25):
I love that. Also, just this idea of just taking care of people and reducing all the friction. So it's just everything's smooth and taken care of. I mean, that's service.
Stoy (18:36):
Yeah, for sure.
Lauren (18:38):
Well, goodness, I appreciate you sharing such an exciting, inspirational conversation. We are wrapping up here quickly though. So is there anything you think would be helpful to share if there's others who want to get involved or want to be able to give back, especially on the side of things, are there ways you would recommend either through specific nonprofits or just in day-to-day or what have you? I'd love to hear how others can help carry this mission forward.
Stoy (19:07):
There's a countless list of things you can do but I always have one big ask for everyone, and that is to help us all be louder. And what does that entail? That means sharing, that means engaging, that means being on podcasts and speaking what we want to speak in and be your real self by doing that. If we can get all 20,000 CFP®s, for example, how loud would that be? That'd be a lot louder than anything Schwab or Fidelity could throw out in the media. And for us to come together that way and be loud, that is the change I would love to see. So if you want to be involved, you can contact me. Go right ahead and do that. I've got a list of everyone I want you to be loud about and just keep being louder. That's my one big ask that I ask all the time.
Lauren (19:54):
I appreciate that. That's such a good message too. And when you say loud too, like you said, it sounds like louder talking with clients, being able to educate them. I know we mentioned earlier just online, right? Participating in the chatter in the conversation. I'm assuming even the lobbying side, if that's people's writing articles, other ways people can be loud to podcast, and we talked about that. I guess giving back through nonprofits, things of that sort.
Stoy (20:23):
Yeah, it's ultimately just doing what you like to do and taking that step forward and doing it. I know a lot of professionals in this industry who are just scared, whether it's compliance or who knows, but they won't take that step. And we need you. We as the professionals, and then we as clients need everyone to take that step for us to move this whole thing forward.
Lauren (20:49):
Yep. Well said. Well, thank you so much for your time today. Thank you for the work you do and for sharing a little bit more about your approach and also your involvement with the community and really furthering this mission around financial education and what have you. So thank you again, and I'm looking forward to being in touch and just continuing to follow your journey.
Stoy (21:10):
Absolutely. Go Bulldogs.
Lauren (21:12):
That's right. Go Bulldogs.
Making Noise to Tackle the Financial Education Problem
We talked with Tiffany about:
- What is a brand personality and why does it matter?
- How do we create brand personalities and what does that process look like?
- How can brand personalities serve every department?
About Tiffany Silverberg:
A self-professed “word nerd,” Tiffany Silverberg carries a wealth of marketing expertise spanning freelancing, journalism, and her current position as content director for Out & About Communications. While Tiffany has a passion for words, she also brings a profound understanding of the significance of crafting brand personalities for clients. She recognizes the pivotal role a well-defined brand personality plays in establishing a distinctive identity and building meaningful connections with target audiences. In her role at Out & About, Tiffany collaborates with various members of the team, from copywriters to the creative and marketing director, to establish well-defined brand guidelines that provide clients with a strategic roadmap, or North Star, to maintain brand identity and foster a lasting and impactful brand presence.
Featured Resources
Full Audio Transcript
Lauren (00:04):
Tiffany. Hi. Welcome.
Tiffany (00:08):
Thank you. Oh my goodness.
Lauren (00:10):
So Tiffany is our content director at Out and About Communications, and we've been working together for five or six years.
Tiffany (00:19):
Yeah, I think, yeah, probably five or six.
Lauren (00:22):
It's been a while in the best way. I think what's been really cool in the time we've worked together is that Tiffany’s seen so much growth and changes with clients, I mean clients we've had for a number of years and been able to see them grow along with us growing. And you all are in for a treat today because Tiffany listens to so many of our clients, so many of our financial services clients, and is directly hearing from the C-suite about their business objectives, where they're going, growing, and really helping to shape the messaging and the tone for numerous organizations of varying sizes. And so she has a really keen ear for listening to what's being said but what's not being said. And then also helping to shape any piece of content you can think of, blogs, podcasts, social media, and so on. And even crisis communications to make sure it is brand aligned. So we're going to talk about actually a tool we use for a handful of our clients called Brand Personalities Today, and Tiffany's going to have a chance to really go into what that is and get into more details as it applies to content applications. So Tiffany, do you want to share a little bit more about your background before we get into brand personality or any of the work we do together?
Tiffany (01:44):
Yeah, absolutely. So we have been working together for five or six years. I think I base it on how old my daughter was when we got started. So I think it's been about five years now since she's six. So before that I did a lot of freelancing or contract type of work for a long time. I've been in marketing for quite a long time. Before that, I was a journalist at a little newspaper, and I've just always liked words, even in college, pre-college, every opportunity. I had jobs that always revolved around stories, words, and the power of communication. I think marketing often gets a bad rap, maybe has a bad reputation for being like we're trying to convince people of things. And I think I come at it feeling, especially with push marketing being more what we're doing now, it's less about convincing people and more about trying to meet them where they're at and they're already looking for the solution. What's the best way we can communicate it? So yeah, that's just kind of a little background.
Lauren (02:54):
And I love the word nerd part of it too, right? I feel like you're like, okay, check out this.
Tiffany (03:01):
Yes, there are a lot of dictionaries in thesaurus right here.
Lauren (03:05):
You're like, okay, check this out. And then you're like, let me explain the background of this word or this symbol. And a lot of those nuances and the language we're choosing is really important. And it especially is important if you're looking at a mission statement or like I said, we'll get into brand personality or even just the voice and tone. So that's part of the fun part of it. And those words make a difference. And even the company culture and how we think and go about our communications. So with that, let's talk about the brand personality. I should phrase this as we kind of get into it. I'd like to be able to explain kind of what it is but then how do you actually create a brand personality? So let's talk first about what a brand personality is and why it is important to the work we're doing for our clients as a tool to utilize and uphold brand standards. Share more about what this beast is.
Tiffany (04:02):
Yeah. So I think we do brand personalities a little differently, and not to pit anything against each other but I think a lot of times when you see brand personalities, it's more of a brand avatar, often sort of chosen from a circle of 16 or eight or there's different ways to put it. And again, I don't want to pin anything against each other. I think those can be really helpful, especially if you're new in business or you just haven't really spent a lot of time defining your values and where you're coming from as a business, that's kind of like the Myers-Briggs way of doing it. But for us at Out & About, we take a slightly different approach, and I think it's just because of where our clients are at. So our clients are often coming from a place of, I've built this brand really organically, really authentically, but now I'm sort of in a next level of growth. I've brought on new employees. It's kind of getting beyond what I can hold, and I need tools like you said, that can help hold all that together without me having to hold all that together. So for us, it comes from a place of like, okay, we're going to pull in, and maybe this is getting more into how we create it…
Lauren (05:14):
That's great.
Tiffany (05:14):
We're going to pull in your values, your history, your future, where you're trying to go, and it's like the essential oil of your brand. We're going to take all those things and pull it all down into one phrase. So that's how we approach it. Instead of saying like, okay, you are a thing. One of these 16. We try to narrow everything down into a little phrase, and we do it a little differently for each client but it's usually two to four words at the most, really, really short. And it's just really, as concentrated, as pithy and strong as we can make it. And then that really becomes a North Star for everything out of that. So all our visuals, all our communication, and if we can do it really, really well, also internal communications and decisions we're making, it can always come back to, does that feel like us? Does it feel like that phrase we've created? Or if not, how can we get it back there?
Lauren (06:20):
Okay. So once we've landed on this two- to four-word phrase, how are we defining it or defining what it is or what are the pieces of it?
Tiffany (06:31):
Yeah, so again, talking about it from a tool perspective, we put this in the brand book and obviously because they're words and because I'm a nerd about it, if we're going to use a phrase, we have to make sure to also define it really well. So we'll often break it down into three or four pillars. Because another way to think about a brand personality is how we want people to feel when we interact with the brand. So we can define that in different ways. We want them to feel courageous, we want them to feel confidence, we want them to feel comfortable or cared for. Those are all C words, it doesn't have to be, but just these are the things we want them to feel, and this is what that looks like and why that's important to us. And then oftentimes, again, with the definitions, we make sure to say, okay, just because it's confident doesn't mean it's arrogant. Sometimes pushing the negative too. It doesn't need to go there, it doesn't need to go there.
Lauren (07:29):
So yeah, really kind of helping to splice out that stuff or those words of support, the overarching brand personality. And then how do you get through to that kind of essence, to that one page of this is our brand personality. Is it conversation? I know you mentioned the mission, vision, values, and kind of this turning point, but what's the process to narrow that down?
Tiffany (07:51):
So a lot of times when we're creating them, it's kind of when we're first starting to work through a discovery process with the clients. So we'll pull a lot from just those initial meetings. And the nice thing about those meetings is there's a lot of us coming needing different things from the meetings. So we're pulling marketing strategies out of there, and we're pulling plans we want to put together for the next 18 months. There's a lot of stuff that comes out, which is kind of nice because oftentimes we'll sit in those meetings, we'll review the recordings later, and sometimes just little phrases will bubble up from the clients. They'll just say the same thing over and over in different ways or just in answering different questions. So that's always really helpful. And then honestly, with the nitty gritty here at Out & About, we have a director team, so the creative director and marketing director, like I said, we all have to come from those discovery meetings with different plans. Okay, I've got to go build this. I've got to go build this, so I have to do the brand personality, some of the voice side. We'll sit down and say okay, what did you hear and what did you hear? And we'll kind of just talk it through and pull…
Lauren (09:03):
…it all apart. Yeah.
Tiffany (09:04):
Yes. And kind of help push and pull things across the table. I saw that. Does that help you? And then to be totally honest, sometimes we get a little silly with it and start going, did that feel like this kind of cartoon to you? Does that brand feel like this pop culture song to you? And I think that kind of helps. Then you start feeling the feelings. It totally feels like a Katy Perry song. From there, then you're like, okay, well what's the actual word that defines that? And not just the song or the cartoon or whatever.
Lauren (09:37):
And then how are these presented then to clients to be able to get sign off on and for them to also have that feeling where they're owning it too.
Tiffany (09:49):
Yeah. So first of all, I think it is super important they feel like they're owning it, right? It needs to not just be a label we're putting on. So we just went to a really silly place about cartoons and pop culture but it needs to feel like something they're very proud of and very, this is what I've been building. Finally, someone is describing what I've been feeling for so long, what I've been trying to pass on from the founder team or C-suite. But then also it needs to be able to trickle down and get everybody rallying around it feeling like, this is us, this is who we are. It's almost like a mascot. It's not a mascot but it's that feeling of like, oh, we're all behind that animal or whatever. So as far as how it's presented, so again, from a tool perspective, we present it in what we call a big brand book.
Everyone kind of calls it something different, and it's really as we present it kind of the middle point. So we'll talk through all the different target markets and UVPs, unique value propositions, and your positioning statement, all those pieces, values and vision and all those things that brought us to this point, and kind of boil them down. And it's that crux that's the brand personality halfway through. Then we're like, okay, all those things boil down into this neat little bow. And then from there, voice guides and brand guides and visuals and all that will sort of flow out of it. So I like to think of an X. And then as far as once we've built it and we're ready to present it, it really helps to kind of have that initial group, whoever the key decision makers are, there's a C-suite or whoever that is, sit down and talk. There are times they're like, that word is not a word we would ever use, or in context with the history of our company random things will come up. So that's really nice to tease through all of that. And then once we're all on board and we all agree that's the word, that's the phrase, whatever, then we'll kind of present it to the executive team or department heads or the next layer of leadership. And then if the company is big enough, they'll kind of take it from there to their teams as needed.
