We talked with Stephanie about:

• Why growth and habit change begins with your mindset
• Clearing the resistance to find your big why so you get to the next level
• How to shift focus and time toward energy-creating and revenue-producing actions

About Stephanie Bogan:

A true beacon for professionals looking to balance professional success with lifestyle success, Stephanie Bogan lived it. Spending 25 hours a week on the beaches of Costa Rica while still earning seven figures, she discovered a sustainable process for breaking through our own success barriers. Stepping out of retirement in 2018, Stephanie answered the call to become founder of Limitless Advisor and help finserv and fintech business leaders create radically successful lifestyle practices. 

Featured Resources 

• Stephanie’s LinkedIn
• Stephanie’s Twitter
• Limitless Advisor Website
• Stephanie’s articles for InvestmentNews
  

Full Audio Transcript

Lauren Hong: Hey Stephanie, we are so excited to have you here today. I was just preparing before the call to learn a little bit more, and holy smokes, as we were just talking about, I feel like you've had multiple lives and each one of them is so incredibly impressive. On top of all that, you're an author, author of The Power of Practice Management. You are a columnist for Financial Planning and InvestmentNews. You've contributed to Kitces.com, Advisor Perspectives, and Financial Advisor Magazine. I mean, the list just goes on and on and on. And then what I love too is that you have this time where you've retired, retired in quotes, you took a step back, and then came back and are just full on it. And so maybe we just start there. I mean, you've built this incredible experience that you've had working with advisors and such over the years. What kind of prompted you to take a step back and then get back into it? 

Stephanie: Well, it was interesting. It was not my plan to unretire. Michael Kitces, who's one of my clients, jokes that this is my encore career. I call it my passion project because that's really what it is for me. So I started my first firm, my consulting firm, when I was 24. I'd worked in an estate planning wealth management practice that worked in the high-net-worth and in particular the ultra-high-net-worth space, which is an amazing way to cut your teeth. And ultimately, really got good at helping kind of build and run and grow that business. And I got invited to speak at some conferences on the financial services side specifically. So I started. My firm sold 12 years later to a Fortune-tier company. 

I always joked that I learned so much about how Fortune 200 companies run that I no longer needed to work for one. And then literally took a year off, went to the beach in Turks and Caicos with our two very young children at the time and did a lot of scuba diving. And then Joe Duran, who was the CEO at United Capital at the time, which has now been acquired by Goldman Sachs for anyone who's not familiar, literally called me up out of the blue and said, I have the perfect job for you. And I thought, how could you know that? And he said, because I created it just for you. And I was like, okay, fine. I have to hear you out. And that's when I basically took over practice development training and client experience. 

The advice model, built out that network and that franchise across our network, right? So really institutionalized and scaling the best practices from business all the way to behavior, which was that in my time at Genworth where we really integrated this practice management offering. So this is where I learned to do things at scale and then really knee deep, as everyone likes to joke, in the apex of my career, retired to the beach in Costa Rica. Because in spite of all of that success, it wasn't satisfying. It was like, no matter what I did, what magazine I was on the cover of, what I was named. Bloomberg asked me to write a book. That's awesome. Mark was like, hey, Steph should write it. I've done all these amazing things and I kept thinking if I just got better, if I accomplished more, if only I would fill in the blank, turn that corner, climb that next rung. 

Somehow it wasn't conscious. I wasn't sitting down and journaling. It was just a feeling. And the reason I retired is because I figured out what it was about and how to solve it. And it radically transformed my life. And the second consulting firm, the coaching firm we have now, that's it. I'll share the secret of course in a second. But really the thing is I felt so blessed that we always had developed this real reputation for results. That was what our brand has always been about. We have these incredible results and like, how are they getting those results so fast, so impactful and with so much time and freedom? Like, wow. 

So for me, the underlying learning there was that success, it turns out, had been a form of significance. Right? Money was a way to get meaning. I was striving to figure out what felt good. And I just hadn't reconciled that I had a really tough childhood. It's a little bit of a long story, but my mother was diagnosed with a mental illness when I was nine. My father had PTSD from Vietnam, insert ensuing childhood trauma, lack of worth, et cetera here. And so for me, success was a way to fill up the cup, if you will. But we all know it lasts for seven seconds. And so when we retired to the beach in Costa Rica, I had no intention of unretiring. I was like, I am done with that. 

I don't have to work anymore. This is gonna be amazing. And it was for four amazing years before I unretired. I did, Lauren, what everybody does when they retire, their soul searching. I googled how to be successful and happy because I hadn't figured that out. So it turns out that all of that success was really my striving for that. If I could just get better, better, better somehow I would be okay. And so I googled that, read an article on mindset, read an article on positive psychology, read an article on neuroscience that led to a paper that led to a research study, which led to years of really copious hours spent studying the science of success, the psychology, peak performance, neuroscience, quantum physics, epigenetics, like really cool stuff in the last 10 years that really provides so much more insight into information about how we elevate who we are, how we show up our work, our wealth, our well-being. 

So I'm sitting on the beach in Costa Rica, right? Drop my kids off at school. I'm in my morning reading time; I think it's groovy. And I'm reading a study from Carnegie Institute published back in 1910, and it's called Education and Engineering. And they, Carnegie, were all about growth and development and learning. They invested a lot. And this particular study was about how to get students in a college, in particular an engineering college. How could you design the curriculum and the experience to make people learn, change, and grow. So there's really a study in how to be successful at learning, changing, and growing. And Carnegie Institute has done a ton of research in that field in the hundred years since. So I'm reading this study and they're sort of summarizing it and there it is that they really determined there were three factors to success. 

In terms of recreating change, sustainable and lasting change in learning, knowledge. And the environment does have an influence on skills. You either have them where you can acquire them. The third factor was psychology. The attitude mindset. And I thought, yeah, that makes sense. We all know about the self-help books, right? Positive affirmations, right? Thoughts, you know, all the good stuff, attitudes, everything. But then the next line really was a mind-blowing experience for me and is ultimately the reason I unretired. And I remember sitting there and reading these three factors. The conclusion was that success in this endeavor was greater than 80% responsible, driven by our mindset or psychology. And I just thought, I barely know what they're talking about. 

Lauren: Right? But tell me more. 

Stephanie: But I was like, we all know this intellectually, yeah, of course it matters. We gotta be, you know, but then here's some hard science around it, right? And I'd been just getting deeper and deeper and well, I really love self-help. I was in a place where I was like, I'm not gonna unretire because people are gonna think I've lost my edge and gone soft. That is the world from which I came, right? I wore the three-piece suit. I was on the cover of Financial Planning magazine when we did our research, I was looking all serious, like oh, I'm so tough and amazing. And now just picturing me on the beach like, yo, what's up? There's no proving going on anymore, right? And so I read that and I thought, wow, maybe this is that thing I have yet to figure out because I've gotten as good as I can get it. 

That other stuff, it's not the answer, right? I've made the money, I've built the brand, I've built this amazing team. I've sold it. Now what, right? So I always refer to myself as like the princess and the pea. Always just keep piling on thinking and it's gonna go away. So I read this and I just thought I have got to know. So that began and basically it has not stopped for right now, about 10 years in. I really basically got a self-designated degree. I just spent hours and hours and hours every day studying this, reading the research papers. And then I had a couple clients who had reached out. So I was applying it in my own life with just incredible results. I went from feeling like I was in the stressed out survival state all the time to feeling empowered and inspired and joyful and right. 

The obligation of work, the imposed right. Perceived, I mean. I worked for four years after I sold my company. So it's not like I had sold the company and just whisked off but it was that perceived obligation. So when I really figured it out, based on the Carnegie study and a wealth of really established neuroscience—Harvard has the Mind Body Institute, they've been massive studies on happiness—what it essentially boils down to is our mindset has the greatest impact on our work, our wealth, our well-being, our business, our body, our bank accounts, our relationship, our relationship to money. Everything that we are, have, achieve, and experience begins right in these six inches. This is the most important space we have. And we spend almost no time reflecting on it. We have, we have, right? We do tests on every part of our body when we're sick. 

When was the last time we all really said, Hey, let's let go. Let's go inside our headspace and see what's going on in there. What's serving me, shrinking me, what's got me stepping back, what's got me leaning forward. And so for me, when I unretired, it was actually a series of weird, odd instances. Bob Vais, a good friend of mine who has been a great supporter and mentor over the years, reached out to me randomly. So I'm literally meditating on my deck at the beach every morning. And I'm like, should I do coaching? Should I do consulting? Should I do 'em together? Should I go back to financial services? Should I do something else entirely? Should I become a third grade teacher? What am I gonna do? Because now I have all this time; I've run the PTA for four years. 

And there's a certain amount of purpose, growth, and expansion we all want to engage in. So I did the decompression and the learning and what was left was a lot of energy and inspiration around sharing and applying what I had learned because it had been so transformational for me. So Bob had reached out, and this is public knowledge and she's talked about it in different podcasts and publicly, Angie was splitting with her partner back at the time. Those can just be tough things to go through. So Bob is like, hey, you've been through a lot of big transitions, right? Could you talk to Angie? And so we had a great conversation. Apparently I said something really impactful, and she felt great about it and shared on a bunch of podcasts, which was very lovely of her. 

She didn't need to do that. But Bob called me afterwards and he was like, what happened with you and Angie? He was like, she was just like really over the top about that call and how helpful it was. And I was like, I'm kind of into this mindset thing. I was like, so I did all that, the best practices, I'm the deep business expert, right? I'm on the magazines, I've written the book. I was like, all that consulting stuff's awesome. All those levers we pull, strategy and operations and service advice and planning and teams and M&A, right? I built the model at United, I built the client experience. I signed off on every deal. I knew that side but I was like, dude, that's not where the shit is. 

It turns out that's like 15 or 20% of our success, like this other 80%. It's more like 90 to 95% according to the science, by the way. By the age of 35, we're a pre-conditioned set of hardwired habits and behaviors, 95% likely to do today what we did yesterday. I call it like those invisible forest fields where you're like, I want more and better, right? And yet for some reason I procrastinate or I don't do it, or I keep making decisions that aren't aligned. And you get frustrated and overwhelmed. And so for me, the decision to unretire, Bob said you should unretire and talk to people about this. And I was like, nope. No way, Jose. And he said why not? You just feel so strongly. It's obviously so impactful.

Lauren: He can see the passion. Yeah. 

Stephanie: I was like, I am a business expert and if I come back, people are gonna think that I've gone to Costa Rica and I've gotten soft. I've become one of those woo woo people. And I was like, I am not one of those moments. There's hard science here. And he's like, well, might I offer a different perspective miss mindset? Because I'm supposed to have this amazing mindset at this point, right? Like all things are possible. And he said, maybe you would be the best person to do it because you have such a reputation on the business side, right? For delivering and knowing what you're doing. He's like, maybe you're the very best person to come back and be like, hey, I've found a better way. And I was like, oh darn. Okay. Maybe. And literally I'd had a couple of clients who'd just reached out to me that I'd worked with privately before, and they were like, could you just make an hour a week for us? 

We would just love to get some guidance around this next phase. I was like, sure. And my new approach is mindset plus methods. That's what I do. You just gotta know that we are gonna really start to dig. And it turns out I've always done it. That's why we got results. I have like five years of deep training and coaching and now I'm like, oh, we're going to integrate this. So we’re the best at consulting and coaching and I'm telling you, game changer. Absolute. So it's not that you can't be successful or you can't elevate your success, it's the speed of inspiration; I call it inspired action. And the joy and ease with which you do it. If you can't build a great business and enjoy the right rewards, then I would argue that's not success, right? 

It's the form of striving and our job with our economics is to elevate our experience, not shrink it. So that's a really long why, because I get so excited that this is my passion project. We have other businesses that generate double digits and annual revenue, right? And I don't spend a lot of time there because this is right when I think about where I wanna spend my time and energy with my time on this planet and the impact I wanna have. This is the most important conversation I can have. 

Lauren: I think it's also one of the hardest conversations to answer, right? Which is what wakes you every day and there's a real passion, right? It's not just sort of a made up kind of thing. So Bob was right. You've brought this incredible rich experience to the table. It sounds like unknowingly just leading also with this idea of mindset. And then I've been able to help that blossom when you took a step away and now that you've been back in it for some time, how do you approach it? What's different about kind of where you were before to where you are now and what would it be like to work with you? What kind of things are you doing that are different? 

Stephanie: You know, it's funny because success really is driven 80% by our mindset. And I'll really break that down in the way our mindset shows up is we can think of having three habit realms. If you've read Atomic Habits, there's a map, right? We are basically right. We have 11,000 thoughts a day. I'm sorry, we have 60,000 thoughts a day and 80% of those are negative. And 95% of those, Lauren, are on a constant replay. Those voices in your head that are like, you can't, you shouldn't, you don't know how, you can't charge that. You've gotta say yes or you'll get eaten by the hungry tiger and die. 

Lauren: All those little voices, they're not your friends, like you said. 

Stephanie: They're shortcuts your brain created, origin stories from your childhood. Literally, I was talking with our group this morning, we were having one of our personal development calls. We do practice calls and personal calls and we were talking about our relationship to money, and how it shows up and either helps us or hinders us. And she was telling a story, the origin story for her, if money is scarce and you've gotta be a saver, was that her mom when she was in private school, had her walk into the principal's office in third grade and tell them their tuition payment was gonna be late cause they didn't have the money. And she was like, I was mortified. She was like, first of all, why was I in private school if we couldn't afford it? Public school would've been just fine. 

Second of all, she remembered feeling so much embarrassment, like, oh my God, something's wrong here. We don't have enough money. And thinking, why am I the one having this conversation? And she just remembers thinking, I never wanna be in that situation again. So she's done really well. That desire to make sure everything's okay and to make a certain amount of money really was part of the motivation to become successful. True. For a lot of very successful people. It's what I call effort and action versus inspired action. So this is the invitation to understand your relationship with your own success and money. Or your desire for more of it. Effort and action. As if we took a piece of paper and we drew a line across it; right above that line draw plus, below that draw minus above that line is everything good and awesome you've ever felt and experienced. 

This is where your thoughts are positive, your brain's right. Your biochemistry's positive, you're in that positive can-do everything is possible. Everything is figure-outable. Your abundance, your creativity, the desire to make the leap, to raise the feed, whatever it is. That all happens above the line. In that positive, empowered, what I call success state. Everything else, which the science says we spend about 70% of our time on a daily basis on, is in stress state. A light version of fight or flight. We're all familiar with this. What happens below that line is everything negative and disempowering. I can't, I shouldn't, I don't know how. Fear, uncertainty, doubt, anxiety, stress, judgment, blame, the need to prove, overwhelm. All of those feelings happen when we're below the line. The issue is we don't recognize that we spend way too much time below the line. 

And it's because we have one brain and two minds, right? Those 60,000 thoughts a day, like a fraction of them are conscious. The rest are happening on a giant play loop in our mind saying, you can't make more money. People with too much money are bad, or hey, there's never enough. Or you can't charge clients that, what will they think? I can't delegate to a team member, right? Clients won't like it. These are the stories that really hold us back and shrink us. And so as soon as we get into a place where we learn how to spend more of our time above that line in success state, we get clear, we get conscious about what's happening and why, and we can start to shift those patterns of behavior. So instead of just responding from a reactive state—a good example is have you ever had a prospect ask you for a discount? 

Sure. Right. Everybody has. How many times have we said yes more than once for most people? And then later we're like, oh, why did we do that? We did that because we acted in that moment, right? All the hardwired thoughts in the subconscious mind and those stories and beliefs are running through our head. And what are those beliefs in this business? All money's good money. All clients are good clients. All assets are good assets. All revenue is good revenue, yes, is the only right answer. Your job is, you get people to say yes. If they say no, you'll get eaten by a hungry tiger, you'll die. You'll never get another referral. Something bad will happen, right? So we don't sit there consciously, like you set a fee schedule, you decided you were worth it. You marketed to people, they spent an hour with you or an hour and a half with you on the phone in a meeting getting to know you. 

And at the end of that time in investment, they said to you, Lauren, we really love what you have to say. There's a lot of value we see here. There's just one teeny little problem. We think there's just an easy little bit less value than you do. So could we have all that love, attention, and awesome experience, the knowledge, picking up the phone with the same enthusiasm as all those other clients that were just not smart enough to ask for a discount. Give me all the best you've got every time you're engaged with me. And feel just as good about it as you do with everybody else. Could you do that for about 75% less please? What would you say?

Lauren: You can't grow. 

Stephanie: If someone walked in and said that to you outright, what would you say? Yes or no? 

Lauren: No. 

Stephanie: Everyone's like, I would say no. And I'm like, except that's not what we do. Every time a prospect asks you for a discount and you say yes, you're essentially saying yes to that. The prospect is saying, I see value just not what you do and I'd like the same as everyone else but I'd like it at a lower cost. And instead of me discerning, deciding if there's value or not, I'd like you to decide if you want me bad enough as the client, we're automatically putting ourselves at a disadvantage in terms of right. Value and trust equity. And kind of right. Who's sitting in the seat of trusted advisor in that relationship? Are those clients we really want? Are they in the best service of the practice? If we're clear that we have a lifestyle practice, 50 to 150 clients are all you need to have a wildly successful practice, have a great life. 

You can get bigger than that if you want to. But if you only need 100 seats and you fill the bus, the coach reframe here, the mindset shifts from below the line. I have to say if I have to make it okay to above the line, I only want clients. That is additive. So I always say that I want really great clients. You cannot drag people to the finish line. We all know those people. Able to see the value, some don't. That's okay. Not trying to change anybody. Just want to find the people who are happy to pay, motivated, able to see the value and happy to pay. If they don't fit that criteria, they're not great clients. You don't want them. Some will, some won't. 

 So who's next? You can always manage your time, energy, and capital to go find a pipeline of great clients. If you get clear, get focused, and get to work. You can't do that most of the time because you're too busy doing too much for too little for too many people for too long. Because we're constantly making these compromises from a crisis of confidence. I have to take that too small client because I'm afraid the referral source will never send me another one. I have to say yes to that discount. Every time we do that, we should be writing ourselves checks, Lauren. So the next time, if your minimum is 5,000 and someone comes along with 3,000, they're not quite there, but you haven't figured out how to say no with dignity in a way you feel good about, which I'll share in a minute if you want me. 