Lauren (12:15):
And can you share maybe an application, so once it's actually put together and it's agreed upon and it's been agreed upon with the C-suite leadership, if there are department heads and employees starting to get buy-in too, then how does it actually apply on the marketing side and maybe even cross department? How have you seen it be a tool for upholding that personality?
Tiffany (12:40):
Yeah, so from a marketing perspective, like I said, we use it kind of the middle point of a brand book. So even as I said in those initial meetings when we're all kind of deciding, okay, it's going to be, this is what it's going to be, it helps us then decide, okay, key phrases, key messaging that's going to define the brand. They all have to sound like that, or colors or new logo or various visual applications. They all have to look like that and feel like that. So that's the starting point. And then again, once we've all decided on it, it really serves as a North Star. So whether we're writing social media posts, or visual posts, our copywriting team, our design team, everyone can go back to this. And I think from a really practical perspective, again, we have that whole book; that's like, it will have this color, it will not have this color, here's a way to say it, but I think when someone sits down and says okay, I have to write a series of social media posts, I have to write a series of emails, it's nice to have just that mental place to sit and go, okay, I have to be here as I'm writing as opposed to pushing up against a guideline, if that makes sense.
Lauren (14:03):
Yeah. So could you maybe share how we use it internally and even share it with our copywriters or copy editors as well? How are they utilizing that to channel the essence of that brand voice and tone?
Tiffany (14:17):
Yeah, exactly like that. We do share it with them and share it with them every single time. So it's not just like you see it once but every time we have to sit down and write again, social media or an email or an ad or anything, they'll have that to go back to. We also do create a video, a little Loom around it too, so someone's explaining it because again, words can be misinterpreted or interpreted different ways so there's someone saying, this is what that feeling is and supposed to be.
Lauren (14:53):
Yeah, it does. No, you're right. It's used all the time. And I think not just in copy but in design as well too.
Tiffany (15:03):
Yes, exactly. All pieces of copy, but design, same thing. Again, it's easy to say, here's your logo, here's your colors, and we have to have those so nothing strays. But I think it's nice to be able to sit when you want to come up with a really cool new ad or print ad or social campaign, and you want it to be creative. It's nice to know I'm coming from this place of, we were talking earlier confidence, or am I coming from a place of fun? Or where am I starting with that and what do I want people to feel?
Lauren (15:34):
What kind of energy you're pulling, it almost seems like maybe it's like your, I don’t know if baseline is the right word but if you were to present this ad, you could go, does this feel like our brand personality?
Tiffany (15:47):
Yes, exactly. It’s like a filter.
Lauren (15:50):
Yeah. Yeah, that's fair. And then any applications for how it's been used for other departments or outside of marketing?
Tiffany (15:59):
Yeah, I think again, I think when it's done really well, it can serve as, I think that's almost like the sign that it's working really well is when it can start being used internally. And again, when people start getting really excited. And we've seen that happen ourselves and with our clients where just randomly people are like, is it that? Are we being that thing? Or just having that conversation or just almost talking about, it's almost, again, I think about sports teams, it's that time of year, but it becomes a rallying cry or something. We're this, people get excited.
But yeah, I mean, one thing that came up for us that we've talked about for our own use is just kind of getting everyone on the same page before a meeting or even internally when you have to have conversations like, well, we need to come from this place because we all agreed upon it. And I think it's important too, to talk about, it's not just like, I need to put on this facade again. If it's done really well, it should be organically from the brand. So it's not just, I know we've talked about this internally too. It's not just, okay, I'm going to put on this face before this client meeting and then I'll take it off afterward. But it's more like, I was hired for this reason, I belong in this team, and so I'm stepping into this thing that's natural for me. This is who I belong to, if that makes sense.
Lauren (17:26):
Yeah. That energy that's projected as the brand is coming, it's not just one person but it's really across the board, it’s holding the values but is sort of like you said, the essential oil of the brand, I think.
Tiffany (17:39):
Yes, exactly. We all smell like lavender.
Lauren (17:41):
Yes.
Tiffany (17:44):
But it's that idea of really narrowing it down.
Lauren (17:45):
Or like you said, it's that Katy Perry song, that feeling, right? And what's the feeling if you were to interact with this person or that person, there's a consistent standard and energy across the border, and that you would feel that in design or copy and what have you.
Tiffany (17:59):
Yeah. And that's what I mean about it not being fake, because at least, I mean, for us, we hire for values and we hire for being an authentic, natural part of the team. So it's like when I'm putting on the brand personality, I'm not putting on something fake. I'm putting on, this is why I belong here, this is who we all are sort of together.
Lauren (18:21):
Well said. So anything you think could be a good takeaway that I haven't asked? I know we're wrapping up quickly here.
Tiffany (18:29):
Yeah, no. I guess one other story, we were talking with a new executive at one of our clients, and she was just saying, this is a client where everyone's really embraced their brand personality. And she was just saying, I could feel it at all the touch points, every interaction. And she's like, it wasn't until you explained it, because we gave the whole presentation to her, and she's like, now I understand what that was. I have a word for it now but before it was like I could just tell everything felt like this brand who we are but I didn't know what that meant. So it was nice that we could actually get the words for it.
Lauren (19:10):
And that's the hard work of leadership, being able to set that company culture, those values are so essential to, you said earlier, hiring, and just the energy that's brought into every day. And then how do we take that and distill that? You were saying, then it gives us a place in which we can come from copy and design.
Tiffany (19:32):
And I guess one more point to that too, we keep mentioning values, and I think the differentiator between your values and your brand personality is just that, well, first of all, for values often we all kind of use the same ones, we say the same words. And so it's nice to have something that feels very, well, for lack of a better word, branded to your brand. We use this phrase, oftentimes we'll choose words that are slightly juxtapositioned or slightly funny together because then once they come together they’re more powerful. So I think that's the difference too. Then you have this separate thing that's almost an inside joke. Everybody's just like, this is our thing. We get excited about it versus values, which are important, but sometimes they're like, well, we all talk about whatever those five things are.
Lauren (20:26):
And it also takes those, comparing what you're saying too, taking those values and mission, vision, all these big pieces. Like you're talking about sort of that X, right? And it funnels it down to sort of you said, get the essence of it.
Tiffany (20:36):
Yeah, exactly.
Lauren (20:38):
So fun. Well, thank you Tiffany for taking time, sharing a little bit of the behind the scenes of what we do here at Out & About, and also that process to be able to get through a really important piece, especially as businesses are growing. So thank you for giving us a sneak peek and sharing more about what makes things stick here.
Tiffany (20:58):
Absolutely. It's been fun. Thank you.
Lauren (21:00):
Absolutely. All right. And we'll include links as well to additional information about brand personality or all of that, and don't hesitate to reach out with questions. Thanks, Tiffany.
Tiffany (21:10):
All right. Thanks.
How a Brand Personality Can Drive Company Culture and Build Trust With Your Audience
We Talked With Derek About:
- Why we need to shift to human connections and consumer-driven lead generation.
- How to build trust into the whole process of a client relationship, starting with leads.
- How the Couplr fintech solution works, including how bio questions came together. (Hint: They’re super fun and you may want to grab some of these for your own bio!)
- The science behind this lead generation tool and how people make financial decisions.
About Derek Notman:
Derek Notman is on a mission to “fix money.” Working in the advisory space, Derek saw one pivotal issue: the need for trust in professional financial relationships, especially for people looking to hire a financial advisor. Essentially, lead generation was broken. His solution: focus on the human element and the power of human connection. Leveraging the latest trends and science, Derek founded Couplr, a lead generation white label solution. Its core purpose? To help clients match with their ideal financial advisor based on who the advisor is professionally and personally, ultimately empowering clients to make informed decisions on their own timeline when choosing an advisor to help them along their journey.
Featured Resources
Full Audio Transcript
Lauren (00:03):
Derek, thank you for joining us today.
Derek (00:05):
Great to be with you, Lauren. Thank you.
Lauren (00:07):
So I know we kind of got started in this crazy world of LinkedIn. I saw an interview you had done about Couplr, this new technology company you've started. I'm super intrigued by it, so I appreciate you taking the time today to share more about the journey you've taken to get this new company off the ground. But I think also importantly, hearing the why and what in this kind of space in the market you see missing. Why don't we start there? I'd love just to hear from you a little bit about your background and how did you identify this gap in the market to get to where you are right now?
Derek (00:43):
Well, like a lot of your listeners, I am a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™. I actually still have my own RIA. So I've been an advisor for over 17 years now. I cut my teeth in the insurance broker-dealer world and now I'm fully independent. And the number one problem I always saw, because there’s so many advisors who wash out of this business, a tough business.
Lauren (01:06):
It's a tough business, especially in the beginning.
Derek (01:08):
Oh my God, I have gray hair for a reason. I didn't start with gray hair but the number one thing I always saw was lack of lead gen. I'm sure like a lot of your listeners, when I started I was told to do a project 200 and cold call. We had phone clinics multiple times a week.
Lauren (01:27):
Yeah, I know. Even door knocking, right?
Derek (01:30):
It was tough and I did it and I did it. I hated it but I did it and I was good enough at it where I was able to make it but it always bothered me because the process just seemed so disjointed and broken for the advisor. It's really kind of soul crushing. When I decided I wanted to be an advisor, I wasn't thinking about having to do lead gen and marketing, I was thinking I want to help people retire and save and invest and all this stuff.
Lauren (02:02):
The relationship building pieces of it, the why. Yeah.
Derek (02:06):
It was so, so important. I think most advisors have that passion. That's why they get in. They want to help people with their money but the process to get clients isn't very transparent initially when you're trying to get into the business. And then once you're in, you're in. So you got to go. So that was always frustrating. It really is not a fun process for advisors but it's a terrible experience for the consumer too. They're getting cold called or maybe they put their name and their email address and how much money they have into a website, and then next thing they know their phone is blowing up. It just feels bad all the way around. So I figured, okay, what if we can fix lead generation? What if we can make it better? And that's where Couplr spun out was asking that question. That's how I came up with Couplr originally.
Lauren (02:59):
Yeah, I appreciate just your honest narrative about the difficulty of being able to get going and just that kind of, I don't know what you want to call that, that mud you've kind of got to get through to be able to get to the other end of really the real work, the work you want to be doing and being able to help people and support them. So tell us more about Couplr. What's sort of that identified gap in the market and how are you trying to solve that initial challenge?
Derek (03:32):
Well, I'll start at a really high level and then boil it down as we go. So ultimately we're on a mission to fix this thing we call money when we don't have great financial advice, education, and so forth. A lot of bad things can happen when we make bad financial decisions or just don't make decisions at all. But if we do have good guidance and education in our lives around money, a lot of great things can happen.
Lauren (03:58):
Absolutely.
Derek (03:58):
And advisors, human advice, is not going away. So advisors tend to be a very big part of that for their clients and helping them realize their hopes, dreams, and goals. So we're on this mission to do that, and the opportunity is huge. We know over a hundred million people a month just in the U.S. alone are looking for help with their investments, their insurance, retirement planning, whatever. We know that depending on the numbers you look at, if you count registered reps, life agents, and so forth, you've got over 600,000 professionals just in the U.S. There's over 4.1 million globally. So you've got these great two markets that need to support each other, that need to connect. And Couplr was like, okay, why don't we change how people are connecting with advisors? Couldn't the consumer drive this process instead of the advisor? Shouldn't we be? And here's the thing, money is very personal.
Lauren (05:00):
It is. It's hard to talk about.
Derek (05:02):
It’s really hard to talk about. And so if I'm going to open up about my financial skeletons, mistakes I've made, things I don't want to acknowledge, how much money I have or don't have. If I'm going to share that with an individual, I better trust that person. And last time I checked, zip code and net worth do not determine a trusting relationship.
Lauren (05:25):
Absolutely.