If in real life I said to you, Lauren, you're gonna write yourself a check for $2,000 every time you take on one of those clients and you're gonna rewrite that check every year because keeping that client is actually from a right opportunity cost perspective. You only have 100 seats on your bus. Every seat you fill with someone below the minimum is money you're taking out of your pocket. It's just that we can't see that money yet. So we don't treat it the same way. If I put your ideal practice on the table, then I said here's 100 seats, here's a million dollars every time you follow my advice, you get to keep that pile of money at the end of the timeframe, the year. But every time you take a client below the minimum, you gotta take that money off the table every time you check your email more than twice a day. 

You gotta take $5,000 off the table every time you do something that's gonna compromise your success out of habit and conditioning. And you know what would happen in like three days, you would stop doing it all because the correlation between your behavior and your results would be so crystal clear that your brain would learn really, really quickly. But we don't write ourselves a check for $500 when we check email 17 times a day. We on average spend 3.6 hours doing it. We give up money we haven't made yet. And so that's where we learn. We learn when we reach a pain point or we have a possibility that inspires us. 

Lauren: Hmm. I love it. Oh my goodness. So many things to take in. So it sounds like if there was going to be someone who would partner with you, is it typically someone who is at a place where they want to grow but it's like they just keep hitting walls? Is that fair? Or what would that profile look like? 

Stephanie: Well, the clients we do our best work with are financial advisors, founders who want to build a wildly successful business in life. They want to accelerate their success, gain back their time and freedom and right. Build a hyper-successful practice that gives them the time and freedom to enjoy it. So that's who we do our best work with. We have two different ways we work with advisors. We have a lifestyle coaching program that kicked off this year where it's really about, we call it building a million dollar, a hundred day off practice, which is really just Fridays and eight weeks by the way. We have advisors that are smaller than a million. We have advisors that are a bit over a million. 

It's really about building a lifestyle practice that fits your version of success, that allows you to deliver deep valued clients, build a hyper-efficient practice, get a great steady pipeline of growing clients. And right. Do it while creating time and freedom for yourself. So that program is really about the mindset, the methods like the personal momentum. We like to call it like a 12-month masterclass in building a kick-ass advisory firm using mindset and methods. And then for advisors that are already over a million in revenue, we call 'em leaders. There's more and better, you do want to grow, you have big goals transferring to the next generation. Building marketing engines that aren't dependent on you. So for those seven- and eight-figure firms and founders we have a leaders program that's like a mix of consulting, coaching, and an elite mastermind. 

But irrespective of how we work with firms, it's that mindset and methods approach, which is, are you really clear on what you want to create? We'd like to say when the vision is clear, the decisions are easy because that is the roadmap for change. And in that roadmap for change, you can get really conscious, this is where the mindset piece kicks in and you can say, am I living, being, having, experiencing, earning everything I want and more and what's in the gap? And then we start to look at, hey, do we have the right client base? Are we charging the right fees? Do we have the right systems in place? Are we leveraging our time? So while that is a really big part of the work we do, we'll probably spend 80% of our time, it's almost switched. We'll still spend 80% of our time talking about the levers and the methods and the M&A and the value, depending on what we’re working on. 

But for 20% of the time, it's what we really don’t need. You're smart, you're capable, you've done great stuff, you do great work for clients. What is holding you back from that next level of growth? Oh, it's that we aren't using our time wisely. Well why not? Well because we're control freaks. Why are we control freaks? Oh, that's a mindset issue. Okay. How do we start to shift that? And what we find is when we surface these conversations and we're not like laying on the couch crying, we're just having candid conversations about what's happening behind the curtain in our mind. And man, it's like you part the curtain and it's like the runway clears and the resistance leaves and all of a sudden you get clear, you get focused, you get to work, and you make the changes. 

That's how we get those results we're known for, not just effectively and efficiently but as enjoyably and quickly as we do. When you put those pieces together and you've got a motivator, we call it a big why. Something that really is a value to you that you want to achieve or experience. We call it mojo, it's magic. The kind of mojo you can create when you get really clear, get really conscious, and then create a course of action. And what it really boils down to, we like to say, mindset sits in the space of making sure the tongue in your mouth and the tongue in your shoes are all moving in the same direction. Because we have a tendency to talk one way and act another. And that's the gap that we all sit in every day. 

Lauren: Okay. So we're wrapping up on time here, but if someone was to work with you or to go through this sort of an exercise, what's the number one thing you think would help set them up for success or the relationship up for success? That pre-work, if there's any. 

Stephanie: I don't know if there's pre-work, but there are two exercises I can share quickly that will transform anyone's life quickly if they do them. And obviously there's a lot more you can do both on the business and the personal side. But the first is that line exercise. If you take a piece of paper and you literally draw a line, we're going to use this with time. What's above the line? Below the line? Everything above the line is energy-creating and revenue- producing. I could talk to you for 19 hours, go give a speech, consult with a client. I could just do it and do it and do it. I'm like the Energizer bunny. I love it. It elevates me, inspires me, uplifts me, it is energy-creating for me. 

When it's all over, I'll be like a deflated balloon but while I'm in the middle of it, there's no end to the charge because it's elevating to me, it's energy-creating. So there's really only two kinds of activities, energy-creating or energy-draining. Stasis lasts for like seven seconds when we wake up. Then those stories in our head shift above or below the line. Everything below the line is the opposite of that, it does not enlighten or inspire you. You procrastinate, you put it off, you avoid it, you hate it, you dread it, and at the end of the day it's energy-draining and it's not revenue-producing. It might be revenue-sustaining, but again it's not right in the direction. So our number one job to affect change with respect to our income, our time, and our freedom is to literally stop doing below the line activities. 

Just stop. So I check my email twice a day. It takes me 30 minutes because I have someone who checks it for me. We have all these rules about what goes where, what I look at, what she looks at, what gets processed without me, our system for surfacing any questions or issues. We have a system. I'm not just like, here you go, I trust in you; we have boundaries and business systems in place. There's some real levers you still have to pull but most people get stuck when I just say check email twice a day. They actually panic. Like the stories in your head start just chirping off. Email is not an energy-creating, revenue-producing activity. Here's how I know: no one in 25 years, Lauren, has ever called me up and said I check my email 17 times a day because I just know there's so many awesome prospects and they're dying to get ahold of me. 

We do it by habit, we do it for the little dopamine hit, and we do it because we want to feel productive in a sea of overwhelm and it's a bunch of little wins but it's utterly dilutive. It's stealing at least 30 or 40% of the average person's productivity. So then I say stop checking. And everyone panics like how are we gonna do that? Why don't you create an email policy? I’m happy to share mine. If anybody wants to reach out to coaching@limitlessfa.life, ask for a copy of my email policy. It's three pages long. It details what to do. For instance, if Michael Kitces, who's one of my clients, emails, it goes here; if a random person we like, here's what you like. It lays the whole thing out. So what I say is I just show up and do what I'm told every day. 

I'm not in charge of anything but at a business level I'm clear and conscious, I'm in charge of everything. I set the rules. I'll check email twice a day. Here's the system I want you to follow. So I have total confidence that what's happening is supposed to be happening. We've got a good communication loop. People feel our love and attention. Like, wow, how are they so on? Like here's how we're going to accomplish that amazing experience. Mindset plus method. So here's a great way, here's the mindset piece because your natural behavior, remember, is 95% hardwired to do the same thing tomorrow except I'm going to tell you about the Post-its. You're gonna take two Post-its, you're gonna write a one on one and a two on the other and you're gonna stick 'em on your monitor. And when you check email for the first time in a day, you take off the first Post-it. 

And when you check email the second time in a day, you take off the second Post-it. And after you've removed all the Post-its, guess what you've committed to not do anymore. No more email for that day. So it will literally feel like someone has cut off your hands for a day or two. And then what you'll realize is you're just so much more productive because you didn't spend 3.6 hours checking email. Now if you don't have someone checking and processing, you might spend a little bit more time. But the key here is don't process and produce at the same time you’re processing. If you're doing your own email until you can get someone to do that, right away that 30 minutes in the morning and into the day is processing time. So if Lauren's like, hey, got a quick question for you about our podcast, my assistant will grab it, put it in the today folder so I've got time to review it at the beginning or the end of the day. 

Stephanie: Hey Dorian, just a little quick this or tell Lauren that or all's good, no big deal. Like quick hits things. Or Dorian will be like, hey, I need something from you. Boom. Then away it goes. If it requires more than a few minutes, it's not email, it's service work or it's marketing or it's advice, which means it gets calendared in your time block. So if you want to read about how to take agency, vote for your time. I wrote a great article, I say great because it's like 5,000 words, it's basically a book. It's great about writing for kids, like we're going for it girl. And it basically breaks down from the mindset piece, which is a really reflective, intentional conversation that will really shift your relationship with time. But then how we go from annual calendars to model schedules to like it'll take you all the way down the rabbit hole from big picture to like best practices you can use tomorrow. 

Like the Post-its I love. So if you're interested in doing that, remember when people stop checking their email, what's left is time they have to focus on something. And then that means we get to address the next issue. Am I focused on the right things? Do I actually do my tasks when I'm supposed to? Am I procrastinating and distracted? Okay, well, you know, I don't have email now, so we start to just go down the rabbit hole and keep figuring out what we have to solve for. We're not working over problems anymore. We're working through them because we have the clarity and consciousness from mindset to go, okay, what's really happening here? Why is it really happening? I keep talking about how overwhelmed I am, but I took on the clients, I said what I did, I decided what I was going to charge. 

I make decisions; the only person really in charge of this situation is me. So if I'm in charge of it, that was the mindset thing that caused me—I was like, wow, if this is that big a lever and I haven't pulled it, what's possible when I do? And then I get so excited about it and then I decide to go out and start a business and tell everybody. So that email strategy and the line exercise are super powerful. One of the things below the line should be right checking email, not responding to awesome emails that fall in. Like client retention or something. When do you get clear? I mean, what's on this line? Your business plan becomes really easy. Everything below the line is not awesome for you. 

You draw a line out farther, you draw vertical lines, time horizons, three months, six months, a year, five years, depends on where you are. And everything below your line at some point has to go depending on the time horizon. Hey, I'm gonna give up all the para- planner work within six months, that's gonna go above the line. Who sits on that sheet? Oh, it's gonna be a paraplanner, insource, outsource, part time, full time. Now you're clear and you're conscious. You're conscious about where your time is really going, what's additive and what's dilutive. And you've made a conscious decision to get focused on the things that are energy-creating and revenue-producing, which is the shortest way to make more money and less time by the way, and be happy and inspired doing it. And now you can build a quick business plan, get focused, and get to work. 

So these things that seem so big and complicated and so overwhelming and unsolvable just start to get really clear—about what's happening and why it's happening from a place of slightly more consciousness, not being in that survival stress mode, sitting in that success state where we can evaluate from our conscious Einstein brain, not the caveman brain that's always in charge. What do I want to create in my practice? What do I want to create in my life? What's the gap? What do I need to account for? Okay, now I can work on my mindset and methods with a roadmap for change. So I think that's what Limitless is good at. We're really good at giving you a proven track to run on. We know how to build big firms, small firms, right? All sizes. There's a blueprint for success and we know all those models, and our most impactful work, aside from all the really cool business stuff, is helping people elevate their thinking and their decisions and their actions rapidly to kind of create the results they want with greater ease and joy. That's what I get really excited about. 

Lauren: I love it. And I can see your passion just in how you talk about it too, which is also really inspiring as well. So thank you for sharing so many insights about your journey and how you got to where you are today and also some really great takeaways that can literally be immediately applied. I'm going to have to try this email tracker and I'm sure it's going to kick my butt. So I really appreciate you. 

Stephanie: It's a habit. Our job is to break those habits and patterns to learn how we can sit in that space. Email is just one example. Hopefully listening to podcasts like this and sharing those actionable insights helps whoever's listening. 

Lauren: Absolutely. And we'll make sure to include links below as well to your book and other resources. And thank you again for your time. We'll be in touch. We'll keep the conversation going. 

Stephanie: Yeah, happy to be here. Hope it was helpful. Everyone have a great day.

We talked with Eliza about:

• Human capital challenges surrounding internal growth, redeveloping recruitment practices, and the impact M&A activity has on the firm as a whole
• How strong leadership engagement and detailed implementation schedules are required for strategic initiatives to truly take flight
• Addressing compensation and cost of living adjustments amidst high inflation and decreased revenue as firms move into 2023

About Eliza De Pardo:

Founder and director of De Pardo Consulting, Eliza De Pardo brings a wealth of research-backed insights on the talent shortages and growth challenges faced by financial services firms as they move from 2022 into 2023. With her expertise in human capital management, Eliza educates as well as aids firms in developing strategic implementation practices that coalesce around a growth strategy.

Featured Resources 

• Eliza De Pardo’s LinkedIn
• De Pardo Consulting Website

Full Audio Transcript

Lauren Hong: All right. Well, Eliza, thank you so much for joining us today. I was reviewing your LinkedIn like I was sharing just before the call, and so impressed with your background having worked at TD Ameritrade and then also Moss Adams and holding a number of consulting roles. And then now you've consulted with hundreds of financial advisors and continuing to choose firms I should really say. So I'd love to hear how you got started in your consulting practice and launching it independent of working with some really big names. 

Eliza De Pardo: Thanks Lauren. Thanks for having me along. I always describe it as a very long path to get to this point but I think there probably are defining moments in anyone's career you can point to that kind of got you where you are today in terms of founding a firm. But my career in consulting in the US really started with Moss Adams back in 2006, around that time I was recruited and moved to Seattle from Western Australia and worked alongside Mark Diversion, which was a fantastic experience. That team was wonderful to work with. And then the financial crisis hit me. Many people know Moss Adams kind of closed up their consulting group at that time. And I co-founded FA Insight with Dan Invi, which was a research and consulting firm that exclusively served the US financial services industry. And Dan and I produced a wealth of research together and consulted with institutions as well as larger advisory firms. And we had a great run for many years. And then were acquired by TD Ameritrade back in 2016, who was actually our biggest client at the time. And actually we stayed on with TD Ameritrade. Dan and I both did a lot of work with them, building more research, producing their practice management programs, white papers guide, all sorts of tools for advisors. So it wasn't until the Schwab acquisition of TD that I decided to go out on my own to consult and work independently. 

Lauren: Fantastic. 

Eliza: Kinda a long path. 

Lauren: Yes, with such great experience and connections and all of that. So consulting can go so many different directions, from business strategy to practice management, a variety of things. And for your firm, what are you really focused on or what are themes that come out of your consulting work and talking with different firms? 

Eliza: Well, at the moment I would say the majority of the consulting work in particular is focused on human capital management. We have an area of expertise here. We've done that for many years, but there are so many factors in the marketplace that are creating human capital challenges for advisory firms at the moment so that tends to be where we're engaged. Areas like organizational design, compensation planning, performance management, and all the human capital issues kind of associated with those buckets, if you like, where folks need help generally. And then we do a lot of work in strategic and really supporting firms, larger firms in understanding, coming together around a growth strategy and being able to execute on that strategy. So that's from a consulting perspective and from a research perspective, we like to really cover all areas in the market. And I've found that over my career in consulting the more depth of data you can have available to you to consult, the better that is. And the more consulting experience you have to feed into the research, the better that is for the research. So those two elements are really important to work together. But generally I would say human capital is probably the one area that really films the most challenged right now. 

Lauren: Yes. Can you share a little bit more about that? I mean, it's sort of an interesting time, right? I feel like I've seen a lot of firms that are going through M&A activity or they're trying to hire and find that right culture fit or the right growth structure. What sort of obstacles are you seeing with firms as they are trying to grow or is it just a sort of like a boon of growth? What patterns are you seeing? 

Eliza: Well, this year in particular has been a rough year for advisory firms. The markets have been very uncooperative for the typical firm, and I think most firms are gonna be down in terms of revenue this year. But in addition to that, the acute talent shortage now in the industry is probably one of the most significant challenges for firms in terms of being able to sustain rates of growth, which you could imagine the sort of disruption it causes in a business. When you lose somebody, a talented team member who leaves the business, that becomes harder to replace. It might take you six months or longer to find the right fit to replace that individual. And you've got this kind of gaping hole in the firm for a period of time. And if you experience more than one departure, and it's kind of common at the moment, many firms are sort of struggling a little bit with the retention of talent. This will over time make it harder and harder to sustain rates of growth. And certainly if you're losing talent in the area of business development, client acquisition, of course the impact is felt even more significantly. So the acute talent shortage is a challenge. If we combine that with economy-wide impacts, like very low unemployment right now, very high inflation, all of these things are combining, including what we experienced last year, which was this concept of the Great Resignation back in August, which kind of hit its peak. All of these things are combining to make it extra difficult for firms to grow their pool of talent in a really sustainable way. So I think firms have to be really focused on how they're going to develop talent internally and perhaps change their approach to recruitment to perhaps have more luck in terms of getting the right people into the business. 

Lauren: Yeah, we see it too. I mean, it's like you said, the Great Resignation, right? Which is a nationwide trend that's happening. But I feel like in this industry, regardless, it's really hard to hire; the right value set and the importance of the hire is so critical, right? Cuz it's that client relationship and then holding onto that client relationship for quite some time. It's a relationship-first business, right? So it's not just, okay, check, check, check, have you got this credential but also is there a value set there, and a reflection of how the firm is looking to present themselves outwardly. 

Eliza: Yeah, that's very true and I think firms are extra cautious whenever they're recruiting roles that will be really close to the client relationships. They do have to meet firm cultural values. They have to be really in alignment with the way the partners are running the firm to be a good fit for clients and for the business. So it takes a little bit more effort to try and figure that out when you're recruiting, but I think it's worthwhile taking a little extra time to make sure those decisions are on point, because of course any errors made can be kind of just ongoing, and you don't want that ongoing turnover of talent as we make recruitment missteps if you like. And oftentimes, as you know, I've met firms over the years where their retention of talent has been a real problem. Oftentimes it comes back to their recruitment efforts and how well or not so well they're going through the recruitment process. In some cases they're finding they're getting higher rates of turnover because they're not doing such a good job upfront. 

Lauren: That's fair. So I have to ask you this—it has been a weird year, right? With the markets and coming off of COVID and all of those sorts of things. And as we're going into the new year, if you were to give one piece of advice, especially to C-suite ownership about the look ahead around human capital management, what would be that nugget of advice you would give them that you feel like would set them ahead? 

Eliza: I think as it relates to the growth of talent, I think you've got to invest heavily in your own development pipeline if you like. So creating a career path, showing talent what the future could look like for them in the business, but then investing really heavily in the development of talent, whether that's internal training, role shadowing, mentoring or engaging external trainers to be able to support the development of your staff. I think it's incredibly important given how hard it is to recruit, given how hard it is to retain talent. I do think firms really have to focus heavily on building development programs. But related to that, we're going into performance review time for the end of the year for 2022, and many firm owners and executives are gonna start having conversations around compensation. And I do think that being extra prepared this year for what will be challenging conversations around pay is important if you want to make sure team members feel valued and we're not rocking the boat and there are no surprises, nasty surprises, for anybody. I think you've gotta be extra prepared for your compensation conversations this year. 

Lauren: Yep. That's absolutely fair. And that's actually really good advice because you're right, it's a very competitive market right now and it's easy to be able to have shiny objects with big numbers, but doesn't necessarily mean it's the right culture fit too. So that's great advice. So just learning a little bit more about kind of the ethos you're leading with too, it sounds like there's a lot around positive change but how do you handle that when things aren't so positive or are there things that you try to really lead forward with so when you come into working with a firm that might be an X state, how do you get them sort of to that next state so it's leading versus just cyclical? 

Eliza: Yeah, I think whenever a firm engages any external consultant to come in and help solve challenges, you have to be really honest with them about the kind of effort it takes to be able to drive change in a firm. The firms I've worked with over the years that have really excelled in the implementation of change are those businesses that have really strong leadership who take a very keen interest in the initiatives you're working on. And they do a really great job of communicating regularly with the team. They also have the capacity to be able to do the work that's required to implement the change. So for example, if you undergo a piece of business in trying to transform parts of the business, you don't really have the capacity to manage that actively every week, week on week. And it could be easily an 18-month change program, if you like. In some cases you're simply not gonna make any headway, right? So I really encourage firms to understand the effort that's required to drive the change consistently, making sure they have capacity, making sure they're assigning the right skills to the projects, and they've really also got the appetite and the enthusiasm for it. That goes an awful long way. Yeah, that's definitely, when I look back at those clients who do really, really well in implementing change, they tend to have executives who have the capabilities and who really have the enthusiasm for the work.

Lauren: That makes sense. It's interesting to hear you frame it that way. So from a marketing perspective, we're always mapping the marketing directly to the business strategy, right? Where do we wanna go? And then how are we gonna map that in? But it's really easy to kind of, I think especially for C-suite, right? They can see the vision and it's easy to talk about the vision and wanting it now, but then how do you layer that in so that the change is managed appropriately? And I'd just be curious when you're going into an engagement, because I'm sure there's an umbrella of activity. Are you then timelining that and basically project planning those various initiatives based off of where the firm is at, kind of what does that look like so you can work toward that positive direction of what the outcome is and have clear expectations going into it? That it's not just gonna be sort of snap your fingers and it's all flowers and butterflies.

Eliza: Well, oftentimes that's how strategic planning feels—you go through that process, it's creative, the management and executives love to be involved in it because it opens a door to some great discussion and they're generally pretty excited about where they land in terms of designing the strategy, which is wonderful, but it can wear off unless you gotta keep the momentum going, right? So we do work with the firms in the implementation planning and for some clients, not all, it depends on the firm and their needs, but we will develop what we call a very detailed implementation schedule, which takes, for example, the firm's strategy for the next 12 months and breaks it down into very detailed actions and we assign accountabilities and we set timeframes and then we'll manage that for a 12-month period, in some cases up to two years, to try to ensure that all the project teams within the firm are staying on track and the working groups are getting their stuff done. And we meet on a regular basis to make sure that's happening and provide coaching in the development of solutions along the way. Some firms, however, feel quite equipped to do that themselves, which is great. Others prefer to have more guidance in that area. So it's kind of a mixed bag in terms of how we work with clients to support implementation. 

Lauren: Yep. 

Eliza: Does that answer your question, Lauren? 

Lauren: Yeah, it does. And I mean, I can feel it on this end too because it's not at the company-wide sort of operations level, right? But for us, I mean, if we're, for example, rolling out a new positioning or branding or what have you, it's a culture shift and that does not happen overnight. You can put something up, kind of like if you were to put up a website, but if no one knows about it; it takes time to build that up. If you put out a new brand, people have to know about it for it really to take flight. And that takes adjustments and it doesn't happen over time. And I'm sure it's similar to your work and we're just a little bit of a smaller degree cuz marketing sits underneath business strategy. 

Eliza: You're spot on. It's that communication piece that's so essential. If you've got leaders in the business that are communicating openly, regularly, with the broader team, you're much more likely to be successful in implementing the change. If no one knows about it and it's all happening among a small group of people, then we expect change to happen, it's just kind of unrealistic. 

Lauren: It is. And having the leadership believe in the change and then to have those internal champions to help drive it. So I'd love to hear too, since you've had access to the C-suite at so many different levels, I'm sure of a variety of sizes of firms and what's going on. Is there anything in particular at where we are and in the world right now or what you see ahead that just gets you fired up that feels different or feels like it's a disruption or a trend or what have you, that I think is an exciting potential change for this industry too? 

Eliza: There's nothing that comes to mind in terms of a major disruption. Some of the better firms that I'm working with, they're all strong firms but some tend to be more aggressive in their approach. I think the technology that's available to firms and the marketplace is just evolving so rapidly that there is more of an opportunity for firms to build a tech stack that's going to better shape their business model in the future. I think I'm finding certainly over the years that I'm meeting with executives that are just becoming more and more savvy, more and more capable of doing a better job of deepening their expertise across a range of management capabilities. And that for our industry is somewhat of an evolution.  We've moved from an industry which has been very fragmented in that we've had thousands and thousands of very small players that over the course of time have started to come together and we've seen record numbers of merger and acquisition activity in recent years as firms are folding into each other and we're creating these entities that are growing in scale relative to what we've seen historically. And with that comes deeper levels of capability, deeper pockets, but also deeper expertise and executive teams that are leading their businesses in very different ways to what we've seen in the past. I think the level of management expertise is becoming far more seasoned, and very rich and deep. And some firms really have extraordinary capabilities in this space. And that's an exciting time. I do think there's a lot of wonderful benefits that come from the level of M&A activity we're seeing in the marketplace. And in some cases I do really feel like it's leading to much deeper expertise and greater professionalization within the industry. 

Lauren: Yeah, I agree. I'm seeing that too. And it creates, especially for some of these bigger firms, that deeper expertise or in-house knowledge—something that wasn't always there—so to be able to see that as it could shape and really change that the service offering at large potentially. 

Eliza: Yeah, absolutely. And I think the clients are ultimately the beneficiaries of the fact that these firms are creating scale and have really strong dedicated management, strong advice team structures and are able to deliver a much more advanced client experience for their end clients, perhaps relative to what firms can do otherwise. 

Lauren: I agree. Yeah. Robust experience and just a team of deep knowledge and to be able to have that kind of expertise at your fingertips that's integrated is something I feel like was only for kind of the bigger companies of the day and now it's still bigger in general, but is changing things, so that’s fantastic. Anything else you think would be helpful to share as we look ahead with the work you're doing or the research or conversations? 

Eliza: Well, one of the things that I think I really kind of alluded to before in terms of firms going into performance review season now toward the end of 2022 and dealing with economy-wide impacts like inflation—compensation is going to be a really huge challenge for firms this year and next year. Revenue is likely to be down, expenses as a share of revenue will be up. So I think there's real merit in thinking through your strategy around compensation, but in particular cost-of-living adjustments and the use of incentive compensation to adjust pay perhaps as an alternative to cost-of-living adjustments. I think if firms are going down that path, they need to tread very carefully around making increases that are associated or connected directly with inflation to protect their financials going forward. So to me this is gonna be one of the really red hot issues that firms are going to have to contend with in this current environment. Team members I think across our industry but more broadly, the economy, people are going to be looking to their managers, business owners, and executives to address the pressures they're feeling from an inflationary perspective. And it's upon owners and managers to have a very clear view on how they're going to handle it, to be able to have the right messaging to be able to ensure team members feel comfortable and taken care of during these really difficult times. And to avoid a situation where we create disappointment and departures potentially with talent. So counsel firms in particular to be very careful around the use of cost-of-living adjustments; if you're going to do it this year, use them very carefully, be very clear with team members that cost-of-living adjustments are not going to take place every year. It might be very much a one-off and firms should be really cautious in how much they offer up this year in particular, just to make sure we're controlling fixed costs given all the other pressures on revenue generation this year. 

Lauren: Yeah, that's right.

Eliza: That's probably my key kind of round out 2022. 

Lauren: Yeah, that's really good advice, especially since we finished one political season, at least here in the U.S. but more of that will come and markets up and down and so it's great advice. I appreciate you sharing a little bit of what you're seeing inside of the C-suite and some of those conversations. 

Eliza: Yeah. 

Lauren: I appreciate your time and thank you so much for all the work you do and for supporting so many firms and giving some of those tips, especially as we look ahead for the new year. So thank you again.

We talked with Nancy about:

• Unlearning and learning how to lead in today’s virtual workplace
• Opening space for collaboration to increase opportunities for team growth and cultural shifts
• Leading recruitment from true, authentic values that are reflected by the organization as a whole

About Nancy Lyons:

CEO and founder of Clockwork Interactive, self-proclaimed rebel, and digital space leader, Nancy Lyons wants leaders to embrace being one to many and not shy away from picking up the phone to connect with their employees. Moving into the future, she sees huge opportunities for building and reinforcing company culture by embracing the digital workplace with proactive rather than reactive changes.

Featured Resources 

• Nancy Lyon's Linkedin
• Nancy Lyon's Website
• Work Like a Boss by Nancy Lyons
• Clockwork Website
• Clockwork LinkedIn
  

Full Audio Transcript

Lauren Hong:
All right. Well, Nancy, thanks so much for joining us today. I’m very excited to hear from you. It was so funny actually. So just an introduction story. Our team, a lot of them are word nerds, and I remember we were first kind of googling, learning a little bit about you, and I think on the front of your website it says something weirdo, I don't know if it's certified weirdo or whatever, but we loved it. And I think what was so cool is it's just embracing that you like to nerd out, like to enjoy different things, like to get in deep topics. And so it resonated, right? And even the name of Clockwork, the company you founded, it's got a spin on it. And I'm so excited to hear from you and that kind of originality and to be able to pull that out a little bit more. So why don't we start with Clockwork? How did it get going? I mean, what was the spark for it to be able to pull out that kind of work and what you do around culture? 

Nancy Lyons:
Sure. Well, first of all, thanks for having me. I appreciate having the opportunity to visit with you today. Clockwork actually started because we had started another company. So my business partners had started another company and that company was acquired. But we had been building websites since 1995, and that company actually started as an internet service provider. And this was before the big telcos came in to monopolize the space. And so there was actually room for small businesses and entrepreneurs to start up in the internet space. So we were offering internet services to end users and then started building websites. And then that company was acquired. And I think the whole purpose of that acquisition was to add digital services to a larger enterprise. And I think we all know what happens in acquisitions, and you could make it that much more complex by factoring in the idea that this happened when the internet was not well understood and was not yet entirely mainstream. 

Nancy:
And so the value of the business they had acquired was not really understood or shared by all, the reality of it wasn't shared by everybody. And so it made for a really sort of tense situation. And so we decided we wanted to leave and start over, not a startup, but a start over. And we had learned so many lessons and the industry had come such a long way in such a short amount of time that we decided it was an ideal time for us to open our new shop and really reflect everything we had learned through all the trials and experiments that we had done in the very early days of the internet. So we started Clockwork in 2002. And we had some great clients that carried over from our last story that helped us bootstrap it. And it was really just a handful of us in our basements at first, and then we moved into an office space. And I wish I could tell a more exciting story than that. I think we just saw that there was this tremendous need for leadership in the digital space when it was so murky to navigate for anybody that needed it. 

Lauren:
Yes. And talk about digital space right now, right? We're all hyper-digital post-COVID. I think we'd be fools to think it's gonna totally return to how it was. But at least if you look at trends in hiring, right? I mean, remote first is a leading trend and people like that, right? And it changes the culture. And I love to hear, I mean, you've been building that, the world of the internet and kind of why culture and what are you seeing today with company cultures and being hyper-digital? 

Nancy:
Sure. Well, I'd like to share for the record that I think the internet changed everything a long time ago. And so the reason that I got into the space where I find myself talking about culture and leadership in the context of culture and hyper-digital cultures is because we saw immediately how the internet was gonna change—not only industry but the landscape in which industry functioned, right? And so I started talking about the impact of the internet and internet thinking on workplace culture from the very beginning. And in fact, I have an interview in a magazine, I don't remember the name of the magazine but from the ‘90s, when I had no idea what I was doing. And they said, what do you want your legacy to be? And I said, it's not gonna be websites because anybody can make a website, but it's definitely gonna be my voice and the impact that I can have in moving the needle toward the future of work. Because I think people have to, especially leadership, have to let go of their ideas, and the security they have in this idea that the way it's always been is the way it should be. 

Lauren:
Yes. Can you talk and or maybe even share some examples for how you are seeing culture played out in a virtual environment, built out in a way that it transcends the physical space? 

Nancy:
Well, I think, again, I think that's something that most organizations are struggling with large and small. I mean, even my company, and I just said I've been talking about this since the ‘90s, struggle with it because we just ended up having a staff that really preferred to be together. We've always been hybrid, we've always had remote options, but on most days, the majority of the staff was in the office. They had the option of being wherever. And in fact, at one point I expanded and added another little campus and I said if people would just go home, we wouldn't have to get more office space. But they were sort of on top of each other. The pandemic forced the opposite and our folks who had always had flexibility were suddenly having to adapt to these ways of working, even though that option had always been on the menu. 

Nancy:
I think what we see a lot is leadership is attached to the way things have always been because that's how they know how to lead. That's what they're used to. That's what they feel control over. And what they observe validates their assumptions, right? When they are in spaces and they see these impromptu, sporadic conversations or connections between people, it validates what they know about physical space. The truth of the matter is those sorts of exchanges can still happen, but people have to take the initiative to make them happen. So what I find in terms of my own speaking is it's really about reminding the individual of their own agency or power in the context of culture and their actions and their micro actions. And that means everything from saying, Hey, are you okay? 

Nancy:
In the middle of a Zoom or chatting, sending somebody a direct message in the middle of a Zoom call or whatever it is to have these momentary connections that fulfill a sort of that energetic requirement of culture. And I think we find ourselves talking about individual responsibility and the lack of judgment. Now we have a change practice inside of Clockwork so we're doing it, we're having these conversations on a systemic level. And I would say it's as much about unlearning as it is about learning. We have to sort of unlearn patterns and behaviors that force these systems to be the single truth. And we have to have the gumption or the courage to want to recreate systems, which when we're thinking about it seems like it should be easy, but in practice it's that much harder. 

Lauren:
Yes. I love how you are helping coach CEOs and C-suite teams to help to change those patterns, either in the way they're communicating or the systems they're deploying to help make sure the culture is still alive and well even if there isn't a virtual environment. 

Nancy:
Right. I think what we're finding is very frank, very frequent conversations, and then a real audit of messaging is critical. And then a communications plan; the thing that I tell people all the time is leadership is just repeating yourself over and over and over again. Because I think it takes a while for people to believe the change. And it takes a while for them to integrate change and even a healthy response to change into their thinking. And I also think including them in the process of getting there is really important because they're hoping for it. I haven't spoken to a single human being who didn't welcome an absence of a commute, who didn't welcome more time with their family, who wasn't happy about not having to worry about what to wear, at least from here down. I think everybody welcomed the decrease in stress around really trivial issues. But stressful issues all the same. And I think including people in the process so everybody can get past their sort of innate desire to protect their routines and just explore what's possible and the truth of the meaning behind those possibilities and the opportunities behind those possibilities. So I think it's about talking through them, exploring the data, and including the broader staff in the actual movement. 

Lauren:
Yes. And taking that leadership initiative to be inclusive, repetitive. And it sounds like you were saying earlier in the office, you can observe the side conversations, but it's being intentional about having those side conversations or reaching out and such, especially in a leadership role. 

Nancy:
Mm-hmm. 

Lauren:
What about for middle management? Are there things you think middle managers can do? Cause that's such a tough position to be in, right? I mean, you've got one person here reporting to another person here you're trying to port to and you're trying to work on client success. And are there things you see managers can do that do require a little bit more potential hand holding coaching leadership when we're not in that kind of same training realm? 

Nancy:
Mm-hmm. What I see a lot from middle managers is this need to replace whatever dynamic they experienced in person with one-on-ones. So suddenly their schedules get eaten alive by trying to have these personal lengthy meetings with their teams. And I actually think one of the things I try to recommend more often than not is just really opening those conversations up because it gives the air of transparency. It's more opportunity for people to get together in a group setting, whether it be virtual or in person or hybrid and really start to understand how the others think and create more opportunities for collaboration or, I mean, listen, I don't think we're fooling ourselves if I even so much as suggest that business can be democratic. 

Nancy:
But I do think somebody's gotta be responsible. Somebody's gotta be the buck stops here. But I do think really making space to hear how people are working through some of these new challenges, there's a knowledge sharing aspect to those group conversations. There's a collaborative planning aspect. I think there's an opportunity to not be reactive, which is what we've been for the last three years, just reactive. And really start to be proactive and plan for what I believe is inevitable, and that's future disruption. If middle managers use opportunities to be less one to one and more one to many and really open up more space for collaboration and be planful I just think there's huge opportunity for growth in the teams. There's huge opportunity for shifts in the cultural energy. I think people feel more seen and valued. I just think the emotional response to that as an opportunity is tremendous. 

Lauren:
Yeah. Not to mention the buy-in as you were sharing earlier. It's that idea of, well, it goes back to the leadership piece of it too, right? The repetitiveness of it, but then also having people buy into what we're trying to accomplish as a team. So fascinating. Are there tools that you see helping to assist with this? I mean, there's Slack and there's Asana, and there's email and there's all these kinds of things. Is there any technology that you feel helps to either incentivize or helps with communications too? 