Derek (05:27):
They really don't. But that's what all these lead gen solutions are doing. They're saying, hey, we'll find the best advisor for you. Give us your zip code, email address, phone number, and how much is in your 401(k).
Lauren (05:39):
Right, right.
Derek (05:40):
Well, wait a minute.
Lauren (05:40):
Baseline stuff. It's not really deep stuff. What's funny, just as a note on that to sort of back it up, we look at a lot of firms’ websites. Everyone goes to the About Us page. They want to know who this person is, and it's not like the credentials are important. It shows this level of, okay, check the box. Right? Totally validation. They're really critical. But once you've got that check, it's your entry card if you will but then it's about the human stuff. Can I relate to that person? Do they have a family? What are their hobbies? What is that connection? So to your point, I mean it is so much more and I think it's really easy to forget about that, especially when you're sort of passionate about doing the work, but it's that human element. So let's talk a little bit more about that connection and what you're trying to cultivate too.
Derek (06:39):
Yeah, you're spot on. It's the human element. It's the human connection. If we have shared commonalities and so forth, we set the stage for trust. If we went to the same school, we're both dog people, we love to travel, etc., etc., etc., you're like all of a sudden, oh man, this person's just like me. That's cool. So the consumer feels more comfortable but also the advisor's like, oh, I just got a lead. They like dogs. They like to travel. We went to the same school, we got something to talk about right off the bat. This is great. So Couplr does that, and how we're doing it differently is that we are a white label solution, and this is really important because trust is a really important part of the process for someone getting advice and finding an advisor. So if I'm on, I could use Fidelity for example, or Morningstar, if I'm on that website researching something about Roth IRAs or retirement planning or whatever, I'm already there, so I'm thinking about my money. That's good. Okay. So that's already a warmer lead.
Lauren (07:44):
Proactively starting to find a solution.
Derek (07:47):
And we know over a hundred million people a month are doing this. But then if there's this call to action to say, hey, use this tool by this other non-Fidelity brand, we're like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait a minute. I think I like Fidelity but what's this other thing, this other brand you're going to make me go use to find an advisor? That feels shady. I already don't really want to be here, so I'm gone. Or the tool's just too invasive because it's asking your net worth and your email address and you're like, well wait, I don't even know if I want to go on a first date with you yet. Just hold on a second.
Lauren (08:21):
That's right. I know.
Derek (08:22):
Back up a little.
Lauren (08:23):
I know it's like already down for a proposal and we haven't even had a conversation.
Derek (08:27):
Right?
Lauren (08:28):
Yes.
Derek (08:29):
Like chill out. Let's hold on. So we embed in situations like that; we leverage the existing brand. That's why we're white label.
Lauren (08:38):
Got it. That makes sense. So it's like a back-end tool.
Derek (08:41):
So you don't know it's not really a Fidelity tool. So we want to leverage, because Fidelity or any company has spent a lot of money and time and resources driving their own brand. So why would they want to detract from that? They don't.
Lauren (08:54):
Makes sense.
Derek (08:55):
And so we take that warm traffic and then we ask the consumer to go through a brief quiz longer than anything else that's really out there. I timed my wife doing it, I stood behind her and just hovered and it took her just over three minutes.
Lauren (09:09):
Oh my gosh. That's like music to my ears for folks. When you think about if someone's searching online, they don't have a lot of time, that they can just pop through it real quick. You always have a drop off at the beginning, right?
Derek (09:23):
You always will.
Lauren (09:24):
A 20-question survey, you're like, oh my gosh, okay.
Derek (09:28):
Yeah, this one, it's lightning fast. It's quick and it's long enough to be like, okay, there's some value here, but it's not too long to be like, eh, I'm out. But what's cool is that we don't ask the consumer to give us a name, an email address, what their income is, any of that stuff. Bumble has a really good approach, if you know about the Bumble dating app.
Lauren (09:51):
Yes, yes.
Derek (09:56):
Well, I signed up for all these things.
Lauren (09:59):
I am familiar.
Derek (10:02):
I had to get permission from my wife. I signed up for all of the dating services.
Lauren (10:07):
Well, you're getting the user experience.
Derek (10:10):
The user experience feeling. So we empower the consumer to make that first move. So then they get matched now based on a variety of human elements with the top advisors at that institution. So not 100 I have to try to sift through because once I get over a couple, three, four, five choices, I'm gone. Anyways. Too many for me to think about.
Lauren (10:32):
Yes, yes.
Derek (10:33):
That's actually based on something called the paradox of choice. That's science that's been written about previously, and now the consumer can vet their advisors. They get to see the profile. Who is this advisor? What are their specialties? What are their credentials? Let me see their disclosures, broker check.
Lauren (10:53):
Wait, wait. So a consumer comes in, they answer the questions, and then they're kind of fed a list of advisors? Just want to make sure.
Derek (11:00):
They're instantly matched with only the top three or so advisors at that firm.
Lauren (11:04):
Okay. So also just to back up one step, this white labeling tool is really for a firm or for a company like a Fidelity for example, or I don't know if that would be the right kind of fit, but that would have kind of a volume of advisors.
Derek (11:20):
It needs volume. It needs volume at this point. Technically, we could probably serve a firm as small as one with seven advisors.
Lauren (11:29):
Okay. Just to really narrow it. Yeah, that makes sense though, right? They're not having to read through every bio and Yelp. Okay, so sorry. So we'll swing back to the narrow. Now they've three or so advisors.
Derek (11:45):
And so then the consumer gets to look at them. Why was I matched with them? Who is this person? Who are they personally and professionally? Let me check them out on social, their websites, all of these things. Because as a consumer, if you're telling me I'm connecting with these top matches for these different human elements, I already feel better about it. And I feel like, okay, wow. All right. We both like to surf. We both travel, dog people, whatever. So then within 10 minutes or so, you can do your due diligence as a consumer.
Lauren (12:17):
It helps. It's time saving,
Derek (12:19):
Major time savings. We've really queued it up well. And then when the consumer is ready, they will initiate contact with the advisor or advisors they want to speak with about working together.
Lauren (12:31):
Got it. Okay.
Derek (12:32):
The advisor does not get any access to these leads until the consumer initiates contact.
Lauren (12:39):
Okay. So can you talk about how the consumer actually initiates contact?
Derek (12:45):
So there's different ways we want to empower the advisor to have their contact info and stuff like that there. But the main call to action we ask for is to use our instant messaging feature, which is FINRA compliant. And that's how they initiate contact with the advisor. Hey Bob, I got matched with you. I really liked that. We went to the same school and we both love dogs. I need help with this thing. I'd like to find a time to meet with you.
Lauren (13:12):
Okay. So and then at that point of conversation is when they would be passing over their contact information.
Derek (13:19):
It’s up to them. They don't even have to give their contact info because we let the advisor respond to the DM.
Lauren (13:24):
Ph, it’s very trust focused then.
Derek (13:27):
Very trust focused. We do not want the consumer to ever feel like they're going to start getting spammed or bombarded or have to give anything away. So it's totally up to the consumer. But what happens when we do this and it's a good match, the advisor now has a warm inbound lead they know things about, like, hey, this consumer needs help with retirement planning. They've been thinking about it for three months. They want to get it taken care of in the next seven days, and they love dogs. Oh, okay, cool. So Bob gets this warm inbound lead, and unless Bob is really bad at his sales process, how can you not close that lead now?
Lauren (14:03):
Yeah, you already have a connection. You've got starting points, something about them that is of interest and they've already been narrowed down. Okay. So that's the point of handing off this qualified lead. Then how about on the advisor's end? How is this platform, the white label piece, getting set up to make sure of the inputs? Are there a bunch of fields or forms the advisor has to fill out to do the appropriate matching? What does that kind of onboarding look like on the firm's end?
Derek (14:32):
Very easy onboarding. We work directly with the enterprise. That's who we partner with initially. They will give us a list of whatever advisors they want in part of this program. We bulk upload advisors. Each advisor gets an invite email. They have to complete a very similar quiz for matching purposes because of how our algorithm works, and then take a few minutes on setting up their bio headshot, tell us more about you, links, all that kind of stuff. And they're not allowed to let that bio go live until they've completed everything, including disclosures.
Lauren (15:03):
Got it. That must be a fun bio to put together. I mean, how have you guys been adding more and more details? How have you narrowed down what goes into this matching process?
Derek (15:13):
It's pretty cool. There's a lot of different things we're asking about. What would you do on a free night off? We have a question about that. Unexpected.
Lauren (15:21):
Yeah.
Derek (15:21):
Do you feel about international travel? We ask almost nothing financial other than what is the consumer looking for? We also ask the advisor, what are services you primarily help clients with? Things of that nature. Do you work only remotely or will you work in person or do you care? A lot of different elements around that but we're connecting on the human level. We're all wired to connect that way anyways.
Lauren (15:49):
Right. So how did you even come up with these questions? Did you survey different folks? Did you work with a sort of expert who really knows survey questions, if that's sort of the right term?
Derek (16:00):
There were a couple things. So part of it was my own research into the science of interpersonal trust. So our tool is based on three different types of science we've actually baked into it, which has never been done before, which is kind of cool. So part of it was on my research and figuring out what are the types of personality and human connection questions we should be asking. But also one of our founders, Megan Lutz, has her PhD in behavioral financial planning.
Lauren (16:29):
So she's like, this is…
Derek (16:31):
…totally up her alley. She loves this stuff. She and I nerd out on it probably more than we should but it's great stuff. And so we work together. We're actually even working on it today. So it's really fun to figure out what we should be asking both sides, why that's important, what part of the personality box that ticks off, and then how are we connecting people based on all this?
Lauren (16:55):
Got it. Oh my goodness. That is a really fun project. I mean, more than a project. I'm sure it's ever evolving. We always say websites are ever evolving. I'm sure this is probably.
Derek (17:05):
Oh, it totally is. Marketing and websites. It's part art, part science. So there's a lot that goes to it. And is it ever evolving? One of the things we're really excited about is that we actually don't know when and why people make financial decisions. It's never been found out. It's never been learned.
Lauren (17:25):
I feel like that's actually quite bold to say, because I feel like someone makes a financial decision when X point happens, right? There's some big life transition. So tell me more about this. I feel like that's definitely something different than the status quo.
Derek (17:44):
There are a lot of knee-jerk reaction solutions that happen like, oh, I just had a kid last week. I should probably get life insurance. Oh crap, I'm going to go do that. So one of the other sciences I mentioned is something called the transtheoretical model of change, and that was actually originally done in the ‘70s to understand why people quit smoking and when they quit smoking. So we've just applied that to this space to find out, okay, I'm thinking, I know we're expecting a kid and it's six months from now, so I'm thinking about it. Maybe I went to a life insurance company's website to learn a little bit more but I'm not ready yet. And so now we can start to track this process and change, well, this consumer's hit this website five times now over this timeframe. Now they eventually got something done and we just don't know that type of stuff yet, and we're going to be able to learn it at scale for a variety of different things. And then what we're eventually going to do is we are an AI company, so we'll start training some AI models where we can get even better and more predictive to help people with this type of stuff.
Lauren (18:54):
Wow, that's fascinating. Oh, so fun. What a great space to be. It's pretty cool. It is super cool. Also, with all the changes that have happened in the last few years with so much M&A activity, I myself, as a consumer, when I go to another firm's website and you go to the team page and it's like, oh my gosh, where do I even start? It's like, you can just keep scrolling. There's so many people. And then it's like, do I go by location? You don't want to read through every bio. Maybe you're lucky if you get through three of them. So this is a really interesting way of trying to do that matchmaking, if you will, between the consumer and the advisor.
Derek (19:31):
We think so, and we're pretty excited about where it's going. We'll see what happens but it's pretty awesome. We're doing it for the right reasons, which is great. People need to connect for the right reasons.