Nancy:
Yeah, I mean, let's say there's no shortage of technology right now. I mean, I certainly see there's a tool for everything. In my organization alone, I mean, there must be 10 or 12 platforms that we're reliant on right now from Miro and its virtual post-it notes to Slack, which we can't function without, to Confluence, which is where we share sort of lengthier data and Trello. I think there's tools that are a little more lofty, some sort of design thinking to map out some of the conclusions or the experiments that we agreed to. So I think making sure that everybody's heard and everybody has an opportunity to participate in how we make actual decisions and make actual evolution or innovate, I think some processes are important, whether they're a digital tool and we're doing it asynchronously, or whether it's a process or a methodology or an approach. And we're doing it synchronously. And to be quite honest with you, I am a big fan of the good old-fashioned spontaneous phone call. 

Lauren:
Yes, I know. We need more of that. I feel like it's been a lost art. 

Nancy:
We do. Yeah, we do. I actually beg people sometimes to just pick up the phone. And in my keynotes recently, I've just been saying to people, what's innovative? Getting to talk to a person. Totally innovative. Oh, true. 

Lauren:
Yes. 

Nancy:
Right. And what do we all want? It doesn't matter how comfortable you are with technology, how long you've been using it. We've all had those moments like an airline reservation or something where we hit a digital brick wall and wouldn't it be nice to just talk to somebody? I think that shows in most contexts, and especially as we're exploring how to improve our cultures and adapt to what's in front of us. 

Lauren:
Oh my, this is so true. It's easy to hide behind that technology wall. So just that extra little effort to pick up the phone can feel like a big leap perhaps. Okay. So we've talked about internal communications, right? C-suite, middle management, things we can do there, technology for implementation. What about even before the hire or putting out that energy about what it's like as a culture, as a company culture, before someone would be hired to be able to really to attract the right talent to join the team. What kind of conversations are you having around that? 

Nancy:
Yeah. I think they're multi-layered. I'm a big believer that your values have to be true or real and not aspirational or marketing speak. The expectation is that any recruitment effort would lead with values so people see themselves in those values. I ask a lot of audiences when I'm talking to them, like how many of you know your organizational values? And it is always shocking to me how few people do. So leading with values is of critical importance I think. I'm also a big believer in peer-based hiring because I think it gives people a real glimpse in. We have a panel of their peers in the discipline, outside of the discipline, and then there's a leadership conversation. And I think it gives people a view into how we work, how we respect each other, how we give each other space, what we value as individuals and how that is valued by the broader team. And so I do think that a process that's fair, that's not too lengthy but is substantive, feels like there's been an investment on both sides and includes an actual view into the humans you would work with, whether it's the team, the department, the division, what have you. But again, the values play a giant role in hiring strategy, and I think most organizations forget that. 

Lauren:
That's so true. And it's gotta be intrinsic. So like you said, this authentic piece of it, what about just putting my marketing hat on, cause I know we're having these conversations about communicating culture and reinforcing culture, at least on social media. I've seen, especially with bigger organizations, that for part of the onboarding process, there's sometimes even a culture handbook or culture training video or something that's entertaining but it's kind of an introduction to things that make the company unique. Are you seeing that kind of thing? Or is that more you feel like a new hire will just kind of go through a 90-day cycle and start to feel and live and breathe it? Or what are you seeing companies do as they're introducing the company culture so it can be lived out and carried on? 

Nancy:
Yeah, I think it's all of the above. I think there are folks who have such a hands-on onboarding process that I think the hope is that real relationships will develop in those first 90 days. I know for us, we always send a welcome package to the new person's home before they start. What is also really interesting, and I'm only saying this for the first time now, is that it’s an organic social media opportunity because almost everybody takes a picture of it and puts it someplace. It's just got like a hoodie and a notebook and their laptop and a glass with some swag so it's not anything enormous but there's some stickers, nothing extravagant but they immediately get a sense of sometimes the playfulness of the organization. 

Nancy:
Sometimes I talk about having a culture of care, and they sense that pretty immediately. I absolutely think that oftentimes when we think about it, like, what can we do that's entertaining, that gives people a sense of the voice and the tone, we're trying too hard. And I also think we overinvest in those moments and production values; it's sort of like social media. You can invest a lot in a video and it's not gonna have any more impact than the actual experience or a raw moment or a candid shot. So for us I would say it's different every time except for that welcome package. 

Lauren:
That's fair. That's absolutely fair. I know we tell that to folks too. Cause it's like, do we need to do a full production? I'm like, there is a place for that, but there is also a huge place for authenticity and the non-perfect sort of look and feel of everything. So it's a balance. 

Nancy:
Absolutely. 

Lauren:
Well, we are about at time here. Any other thoughts? I know you've got a book and other resources, places that you think might be interesting for folks to learn more about your work or other just helpful sources of information around company culture. 

Nancy:
I do have a book. If you don't mind, I'll plug it real quick. 

Lauren:
Let's talk about it. We’ll put up a link there. 

Nancy:
Okay. Work Like A Boss is an interesting book because it's not written for leadership. I think every business book you read is written for managers, leaders, what have you, right? Work Like A Boss is written for everybody else. And it's really reminding people that they have agency and that the secret to a healthy work culture is approaching work without judgment of other people. We have this tendency to wanna be comfortable, and the way in which we are most comfortable is by really only accepting or being open to people around us that are like us. Because the more similar you are to me, the less tension that creates, the more comfortable I am. And this book actually opens up the idea that we have power to shift how work feels. And culture is really that thing. It's not the gimmicks, it's not the perks. 

Nancy:
We mix up things like free lunches and sodas with perks. And it really is that palpable energy. You know it when you feel it and it suggests safety and it suggests openness and some amount of purpose. We create it for each other. And one person can change, can make or break an entire work experience. And in this book, I talk about how fear plays into why we act the way we do at work sometimes and how kindness is super easy and it's very different from nice. And how all of this begins with owning your own baggage. Like really recognizing sometimes I'm passive aggressive and this is what I can do to change that. Because it doesn't make other people feel good. So the book has a little bit of tough love in it. 

Nancy:
It's a super accessible book. It's kind of fun to read. And I think that it's eye-opening because we have all been trained in the ways of work. I also call that the cult of work. And right now, the situation with COVID forced us to react differently, to respond differently. And it continues to sort of call on us to show up differently. It's not just virtual or physical. There's a lot of nuance to it. And each one of us has a responsibility to show up strong and creatively for it. 

Lauren:
So true. So well said too. So I'm assuming it's on Amazon.

Nancy:
Any place you would buy your book, all you have to do is check it out. It's there. 

Lauren:
I've added it to my reading list here. 

Nancy:
Excellent. 

Lauren:
Thank you. I feel like we could just keep this going. We could go for a lot longer. I just really enjoy hearing about different approaches to work and culture and onboarding and authenticity and leadership training, all kinds of pieces. So I also really loved to hear a little bit about the book. And it's not just about, like you said, leadership, C-suite or management or what have you, but it's this intrinsic idea of empowerment across the board.

Lauren:
Well, thank you again for your time and for sharing a little bit more about what you do and bring to the table. I'm excited for others to hear more and get that book.

Nancy:
Thanks a lot. It was a great conversation. I appreciate you having me.

We talked with Julie about:

• How to build client engagement by getting into the client’s headspace
• Why it’s important to have a niche that is authentic to you
• How generational differences affect client experience

About Julie Littlechild:

Twice named among the 25 Most Influential People in Financial Planning, past member of the National Board of Financial Planners, and author, Julie Littlechild believes growing client engagement requires advisors to deliver not only what clients expect but what they need. She discusses how shifting conversations to truly understand each client’s headspace creates a personalized, high-impact service.

Featured Resources 

• Julie Littlechild’s LinkedIn
• Absolute Engagement LinkedIn
• Absolute Engagement Website

Full Audio Transcript

Lauren Hong (00:00):

Thank you so much for joining us today. I was just reviewing your LinkedIn and all the things you've been involved with and it's so impressive. So you were on the National Board of Financial Planners for several years and then one of the 25 Most Influential People in Financial Planning. I think it was twice. Is that right? 

Julie (00:22):

Yeah, I think so. 

Lauren (00:24):

And the list keeps going, influential practice management awards and then an author and I'm thinking, oh my goodness, you've had such an incredible career that has not only been recognized but you’ve been able to add so much to this space and what's going on. And so I really appreciate your time and I'm excited to hear from you today. 

Julie (00:45):

It's all right. I think if you just stick around long enough, people have to acknowledge you for something. <laugh> That's been my strategy all along. 

Lauren (00:52):

<laugh> Well, it's working and I love to see great work acknowledged; it is so important. So I wanted to give a brief introduction just for folks who are listening. So it seems like the sweet spot here, a lot of it is around practice management and all kinds of research. And I'd love to hear more about that. We'll start there. I know you've looked a lot into client engagement. You've talked with tons of advisors and firms about kind of their secret sauce and what works really, really well for them. And what's kind of the umbrella? What are you seeing with firms over the years and growth and what works? 

Julie (01:34):

Yeah, so our focus is very much in that spot of client experience and client engagement. And you're right, we gather our insights, not just from talking to advisors of course, which we do every day, but from an industry investor study we do every year, and then our day-to-day work, which is gathering input on behalf of advisors from their clients. So every day we're given this glimpse into that particular piece of it. And you know, the whole concept of engagement has changed a little over the years. And we're really on a soapbox at the moment because I feel like we've been using this word, client engagement, for so long that it hasn't had much meaning for people frankly. Everybody has their own definition of what engagement is. And so they're right. 

Julie (02:34):

I guess if there's no agreement on a definition. So a lot of the work we've been doing lately, just to kind of give you a little context for that question, is to say, well, what is the definition of engagement? Can we actually have a clear definition? Is it defensible, as in does it actually lead to business outcomes that we're trying to achieve, in client outcomes? And then is it actionable? So when we've been looking at the research over the last year, that's really where we've started digging in and we've been able to really demonstrate that yes, there's a definition. The definition we use as an engaged client is the most satisfied, five outta five, and they've provided a referral. And then when we dug into that, we could see that they were more loyal, they provided all the referrals, they were more satisfied with investment performance as in like the flip side being they felt like they were getting more value from advice and clients were more confident about their financial futures when they were engaged. 

Julie (03:40):

So all of this began to get us saying, let's get really specific about what drives engagement so we can be more tactical about it. And we absolutely see some correlations in terms of what drives it. But a lot of it for us is sort of boiling it down to this idea that we can all deliver great service, understand expectations, meet or exceed them, you're good to go—but if you really wanna engage at that deeper level and achieve all of those benefits we talked about, then it's much more about leadership. It's about the conversations you're having with your clients, the kind of communications you're sharing, and the extent to which the entire experience is designed, intentionally designed, to help them based on what's important to them. And so this is what we're sort of seeing. It's kind of big picture questions but then we try to drive down to what does that actually mean, tactically mean? 

Lauren (04:44):

And what's important to them, specifically meaning the client, not necessarily the employee that's servicing the client. Can you maybe give some examples of the tactics? And you talked about leadership. Are there things you're seeing firms doing? Is it the kind of value sets in how they're communicating or are there specific technologies they're deploying or things that are helping with that client experience, however we're defining it? But really client experience as it does map to ROI. I’d love to hear a little bit of that side, of the tactical implementation. 

Julie (05:24):

Yeah, sure. So when we think about it tactically in that sense, there's definitely examples and you mentioned technology because I think technology is allowing us to do a lot of this more effectively now. So that's certainly a big help. But I would give examples like, if you wanna deliver good service, you understand your client wants to meet twice a year and you reach out twice a year and you set a meeting and you have a good review, and you look at their plan or portfolio and you follow up and you do all of the things they expect you to do; that's good service. It's what they expect. When we're seeing the shift to engagement, it's advisors saying, I'm gonna do all of that but what I'm going to do is try to co-create the agenda by getting incredibly good at teasing out what's on your mind, how you're feeling, your concerns, challenges, and aspirations. 

Julie (06:21):

And then we're gonna build the agenda around what you wanna talk about, not just what I wanna tell you. And so these are kind of subtle shifts. That's one example. And the theme of co-creation is sort of big in our world. Maybe a more granular example would be, we could have an advisor who has a great content strategy, right? Sending out great articles, writing blogs, doing all of that, in touch regularly. But maybe it's more generic content. Maybe it's content the advisor thinks the client should find of interest. And then the shift we're seeing is actually asking clients what they are concerned about, what their interests are, and then being able to personalize the content that is shared based on that. So it's like tweaking how we service in a way that's much more client-centric. 

Lauren (07:16):

Yeah. Less about sort of your own headspace and more about how do you get in the headspace of your client. 

Julie (07:22):

Exactly. 

Lauren (07:24):

Basically serving up things of value for them. We see that all the time too. Especially content brainstorms, things that we may be passionate about but that doesn't mean the receiving party is. 

Julie (07:38):

Well, and I think we have to be careful even in how we ask the question, cuz I've seen people talk about that and then maybe they get a little better and say, well, you know, I'm gonna think about the last questions my clients asked, that would be good content. Which is true. I think, if these are the questions you're hearing but often the questions you're getting from clients are still quite investment-focused or planning-focused. They're very granular and tactical and that's great. It's never gonna hurt, right? But if you could almost look inside your client's head and understand what was stressing them out and what they were worried about and what they were talking to their spouse about that night or the night before, and provide content that got at that stuff, that's a whole different level. 

Lauren (08:24):

Yep. I absolutely respect that. Easier said than done. 

Julie (08:29):

Of course <laugh> there are ways to do it, but easier said than done for sure. 

Lauren (08:32):

Absolutely. We talked a little bit about client engagement, leadership serving the clients, but then there’s the team, right? Cuz it can't just be a solo advisor who’s spearheading; it's gotta be the team. Are there certain things you're seeing that help create that communication and cohesion within the team to be able to have leadership at various levels besides just holding that to one person to help and not just be the rainmaker, just the CEO, but really bringing out that culture. I'd love to hear if you're seeing ways that's carried out through training or what have you. 

Julie (09:10):

Yeah. I mean, to me, this is a big question. It's an important question because when that kind of culture is infused all the way through and it's being reflected in every part of the business, that's pretty powerful. And I think some of the challenges we see are helping the team understand how their role connects to this idea of leadership, right? Because it's one thing, as you say, to sit down and say, well, I'm meeting with a client, we're talking about their life. The leadership opportunities might be a bit more obvious than the receptionist or if it's a paraplanner or somebody who's in the background. And one of the best ways I've seen is simply helping the entire team formally invite input from clients. 

Julie (10:04):

Sharing that with the whole team. So if clients feel concerned about their children's future right now, how could we each lean into that? How can the marketing team find content on that? How can the receptionist find an opportunity to maybe chat about the kids when they come in? How can we ensure we build that into the plans? Right? It's almost like taking the key challenges and concerns and then looking at how that might filter throughout the entire organization. That takes intention and it takes focus. It's not just gonna happen but I think it's a powerful exercise. 

Lauren (10:46):

Absolutely. Oh, I love that example. You can see how it can transcend. It really bleeds into all different parts of the organization too. 

Lauren (10:56):

Shifting gears a little bit, obviously it's been a kind of crazy few years with COVID. It's been stressful, it's been chronically stressful, with so many political and cultural things, all kinds of things going on. So, the markets, etc. How is that or has it impacted the clients you're working with? And has it changed really the definition for client engagement or just really shifted at all what folks are doing?

Julie (11:31):

It has, I think significantly, and I would argue that there's always some formance of uncertainty in our lives. It's always impacting clients and what they're worried about. It might not be a global pandemic, but it could be a family health scare, right? Sometimes it has the same impact, just at a very different level. So I think a lot of these concerns have been there but the pandemic and all of the other uncertainty you point to has really put a spotlight on how clients are feeling. So we've been thinking a lot lately about how client mindset actually impacts the experience or should impact the experience. And even in the research, when we went out this year, we were very focused on not just what they expect but what they need. 

Julie (12:29):

And that took us down the path of asking them about client self-confidence, which is a sort of index we track, the impact of uncertainty on their lives, the concerns they have right now and how they're experiencing stress in their lives right now. And it's probably not any surprise that it was pretty significant <laugh> and even to this year, right? It's not as if it's gone back to where we were, right? And so I think for those advisors who have leaned into this idea of mindset may influence experience, it might not impact how often I wanna meet, but it's going to impact what I wanna talk about when we meet. It might not impact my expectations of the material you send me, but I'm gonna be much more impacted if you can send me the right stuff, right? 

Julie (13:27):

So it's been a fascinating ride for me looking at this data because the other thing I'm very aware of as you look at it is that how I'm feeling can influence my relationship. So for clients who are less confident in their financial futures, satisfaction tends to be low, loyalty tends to be lower, all those metrics. So there's like this positive or negative halo effect on the advisory relationship. And that to me is an opportunity, right? For advisors to really lean into, understand, not just say how are you doing but to tease that apart, understand how clients are feeling and have those different conversations. Cuz we're seeing the impact just all over the place right now. 

Lauren (14:17):

Yeah. I love actually to hear about shifting the conversation too. You gave the example of how are you doing or other ways to be able to say how are we doing for you? How can we support you? Those kinds of things. Are there further examples of personalization that help to kind of carry through what you're seeing in those emotions, either that the individual's carrying out or that you're seeing globally or through the data that you can be more aware of that relationship to create more personalization? 

Julie (14:55):

I think one of the things that almost gets in our way with this issue is that I think as human beings we're not particularly good at articulating how we feel, right? I mean, it's not always the problem of the advisor. Sometimes they're trying to do all the right things, trying to understand how clients are feeling, but you know, if you asked me if I sat down with my business, how are things going? I'd say, yeah, they're good, you know, it's good. The kids are good, everybody's like we're not dealing with any major crises but it wouldn't take them scratching too far below the surface to understand, I've got a 13-year-old son and a 90-year-old mother and this and that, and all of this impacts my ability to hear advice, to take action, to think reasonably in a way. So I say all that because I think we have to be very clever about the kinds of questions we ask. So if it's just tell me how you're doing, you might get a good, fine. But if we can ask even things like can you rate your level of concern on the following things right now, I'm gonna give you a one to five, that's easier than sitting down and seeing if there’s anything you're concerned about, right? 