Lauren (19:41):
Yeah, that's important. Oh my goodness. I appreciate you sharing more. I know we're about at the top of our time here but anything else you think would be good to share more about this platform or what's coming up next for it?
Derek (19:55):
Yeah, I think definitely go to our website: CUPLR.ai, couplr.ai, and you can sign up for our newsletter on there. And then we've actually published some articles that really dive into the science and the reasons behind our solution. And then you can also, even if you're an enterprise listening, you can sign up for a demo from there as well from us. And if you want follow me on LinkedIn just because I'm pretty darn active on there.
Lauren (20:23):
Yeah. Even hearing about this research too, I would even think as just an advisor looking to make connections, being able to understand that deeper or anyone frankly who's in sales, it feels like it would be good information to have to be able to bridge those relationships.
Derek (20:41):
No question. Because I mean, as you know, you serve a ton of advisors. Very few advisors signed up as an advisor to become a marketer. They want to be an advisor. They need help with all the marketing stuff and the lead gen and all that. But if they can learn those insights so they can work with people like you to make their website better or whatever, everybody wins.
Lauren (21:02):
Yeah. It's a win-win. And it is about that human connection, as you talked about earlier. A hundred percent. Oh my goodness. Well, Derek, thanks so much for your time today. We'll make sure to include links below to Couplr and some of the other pieces you mentioned. Again, I'm excited to see this roll out and the learnings that come from it.
Derek (21:22):
Likewise. Thanks a ton, Lauren. I really appreciate it.
How to Create Trust-Based Lead Generation with Fintech Solutions
We Talked With Stevyn About:
- The parallels of the financial services industry and health.
- Why being “wellthy” starts with awareness.
- How to find your health credit score and steps to improve it .
About Stevyn Guinnip:
As the daughter of a financial advisor, Stevyn Guinnip grew up watching her father help people build financial success and prepare for retirement, only to get sick or die prematurely because their health was neglected. She also saw financial advisors ignore their wellness for decades and found herself asking, “What good is wealth, if you don’t have your health?” Stevyn went on to earn a master’s degree in exercise physiology and became a certified health & wellness coach. A near-death experience in 2016 brought her to an epiphany—the same skills it takes to be financially successful are the ones necessary for staying healthy. Stevyn founded Grow Wellthy and teaches her clients that health is their biggest asset. Today, she helps financial advisors, investors, and their clients retire “wellthy” by earning back their health.
Featured Resources & Shout Outs
- Stevyn Guinnip’s LinkedIn Profile
- Stevyn Guinnip’s Instagram Profile
- Grow Wellthy on Facebook
- Grow Wellthy website
- Find Out Your Health Credit Score
- Well-Advised Newsletter
- Outlive: The Science & Art of Longevity by Peter Attia, M.D.
Full Audio Transcript
Lauren (00:02):
Hi, Stevyn. Thank you for joining us.
Stevyn (00:05):
Hi. Thank you so much for inviting me. This is exciting.
Lauren (00:08):
Yes. Like I shared earlier, I've been following you on LinkedIn. I know we've got all these small town connections, small world connections. It's really fun to see that all come together. But I'm really looking forward today to really hearing about your company and what you bring to this world and financial services and the financial advisory world and all of those good things. And in particular about Grow Wellthy. So why don't we start there? What's your story? How did you get to where you with your offering?
Stevyn (00:40):
Yeah, sure. So Grow Wellthy is a play on words, obviously it's W E L L, it's wellness wealth. It's the other wealth that a lot of people aren't talking about. And if anyone's listening, I would just say the one main concept I teach is that your health is an asset, just like your 401(k) is an asset or properties you may hold are an asset. It is something we want to treat like a financial portfolio to be there for us in the future. So because of that, the name of the company is Grow Wellthy because we're actually trying to not go bankrupt in this space of health and wellness because we need it in retirement just as much as we need those dollars. And so I came into this because my dad is a financial advisor. He was for 32 years in the industry.
So I jokingly say I've been in the industry since I was 11 when he started that business. And I got to see from the inside out what it takes to be in this industry with the stress, the sedentary, the pressure, all of the things to grow a business, to be seen, to be heard, to be relevant, to take care of your clients. And I was like, oh my gosh, that's a lot. I don't want that. My dad asked me, he said, do you want to go into this business? He had a booming business. And I said, no, I don't want this because I've seen too much of the high producers, the very successful financial professionals, what it takes from them, and I didn't like it. So I went and became an exercise physiologist. I said I'm going to fix this from the other side. So for 20 years I did that, and it was when I almost died in 2016 while living in Australia that my two worlds collided.
And that was the world of understanding the financial services industry and understanding what health is. And my own near-death experience made me realize they're the same. They're identical industries. It's just that one of them has an asset of money, one of them has an asset of health, but you follow the same principles to achieve success in both—long-term thinking, small deposits, consistency, staying out of debt, having all these different concepts. And I was like, oh my gosh, all we have to do to help these people who mean so much to me is skill transfer all these concepts they already know just to a different medium, which is their health, and then they can get to retirement, not be bankrupt, not have one good year, die at the desk, all these things I've heard. And that's where Grow Wellthy was born when I kind of made those two worlds come together.
Lauren (03:09):
So share a little bit more about who you serve today. What kind of things are you doing for them?
Stevyn (03:15):
So I serve financial professionals, people who understand money. I help them to assess how they're doing with their health, look at the trend that's been happening, and then we find the gaps and we change that trend to a better place. So I work with financial people to transform their health, to get out of debt with their health and to become an abundance of wellness. And we do that through coaching, group coaching and private coaching. And that's something I've been doing for years now and most recently, which is kind of interesting for your people, is that we've started to actually integrate that into the culture of the company and to say, okay, this is great for me as the financial professional to change my health, but how do I integrate this into the culture of my company and help my clients to understand how this is an important thing for them too? So we've started educating and offering value add and ways to attract and retain more people by delivering these concepts through what I call the quarterly wealth webinar series. So there's kind of two arms to what I do.
Lauren (04:29):
So when people come to you, are they at a breaking point? What is the trigger? Are you trying to, I'm assuming, of course, wanting to try and reach them before you get to that, but what's the reality?
Stevyn (04:43):
Kind of in financial services, the younger the person is, the less they're willing to take action and save for retirement, even though they should, they should start decades earlier.
Lauren (04:57):
Really, there's many things you should do, right?
Stevyn (05:00):
Right. It's the same with health. They're like, okay, when should we start? Two decades ago, that's really when we should have started. So people come to me, they're like, yeah, I kind have been neglecting this for a while. So there's two big triggers. One of them is turning 40. They're like, I'm at 40ish and I've been not doing what I should be doing, and I feel like it's going to get serious soon if I don't do something. That's one. The others are people who are maybe 50, maybe even 60, who are like, okay, my bloodwork does not look good. My doctors want me to take this medication. I'm at risk for a heart attack. I've got these issues that are not making me feel healthy, and they're going to turn into a really big problem soon. And so then we're really trying to make changes quickly to get them out of the danger zone and back on solid ground again. So there's kind of the people who are more preventive in nature and the ones who are trying to fix a problem.
Lauren (05:52):
So just in the wealth management space, there's triggers in all of it. Someone gets scared, has a baby. So you're sharing that these triggers are really turning points with your age. Something happens medically, what have you. And I'm assuming there's been other factors that are sort of off so they know they should be doing something. So what do you do to help them get that in line? I mean, as business owners and a lot of advisors, you're going out, you're hitting the ground, it's high energy, it's hard to fit in these other things and make them a priority, even sort of fit it in to what's going on, or well kind of get their own buy-in, right?
Stevyn (06:35):
Right.
Lauren (06:36):
I see the alignment with a little bit of what you're talking about with the financial planning side of it, but keep going.
Stevyn (06:42):
Yeah. Well, I've interviewed 500 financial professionals because I'm writing a book on this topic. And the three things I consistently hear, and I see this in my own clients too, there's three barriers that keep people from actually doing it. Everybody wants to be healthy but not everyone is doing it. And so that creates this frustration gap. So the three things are that they are unmotivated—they know they should do it but they're just not that motivated to make changes. So they use excuses, I just don't have time, or things are too busy right now, or whatever. And so what we have to do is address that and make it a priority by showing them what I call longevity metrics. When they see their longevity metrics, they're like, whoa, I had no idea. I am 52 but my metabolic or biological age is 67.
What? No, this can't keep going. I'm going to die too young. So we take some of these really key metrics and help them to see where they really are as opposed to just like, oh, I probably should do something. They're like, this is where you are. And that's really motivating, and it creates perpetual motivation. You start to see these numbers create a trend, and then you get excited about it. So that's number one. Number two, it's just utter confusion. They're like, well, I tried keto and then I was told I should probably do this 75 HARD program. And then someone said if I just ate asparagus or whatever, there's a million ideas of somebody's cousin's aunt who did something and lost 30 pounds, and it's like analysis paralysis. They don't know what's right for them. And so that's what we have to do too, is ask what are the best practices?
And then what are they based on? They're based on three authorities, which is how you feel about it, what your results say, and what does science say? So we kind of clear the mud and make it really actionable on a few items that get them to where they're wanting to go in a very strategic way. And then the third thing is that they may know what to do and they're motivated but they just can't be consistent for whatever reason. They'll go a few days and then miss a few days. So we work on the consistency pieces, what to do, the right time of day to do it, and we embed it into four of the habits they're already doing in their day. They're four routines that are happening every day no matter where they are, and it throws it on autopilot. I call these the High ROI routines, and that's basically just making sure you're doing the least amount of effort to create the biggest amount of impact on your health so it's sustainable over the next several decades. And that's the process we go through and it works.
Lauren (09:17):
And is it customized to each individual? How are they monitoring this? Is it through an app?
Stevyn (09:26):
I have a coach portal.
Lauren (09:26):
Yeah, share a little bit more.
Stevyn (09:28):
Yeah, I'm the coach. I have a portal that is HIPAA compliant. They get a username and password. We actually go through and communicate constantly through that, through either data exchange because a lot of these wearable devices and things we do are actually auto ported right into it. So I can see what's happening behind the scenes and I can give them direct feedback on that and say, I noticed this happened. You might want to try that, or how come we're doing this? And we just kind of start to build this customized process. But there are five main concepts they go through, and I teach everyone the same main concepts but how those play out to each individual is very unique. So there may be one gentleman who’s really working hard on fixing his meals and balancing out his macros and his fiber because he’s just way out of whack.
Once we get those balanced, all of a sudden his weight starts to fall off. I have somebody else who's just incredibly stressed. So they're going to spend more time in that module working on those techniques to get their heart rate variability, their HRV, down so they can actually start to achieve their goals. And so each person may have specifics they're working on but they all work for everybody, generally speaking. So what I'm trying to do is help them become their own wealth manager. So as their body changes and their lifestyle needs change over the years, they just go back to these five concepts and rearrange things and rebalance their portfolio and their health continues to stay as high as possible. And I call it living long and dying short, or just trying to extend their health span so their sick spans shrink and they're not losing their quality of life or spending money on stuff they don't want to spend it on.
Lauren (11:16):
Yeah, okay. It sounds like it is customized to each individual but are there tricks you've seen, especially for busy professionals? Does everyone calendar it out or does everyone have a wearable device? What are those efficiencies that keep that sort of pattern of accountability in there that make it as easy as possible? It's like a meal planning program. I’d love to hear more on that because people are busy and you have to make it fit or else it can feel more friction, and that can also, I would assume, deter people.