Julie (16:13):

So if we can tease those out, learn if the plan reflects what's most important to you right now? These are the kinds of questions that are preludes, I guess, to deeper conversations. 

Lauren (16:28):

I love that too because it all maps up to what we started the conversation with, right? Which is around how do we define client engagement and how is that directly related to ROI and what are ways we can do that subtly, either individually or through technology and such. So I have a few more questions for you here. I know we're covering a lot of different things but they’re all related. So in marketing, of course, we talk a lot about really finding your niche, right? And I'd imagine if you're looking at a firm at large being more personal if you know a particular niche, if you're working with Gen X or whoever it might be, right, you can create an experience for that audience. I'd love to hear a little bit more about that. Do you see a lot of firms really going after niches? Or is there a way that folks can choose a niche to be just more authentic or really to help support with client engagement being the end goal, right? Cause that impacts retention, that impacts the bottom line. 

Julie (17:43):

Yeah. I mean, you've hit on so many of the issues cause I know you see this I'm sure as well, but one thing for clarity is I absolutely believe that this is a critical part of engagement. That to deeply engage we need some focus. Otherwise, diffusion is the enemy of engagement if we're just trying to be all things to all people. I think you can deliver good service to a lot of different kinds of clients. I don't think that's a problem at all. But if it comes to engagement and leadership and some of these other issues, you've gotta go a lot deeper. So that's my bias <laugh> here. I would also say this is probably one of the hardest things for advisors to do. 

Julie (18:36):

So you see that too. It's when we talk, everybody nods and says, I get it, I get it, I get it. And then a fear of some sort takes over. It's like, what if somebody walks away? Or what if my clients think I'm not focusing on them? Or what if and what if and what if? And I get that too. But if I set that aside for the moment, <laugh> I do believe if we can really sit back and say, what if every minute of every day our team was focused on the needs, goals, and aspirations of a defined group, wouldn't we come up with some really cool ideas and ways to support them? And couldn't we build the entire business around that from the form of our communication to the frequency of our contact, to the content, to the digital presence, to all of that? 

Julie (19:40):

I mean, that becomes such a powerful attractor. One of the battles I guess that we see is partly in definition so I'm certainly a believer that there's a difference between a target audience and an ideal client. So I could say I'm targeting business owners doesn't mean I target every business owner. My ideal might be a certain net worth or an investment philosophy or something. But I think we conflate those two things so much and as a result, we get a lot of people saying, yeah, I have a niche and it's clients with a million dollars or more, which we all know is not a niche, it's just a wealth. That's an ideal client and that's fine to have a target. So all of that makes it harder. 

Julie (20:36):

So I think there's some work to be done. It's like, why am I there? Who truly energizes me? Who do I wanna work with? Who do I wanna support? Who do I wanna build this business to support? What's gonna get me bouncing out of bed every day? Cause I just either love to work with these clients or do this work. I think specialization can be an itch as well. I mean there's challenges but we've seen it work more times than we can imagine. 

Lauren (21:05):

And to circle back, at least from what I've seen it take, it really does take leadership to be able to make those play calls and champion behind them and put resources behind them but when it happens, it can be very powerful. 

Julie (21:18):

Yeah. One of the things we've been talking about is to use the word authenticity earlier. We talked to advisors a lot about this idea of what we call the authenticity test. The idea is first of all, that whomever you're focused on has to be authentic to you. Right? So if I say the words, I'm targeting clients with a million dollars in investable assets and more, does that truly resonate for me? Is that inspiring to me at some level? And then if I flip that around, if that was the welcome sign on my door, <laugh> would clients go, oh my gosh, they understand me? And of course they wouldn't in that case. But I think as soon as it's authentic to you, if you can understand why you wanna target a certain group, usually that's the answer. 

Julie (22:15):

Maybe it's even if you picked a group like pre-retirees, which some people do and we kinda laugh cause it's so big. But I actually believe if you did it well, like they have a set of needs, they have certain concerns, there are demographic issues, there's a lot that you could pick up and if that's what compelled you, helping people through that phase of complexity and anxiety for some in their lives all of a sudden, that's very compelling. That can be the sign on your door. 

Lauren (22:48):

That’s so well said. It gets me excited <laugh> but you're right. Because it's coming from a place of authenticity, which fuels passion. And so it's all interconnected. 

Julie (23:06):

Yeah. 

Lauren (23:08):

Okay. One last question—we're about at our time here—but one last question just for folks to get a look ahead. I know you're doing research and you've got your finger on the pulse on a lot of different topics. Anything you’d like to share related to that? Just kind of look ahead or trends that you're seeing? 

Julie (23:34):

Yeah, for sure. We do this every year because we can see trends and doing it over the last few years has been a real gift because it's given us this look into mindset. I guess the one thing I've noticed that I might mention as a way to think about change in future is that a lot of the change we saw in the last few years has been to do with the pandemic, right? So obvious things like we shifted in terms of how we meet with people, all of those kinds of obvious things have changed at the same time. And maybe we weren't noticing because the pandemic was so all-consuming that the demographic shifts were having the same impact, so younger clients under 45 wanna meet more often, want virtual, tend to use social media, and these trends aren't going away. 

Julie (24:34):

Right, <laugh> even if you believed we'd go back to how some people felt pre-COVID, which I would argue is not happening either. We've got these demographic shifts and some of the most significant differences we see are based on age. If it's younger, it's about expectations. But if it's older it's actually about concerns and challenges and mindsets. So I think we need to lean into demographics and think about if and how that means we need to segment our experience a little differently going forward. Because it's very clear we're not going back to the way it was. 

Lauren (25:13):

That’s so interesting. It makes me wanna dig into the research and hear more of what's going on. 

Julie (25:18):

<laugh> 

Lauren (25:20):

Well goodness, thank you so much for your time and for all the work you do. And it's really fascinating to hear not only what's happening today with the pandemic and what you're seeing but also just that bird's-eye view of what you've seen over the years and what works and what doesn't. So I appreciate your time. 

Julie (25:40):

Well thank you. Appreciate it.

‍
We talked with Stephanie about:

• Spearheading the advancement of women in the financial services industry by partnering with Females and Finance Career Center
• How career path priorities for financial services employees have shifted toward flexibility and increased pay
• Attracting and capturing talent through an expedited hiring process

About Stephanie Roberts:

Owner of Humans Being Resources, a “full-life cycle recruitment” firm with a specialization in finding professional talent for the financial services industry, Stephanie Roberts has firsthand insight on how companies can elevate their employee searches to engage top talent in today’s market. With over 12 years of experience in recruiting, she helps companies modernize their hiring process. Stephanie’s work with the F&F Career Center has helped expand opportunities for women in the finance industry.

Featured Resources 

• Stephanie’s LinkedIn
• Humans Being Resources
• Humans Being Resources LinkedIn page 
• F&F Career Center
• Females and Finance
• Females and Finance LinkedIn page

Full Audio Transcript

Lauren Hong (00:02):

All right. Well, Stephanie, we are so excited to have you on the show today. I have been following a little bit about what you've been doing with the Females and Finance group, and I've been enjoying looking at your website but I don't want to steal your thunder. So why don't you, if you don't mind, just share a little bit about your background, your company, and the kind of work you do—just to set the stage here before we get into a little bit more of the nitty gritty of this engagement with Females and Finance. 

Stephanie Roberts (00:32):

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I appreciate you having me today. As you indicated, I'm Stephanie. I'm one of the owners of Humans Being Resources, a recruiting firm that specializes in the financial services industry—financial services meaning also insurance and banking as well. It’s honestly kind of a funny story how I got into it, but I like to give a lot of credit to my mom, because she is a human resource director, so I kind of grew up in that environment. However, I honestly started my college career going into fashion merchandising. So I always thought I was really thrilled with fashion and wanted to own some stores. I actually owned a couple boutiques in my previous life and then got into staffing, worked at a temp agency for a little bit, and then went into more of the financial services side with a large FMO. And then, just kind of having that entrepreneurial spirit, my husband and I put our heads together and started HBR based on his background in operational <inaudible> and my experience in recruiting within financial services. So we created our model and have been here for a little over six years now. 

Lauren (02:01):

Wow. Well, just with our clients, I know it's a challenge. We all constantly hear it's a challenge to find top talent. There's an alignment of values and expertise, investment, philosophy, just depending on the type of business. So why finance? Is it just because of that background or seeing the need. I'd love to hear a little bit more. 

Stephanie (02:25):

Yeah, so I would say a lot of it started just from the relationships I had already built and just kind of my knowledge within this sector. When we first started, we didn't really niche ourselves in financial services. However, that is where the majority of our business was coming from. I'm sure you're familiar with financial firms and financial advisors—they don't go into business to be a recruiter or a hiring manager. They're great at the financial advice side of it. So as we expanded, we were just really seeing that there was this big need within financial services. So then we finally decided, let's just drill down and say this is our niche and this is what we specialize in and that's what we're gonna do. And that's exactly what we do. So we've kind of just kept it that way. And we work all across the United States with various firms. 

Lauren (03:27):

And what kind of placements are you typically? Are they senior level? Are they partners? Are they more operation support? And are there trends you're seeing? 

Stephanie (03:40):

Yeah. So we do all positions up to a financial advisor with a transferable book. So we'll do a receptionist, we do marketing, client service. They can be licensed, unlicensed, para planners, portfolio managers. So really huge variety, up until we get the call that they want an advisor with a book. That's when I have some good partnerships that I'll refer that business out to other firms. That's kind of where we draw the line, but we get a lot of calls for junior advisors right now. So maybe they're looking for someone who has two, three years of industry experience and they're licensed. They don't need to bring a book over but being in that advisor capacity is the role that individual would take. 

Lauren (04:30):

That's fair. It's a different kind of engagement when you're at that relationship if you're looking to roll over a book. So if I can just shift gears a little bit here. I'd love to hear more about the Females and Finance career center partnership you've established. I thought that was really intriguing, an interesting hub. How did that all come about? I mean, obviously you've got this dynamic background with what you're doing and there's an alignment of a shared vision or audience per se, but tell us a little bit more about how that partnership and that platform came about. 

Stephanie (05:01):

Yeah, so I have to give credit to one of our repeat clients who we've built a really good relationship with out in Georgia. She referred me to Cheryl, and Cheryl as many people know is just a fabulous connector, very involved in this industry and definitely someone you want to know and really build that relationship with. So Meredith had made that introduction and Cheryl and I actually had several conversations prior to the career page actually being launched. So she has these great big visions and she had this vision to get this page going and asked if we would be interested in being kind of the sponsor and kind of head that page. And we said absolutely. Because it obviously goes very well with what we do. So that's been launched for probably a few months now, maybe three. 

Lauren (06:01):

My gosh, is that just a few months? 

Stephanie (06:02):

Yeah. So that page is fairly new but we're excited. It's definitely taken off and she's done a great job of promoting it. 

Lauren (06:14):

And how are you sourcing the opportunities and managing it? And I mean, even the platform that was chosen, how did you sort of get from concept to launch? What happened in that in- between phase? 

Stephanie (06:28):

So that all goes to Cheryl, with the mastery skills she has. She is the one who put it all together and it's a good opportunity for HBR to be exposed to some other positions that might be out there. And if one of her members needs assistance in just not having a good process to follow, we're there to lean on and to help. So she really manages that page and does it very well. 

Lauren (07:03):

Okay. So then she's really managing it, setting up the software, all of that. And you're acting as that sponsor to then help to further support with the actual platform. And are you sending potential candidates there or what kind of relationship do you have with supporting that in your sponsorship engagement? 

Stephanie (07:24):

Yeah, it's a good resource for potential candidates but it's also a good resource for clients or members of the organization. If they have an open position, like I said, they're more than welcome to engage with us and our services if they don't want to go through that process themselves, or it is even available for a member to just post their position out on her site. And then, between her and I and other members, we do a lot of promotion and marketing of that page and really promoting those open jobs. So it's always being updated. I constantly update her on new jobs we're working on. And with members who want to work on it, maybe putting jobs out there. So it's good for candidates, but also for members and clients. 

Lauren (08:21):

Okay. Yeah, that's fair. I think it's a pretty dynamic platform and it feels like it fits a real pain point right now. Are there other platforms? I haven't seen anything quite like that. I think FPA has some options, if I remember correctly, and other groups, but not quite like this or more all encompassing sort of broader financial services. 

Stephanie (08:43):

Yeah, one of the things I really like about Cheryl and Females and Finance is how much she does to really promote it and market it, and I think she's grown to well over 3,000 members now. 

Lauren (09:00):

Great. It's amazing. Yeah.

Stephanie (09:03):

She definitely wants to make an impact in this industry and really just kind of change it and bring a lot more workforce into the industry as well. She's doing a great job, so we're excited about it because the idea is to really try to expand and get more individuals into this industry. 

Lauren (09:26):

Yep. That's fair. To take a step back and transition a little bit. I’d love just to hear what you're seeing in the industry, in this industry at large. It's a different market we're in right now, you know? COVID, post-COVID, all sort of gray, right? And work from home, and the challenge of finding top talent and all sorts of things. Are you seeing that in this industry? What sort of trends are you hearing or how are you helping, frankly, companies stand out to really find that right fit? I'd love just to hear more about the pulse you all have on the market or the industry at large. 

Stephanie (10:06):

Yeah, you're right. It is very tough. The past couple years, the market has definitely shifted and changed. I feel a lot of candidates put priority over certain things that maybe they wouldn't have in the past. So while pay definitely is still important, there's still a high importance for candidates to have good balance. And so that remote option or hybrid, that's a big one right now we're hearing a lot. And you do still get firms that are insistent and know they want them in the office. So it definitely shrinks your pool of candidates when you're not willing to offer that flexibility of hybrid or remote. So I do feel that since COVID it's made remote more desirable for, for many reasons. And then like I said, going back to pay and there's just so many jobs open right now. 

Stephanie (11:06):

This is where I really explain to clients that it is important to use a resource like us to really do all the work for you because it can be very time-consuming when you're trying to do all the recruiting and sourcing. Anybody can post a job on a job board right now but more than likely it will be lost because there's so many jobs posted on these job boards. So we definitely use job boards, but where we find a lot of our success is through our recruiting and the sourcing and just cold reaching to candidates. So what else? I think you asked me a few questions. 

Lauren (11:47):

Not really. Just those trends you're seeing and the industry at large. So that's helpful though, just to hear a little bit more about what you're seeing on the employer side. Anything you're hearing on the employee side, or things employees should keep in mind in this job market too? 

Stephanie (12:06):

Yeah. So as far as the employee side, we typically do work more from the client side. So when the client has the need, they reach out to us and then we start that process. Through my networking and the different relationships I have, individuals reaching out, I do get a lot of great experienced candidates who are ready to leave their firm. And oftentimes they're ready to leave because of either the lack of flexibility or their pay. Some companies have not adapted to the new environment we're in and needing to increase their current employees’ pay. So we have seen a lot of employees leaving for better pay, but also the better flexibility and just overall opportunity. A lot of individuals want a career path. 

Lauren (13:01):

That's fair. Yep. And along that kind of vein, I always have like the marketing lens on, right? We talk with a number of companies about how to promote what your company's like from a value standpoint, and it could be awards like best places to work or just company happenings, if there's fun events or just more showing off that company culture. Do you have any tips for employers about ways they can help an employee get to know who they are, either through their interviewing process or even just before they were to engage with the company, to really help warm up that prospect or even for them to self-qualify if they're a good fit? 

Stephanie (13:47):

Yeah, so as part of our process, once a client engages with us, we schedule what we call a client intake call. And that's where I really go deeper with the client in regards to the position, but also their firm and their culture. So I really want to learn as much as possible about their culture and just the overall opportunity they have for their candidates. And we really use that information as we're engaging with those candidates. But of course, like you said, then it does fall on the client once they get that candidate in front of them to really sell their firm and why someone should work for them. 

Lauren (14:30):

Yeah, that's fair. Are there any things you're recommending, like if they've got a top candidate, they talk with other employees within the company? Or even like sort of onboarding processes? Or are those things that your team doesn't touch? Just curious. 

Stephanie (14:51):

So we don't get too involved in those types of conversations. We'll give a little advice through my conversations with candidates, learning what are some important things to them as they're looking at new opportunities. So I share that with the clients. Training definitely is one of them. But I think that's a great idea that they meet with some of the other team members. We have some clients who will maybe do dual interviews. So it'll be the advisor and then somebody else in the interview as well. The thing is, they just want to keep in mind to not drag that interview process out too far. Because especially in today's market, candidates go very fast. So if they're going through multiple interviews, you're gonna lose them. They're probably going to go down the street to your competitor. 

Lauren (15:49):

Out of curiosity, I'm sure it changes by the kind of role, but I'd just be curious if there's an average for where timing typically falls. Or even an average for more of like a partner or a more senior hire. I'd be curious to know the length of time. 

Stephanie (16:10):

So we tell our clients on average eight to 10 weeks. But like you said, there's so much that goes into that, so it's kind of hard to really drill it down exactly because location's going to be one, what they're offering, their overall offering the salary, and just kind of how they compare with their competition in the market so that really can vary. But we do tell them eight to 10 weeks. 

Lauren (16:35):

Okay. That's fair. And then any tough conversations or things behind the scenes that you think even before you get going that you're having with your clients? Maybe job descriptions, if you've seen more unicorn job descriptions or other things like that. I'd just be curious about things that might help employers as they're thinking about who to hire and how to put this together and all of that. So what do you wish they would've done? 

Stephanie (17:07):

Oh, that's a great question. There's definitely a lot that comes to my mind. So we do help them with the job posting; we create the job posting based on the information they give us. So one thing we have found is that advisors or firms have different titles for basically the same position. So we really give our advice based on our experience and what title works once we post that position. So they all kind of like to name it different things, but it's all essentially the same. So that's one of them. I would say the toughest conversation really is salary. And really just educating them on what the market is like today, that we are not in the same way we were in three, four years ago. 