Stevyn (11:53):
Yeah. Well, more friction creates more cortisol and more cortisol in your system prevents you from reaching your goals in a state of breakdown all the time. Stress can be mental but it can also be physical. And so the last thing we want to do is create more friction. We want it to be fun and easy. That's our guide. I call it becoming a dopamine detective. Dopamine is the feel-good hormone in your brain. So when it feels good and it's good for you, follow that, follow that. And sometimes that's where people start. We're just like, if I give you everything you should be doing, you're going to become overwhelmed. It's not going to work. Where's the place that feels good to you? So I would encourage anyone listening to this or watching this to say, what's something—just do an audit of your life.
What's something that feels good and is good for you? For me, it's hiking. I love to get out and hike, and I always have really great numbers on my wearable whenever I get outside. So how do I build more of that into my life? Or I love my shoes. I know this is crazy but my running shoes are kind of a purple and blue, really crazy colors, and when I put them on they make me feel happy. Sometimes it's just that, just get a new pair of shoes that make you feel happy that you want to put them on, and that can catapult you into more things because we have to follow the dopamine. That's why people get stuck in eating snacks late at night because dopamine feeds in their head, because it feels good to do that. We just have to find other feel-good things.
And so that's where I would tell people to start: what do you like and what actually is good for you as well? And the other thing I would say is get the book Outlive. If you're looking for another book to read, I highly recommend this book by Dr. Peter Attia. He’s got great stories. He's a physician but he also comes from a background of risk assessment for the banking industry. It's a really cool kind of combo hybrid skill set, and he's got some great concepts I think people could learn a lot from. So if you need a book, I would recommend that one. Also, I think a good place to start is ACT. So ACT is an acronym, and it's obviously three letters. The A is your awareness, what are you actually doing? As soon as someone says to me, I try to exercise three days a week, I know immediately they're not doing it.
Lauren (14:18):
Red flags.
Stevyn (14:19):
Yeah, red flags.
Lauren (14:20):
We've all been there. You're like, there's these little subtle words and you're like, I try. Yeah, I hear you. I know we've totally all been there.
Stevyn (14:30):
Yeah, so be real, it's the reason why some people don't go to financial planners. They try to save 10% every month, but they're not; in fact, they're going into debt and they don't want anybody to know that. But you can't actually get better until you see it for what it is. So A is awareness, and you can get that through getting a wearable, like this is a Fitbit. You can get an Apple watch or a ring, whatever, but what are you doing? And then the next letter is C, which is curious. Get curious. That's just start posing questions. I wonder what it would be like if I did go to bed an hour earlier. And sometimes just posing the question is enough for your subconscious mind to start to chew on it and create space for that thing you've just asked for. And then the T is find something, take some action. Any action will start to build momentum. You can't feel motivated and then take action. Action creates the motivation, so do something and then the motivation will show up afterward. So hopefully that gives people some ideas.
Lauren (15:31):
Yeah, those are really good tips. It can be scary to be able to commit to something like this, right? You've got to show up and then you've got to be able to act on it. So I'm sure you help to hold that action accountable too, but to help, how do you ease that scariness? Are people having to get gym memberships? What kind of volume of time is required even to sort of get going, and then when do you see it sort of level out where a pattern is actually quite consistent?
Stevyn (16:03):
If someone were to work with me, what's that commitment look like?
Lauren (16:07):
Yeah, what's kind of the ramp up to actually get to a place of steady consistency and what's the initial kind of commitment?
Stevyn (16:16):
It usually is about six weeks to find consistency and automation in these habits, and there's a bit of confusion.
Lauren (16:26):
That’s long. I have to say that because I mean, I was thinking you're going to say like 90 days or something like that at least. But yeah, it’s about patterns. Is it in 30 days a pattern can be created, something like that?
Stevyn (16:39):
Some people say 21 days. Yeah, the first two weeks of working together is very much data collection. We're just trying to figure out what's going on and where the issues are. And then after that, once we understand them, then we can pick the best practices that work for that person. And then it's a matter of working it out and figuring out where these things fit and how they're going to be easy and automated and not something they're going to, I can do it. I know I can. I'm talking myself into it. No, can you see yourself doing this in five years? Well, no. Well, then let's not do that. We're not going to pick that one up. We'll pick up something else that seems easier. So that takes us two or three weeks to kind of figure that part out. And then we kind of refine things.
And the last week of working together is called High ROI routines where we bring all of it together into this beautiful web of wellness where you actually get 16 opportunities to make choices for yourself throughout the day. And by that time, I'm like, we're launching now. You've got what you need. It's time to actually take off. And then they can either go on their own and take their plan and execute on their own, or they can stick with me on a monthly membership to hold them accountable. And a lot of times people stay with me for a year. I have several people who started four months ago and they've already reached first goals and they're into second goals. Like, oh my gosh, I never thought I'd be here. One of them was to be under 200 pounds. He hit 199 within I think two months.
It was like 30 pounds of weight loss, and he's feeling great. He's achieved all three of his goals we started working on. He's like, I'm ready for my next goals. Let's keep going with this. And so it's really up to the individual where they set their goals and what they want to continue to pursue. But as far as initially setting up this framework, which is why I have it this way, I used to teach these concepts over a year and just drip it out very slowly and slowly improve people's lives. It doesn't work very well that way. Give them the plan and then slowly implement the plan so they can see the whole picture that works for their goals, get all that stuff done, and it works so much better to achieve, to actually get it done for good and never revisit those higher weights or blood pressures or cholesterol levels.
Again, I have one gentleman who went through this and within four months he had reached his goal. He went back to the doctor and the doctor's like, you did it. I've been bugging you for 10 years to take blood pressure medication and now you don't have to anymore. Your cholesterol's fine, your blood pressure's fine. He's like, do you know how good that feels? To not have to say, I promise I'll do it this time. It's done, right? It's done. And he's the first one to say it's, I've got my habits. It's like clockwork. I just do these things all the time now. So to me, six weeks is nothing. You take six weeks, you commit an hour a week to learn the concept, and then you take some action and communicate with me through the portal and this beautiful thing just blooms of your new habits.
Lauren (19:37):
So a lot of advisors will often refer to themselves as the financial quarterback for an individual. So I'm sure you've heard this expression as well. So do you find yourself in sort of a quarterback role? Are you liaising with others to be able to help that individual reach their goals? Or is it kind of a one-stop shop but it's that individual's responsibility to, I don't know what it might be, if it's identifying an easy meal planning program or something like that. How does that side of it work?
Stevyn (20:09):
Yeah, I help them find all of those resources. So if it's to understand, we use apps; I've got a customized thing that we can actually say, okay, what foods don't you like? What do you like? And we can build a meal plan specific to their likes and dislikes and give them a whole collection of meals that are what they want that meet all their goals. So we have those resources. I tell them what blood tests to get. I say, here's the scale you need to order off of Amazon. It's $25. It's going to tell us a whole bunch of different body composition numbers. I help them figure out which of the wearables is going to be the best one for them. Some of them love their Rolexes, and so they're not going to wear something like this. So we have the Oura Ring and they wear just the ring, and that works out fine too.
So we figure out all of that stuff. And then if they have a doctor who is going to work with them on this stuff, great. If they don't have a doctor who’s willing to work with them on this stuff, then we help them either supplement the testing with just their own tests they get themselves or find a new doctor who is going to help them. Because some doctors are just like, you're fine. Stay on cholesterol medication, stay on blood pressure. You don't need to worry about this. You're fine. And when they come and they say, no, I'm taking back some ownership of my health here and I want to get off these medications, I want to get to this new weight, I want to do whatever. Some doctors just aren't willing to work with that and some are. So we have to help them navigate that too.
Lauren (21:36):
Okay. Oh my goodness. So many things to consider. So on a related topic, to just swing back to the initial part of the conversation. You also had shared that you talked with, it sounds like employees as well, or even potentially those advisors referring you out to their own clients. So are you doing workshops for employees around this? Am I understanding that right? And what kinds of topics are people interested in?
Stevyn (22:04):
So we started in 2023 in January. We've done three of these. Now the next one's coming up; there are four, we'll say there's four a quarter, or sorry, four a year, one a quarter. And it's a live event with me where I teach on a specific topic. Last time we did it, it was healthspan versus lifespan and what that means for your financial portfolio. So it's connecting the dots between a client's health and their wealth and helping the advisor have better conversations with them in their planning meetings. The one before that was tax-free health, how to reduce taxes and keep money, more of your health for retirement. Then we did one on health as well. And then I think we've got one coming up that's called Your Health 401(k).
Lauren (22:49):
Oh my goodness.I love that title, Your Health 401(k). It’s so fun.
Stevyn (22:59):
Yeah, so that's the one that's coming up in October. And so we do this in two ways. We educate, they're educational, and we're not working on the transformation. I'm not coaching people, we're just educating on these ideas. And so sometimes in a financial firm, we're just educating within their own structure, within their own support staff and financial advisors to help them as a value add. But then sometimes they take this and they invite their clients to it, and they use that to drive referrals or to keep this thing interesting, build themselves apart, build an event, customer appreciation. And the feedback we've been getting is fantastic. No one's ever done this. No one's ever talked to me about this before. I had no idea these things were so connected. What do I need to do? And they start taking more interest in their health because they realize how connected it is to their own financial portfolio. Oh, that's great. Yeah, that's been really fun.
Lauren (23:55):
It's a new unity, like a built-in event. And sometimes what we see too is with prospects, they're not ready to talk about the numbers. They're thinking about what am I going to consult about after I've retired? Or other topics that are more here and now. So it's an interesting sort of even lead into prospects, especially if you're sort of looking at those time periods you mentioned.
Stevyn (24:16):
Yeah. Yeah.
Lauren (24:17):
Oh, fun. Well, we're about at our time here. Any other final thoughts or things you think would be helpful to share for folks who might be interested in exploring this kind of a service?
Stevyn (24:29):
Yeah. Well, I think a good place for anyone to start, like I said, is with the A awareness of that ACT acronym. And one way they can do that is go to my website@growwellthy.com slash quiz, or it's just on the homepage too. And you can get your health credit score in that quiz. So basically you answer, I think it's 15 questions, and it's going to give you a score from 400 to 850—what your credit score looks like for your health, because that's your buying power for your future, your purpose, your relationships, all the things you want to do in retirement depend on that score. And so that's a good place to be like, just how am I doing? And what that will do is give you information, some steps to follow, but it also gets you onto my newsletter, which is called Well-Advised and Well-Advised goes out once a month.
And I share interesting topics, people who are doing great things in this space, in the industry and spotlight, and maybe even someone who’s listening with you wants to be a spotlight who's doing great things in this space. But my whole goal is to plant seeds of thought and open new concepts that this is part of financial planning. Your health is part of that, and it affects your assets, and it is its own asset. And how you deal with that, with your own life and with your clients’ life and how you infiltrate that into your culture, I think is really important. So a good place to start is how am I doing? Where's my credit score? And just go take that quiz on my website.
Lauren (25:59):
Oh, I love it. And like I said, I really enjoy hearing about the fusion between this world and wellness. So interesting.
Stevyn (26:07):
Yeah, it's fun.
Lauren (26:08):
Thank you again for your time, Stevyn. Really appreciate it and I'm looking forward to staying in touch.
Stevyn (26:12):
All right. Thanks so much.
How to Skill Transfer Your Financial Services Knowledge to More Healthy Habits
We Talked With Suzanne About:
- The reason your marketing strategy should always start with identifying your why
- Using storytelling versus data to create more impact and build layers of credibility
- The importance of being what you believe is a good representation of you and your expertise
About Suzanne Siracuse:
Suzanne Siracuse is a visionary in the financial services and media space. Leveraging her extensive knowledge in both arenas, she has become a leading consultant for financial advisors and financial services firms, guiding them into creating innovative business strategies, impactful marketing programs, and advocacy initiatives around diversity, financial literacy, and next-gen talent. As the former CEO and publisher of InvestmentNews, Suzanne's trailblazing efforts were instrumental in launching an impressive catalog of initiatives in support of the evolution of the financial advising profession. Today, as CEO and founder of Suzanne Siracuse Consulting, LLC, she continues to share her wealth of experience with advisors. Her unique approach helps advisors and firms discover their why, identify their niche, and forge meaningful connections with the media, ultimately setting them apart in a competitive market.