Stephanie (17:58):

Pay has changed a lot and if you want to attract top talent, you really have to make sure you're in line. And again, that's part of our process too. We do research based on their area and these certifications they're looking for and their minimum requirements, and we'll provide them with what our recommendation is. And then timing is a big one, really making sure they engage with us, they are committed to the hiring process. So really setting time aside to put those candidates through an interview and ready to offer when the time comes. So those are kind of the top ones, I would say, but we really try to keep them as involved and try to take as much off their plate as possible when they go through our process. 

Lauren (18:53):

Yeah, That's fair. That makes sense. And I would assume not only routine timing can be involved, but then you think about the holidays and all these other things that come into play, right? That just can throw a cycle off. So very good. Well, any other closing thoughts before we wrap things up here? It's been so fun to hear about your role and relationship with the Females and Finance group and all of that.

Stephanie (19:19):

I don't have too much else to add other than we're here to help. Again, like I said, we want to just save clients time, let them focus on what they're good at and then outsource the other parts of it. It's what we specialize in. We're a recruiting firm, so we know where to find good talent and really will help kind of get them through that process. 

Lauren (19:48):

Well that makes so much sense. Easier said than done, right? It's all about the people, right? So having a good team is just absolutely what it's all about. So thank you so much, Stephanie, for your time. Really appreciate you sharing more about not only your day to day, but the relationships and also how you're giving back to the community as well. And really I think helping to support and create a platform to help recruit talent and share opportunities. So thank you again.

Stephanie (20:25):

Thank you.

Johanna has always been a people person with a passion for building relationships and helping others achieve their goals. She also thrives and sees abundant opportunities working in ever-evolving environments, making project management and marketing a natural fit for her. Johanna brings her gifts for client care and project organization to Out & About.

A New Day, A New Opportunity

Having moved halfway across the globe at a young age to attend college, Johanna is no stranger to adapting to the world around her, with her path eventually landing her in the field of marketing. While pursuing her bachelor’s degree in communication from San Diego State University, Johanna got her feet wet as an intern helping a local cosmetic company build its online storefront. Later, her passion was cemented working as a marketing assistant at a biotech firm, where she expanded her skills in event coordination, advertising, and market strategy.

In her role, Johanna helps organize the tasks and deadlines that contribute to bringing our ideas to life and producing tangible outcomes for our clients. We’re thrilled to share her talents and ability to find opportunities to be creative and learn with whatever the new day brings with our team. 

What You Can’t Tell Just From Looking at Her

Johanna, who lives in San Diego with her son and husband, grew up in France before moving to the States to pursue college. She’s a photography enthusiast with an eye and heart for capturing priceless family memories in portraits.

We love having Johanna on the team! Learn more about her and the rest of our team on our team page.

We are looking for a Marketing Campaign Manager to join the Out & About team to oversee and support with implementation of organic and paid campaigns. Day-to-day duties include auditing workflows, setting up campaigns, monitoring campaign performance, tracking data, and providing performance recommendations and projects as assigned. This is a part-time, remote, and non-exempt role starting at 20 hours a week. 

To apply, please submit your cover letter, resume and any examples of campaigns you've managed to hello@outandaboutcomm.com.

Does this sound like you?

• You dig data. You love getting into the heart of a campaign. You like to know what makes it tick or why it’s not ticking. Your passion is looking under the hood and seeing why funnels work or aren’t working.
• You are eager to make recommendations or give a presentation. You welcome opportunities to speak to the team and to clients to educate them on the why behind your recommendations. 
• You love explaining the details, but you first start at a high level. You know that the technical side sounds foreign to those not in the SEO/PPC/funnel world. If asked questions on the spot, you love the challenge and the opportunity to explain the why.
• Knowing the latest happenings in the algorithm world keeps you glued to your screen. You love not only being in the know about all of the latest changes, but also how these changes impact your work.
• You love to partner with a team to support the design, oversight, and implementation of marketing campaigns. Once the work is up and running you monitor and poke holes to ensure we are aligned with our KPIs.
• If asked to set up a campaign across different channels, such as Google, LinkedIn, Facebook/Instagram, or retargeting, you can run with the implementation. But you also love tracking, monitoring, and making recommendations including everything from budget spend to in-depth audience targeting.
• You value SEO and the long game. If asked to run keyword reports, audit content, or support with content planning for SEO rich keywords, you are ready to pull and analyze the data.
• You look past the content and keywords, to explore backlinks, metatags, permalink structure, and so much more. If given the opportunity to run with SEO implementation, you take it on and know how to use the appropriate data tools to make it happen.
• It’s not just about individual campaigns, but it’s about UX/UI, design, videos, copy and more. You are eyes wide open and excited to work with a team to enhance campaign engagement on all levels.
• Working with a team of creatives who puts their best foot forward at all times is a dream come true.
• You see the value of a fully integrated campaign. You love the harmony of SEO, paid, brand design, brand voice, content marketing, automation, and more that is all together targeted, focused, and timely.

Educational Level

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience, preferably in Marketing, Communications or relevant field

Related Experience

• At least 5+ years experience in a digital marketing, SEO, or PPC related role
• Hands-on experience with digital marketing campaigns and workflows
• A/B and multivariate experiences
• Optimization of landing pages and user funnels
• Experience in the financial services industry

General/Special Knowledge and Skills

• Demonstrated experience setting up Google, LinkedIn, Facebook/Instagram, and retargeting campaigns
• Deep knowledge of Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Google Tag Manager, and the suite of Google data tools
• Knowledgeable about marketing funnels, automation principles, list purchases, and more
• Experience with collaboration tools like Google Docs, Dropbox, Slack, and Asana Excellent verbal and written communication skills
• Self-starter who sees problems as exciting puzzles to solve
• Ability to get into the weeds, but know when to step back and focus on the big picture
• Staying up-to-date on trends and best practices in digital marketing and analytics
• Deep understanding of digital marketing ecosystem and ability to identify ideal tactics based on client resources and goals
• Excellent analytical, organizational, and project management skills
• Ability to multitask, managing multiple projects and people while leveraging knowledge and experience from project to project
• High attention to detail
• Problem solver who responds quickly and effectively to issues and opportunities while ensuring compliance with brand strategy and guidelines

We talked with Mac about:

• The journey behind his mission for improving financial literacy for kids 
• How he utilized his network to help develop new tools to support his mission 
• What he hopes a financial literacy app can bring to underserved communities

About Mac Gardner:

As a CFP®  professional and founder and CEO (Chief Education Officer) at FinLit Tech, with over 20 years in the industry, Mac Gardner has presented over 4,000 financial plans. It was during this time that he saw the need for more user-friendly financial literacy education. He started by looking for ways to educate adults, but has since pivoted to focusing on promoting financial literacy in children through books and technology.

Featured Resources 

• Mac’s LinkedIn page
• Mac’s Twitter page
• FinLit Tech
• FinLit Tech LinkedIn page
• The Four Money Bears 
• The Four Money Bears Kickstarter
• The Four Money Bears LinkedIn page
• The Four Money Bears Twitter page
• The Four Money Bears YouTube channel
• The Four Money Bears Facebook page
• The Four Money Bears Instagram profile 
• Motivate Your Money!: Plan Spend Save Invest Gift by Mac Gardner 
• The Four Money Bears by Mac Gardner 
• See It Be It Role Model Award by Investment News

Full Audio Transcript

Lauren:
Well, thank you for joining us. I'm really excited to hear from you. I know we were just chatting before, but you've been in the industry for 20 plus years or something you had said. 

Mac:
Yeah, I say 20 plus because you start putting the other one on get so 

Lauren:
Well, what sparked this conversation is this Kickstarter campaign that you've been working on around, you know, financial literacy and this game for kids. I’m excited to get into that. But before we do, which I know is kind of the prerequisite to this Kickstarter campaign is you've been writing books for some time. And I’d love to hear a little bit about that kind of journey and how that got started, and then how that brought you to the campaign that's recently been running. So maybe we start there. 

Mac:
Sounds like a play. Well, first and foremost, thanks for having me. This is a great opportunity to share our story with your viewers. The first book Motivate Your Money, this book I wrote years ago, that's an old picture. I was younger and had more here. I wrote that book when I had my practice in Houston, and I wrote it to really help my clients. I just found it was pretty eye opening. I was working with folks who were multimillionaires, very wealthy, but they really didn't have any financial planning, guidance, you know, foundation. And so, one of the best compliments I've ever received as an advisor is, “Mac, you make this financial planning stuff easy to understand.” I like to share these Mac nuggets, little ways to break down a story or break down the complex things that are going on the financial service industry and make it easy for folks to digest.

Mac:
So that was my first book. And then one of my clients said, “Hey, Mac, love the Mac nuggets, love the first book. Would you be open to creating something for kids?” And so that is how the Full Money Bears book came to be. And so that book, the essence behind it is there's only four things you can do with money, right? Spend it, save it, invest it, and give it away. Kids like bears. So we created these full bear characters: spend a bear, saver bear, vested bear, and give a bear. And they show throughout the book, their pros and cons, each function of money and that when they work together, great things can happen when you form a budget. 

Lauren:
So what kind of, you're able to explain that. So simply, I mean, what was it just through your conversations or for your training or what, what kind of, how were you able to make the complex simple? 

Mac:
So in my first book, I talk about the five steps to financial success and that these are steps of things that people were doing that I had been engaging with. I've been very fortunate. I've provided and presented over 4,000 financial plans in my career. And so I've done a lot of financial plans in financial planning. And with folks that ended up having money to retire or to pass on, they were following these five steps. Step one, plan accordingly. Step two, spend cautiously. Step three, save diligently. step four, invest wisely. And step five, give generously. And so what that really ties into is that, you know, always have a plan. And then those four functions of money. Remember there's only four things you could do with money: spend it, save it,  invest it, give it away. And so the bigger picture behind this four money beers book is the sad fact that financial literacy is not taught in schools. 

Mac:
And so you have parents with young kids that unless they're a CFP or a CPA, or in finance or an advisor, they really don't have that guidance. And so if you never got it, how can you teach your kids about it? Right. And so that's really what we were looking to do with the full money bears is to create a story, which is actually a story of me and my wife, teaching our kids about money that a parent can sit down with their 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 year old kid and say, “Hey, wanna learn about money? They're these four bears.” Yeah, and so that's how it came to be. 

Lauren:
So how was it received? You got the book, put it together, shared it with the world. Sorry, you tested on your kids first. Like, you know what? 

Mac:
Here's the funny part, uh, I wrote the book as a request of a client. Yeah. And took the book. We were living in Houston at the time. Two of my kids' school said, “Hey, you know what, I'd love to be able to read this. The principal's looking at this book.” And she says, “Do you know what you have here? Like a book that helps some kids and parents talk about money.” This is five, six years ago. The state of Texas had released these peaks, these sort of cool curriculums for financial literacy starting in elementary school. And she was like, “Mac, no one has anything like this. This is awesome.” And I was like, “Oh, okay, thanks.” And so that was how the journey started. I sent the book off to 30, 35 state school boards. Wow. The process to get a book into a public school, Lauren, is mind numbingly difficult. 

Lauren:
Oh, I can only imagine. 

Mac:
Yeah. So we tried a lot of different things to get into schools to get different ways. But what we did see was that teachers were using digital solutions, apps, games and so forth to teach their kids. And so that's one of the drivers towards how Finlay Tech started digitizing the book and creating a gamified solution to allow parents, teachers, enterprises to promote financial literacy. 

Lauren:
So was that kind of the turning point where you said, “okay, we've got the printed version. We need to now take this to the next digital level of where kids are at and where education is at.” 

Mac:
It was. So we, everything, both of my books are self published. You know, you can jump on amazon.com. Like you can buy pretty much everything nowadays. 

Lauren:
I know. Yeah. Amazon is a little too easy, right. 

Mac:
It is, but you can buy the book on Amazon, and we are so blessed. And so fortunate Lauren, when I tell you that we have book sales around the world. We sell our book in England, France, Germany, Italy, Canada. Yeah. And what it shows is that financial literacy isn't just a US issue. Right. It's a global concern. There are parents with young kids around the world that want to teach their kids about how to manage money. And so the cool thing about books is that kids are still a demographic that rebook, but they're also early adopters to technology and are also learning through iPads, laptops. 

Lauren:
Yeah. 

Mac:
Phones. Yeah. So that's why we had a lot of responses and a lot of demand and requests to create some sort of digital version of our book. 

Lauren:
So you've got the financial knowledge that you're bringing to the table, a book alone, to be able to publish that, create the visuals. I can't even imagine what it's been like to try to create, you know, this interactive app. How have you built this team? I mean, unless maybe, maybe you've super power skills. I just can't imagine how. Tell us about that. What's been that process to be able to take this vision and then to be able to take that to life in print and digital?

Mac:
So I have been a huge fan and advocate of networking, the power of connecting with people and connecting people. And a few years ago, executives and leadership at EMO got a hold of my book. And they said, “Hey, this Matt Gardner guy is doing some really cool stuff. He's starting a financial literacy conversation, like at age five.” Yeah. That's super cool. And so we worked informally and then last year began working formally in partnership with Finlay Tech. And one of the great connections that I made years ago was a gentleman by the name of Ryan Gallini, who heads up DI games in Austin. And so last year I said, “Ryan, you know, we met four years ago, maybe even more. And we had these great ideas, but you know, the timing wasn't right.” Things were, you know, the COVID and all kinds of wild things happened. 

Mac:
So last year we reached out and I said, “Hey, Ryan, we're ready to do this.” And he said, “Mac, I have been waiting.” He has an extensive background in gaming and has been building some really cool tools. And so I said, “Okay, I've got this idea.” One of the other responses we got from folks with the book is, “Mac, love the fact that you're teaching kids about what to do with money once they get it. You gotta write a book about teaching kids about earning money.”

Lauren:
Yeah. Oh yeah. 

Mac:
And so what we're able to do through this, through the Four Money Bears Berryville, which is the name of the new app. The child or the user learns both sides of the personal finance fence. What we mean by that is you inherit your family's berry farm. So you're running a farm and the farm stand. So it's a farming simulator is really what it is. And then once you earn the money, we'll have quests and quotes and little quizzes in the game to help provide that guidance as to what to do with the money. 

Lauren:
Got it. 

Mac:
And we've developed a new way for teaching financial literacy. We call our TAT method where we teach, analyze, and then track the progress of the user over time to be able to say, “Hey, these are the habits that are forming. These habits become behaviors when these behaviors become traits.” 

Lauren:
Yeah. And the gardening piece is something that everyone can relate to. I think of various ages and it's something easy to talk about and I like this idea of it's relatable. 

Mac:
So then, and it's a game. It's a simplified game, and that's one of the other big issues, Lauren, when it comes to financial literacy that we've seen is so many financial literacy courses are way over the user's head. We want to meet these young people where they are, and kids when they're playing games, they love to play games. And if we're learning and we're teaching them that way and they’re having fun, why not? 

Lauren:
So tell us where you're at with the app process, and you kicked off this Kickstarter, which I think overnight you hit your goal. I mean, it was crazy by the time that I went to check it out, I'm like, oh my gosh, it's already surpassed. But that's a whole other conversation. I'd love to hear just more about the ramp up too for that Kickstarter, but where are you at with it now that you know you're going to get those funds and then is it going to be going into development of building this out and kind of what's the next. What's the red carpet if you were to roll it out for next steps. 

Mac:
Our initial idea behind this app was to put together a demo. So for those of you who are listening and watching, if you go to www.thefourmoneybears.com, you can actually download the demo. So there's a playable demo that's available now. See the bears, meet the bears, see what the users have to do in the game. And when we were looking at different ways to raise funds and raise awareness of our “teach kids money” mission, we like the Kickstarter platform because we can raise funds. But really what allows us to do is to raise awareness of what we're doing as a company and why it's important to get it done. And so we were fortunate in six days, we raised the minimum threshold. We were like, “wow.”

Lauren:
Great. That's something there. 

Mac:
There's definitely something there. But you know the more we raise, the bigger and better we can make the game. Right. And so the next step is to continually develop the game, get that aspect of it built, but what we're finding as we continue to walk down this road and we start engaging with different folks is the use cases of our game are really interesting. So I'll share with you the three that we thought of. And then things got really, really, really, really deep with it. So, the first one was just parents with young kids, right. Hey, you know what? You've got a child, they're wasting too much time on their electronic device. Yep. Play this game and then learn a little bit about money. So that's on. The second channel are teachers. Teachers have come to us and say,” Hey, you know what? We want to teach this stuff to the kids. We know it's important, but there's no like consistent utilization tool that a teacher in Florida versus a teacher in DC versus a teacher in California.” And so we're building a tool that will allow teachers across the country to be able to use that platform, our platform teach, analyze, and track. The third one, which is getting a lot of attention, is from financial institutions. 

Lauren:
Interesting. 

Mac:
Happy to give back. So, let's just say you're a bank. Banks have something called CRA, community reinvestment act groups, wherein they're giving back to the community and they're giving a lot of things back. And so we're talking to a regional bank here in Tampa right now, and they want to utilize our Berryville app to give to children in underserved overlook communities in the Tampa, St. Pete area. To be able to not just teach them financial literacy, but you know, there's a crazy stat that said a child's financial success is almost exclusively determined by the zip code they grow up in. 

Lauren:
Wow. 

Mac:
So imagine being able to drop a game into a community, into a zip code, and then all of a sudden to change the conversations that are being had in that household. Yeah. The ramifications that can happen for that child, for that family, that community, just to talk about investing, talk about giving and all these different things. So, it's phenomenal some of the things that we're seeing ahead of us right now, and different applications. 

Lauren:
That's amazing. It gives me goosebumps here and you talk about it cause it's the power of mass, right. Being able to reach other people and to be able to make an impact across generations. 

Mac:
And that's the thing that we can do with technology, with an app, that we can't necessarily do with a book. Yeah. It's hard to scale a book, but with an app we can create this platform. We can literally disperse it into a community. Give it away. And just have young people absorbing this fun, new way to learn about money. 

Lauren:
That's so fun. My goodness. So to backtrack a little bit, I really resonated with what you're talking about with the why Kickstarter platform. Right. It's not just about raising money, but it's about the bigger picture strategy to reach more people. So can you share a little bit more about how you went about doing that because the marketer hat is on, right? So, I mean, what was your game plan to be able to reach people, to get this word out, and to use this as an excuse, if you will, to do so.