Featured Resources & Shout Outs
- Suzanne Siracuse’s LinkedIn Profile
- Suzanne Siracuse’s Facebook Profile
- Suzanne Siracuse’s Instagram Profile
- Suzanne Siracuse Consulting
- Heather Fortner’s LinkedIn Profile
- Lori Hardwich’s LinkedIn Profile
- Josh Brown’s LinkedIn Profile
- Jim Pavia’s LinkedIn Profile
- Michael Nathanson’s LinkedIn Profile
- The Net Positive Pledge
Full Audio Transcript
Lauren (00:00):
Thank you for being here today.
Suzanne (00:03):
Well, thank you so much for having me. I'm very honored and I'm excited for our discussion.
Lauren (00:07):
I am as well. So without further ado, I feel like you'll be able to give a proper introduction about your journey to InvestmentNews and now to your consulting firm today. Tell us about how you got there. And I want to hear a little bit more, even just your time at InvestmentNews, which I know we'll get into more. But what was your journey to get there and then if you can share a little bit more about where you are today as well.
Suzanne (00:30):
Absolutely. So when I graduated from college, I thought I wanted to write commercials for a living. I wanted to get a job at an ad agency writing jingles in a very creative field. And that's not the easiest job to get right out of college, let's put it this way. So what I ended up doing is I kind of compromised and I ended up becoming a salesperson in the advertising department at the Philadelphia Business Journal. I grew up right outside of Philadelphia. Go Eagles. And I just got involved in working with clients, and I loved my boss, I loved the people I worked with. In fact the publisher was a woman, the head of sales was a woman, and my boss, who was the marketing manager, was a woman.
And so when I think back and when I reflect back on that time, it was real foreshadowing of really being able to see someone in a position and successfully doing it. And that's actually a big influence of why I wanted to become a publisher, right? When I started out at the Philadelphia Business Journal, I was right out of college and didn't really know what I wanted to do, but after being there for a little bit, that first job experience can either go really, really well or not so well. And mine went really, really well. And that really fueled how I got to InvestmentNews. So I stayed there for eight years and started working with a lot of financial service firms, and then realized I wanted to move to New York.
So I started working at Pensions & Investments, which was the sister publication of InvestmentNews, and the publisher of Pensions & Investments, after about a year said, hey, we're really noticing a trend in the RIA space and in the intermediary space. And we're looking to launch a newspaper. At the time, there were no websites; that's how long ago this was. And I’m wondering if you want to move over and help us launch this? So I absolutely love launching things, new ideas, being creative. P & I was a little dry. So we launched InvestmentNews, and that was in 1998. I was running sales for many years, then became the associate publisher and became the publisher in 2006. And during that time period, I really got to understand the wealth management space and the evolution of it, quite frankly.
So when I think back, there were two major things happening, right? There was the evolution of the financial planning, wealth management business from traditionally broker model investment focused to now much more holistic, focused on an independent model. And at the same time in the media business, which is what I did, it was showcasing that changing or that evolution in consumption of media and consumption of content from traditional print, magazines, newspapers, to digital, launching websites. So you really saw this evolution in both areas I was working on, which was incredibly exciting, especially after being there for so long, seeing the print model.
That top revenue source was continuously kind of going down this way and digital was going up. And so really being able to create so many new offerings and products featuring great content for advisors. So, the website and newsletters and webinars and video, and then we launched a ton of events and award programs and all of that. So those were really important pieces to where I am that got me to where I am now, right? So when I think about some of those, I like to call them the GA, game changing offerings, right? Like 40 Under 40, right? Like Women to Watch, Women Advisor Summit, Diversity and Inclusion Awards, Best Places to Work. Those were all kind of bigger initiatives that encompassed lots of different moving pieces, right?
Not just editorial, not just video, not just webinars, not just research, but just all of the above, to really put on these really important industry events and offerings that are still going strong today. So when I left, which is now four years, I can't even believe it, I was able to take a lot of that information and a lot of that experience that I learned in the 22 years I was there. And translate that now to advice and consulting for firms that are trying to do business with the RIA market or the wealth management space. So I'm very, very specific in my niche, which is working with firms that are trying to work with financial advisors and financial advisory firms. And my three pillars are business strategy,
marketing strategy, and supporting and developing advocacy initiatives that include DEI, next-gen talent development, and financial literacy. So I have clients that range from very, very large RIAs where I'm helping them with their M&A strategy to fintech companies that are trying to get advisors to take a look at what they offer to alternative investments to organizations like the Financial Alliance for Racial Equity. So all over the board, which is the way I operate. I like to have my hands in a lot of different things. And it also really helps me continue to keep an important pulse on what's going on in the industry.
Lauren (07:22):
I love hearing your journey, and you're so right about it was such an interesting time you were there, right? There's so many things that were happening within the media, traditional news market versus digital, even the RIA space and that sort of hybrid. What a fun time to really be shaping that out. And then I think also to see where it is today, right? And to be able to say we went through that threshold of growth, right? And in two different avenues to now see all the successes and be able to move with the market from where it's at. So I appreciate you sharing that. Also, something that resonated with me when you first shared your story is just this idea of it is sort of not always about the job, but it's about the boss, right? And be able to have that mentorship. And I feel like that sounds like this sort of guiding light for you as you stepped into where you are today, but now you're also not maybe in a mentorship role, but you're helping to coach and sort of be that guiding light for other folks where you've had that share of knowledge.
Suzanne (08:24):
Yeah, it's really interesting. I just shot my podcast earlier today with Heather Fortner. She's one of the few female CEOs of an RIA firm. SignatureFD. And we were talking about the evolution, again, I keep using that word, but the evolution of your management and your leadership style and how it really does change with your experience level. And so I feel like I became a much better leader now then I was when I first started. Which I think most people feel. But now because I'm a consultant I do not have employees purposely. That's where I wanted to be in my life. I now can mentor people I choose where they choose me.
And it's been absolutely wonderful. And then most of the people I did mentor at InvestmentNews were people who worked directly for me and just to see where they are now is really unbelievable. So I'm giving advice now to a lot of women who are looking to step out of their organization or have stepped out of their organization and formed their own firms. And that's just so much fun because you learned a lot along the way. And I had some terrific women who jumped in and helped me when I started my firm. Lori Hardwick, who is a mainstay in the fintech space, she had started her consulting firm and shared a lot of great best practices with me. So I always say, developing that network is an important goal for a variety of reasons, not just for business development. Right, right, right. Which is maybe originally how we all start thinking about a network. But really as you continue to evolve in your career and on your journey and what you want to do, part of my business model is my connections with a lot of VIPs in the industry. So that is something to just keep in mind. That's a really important technique when you're growing your business.
Lauren (10:44):
Absolutely. I think not just being able to build those relationships, but maintaining them and that sort of thing. So I think it is also rewarding to see folks as they've grown over their career and what they're doing. I know for myself, I have the fortune of being able to see really C-suite from a variety of organizations at different stages. But you can sort of like cherry pick a little bit, kind of the best of the best, or even just learnings for what to do and what not to do. And so it's fun to hear you talk about where you are at the point in your career to be able to, like you said, sort of pick and choose, but then also as you're coaching, to be able to help folks, but then give them kind of the best of the best as they're growing with their professional career.
So, shifting, I want to shift topics a little bit. So one of the pillars you talked about was marketing. You have been at a seat, at InvestmentNews, you've been able to see how folks interface with the media from a variety of angles. And we work with a lot of RIAs, a lot of advisors, and PR always comes up, right? I know trends in PR have obviously changed and there's so many different ways of approaching it, but I'd love to just hear a little bit about that side of things. How do you recommend advisors even go about PR and reaching out to the media? And what's a first step if someone's thinking about just being a little bit louder with thoughts.
Suzanne (12:06):
Yeah. So this could be a five-part series, right? Because there's so much to it. So we're going to scratch the surface a little bit, but I think what I always would recommend is before you start with anything, you start with the why and why you should make as an advisor this a priority, meaning marketing or PR, and put some money behind it. I think making sure you are very clear on the why, why you wish to pursue a media relations strategy. What are you looking to accomplish?. Because if you just say, oh, everybody says I need to have a media strategy, so I need to have one, you're missing an important foundational step. You need to understand and create a plan and goals of what you actually are trying to accomplish.
And some of those whys, some of those goals, could be I want to do this because I want to establish credibility with prospects and current clients. Because when they see your name quoted in a third party, like CNBC or InvestmentNews or Barron's or Wall Street Journal, it gives the impression that you're an expert on a particular topic. So I would say that's probably the number one why, right? Understanding that and also for branding and an awareness-building tool. I mean, PR is second to none for that. It's also an essential part of an overall marketing mix. It's not the only part. So I always caution if you're only going to go in on PR and not do all the other pieces that are important to that, you're not going to get the most out of it.
And that's where I just say, really understanding what your overall marketing strategy is, in which PR is one of those spokes. And then when you get that PR content, so you get an article posted or a column featured, how are you leveraging that in the rest of your media strategy? That's why having that larger picture strategy is important. The other thing around a why is the Google search relevance. In this day and age, there's very few people who are going to do business with you until they've Google searched you. And so if nothing comes up, that's not great. So having some articles or webinars or quotes, something you're doing, speaking at an event, adds that layer of credibility. And it also increases your probability of appearing during Google search.
It helps get more interviews with other media. So if you jump into your first interview, that will eventually lead to more and more down the road. So I just gave you a couple of the whys, but before that, define what success looks like so you can measure what works and what doesn't. So ask yourself again, what you want to accomplish, and then write it down because you're more likely to follow that plan if you write it down. So that would be first and foremost before you do anything. Then focus on the topics you are an actual expert in. Simply saying you're a retirement planning expert won't move the needle. It’s not going to cut it.
It's way too general. So what are you an expert in, but also what are you passionate about? And I talk about this too, when I speak about niche markets and segmenting your client base. I just interviewed on my podcast an advisor who focuses on the LGBT niche. Actually gay women who have dogs. So that's a big niche, right? But there's plenty of them. But again, when you look at being very, very niche in your client segment, it actually allows you to be much more niche in your marketing efforts. It's much easier, quite frankly. So again, what are you passionate about? What are you an expert in?
What differentiates you from other advisors? And then define if you want to focus on the consumer market, right? So CNBC, Wall Street Journal, Barron's, Yahoo Finance. Or the B2B market, right? Your industry. And I recommend having a plan for both. But it’s probably easier to start with B2B so you can have a foundation that will help you with your B2C plan. Mm-hmm. And I would also say decide if you have a budget to hire a PR person to help you with the outreach and ideas. And if not, create a wishlist of the top three to five media outlets you want to be a source on. What do you watch? What do your clients watch? What do they read?
What websites are they on? Maybe get an informal poll from some of your current clients. So that can help you in determining which outlets you need to focus on, because this isn't a full-time job for you, you're an advisor. Once you determine the outlets, then find out who the right person is at those outlets because various editors cover different things. So know which reporter handles investments or financial planning or the markets, those are a couple of different things. And then you can submit columns as well as being a source in various news stories. So those are just a couple of things you could start out with.
Lauren (18:53):
Yeah. I feel like this is fantastic. Give us a quick start guide to just PR. Where do you start and then where do you actually take it to the action steps, which is a great way to get started. Sometimes we have firms we work with and they go, we want to be featured in the New York Times. And I'm like, that's great, but let's get into it— because it can be such a shiny object, you know? I think sometimes it's hard to know where to start and often just reminding folks if they do want to DIY that people are people and it's got to be authentic and it's got to actually add value to their readers, to what they're writing, these kinds of things. So it's a two-way street. And to your point about knowing your target, right? If you're passionate about it, you're probably going to be able to then just naturally speak to it. So it becomes a win-win for what they're trying to work on as well. So they meaning the editor, whoever's writing it.
Suzanne (19:45):
So, absolutely. Absolutely. And again, having a very clear understanding of what you're trying to accomplish before you start anything. To me that is the biggest mistake—the biggest mistake of those who don't do that.
Lauren (20:01):
Yes. And just answering the big picture question too. That why. What's the end goal? What are we trying to accomplish with this? This is great, like I said, a really good quick start guide for where you start with it, right? Because it can sort of be shiny. So I appreciate you breaking that down. And you're also just from your perspective, from where you are as well. So is there anything in the media you feel like is missing? Any stories, any kind of topics you're seeing? Are you seeing kind of an undercurrent of conversations even that you're having with the firms you're consulting with? Do you feel like there's topics that would be valuable in the financial services media landscape to hit on more?
Suzanne (20:43):
Yeah. So I think, again, step one is are you talking about B2B? Are you talking about B2C? So again, that seems so simple to maybe you and I who play in this space every day. But for an advisor who’s not, this is not second nature to them, right? I have talked to more advisors who are just like, I just need a good website. Can somebody help me do that? My focus is on providing great advice to my clients. Or creating a business to business development strategy for my firm. So this feels uncomfortable. What I would say is start with where are you primarily wanting to get your media attention? Is it in the B2B space, meaning the wealth management industry, like InvestmentNews, wealth management.com, the financial advisor magazines, or is it the mainstream media?
So I think you can create stories and topics based on those audiences. So for example, I think for both of those audiences utilizing case studies and real-life examples to show what your clients are looking for in terms of services, like more and more are looking for tax and estate, things like that. More comprehensive financial planning services, and then product offerings, ESG, crypto alternatives, guaranteed income, whatever it would be. So thinking about it from that way and telling a story through the lens of here's how I helped my client. I think people like to throw a lot of data around but the more impactful thing is when you can actually cite an example of how you as an advisor worked with a client to achieve a particular goal doing X, Y, or Z.
So I think that is a piece that is really, really, really important. And it's also important to show on your website. People want to be able to see, oh, I have that problem too. Or, hey, that's something I worry about as well. So that could be one angle. Reporters and editors right now are seeking out diverse voices, whether it's racial diversity, age, LGBTQ+ or next-gen advisors, but also diversity of thought. And what I mean by that is you need to be a tad contrarian at times. If you're constantly just agreeing with what's already being said, they want somebody who maybe has a unique point of view, somebody who can shed light on something and have maybe an interesting stance on it.
I use Josh Brown as an example. He is very well spoken. He uses humor. He's obviously very intelligent and very knowledgeable, but he uses his personality to really drive that home to the media too. And he's done a great job of it. So again, he's not saying the same thing everybody else is saying. So again, that diversity angle, but also diversity of thought. And then for the B2B side too, maybe best practices in growing your business, a unique way you've advised a client. Those types of things I think are always really valuable to the media. And then finally, I was just on the phone with an editor from CNBC today, and they're always looking for someone who can comment very quickly when immediate news comes out. So if interest rates go up, if there's a meeting with the Fed, if there's the job report, those types of major news cycle things that are happening in the market now. If you can immediately say, I'm always available, here's my cell phone, I can comment—because they're always on a tight deadline—so realizing that, I think that's another way you can really have a good relationship with the media.
Lauren (25:37):
Yes. And to that point, I feel like sometimes media opportunities will come in and they don't always come in. And I think it's a good reminder too, if there's a firm that's working with a PR agency when that comes in, it's a critical response time. Response time is very critical. Kind of like when the New Deal would come in, right? You want to be able to respond in a very timely manner as well. But you make a good point—being that trusted resource for really knowledgeable advice and making yourself available is a way to build that relationship.
Suzanne (26:09):
Yeah. Absolutely.
Lauren (26:11):
Oh my goodness. Well, so many great tips. I feel like our time's just absolutely flown here. Any other kind of last minute thoughts or pieces you'd like to leave us with regarding media trends you're seeing?
Suzanne (26:27):
I would say the most important thing, and you hear this a lot in marketing, is just be authentic. And I alluded to Josh Brown being himself, and that's what people want. That's how people identify and actually want to do business with you, is if you are just authentically you. So don't try and be something you’re not; if you're not super analytical, don't try to be that. Be what you feel is a good representation of you and your expertise and what you bring to the table. The other thing I would say is with the media it's not about what you want, it's about what they need.
Lauren (27:13):
Yes. Thank you.
Suzanne (27:15):
So understand what is important to the media and work your pitch and your angle around that, not the other way around. And then understand who their audience is and what their main focus of content is so you can tailor your angle or your idea to them, right? So I don't know if you follow Jim Pavia on social media, but he's the personal finance editor for CNBC. Jim and I worked together for many years at Investment News, and he's hysterical, right? So he loves to publish the horrible things that come across his email, meaning this PR person sent me a pitch that has nothing to do with personal finance. So again, that's an extreme example. He'll give so many examples of people not knowing what he focuses on. And how annoying that is. So that's just a best practice. Make sure you are very clear about the right person you're working with, what they cover, and make sure you are tailoring your pitch and your angle directly to them and what's important to them and their readers.
Lauren (28:39):
Yeah. So well said. And I feel sometimes there's just nothing better than old fashioned personalization, knowing what your interest does, but then just being real, like you were saying too. It's different to just send a cold pitch that's cut and pasted to hundreds of people versus actually, I've been following you and this is something I noticed you wrote a few months ago and, and I love what you said about this, or however it's spun, right? But that's what I think you were alluding to earlier, the passion piece, right? It's just you pulling the thread all the way through, and if you want to say the magic or what have you, I feel like that's where the relationships kindle and the opportunities are built.
Suzanne (29:24):
Yeah. And you just reminded me of something. The other thing I highly recommend you do to establish relationships with the media, with the reporters, with the editors, is follow them on social media, read their stuff, subscribe to their stuff and comment on their stories. Share their stories. Hey Ryan, Neil just wrote a great story about a new fintech firm that's going to help me with my scale, my holistic planning services. Hey Ryan, this was great. I'm going to look at these couple of companies you referenced. That small, again, personalized approach is going to be so appreciated by that reporter. And will definitely get you a relationship going with the reporter much easier once you are actually showing you're reading their stuff, you're promoting their stuff, you're engaging with them versus just you want something from them. Sales 101, by the way—before you ask for something, why don't you give them something?
Lauren (30:43):
Oh, absolutely. So well said. I appreciate your time. So many great takeaways and good reminders, but also things you just keep top of mind—not only for media outreach, but just for outreach in general, if it's sales, if it's building relationships or what have you. But I think those pieces carry across the board so well. Well, thank you so much again for your time. Thank you for all you're doing within this industry and consulting. It's fun to hear. I know we didn't get to get into that as much as I hoped you would today but it's okay.
Suzanne (31:15):
Listen, I'm so busy and I like leaving an impact. Michael Nathanson, who is the CEO and chairman of the Colony Group, has an initiative right now. I'm gonna plug it because I think it's so important. It's called the Net Positive Pledge. He is looking for RIA firms to come together as groups. To pledge that they are going to leave the profession in a better place than when they came into it. And I think one of the things they're doing is eliminating plastic bottles, right? So they're tallying up how much that is saving the environment. By saving on plastic, each firm can do something.
And so really collectively thinking about how you already as advisors doing such amazing work, I mean, truly amazing work, helping people feel secure to retire in a place where they feel secure. Now what else can you do for the profession that's been good to you? So that's what I would leave with. I'm doing a lot of work in that area. Leaving an impact is incredibly important for all of us. And I feel very blessed to have been introduced to this great industry 25 years ago.
Lauren (32:46):
Oh, so fabulous. Well make sure to link to that resource as well below. And I appreciate you sharing that. You're just such a wealth of knowledge and thank you again for your time today and again, all you're doing for this space.
Suzanne (32:57):
Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.
Lauren (32:59):
Of course. We'll be in touch.
Your Media Marketing Strategy: Start By Letting Your Why Shine Through
We talked with Jamie about:
- How financial literacy is important but creating positive behavior habits with your money is an even bigger factor
- Giving your children the tools to understand financial concepts and space to practice while they are under your roof, which will help set them up for the future
- How the earlier you can instill the habit of saving, the better
About Jamie Bosse:
Jamie Bosse is a financial planner, author, and mother of four with a passion for mentoring and financial literacy. From blogging to books, she shares her deep financial knowledge to help clients and others understand, manage, and improve their financial situations while educating future generations about saving and decision-making as early as possible. She’s the author of the children’s book series, Milton the Money Savvy Pup, and her first “grown-up” book targeted at helping parents take control of their lives, Money Boss Mom, Helping Young Parents Be the “Boss” of Their Financial Future, was published in 2021. Jamie has 19 years of financial planning experience under her belt and is currently a financial planner with Aspyre Wealth Partners.
Featured Resources
- Jamie Bosse’s Bio
- Jamie Bosse’s LinkedIn Profile
- Jamie Bosse’s Instagram Profile
- Jamie Bosse’s Facebook Profile
- Moneybossmom.com
- Money Boss Mom book
- Milton the Money Savvy Pup books
Full Audio Transcript
Lauren (00:00):
All right. Well, Jamie, thank you for joining us.
Jamie (00:03):
Thanks so much for having me.
Lauren (00:04):
Yeah. As I was mentioning just a few minutes ago, I have had so much fun following you, and just really admire that you've really put yourself out there. I know we're going to get into it with the books you've written but also just really embracing this idea of being a mother in this financial planning world and professional world, if you will, and being very comfortable with that. And so, I'd love just to start with you sharing a little bit more about your journey to where you are today but then also want to hear more about the books and sort of what led you to that. So I'll pass the baton and let you share a little bit more.
Jamie (00:42):
Okay. Sounds great. So I have been a financial planner for 19 years now, which is so funny to say. And I actually got a degree in financial planning, so I graduated from college with that degree but I got into the field completely by accident. I was a first-generation college student and went to school to become a teacher actually. And I think that was more just because I didn't know all the jobs that were out there. But when I was a sophomore in college, my parents filed for bankruptcy and that raised a lot of questions for me.
Lauren (01:14):
Oh, goodness.
Jamie (01:15):
I was like, how did this happen? What does this mean? Are they going to jail? How do I prevent this from happening to me? That's when I really realized I must not know very much about money or have good examples about it. So I wanted to learn how to handle money myself, and ended up taking a personal finance class at Kansas State University just for me, not to major in it or anything but just for my own knowledge. And so I ended up taking that first course and then another one. And then as I got more into it, I realized what a cool profession, right? It's a great way to help people avoid mistakes and create a better life and get organized. And it just seemed like a really rewarding profession. So I ended up changing my major my junior year and becoming a financial planning graduate.
Lauren (02:15):
And here you are. And it's stuck, right? So I don't want to project or fast forward but now you've written these books, right? So now you're sort of getting into this idea of educating the future, right? About financial planning. Tell us more about that and kind of the why, how did the spark, how did you actually get to producing the books? So tell us more about not just being a full-time financial planner but also now thinking about these kinds of, if you want to call them, side projects.