Mac:
I have been very fortunate. I have been utilizing platforms like LinkedIn for years. In fact, I owned stock in LinkedIn before Microsoft bought it years ago. So, I have probably 24,000 connections on LinkedIn and just the folks that have been following our journey since we wrote this Four Money Bears book. Financial advisors across the country use our book. So if you're a financial advisor and you've got a client with young kids and you want be able to give something back and make that connection with the next generation, we have book sales across the country from that cohort. And so I had a nice natural, pond of folks who were willing to support this mission, and this new digital solution that's coming on board. 

Mac:
So that definitely helped. EMO is a huge supporter of our mission, and they were contributors to the campaign. Just what Kickstart allows you to do is to have this platform that sort of magnifies the message. Because you'll have people that come in that, you know, you do your outreach to say, Hey, you know what, we love your supporters report, but what we found is that the faster that you get to your goal, and reaching it there are certain metrics, I guess, within Kickstarter that pushes you higher up the list then, you know, other folks do. So it becomes this sort of domino effect that allows us to reach more people. 

Lauren:
So powerful and a smart approach because it fits in well with the mission of, you know, what you're trying to do, too. and hearing you talk about it, so excited, where do you even find the time? My goodness, you know, you were talking earlier, you've got kids of your own, a business you're running. I mean, it sounds like it's just been little pieces over the years and just making it better and better.

Mac:
I joke around, I tell people, “yeah 'm doing this 25/8, not even 24/7, so 25/8.”I heard a great saying, you know, if you do something you love, you won't work a day in your life. So I just, I enjoy spreading the news. I enjoy making a change in the life of the financial lives of people that I interact with. And so, you know, being able to put my energy and, and have this great team that's, you know, Ryan and I sent to sit down like, oh, Mac, this is going to be perfect. This would be great. And to have someone that sees a vision and realizes, look, we can do something, we're at a really cool time. We're at a really cool place in time where a child can get a hundred dollars bill for a birthday gift. 

Mac:
And remember the four options, right. Spend, save, invest, and give. That child before maybe reading the Four Money Bears book, we'd be like, “okay, I want to blow the whole hundred dollars on a pair of Nike shoes.”

Lauren:
Yeah. 

Mac:
Now, because they may have read our book, mom and dad share with them, “Hey, you know, you got a couple options. You can spend some, you can save some, you can invest some of it.” And all of a sudden, now this child is saying, “Hmm, this investing thing, what do you mean?” Well, those Nike shoes that you said you want, did you know that you can actually buy shares of Nike and you can own that company? I can own the company that makes the shoes. And what's so cool about it is that the technology is here now, Lauren, that allows for things like fractional ownership of shares, where you can use your phone and you can literally buy five shares of Coca-Cola, buy five shares of Starbucks, buy 5, 10, 15, 20 shares of Nike, right. 10-15 years ago that wasn't even an option. And so when I tell people about our mission between building the bridge between financial literacy and financial technology that's what gets us to financial wellness. That's what I mean by being able to have the stories, have the education and then have the tools to be able to enact that education, and then change lives. 

Lauren:
Yeah. And not to mention the powerful piece about technology is you can track so much data and be able to see those patterns and which provides more insights and not only to be able to better the game, but then to be able to know what's working, what's not working all kinds of things. 

Mac:
Yeah. So AB testing, all that fun stuff. It's that whole world, you know. Ryan likes to flex the muscle, and I'm just like a kid in the candy still like, “okay, tell me more. That's so cool.” 

Lauren:
Technology. So the number side, right? Yeah. 

Mac:
Yeah. So fun. The tech side is pretty awesome. So, we're really happy. We're on a really cool path. We're getting attention from some really, really big names in the FinTech space, and if we can build a solution that can help more people when it comes to understanding and educating them about money, that's what we're all about. 

Lauren:
Oh my goodness. Well, thank you so much for sharing the behind the scenes of the story and you know, where it is today. Can't wait to follow along with the journey. We'll make sure to include the links below, and I'm excited for updates. So thank you again for sharing a bit of background.

Mac:
You are so welcome. The financial life journey is a long one and, you know, we envision the full money bears as a child's on ramp to their digital financial journey. And as I like to say, the journey continues. 

Lauren:
Absolutely. Well, thank you again, Mac. 

Mac:
Thanks for having me. 

We talked with Ken about:

• The major hiring and retention trends affecting employers today
• How TurningPoint is working to weed out unconscious bias in recruiting 
• Advice he gives to those who are concerned about losing key talent during this Great Resignation

About Ken Schmitt:

Ken Schmitt believes it's a really good time to be in the “people business” because there’s so much happening right now. As founder and CEO of TurningPoint Executive Search, he has the opportunity to work directly with people on a daily basis to help them build the best team for their company. Most recently, that means navigating the post-pandemic hiring landscape.

Featured Resources 

• Ken Schmitt LinkedIn
• Ken Schmitt Twitter
• TurningPoint Executive Search
• TurningPoint Executive Search LinkedIn
• TurningPoint Executive Search YouTube
• TurningPoint Executive Search Facebook
• “5 Things We’ve Learned in this Tight Labor Market”
• “Turnover Trends - Who, How, & Why?”
• “How to Boost Hiring and Improve Retention: Tips from a Recruiter”

Full Audio Transcript

Lauren (00:00):
All right. Well, Ken, thank you so much for joining us.

Ken (00:03):
Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Lauren (00:04):
Of course. So excited to hear from you today; I've been looking forward to this conversation all week. You just bring so much to the executive recruiting space and we'll include a full bio and link to your LinkedIn in the notes below, so why don't we just start off? How did you get into the space that you're in and really starting? And I mean TurningPoint, how many years has it been, 10 years or so? 

Ken (00:31):
We’ve been in business for 15 years.

Lauren (00:33):
Holy smokes.

Ken (00:34):
Yeah, it’s our anniversary. Time flies when you're having fun, right?

Lauren (00:38):
 Yes. Congratulations. So share a little bit more about TurningPoint and how it got to where it is today. I'd love to hear a little bit more and what you all do.

Ken (00:51):
Sure, sure. Yeah. Thanks. And again, thanks for the invitation to chat today. I really appreciate it. So I've been in the recruiting business now for 25 years, but 15 as far as TurningPoint goes. I always wanted to have my own business. That was always my goal from when I was a teenager growing up in a very entrepreneurial household with a Jack-in-the-Box franchisee for a dad and an interior decorator for a mom. So entrepreneurism is kind of in my DNA, but we've kind of ebbed and flowed and expanded over the 15 years as TurningPoint. We started off doing mainly accounting and finance recruiting in the early days. And then I did a complete rebrand and pivot, something you're very familiar with as far as branding goes, changed back in 2011, 2012.

Ken (01:34):
So it's been 10 years since we actually made the move over to sales and marketing and operations recruiting, and we don't do as much accounting or finance these days. So, a bit of a pivot and a rebrand there, but it's been great. It's been a lot of fun. I get to meet a ton of really great people. This time in particular, I always say it's a really good time to be in the people business. Yeah. Because there's so much happening out there and so many trends that are going on, partly because of COVID and partly just because of the changing demographics. So, I really do enjoy it. It's very fulfilling and very engaging.

Lauren (02:06):
Yeah. So let's jump in. I'd love to hear a little bit more about the trends, especially with the Great Resignation going on and COVID. I mean, hiring is challenging. So what are you seeing out there?

Ken (02:17):
Yeah, it really is. There's so many moving parts. It's really difficult; I really feel for a lot of employers out there that are trying to get their arms around everything out there—whether it's in regard to DEI and building a more diversified workforce or it's trying to retain the people you already have because they can go somewhere else and get a 20 or 30% bump in salary, or then trying to bring in new talent as well. Even people who are doing the same job they already have somebody on board doing today, but it costs them again, 20% more to hire a new person as compared to their incumbent. So there's a lot that employers have to really grapple with right now. Work from home is a big part of that, to your point, no longer are people just willing to, without question, just work from the office five days a week.

Ken (03:05):
We tell clients on a regular basis that if you want us to recruit somebody for your position and you're requiring them to be in the office five days a week, we can do it, but it's gonna be much more difficult. It's gonna take a lot more time and they're gonna have a lot fewer candidates to look at in terms of their pool of candidates, because there are fewer people who are willing to consider that kind of scenario where they have to be in the office five days a week. So it's tough.

Lauren (03:31):
I bet those are conversations you were not having just a few years ago or were they? I mean, is this just kind of a mega trend of new work life? 

Ken (03:43):
Well, it was a trend that was starting to take hold pre-pandemic, but mainly from the candidate side. There were candidates, especially in sales and marketing as you know, who were saying, Hey, I'd rather not have to go to the office every single day if I don't have to. Especially if you're in sales and you're traveling around to different clients anyway, there's not really a lot of value in being in the office, but it was really difficult pre-COVID to find companies—hiring managers, leaders, CEOs—that were willing to let their staff work remotely unless they already had a remote field sales team and they were already used to that. That's one thing, but most companies were not. And so that was the challenge. It was a little more on the demand side, but not as much on the supply side in terms of opportunities and jobs that would allow for that.

Ken (04:30):
But then COVID comes along and just changes everything completely, and accelerates that trend beyond anybody's wildest imagination. And now, the majority of companies have realized their people are just as if not more productive working from home. People are certainly happier about it. They're engaged. They don't have to spend and waste their time driving to an office every single day. But companies are also having to adjust how they manage. And there's definitely something to be said for the loss of collaboration and creativity if you're not together as often. So it's requiring a change in how we manage as leaders, and how we engage our team and how we create that collaborative space.

Lauren (05:12):
And how are you filtering for that? I mean, I assume a lot of this comes down to values of the company and trying to pull that out within the prospective candidates, but what sort of things are you filtering for with this new world that we're living in to see if that would be a good fit, that virtual environment, or even just a fit for the company?

Ken (05:37):
Yeah, that’s a good question. And it really kind of depends on the organization, but also on the position itself, the function. We have a lot of tech clients, but we also have a lot of manufacturing clients as well. And the manufacturing clients—while we don't recruit for warehouse positions or frontline workers, as far as being on the manufacturing floor—a lot of the folks we are recruiting are leading those kinds of teams, right? And so if the leader's not in the office, then why should the team be? So there's a little bit of a challenge there. And so to your question about filtering, we have to really kind of dig more deeply into why for the role you want us to recruit for you.

Ken (06:17):
Why does it have to be in the office? What's the dynamic around that? Is it a turnaround situation? Is it an early-stage company where they have to build up a team? And so having that physical presence with the rest of the executive leadership team is really important. That makes some sense if the answer is, well, it's always been this way; COVID was a goofy blip on the radar screen. We're all going back to being in the office five days a week, and that's a different story. And that's where you have a much harder time finding candidates who are willing to do that when there's no real compelling reason behind it.

Lauren (06:51):
That's fair. So it's really unique to each company's situation, right?

Ken (06:57):
Exactly. What's going on, and I think right now it's kind of this confluence of things. So you've got this work from home dynamic, which is brand new on top of that. You also have this very real war for talent, and there's a big shortage out there for qualified people, regardless of the function in the industry. And so companies that may have been more stringent about certain things pre-pandemic, or when the labor market wasn't so tight, now they're having to relax those kinds of things to get anybody to even be interested in the job because the supply of people is so short. Even things, for example, like drug screenings, right? Which was the norm across a variety of industries pre-pandemic, right? But with COVID and the labor shortage, and on top of that, more and more states legalizing marijuana, obviously companies are having to adjust to that. And so now you don't have to have a drug screen every single time, or maybe you don't have to have a college degree for a lot of the jobs. They realize a college degree is not a bad thing, but it's not really an absolute must to do the job. So companies are having to adjust their criteria a little bit with their own filters when they hire people.

Lauren (08:07):
Oh, that's so interesting. So as you were alluding to earlier, each company's so different, right? The leadership team, the culture, the values, all of that. As a partner with them and helping them to identify how to build their team, how are you pulling back layers of the onion to really get a pulse on the companies, just how they work, how they communicate their values, so you're able to create that best fit for them for longevity. What sort of steps do you all take to look under the hood?

Ken (08:40):
That’s a great question. I mean, we've done this for such a long time that we know certain cues when somebody is kind of BSing us and it's not exactly the true, complete truth, right? But you also look at what's the average tenure at this company. When we talk to a company, whether it's professional or financial services or manufacturing or anybody else, we ask what's the reason the job is open, what's compelling them to hire this role. If they say, well, we've had three sales managers in this role in the last 18 months, or the last two years, and none of them are good enough, well, that's a pretty big red flag, right? That's some insight into the culture out there.

Ken (09:20):
If the company's going through a changeover in leadership, that's some insight as well. If the hiring manager we're working with is giving us this laundry list of requirements for the position, and we push back and say, well, you can have six of those things, but not all 15, if they're not willing to be open to that conversation. If they're not coachable, as we call it, if they're not willing to accept our feedback as the experts in the marketplace, then it's probably not the best client for us to work with. It's gonna be very frustrating for us and for them, because we can't find this perfect person out there because they're being so restrictive. 

Lauren (09:59):
That makes sense. And then it would probably be personality cues for the type of person you need to hire to be able to work with that type of team or what have you. 

Ken (10:08):
Exactly. And it takes more time, to your question. It takes more time for us to peel back those layers and it's not just give us a job description. Okay. We're gonna go off and start recruiting. Now it's, let's have an hour-long, we call it kickoff call, usually over Zoom. It's a more in-depth conversation after we've already decided through my previous calls with them that they are the right fit. Then we dive even deeper into the actual position and the company culture with that kickoff call before we actually go out to market and start to recruit for that position.

Lauren (10:39):
Okay. And then can you share a little bit more about that out to market piece of it too? What are you doing to be able to solicit that talent? I know you talked earlier about how you're having those challenging conversations and also creating transparency around the trends of what's happening in the marketplace which might help to shake, like you said, to bend on expectations, if you will, folks may have put a line in the sand previously, once you've had that. And once you're at a point where you're actually going to find that talent, what are you doing and how are you screening for that talent with those criteria that have been laid down? 

Ken (11:13):
Yeah, that's really kinda where the secret sauce is, so to speak. That's why clients hire us. Many of our clients actually have their own internal HR or what's called TA or talent acquisition teams. But when they have a situation where it's a very high impact, high sense of urgency position, or it's a role where they just don't have the bandwidth to do the search, they come to us. They come to us because of our ability to source candidates and then also screen the people we do find. So because we're a more specialized firm, we have a pretty sizable database, as you might expect. So we look at our database for people we know who could be the right fit or could be a referral point. But we also tell our clients that even though we've got a very deep database, the best person for that job may not be someone we already know. 

Ken (11:58):
So we don't wanna limit the folks we're gonna consider for the job to just the folks we already know. Let's look at the full universe. So our database is one component of that searching. Then the other one is social media, being LinkedIn. And so we rely very heavily on LinkedIn to compare those people who are out there to the folks we already know. And so that's a big part of it—kind of knowing how to find these people. When I got into recruiting 25 years ago, there was no LinkedIn, right? It was all good old-fashioned phone calls. So back then, the secret sauce behind the value we bring to the table was trying to figure out who to go after, trying to figure out who are the key players. If a company is looking for someone in their competitive landscape, who are the right people in those competitors that you actually go after? These days, with LinkedIn and just the internet in general, it's easier.

Ken (12:49):
It's not easy, but it's easier to figure out who to go after, who to target, but now the secret sauce, the value add, is the messaging. How do I compel a high-performing VP of marketing to respond to my outreach when they're also getting kind of bombarded by 10, 15 other recruiters and companies that are hiring at the same time. So that messaging is really important for us. And so we have to really know what it is that's going to compel them to respond and kind of what their hot buttons are depending upon their function. So then once we find them, the next phase is obviously the screening process. And we go pretty deep. So we do a phone screen for about an hour. We have them complete a customized client questionnaire that asks even more in-depth questions about their fit for the role. And if we like that, then we do a virtual Zoom interview as well. So we've usually spent between three and four hours with every candidate before we present them to our client.

Lauren (13:46):
That's fair. And to go back to the point about the messaging, I think that can't be undervalued or under-appreciated. I think you see a lot of just mass see what works these days. Especially with email and being in the digital world, you can't take out that personalization and the human element. I think like you said, really being able to connect with people and be able to see if that might be a good candidate. I'm sure that's something that only takes years of experience, right?

Ken (14:18):
Right. And you just have to ask questions. I mean, your phrase, you just peel back the layers. That's what we use. We say the same thing internally when you ask somebody a question. You're trying to screen them for a certain job; you can't just take their first response at face value. You've gotta say, okay, so tell, tell me more: Why did it happen that way? Who else was involved? What were the challenges along the way? One of the big questions we ask is, tell me about your last three deals, whether you're in sales or marketing or operations, your last three initiatives. And then with that question, it's a pretty simple question, but you really glean a lot of insight about the individual. Are they taking credit for everything and blaming other people for the bad things? Is it more inclusive? Are they more of a we kind of person versus I? What do they attribute their success to? Those kinds of things. So you really get a good sense for who they are as an individual.

Lauren (15:07):
Yeah. That's fair. I would assume also it helps to color if the cultural fit would be a good fit as well, right?

Ken (15:13):
Right. And there's a lot of people—I mean, we work with a lot of mid-market companies, so a lot of our clients are on the low end 10 million, on the high end about a billion in revenue. And so people who come from very large organizations, from Microsoft or from Dell or from whoever, they many times say, yeah, I wanna work for a smaller company and we have to really explain to them, okay, when you say that, that means you're gonna have a company where there's 100 employees total, whereas at Microsoft, you have a team alone of 5,000 people or whatever the number is. So it's very, very different. You've gotta be truly understanding of what that means with how that dynamic's gonna change, and how hands-on you're gonna have to be to really survive in a smaller company.

Lauren (15:57):
Yeah. That's very fair. And then I'd love to hear a little bit more too, just about DEI and hiring. And if there's anything you have folded into your processes, if you're maybe interviewing folks or scanning resumes or that sort of thing, or if that's been a conversation that's come up. 

Ken (16:16):
It has quite a bit actually. We spent about six months or so researching, trying to figure out what we can do to help with DEI hiring. It's obviously diversity, equity and inclusion, right? And we're in a pretty unique position as a recruiter because we can help impact that with our clients, obviously, and many of our clients, because they are mid-market, many of 'em don't have a formal strategy if you will. So as an example, one of the things we are now doing as the result of all the research we did over the last six months or so is that when we present our first batch of candidates to our client, we used to send them the full resume along with the link to the person's LinkedIn profile.