Jamie (02:49):
Yeah. So the writing piece—I've always loved to write, so I did write blogs and company education things for where I worked along the ways, for example, when I worked at a bank, they would come out with the new benefits for the company benefits signup, and I would help explain things to people and I'd get the same questions from people. So I would do a writeup and be like, hey, here's what you think about when you're filling out your 401(k). Here's what this short-term disability policy means and how it works. And so I like to communicate through writing, and I think explaining things through writing is really helpful. So in my current role at Aspyre Wealth Partners—I've been there for about 10 years and that's kind of where the motherhood journey started as well. So when I first started at Aspyre, my first child was six months old, and then I've had three more since. So I found I was living a lot of the experiences clients were going through, right? So you talk about like, oh daycare is really expensive, right? Well, I was dealing with it myself, right? We were working people.
Lauren (03:59):
It’s very relatable.
Jamie (04:00):
How do we figure out how to add this $1,200 a month line item to our budget? Where does it fit? How do we move things around? And then just all the things that go with it, right? You need to buy the bed and stroller and rocking chair and all these new things. And so I was kind of writing about it as I was going through it. And trying to make it kind of funny. So I ended up writing a lot of blogs, kind of targeted to that young mother audience, working moms trying to figure things out and you're balancing all these competing priorities of paying off your own student loans, but you're also now saving for college for a child and all these things. So that's really where the journey began. And I remember thinking I could maybe write a book about this, with the money boss mom vibe, and I actually bought the domain name Money Boss Mom in 2017. Well, I didn't actually write that book until 2021.
Lauren (05:06):
I love it. It's in the works; it's been brewing and everything,
Jamie (05:10):
So, it's percolating. So I started organizing some of my blogs into chapters and just kind of putting them in folders, like, okay, I'll get to this one day.
Lauren (05:18):
Right.
Jamie (05:19):
But it took a lot longer than I thought it would. But the first book I actually published was Milton the Money Savvy Pup: Brings Home The Bacon. And that is a kid's book about money that focuses just on the basics of identifying coins and their value, understanding money is earned by working, and sometimes you have to wait and save to get what you want. That book really started because I couldn't find a lot of great books out there for kids about money. Because at this point, I had a three-year-old and a one-year-old, and I was like, oh, I need to start teaching these kids about money.
Lauren (05:57):
Right.
Jamie (05:58):
What's out there? So I kind of bought whatever I could find, and then by the time my son, my oldest son, was five, we were shopping at Target one day and he's like, oh, I really need this. And it was a $60 remote control, right? A giant truck thing. And I said that's not in our spending plan today. And his response was, we'll just buy it on Amazon then.
Lauren (06:24):
Yeah.
Jamie (06:24):
And I was like, okay, so clearly my son doesn't understand that buying things on Amazon is actually also a financial purchase. And so I really started digging into like, okay, what concepts can a five-year-old understand about money and how can I put those into a framework where we can talk about it?
Lauren (06:44):
Right. So I have to ask—I'm a mom as well. And I've got two little ones. We do the star system. You earn, you get chores, you do chores, you get stars, and you can earn things like you get to go Starbucks for a cake pop or something.
Jamie (06:59):
I love it.
Lauren (06:59):
When do you really feel like you can start talking about money to kids? And what kind of things have you learned along the way to be able to help them kind of have those moments, right? Like it's not just stars and this or that but your family is working to, for lack of better words, put food on the table, right? I'd love to hear a little bit more about sort of when that's introduced and how have you helped to sort of create positive saving patterns and just that kind of thing for children.
Jamie (07:32):
Sure. Well, it's a work in progress, you know?
Lauren (07:36):
Yes, parenting always is.
Jamie (07:37):
They’re still all too new to rate. They might not be learning anything but what's been fun on our journey is I feel like when you give kids money and you give them some power with it, right? So you give them the decision-making power. So if you say, okay, you earned $5 for these chores you did, and now we will take a trip to Target at the end of the month and you can get whatever you want. It’s your money. And it's really exciting to watch them kind of put things together and see, okay, how much does this actually cost? How much do I have? If I spend money on this, then I won't have any more to buy something else with.
Lauren (08:18):
Right.
Jamie (08:20):
And so I feel it’s just really cool to see them start thinking that way. And I don't think they really get there until like seven or eight where they're really thinking about it, really flexing. Because my five-year-olds, they get paid and they have money too but they just give it away to their friends. They'll be like, oh, here, they'll put it in the yard. They just don't value it.
Lauren (08:42):
Yeah, that makes sense though. Which is why I was asking about the age, the timing of this.
Jamie (08:48):
But I think with older kids, especially my 10-year-old, when we're shopping, he's very thoughtful now about, okay, I'm kind of interested in this thing, and so I'll take a picture of it with my phone. So we have a picture of the item, a picture of the cost, and then he'll leave it there and be like, I just want to think about it. And then we'll walk around some more, he'll shop some more. And now most of the time he actually decides not to buy something and he's like, you know what? I'm going to keep saving for something bigger. I don't know what it is yet but I'm going to keep saving.
Lauren (09:16):
Yeah.
Jamie (09:17):
But my eight-year- old is like, he'll look through a bunch of things, he'll dump it all in the cart, like yeah. And it'll be $70 worth of things. He has $30. So then we have to talk about, okay, well, what's a priority? Do you really think you'll enjoy having this toy? Why do you want this one over this? But I think just the act of decision-making and seeing what things cost is really the learning part of the process. Because technically you want them to kind of spend money on silly things now.
Lauren (09:54):
Yes.
Jamie (09:55):
And make mistakes and figure this out. So they are learning from the mistakes now while it's not a big deal. But they're not making these mistakes when they're in college or something.
Lauren (10:06):
Absolutely. So I love the idea of books too, right? We're all about books over here, and I feel like there's such a good way to introduce children to the world for whatever it might be. To be able to expose them to just anything, anything from hiking to potty training to just learning about the world, right? Travel, all of it. So you started with this book, right? To be able to help tell the story and the journey but then what sparked you to write more than one book? It's an endeavor to be able to write one alone, let alone multiple. What happened after you wrote the first one and then what sparked the next ones?
Jamie (10:48):
Okay. So the first Milton book, like I had said, I'd researched the different concepts kids can understand at different age groups. And that first one told a good story about waiting and saving and learning you earn money by working. And then I felt like there were just more concepts kids could still understand. So the second book is really about the kind of give, save, spend concept where you have the three jars where each time you get paid you don't just spend it all, you allocate to giving, you allocate to saving, and then you can spend the rest. We actually use those jars with my kids. And so I wanted to kind of solidify that story and what that means because I feel like when kids get money, people never say, how much are you going to save? Yeah. They're always just like, what are you going to buy? Whatcha gonna buy with that? It's burning a hole in your pocket. But there's other things you can do with money instead of just spending it.
Lauren (11:50):
Expanding on that first idea of then what do you do with it?
Jamie (11:55):
Yeah. So now you're earning the money in the first book, you're identifying the coins and their value, and then okay, now you know there's a better way I can work with this money.
Lauren (12:04):
Right. Absolutely.
Jamie (12:05):
And I feel like that saving habit, the earlier you instill that habit of every time I get money, I save a portion of it, that will really help you in adulthood because I feel like a lot of adults struggle with that. And so yeah. If we can make it a habit, that's the goal.
Lauren (12:23):
Okay. So just to also take a step back here, putting on the marketer hat, right? You've spent all these years of writing blog content, raising children, building these communities. Have you found yourself having more and more families come to the firm? Has that attracted that target since you've put that energy out there? Or has it just been that this is sort of a value add to your current clients? I'd love to hear a little bit about that too.
Jamie (12:50):
Yeah. So I would say right now, the clients I work with now and the clients I bring to the firm typically are people in their 30s and 40s, dual working parents who have kids at home. They're figuring out life and life changes every couple years when you have another kid or whatever, so I think it has really zoned in on parents as that's who I'm best at working with. And I feel like when I started the books, I thought it would be a great gift for clients, like if they're having a baby or if they were older clients who are having grandkids. But it has been a good marketing tool where I don't really pursue these people as clients but they see some content, they see my books, and then they might reach out to me to do some planning.
Lauren (13:44):
Yeah. It’s sort of an indirect effort. You don't realize you're adding value out to that community and then it just happens to, I dunno, like breeds, right? So it's something you write. It sort of comes with it. It's a validating, I guess answer, if you will. Even if that wasn't the intent, sometimes that's the best, right? It's not the intent but it's just literally like, this is something I'm passionate about, I want to make the world better, and I see an opportunity here. And it happens that it not only helped but it's creating other people you can help too.
Jamie (14:16):
Um, exactly. Yeah.
Lauren (14:17):
It's a win-win.
Jamie (14:19):
Agreed.
Lauren (14:19):
That's so great. So, okay, just taking another step back here. So now you've kind of leaned more into this idea of supporting this, you said 30s and 40s, group. Putting together books about financial literacy, I'm sure it's opened up other conversations in this space around financial literacy, educating children, the next generation. What kind of things are you hearing, I'll call it in the financial planning world, related to these kinds of conversations? I love to hear if there's certain undercurrents or themes or just if you notice patterns of other people who go, I'm so grateful you did this, I also needed those books, or what are you hearing?
Jamie (15:01):
Well, I feel like in the industry in general, literacy has always been something that's very important. And it's something that people aren't learning in school. So what they do learn, they are picking up from their parents, just by observation or they're learning by trial and error and they're making a lot of mistakes along the way. So there's been a big focus and a lot of great organizations are really working on financial literacy, content, activities, books, and those sorts of things. But I feel like a lot of the conversation I hear with practitioners now is like, literacy is one piece of it. The education is important, and if you don't have that baseline education it's hard to make good decisions but the biggest factor is really the behavior side of the equation too.
So, you might know what you should be doing but do you do that and why not? So kind of looking at more of the bigger picture with whoever you're talking to or working with or yourself if you're analyzing the way you act around money, and people do what they do with money in a subconscious way almost. It's their Money Scripts® by Dr. Brad Klontz of how they grew up and how they learned about money. They might hoard money for some reason because they saw their parents suffer or they might be a spendthrift because they never had anything growing up so they want to buy all the things now that they can.
So a lot of it's getting to the behavior side of things too, and working around, okay, I know this about myself now, or I know this about my client now—what systems can we put in place to make this more streamlined for them so they can say yes without having to think about it or getting in their own way.
Lauren (16:51):
That's absolutely fair. It's meeting the individual where they are. But I also think a lot of what you're working on too is bringing up that next generation and creating those positive behavior patterns. And helping just to be aware of that and creating a tool to be able to do that. I would imagine even just talking with your clients too, those kinds of conversations probably help their children and so on and so forth. So it would come full circle. So fun. Well, this is really great to hear about. As I mentioned when we started too, just kind of opening up here, I also just admire that you've put yourself out there as a mother, as a working professional, because it's not an easy fleet, right? It's totally hats off to working parents because being one of them, I know it's just part of it. So I love that you put yourself out there but not only have you been able to hold that professional space but also to be able to support the next generation. So it's like I said, many win-wins.
Jamie (17:59):
Thank you. It's exciting and I think if you can give your children the tools to at least understand financial concepts and give them some space to practice things while they're still young and under your roof, I think that'll just set them up for a lot of success in the future.
Lauren (18:17):
Yeah. So fair. So any last thoughts?
Jamie (18:22):
I don't think so. I'm working on a couple more Milton books. I have a good night story I'm working on that doesn't really have a lot to do with money but it's cute. And then one more that's more gratitude focused in terms of we always want to buy new things but also being grateful for what we already have and celebrating that. So hopefully those will come out, probably next year in 2024.
Lauren (18:51):
Oh, I love it. We'll have to watch out for that. Well, thank you so much for your time. We'll make sure to include some links below as well to the books and to your bio and all those good things. But again, thank you and I'm excited for those books to come out.
Jamie (19:03):
Oh, thanks Lauren.