Ken (16:58):
And a lot of times it's not deliberate, but a lot of unconscious bias creeps in when any of us are doing any kind of hiring; you wanna hire somebody who came from a similar school, grew up in a similar part of the country, looks and sounds like you, and has a similar background. It's just very unconscious, right? But that ends up resulting in weeding out people who are different—different ethnicities, different gender, different backgrounds—whatever it might be, unconsciously. And so we are now changing that up so when we present our first batch of candidates to our client, we are not including the person's name. Or the location where they live or anything like that. They have the full resume, but just not the person's contact information, and we're not sending out the LinkedIn profile.

Ken (17:42):
We want our client to decide which of our candidates to interview based solely on the merit of their background. Then once they say, great, I wanna meet candidate one and candidate three and candidate four, then we'll obviously say, okay, here's the individual. We'll include the full information about the person. And at that point, then we can at least know they're interviewing people for that reason. We also then talk very candidly with our clients about how diversified is your workforce. Do you need to really do a better job of bringing in more people of color or how many women do you have in leadership positions? What does that career track look like? That upper mobility? So just being willing to have that conversation really goes a long way. And then doing thing like the resume screening is helping quite a bit also,

Lauren (18:31):
How has it been received? Do you have different reactions from before or pushback or any of that?

Ken (18:38):
Yeah, so of the several dozen folks I've talked to, 90% of them are very receptive to that. They like that idea. They appreciate it since they've been trying to figure out ways they can also improve their own diversity hiring. I would say 10% of the time they say, hmm, I'm not sure how that would work. And I'd be curious to see how that goes or let's try and see what happens. So they're a little bit more skeptical or uncertain about it, but the majority of folks have received it very, very well. For sure. And the other piece of it is that, I mean, there's three different pieces, right? There's how do you source your talent? Where do you get your talent from?

Ken (19:16):
So a lot of us tend to use, like I said, LinkedIn or our database. If our LinkedIn network is comprised of a lot of other similarly aged white males, then most likely the folks I'm going to be pulling from in my recruiting are similar, cuz that's the network I'm pulling from. And so I've gotta do a better job of diversifying my own network, my own ecosystem if you will. So I can pull from a broader class of people. We need to look at recruiting deliberately, recruiting from historically black colleges or Hispanic colleges or whatever that demographic might look like so we can bring a more diverse slate of candidates to our companies, to our clients as well. And that just takes some time. 

Lauren (19:59):
Yeah. Well, thank you for sharing that insight too. Any other trends or challenges that would be helpful to share as we look ahead? It's a wild world we live in, especially the last few years with COVID and all of that. What would be smart for folks to be thinking about with hiring or just things to be aware of?

Ken (20:20):
Yeah, I think, I mean, we've talked a lot about hiring, and there's a lot of things that are out there. I think on the retention side, it's also really important with the Great Resignation and reshuffle, whatever term you want to use. There's a lot of people who are changing jobs, an awful lot of people at a record number. And I think a lot of employers feel like they don't have much control. That's kind of it is what it is. They're gonna leave, but you can do some very small things to really make a difference. Most importantly, just communicate, right? We have this mantra I've been using now where it's take notice before they give notice. In other words, take notice of your key players, your top performers, acknowledge them before they're sitting across the table from you handing you their letter of resignation.

Ken (21:04):
You don't have to have an hour-long discussion every single week, but once a month, identify your key players, the folks you really can't afford to lose. And once a month, once every six weeks, have some kind of a touchpoint, a phone call, a Zoom, a conversation, coffee if you're in the same city, whatever it is, just to kind of keep them engaged. And find out what's happening with them. How is their family? Take the time to learn about what's important to them. Don't apply a one-size-fits-all management style to all of your employees, right? That was maybe okay 20 or 30 years ago. Today, people wanna know that you know what's important to them. Some people value compensation and other people value no commute, while others want upper mobility.

Ken (21:48):
I just wanna learn different things and get a broader exposure. So you have to take the time as a leader, as a manager now, to really know your staff and then engage with them. And people are still gonna leave, right? That's inevitable. But you can really stem that tide quite a bit if you take extra time to communicate with them and stay in touch on a regular basis. So that's a trend, I think, that is certainly here to stay. It's not a COVID-related thing. It may have been accelerated by that or sparked by that, but that's just the new dynamic of the workforce today.

Lauren (22:19):
Yeah. That's so true. There's an article I read recently that talked about something like, what do employees want? You know, some sort of headline like that. And it talked about human connection. It's not always about being in the room with the senior leadership or this or that, but sometimes it's just about how are you doing, how's your family, it's building those relationships that create connectivity, right? And so just to your point earlier, it's like you said, I don't think that's COVID-specific. It's just probably more chatter right now with everything, right? 

Ken (22:51):
Right. Well, the days of leading the way that Jack Welch led are gone—where you have A, B and C players and the Cs are already out, either you're up or you're out kind of thing, where you didn't bring your whole self to work as a leader, you weren't really allowed to be vulnerable. Everybody thought that was a weakness if you talked about your family or personal things, right? Said, gosh, I'm really struggling right now where things are difficult. That was the way it was 20, 30 years ago. Today, if you're not willing to be vulnerable and bring your whole self to work, and I'm not saying wear your emotion on your sleeve and air your dirty laundry, but you've gotta be willing to talk about you as an individual and your employees as individuals, as people, not just as numbers or a cog in a very large wheel.

Ken (23:37):
Those are the leaders that did a great job. There's a great book I just read by Hubert Joly, who was the CEO and really drove the turnaround at Best Buy. He was also at Gartner for a long time and at Carlson, a travel company. The book is called The Heart of Business. And it's literally around the heart, right? The people side of your people, and how important that really is and how the old mantra—that employees come last and your stakeholders, your shareholders are first, customers are second—that's all been turned on its head. You've gotta look at your employees first because if your employees are happy, then revenue, profit, happy customers will follow inevitably; it'll happen. So I'm a very big believer and follower of what he's talking about in that book.

Lauren (24:27):
Yeah. I think my husband says it's something like, it's not just about the people—it's all about the people, right?

Ken (24:34):
Exactly. Yeah. Appreciate them. It's a great way to put it.

Lauren (24:38):
Oh, that's great. Well, Ken, thank you so much. I just really appreciate your time today and sharing a little bit more behind the scenes about what you do, what's happening, what you're seeing in the market today. It's so timely with just so much disruption if you will, or just so many changes that are happening across industries. So thank you for taking the time and sharing a little bit more.

Ken (24:59):
Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks for the invitation and for the great conversation. I appreciate it. 

Lauren (25:03):
Always good to see you. 

Ken (25:05):
You too. Take care. Bye.

‍We talked with Sheryl about:

• Her experiences as a woman in finance searching for a network of other women 
• How Females and Finance™ grew to over 3,000 members and its goals for the future  
• Tactics to keep community members engaged in professional organizations

About Sheryl Hickerson

When Sheryl Hickerson started her career in financial services, she was often the only woman in the room. She decided that needed to change. With a passion for community and commitment to growth, Sheryl launched Females and Finance™ in 2018. The membership group is dedicated to recruiting, training, and advancing women in financial services.

Featured Resources 

• Females and Finance™ Website
• Females and Finance™ Facebook
• Females and Finance™ LinkedIn
• Females and Finance™ Instagram 
• Hall of Femme Podcast™ 
• Lauren LaForge, business coach 
• Get Untamed: The Journal (How to Quit Pleasing and Start Living) by Glennon Doyle 
• ClickUp

To learn more about our On Purpose guest, check out Sheryl’s LinkedIn page or follow her on Twitter.

Full Audio Transcript

Lauren (00:00):
Well, thank you so much for joining us today. So absolutely we are gonna jump right in and we'll go ahead and include your bio and all that below in the show notes. But just tell us a little bit about your story. I am so excited to hear about all the things that you're involved with. I'm not even quite sure where to start. You've got so many things between speaking and this whole amazing network you've created with women and men in financial services. I’d just love to hear more. So tell us about who you are and how you got to where you are today.

Sheryl (00:30):
Absolutely. So I did not grow up to go into financial services. It's probably not a shocker. I'll be 51 in a few weeks. And when I left school, I had all intentions of going into medical school. I went into St. Louis University and was just really excited about the idea of maybe infectious disease or something that was puzzling. I really liked puzzles. And I got in there and went, wow, that's a lot of homework. And I'm way too much of a social butterfly. I was like, oh, we're in trouble. We're in big trouble because my dad made a deal with me cause I wanted to go to Mizzou, the party school. And he said no. And he says, if you go to StLou, I'll pay for it. So he made me an offer I couldn’t refuse kind of thing. Oh goodness. So I did it. And I'm glad for it because it really did actually open up the door of what I didn't wanna do. And I don't know if sometimes people look at that as a blessing. I didn't know what it was I wanted to do, but I definitely didn't wanna do that. And so I packed up my car at 19 from St. Louis with a thousand dollars and I moved to San Francisco. I got there and was broke in like a second.

Sheryl (01:42):
But I got there and I was so full of energy and excitement and passion for whatever the world was gonna throw at me. And so I thought, well, I gotta get a job. So I went into the Kinkos in Berkeley, California. I'll never forget. And the first time I've ever seen a computer in my life, and I thought, well, it worked for her in “Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead” to copy the resume out of the book. If Christina Applegate can do it, I can do it. So I did, I copied everything in this thing. And then I faxed it off to the wrong number. And an insurance company called me and said I think you're looking for something different, but we're hiring so come in.

Lauren (02:24):
Oh my gosh. It's meant to be.

Sheryl (02:26):
It really was. And the gentleman who hired me is still my mentor to this day, Robert Grumby. And that was when I was 19, just about 20. And years later—I worked there for quite a while—I asked him years later, why did you hire me? Because clearly I didn't know anything. He says, you didn't. And it was beautiful because we actually had somebody who was so excited about living their life. And you came in every day, this breath of fresh air, and we could mold your mind around what it is that we did in financial services, right. Without losing your curiosity, your excitement and this willingness to want to serve others. What we do so much in financial services, people oftentimes forget the services part of the work we do. The money's a byproduct. It's all energy. Anyway, it's not real, it's just not real. I mean, crypto proved it’s not real. 

Lauren (03:26):
Another topic, right?

Sheryl (03:27):
Yeah. But I mean, the point of it is that honestly, it was about the service that we do. And I was just really drawn to that. So I got into financial services that way. Insurance companies are a gateway to financial services and it was wonderful for me actually. I really enjoyed it. To this day will die on the mountain of everyone needs insurance and risk management is important. But then I went out to explore other things, such as estate planning and I was often the only woman in the room. So it's really important. Understand where many of us who are in the 50-plus market, we were many times the only women standing in those rooms; men didn't know where bathrooms were for us, nor did they actually care. Men didn't understand that we had children at home that we were oftentimes the main caregiver of, and many of us in that sandwich generation had an older parent we were caring for as well.

Sheryl (04:21):
So there was just an inordinate amount of stress in a very oppressed way. And yet you flourish. Many of us just continued to flourish. Yes, we had fallout, but many of us continued to flourish. And so 30-plus years later, about three or four years ago, I just, after doing so many different roles, decided every time I tried to join more in a different female-centric membership or community or network, it just didn't feel like it was what I wanted. Like, I don't need someone to tell me how to manage my calendar. I'm pretty good at that. Or I needed real supportive networking. I wanted to hear what other women were doing. I don't really care to hire someone to come and speak. That woman who made a seven-figure income, could you put her up on the stage? I wanna know how she did that. That was what I was super fascinated with. So I built my own.

Lauren (05:20):
So did you just wake up one day and say, I wanna build this network, or was it just kind of all these small seeds over the years? Was there a turning point?

Sheryl (05:30):
I think it's almost always a culmination. But really what had happened was in January of 2017, I went to speak at an event in San Antonio, Texas. And I was speaking at this point—in 2016, I had like 40 conferences, crazy. Like every week I was on the road, but in 2017, I kinda halved that. And I went to this conference and got up on stage and I'll never forget. I used to ask, oftentimes the event coordinators, like how many cheeks are in the seat, just so I could plan accordingly for questions and she said 300 and I said, okay, great. And so I walked up and onto the podium and stand behind the lectern. And I looked out and I remember seeing just a sea of old white men. I kept thinking, how is this possible?

Sheryl (06:13):
And I stood there for a very awkward amount of time. And I actually was counting how many women were in the room. Four. It was four women. And they divided 'em like there was one in 25% in the room, one in 25. Like they were trying to break us up. And I thought, for goodness sakes. So I got done speaking, went down, sat at one of the round tables, the little clam shells. And I'm sitting there with a group of gentlemen, and it was the gentleman after me who spoke who actually changed my life and the trajectory of what I do today, because he got up there and he said, San Antonio has been great, so much shopping here. But if I don't hold my wife's hand in the store, we're gonna lose our retirement plan.

Lauren (06:54):
Huh.

Sheryl (06:55):
And the men laughed. And one of the women did too—I was looking—but it was not funny. I made the money in my family. I ran the finances in our family and I thought, no more. No more jokes are coming at our expense anymore if I have anything to do with it. So I felt a responsibility. So it just culminated to that point. And that was when I decided I'm doing something now. You can make a very cavalier statement and be like, I don't even know what that means, but I'll figure it out. And so that was it. That was my turning point.

Lauren (07:29):
Yeah. So it's amazing. So it wasn't just standing up on stage and then being able to look out and have that distraction if you will. But it was also the words and just the energy that was being built there and in an empowering way. To be able to make a difference. So now you've got this membership group, which is pretty impressive. And I think it's several thousand that are part of this group.

Sheryl (07:49):
Now we have 3,298 members.

Lauren (07:52):
That is crazy. I mean that.

Sheryl (07:55):
Yeah.

Lauren (07:56):
That is a lot. That's a lot of members.

Sheryl (07:58):
Yeah. 

Lauren (07:59):
Heck. I mean, there must have been something that you did to be able to catch fire. Was it through your network or was it through the speaking events? How have you built this? And I mean, to be able to retain membership too, right? You've gotta be able to offer significant value. So tell us about how you've built it.

Sheryl (08:18):
Yeah. So I think that the first thing is in the early days—I call it my original OG—I remember saying I'm gonna get 200 women. That was some random number I just pulled out of the air— 200 of them. And the beginning phone calls. And I love all those women who listen to me cuz they sounded like this. Like, hey girl, I'm gonna do this thing. I don't even know what it's gonna do, but will you come along and help me? And they're like, yeah. Yeah cuz you do things. You make stuff happen. Okay. Thanks. I love when that happens. Hey girl, I'm gonna do this thing. I mean, seriously, I didn't even know what it was. It was when you talk about startup and grassroots, whatever's underneath that, it was Females and Finance at the beginning.

Sheryl (08:58):
And you know what, I think it's a beautiful thing because what happened was I learned everything. I learned everything from how to build a website and how to start a marketing plan and how to do everything you could possibly imagine. And I still to this very day maintain our website, maintain the graphics that go out. I do not have marketing staff. And there's a lot of membership organizations that are smaller, like half the size of me going, do not tell my staff cuz I don't know how you do it, but I'm very efficient. I am transparent. I've got a few awards back behind on my creds that say I do marketing well. Okay. It's a matter of how do you bring passion through your dialogue? Cuz it hooks other people when they wanna be a part of that too. I can do that too.

Lauren (09:46):
What happened? So you started making these phone calls and then people started talking and then did you just sort of channel them into a list or what did you do?

Sheryl (09:59):
So you start off. It was definitely before the whole membership wave came. One of the things I have to say is I listen, I do a lot of studying in other fields of marketing and what they're doing and then I apply it to financial services. So there's some of my secret sauce. And I was seeing a lot of membership organizations popping up here and there where they were very niche and very extremely focused. Cuz the more niched and focused you can be, the easier the stickiness, absolutely. So I started a Facebook group cuz it was free and I thought I can go in there and it's a way for me to start. It's an easy way to get people to invite and women are on Facebook. I mean, if you look at the trends of it, there's a lot more women on Facebook than men. So away we went and I made that invite very clear at the beginning.

Sheryl (10:51):
I'm looking for abundance-minded individuals to come and do this. And I will tell you that the other thing people are always shocked about, how many people we've been able to do in three years. That's actually not the shocker. We vet every member. So every person who's in is a vetted, qualified financial service professional of some sort. And I am the gatekeeper. So you gotta make it through me to get in. And from there we move on and move forward. And I have a requirement that everyone participate; there are no wallflowers. You know, I want to be certain that we are all giving back to the profession. And especially what I like to call vintage professional; I'm not calling myself seasoned and old and all that stuff. I'm vintage, as somebody who's been doing this for 25-plus years. My desire to give back and bring a young person through and help—the pull is so strong—while I also still want to make money and things like that. Of course, I wanna keep my financial energy high, but I still wanna have that give back. And so I go into a lot of organizations and look for the young people who are not out prospecting for them to surround them with support and abundance and even just love.

Lauren (12:08):
And when you talk about just engagement, what does that mean?

Sheryl (12:12):
Yeah.

Lauren (12:12):
Being actively engaged as part of the network.

Sheryl (12:15):
Yeah. So we've always maintained, even to this very day in 2022, 56% of our community is active every 30 days.

Lauren (12:25):
Wow. That is significant.

Sheryl (12:27):
It's very significant.

Lauren (12:28):
On Facebook groups, that sort of thing, you've got a very small percentage that are active. So you've gotta have a huge amount of people that are in those groups to sort of simulate this idea of activity. 

Sheryl (12:41):
Yeah. And this is it. I'm really a good community builder. You've got to ask engaging questions and you've got to ask for help. You need to go out and actually have dialogue around things that are timely, trending things of that nature. And you also have to tell everyone it's not a love fest. People come in and present things that are sometimes, oh, don't ever put the insurance and the financial plan or people together. Oh, they get a little gritty. But they have their way. They believe in what they're doing and they be a little bit out there, but they're always kind. And one of the questions that someone asked me that I wanna make certain I also share with you is how many people I ever had to remove. That’s a little bit of a dicey conversation, right? And so I'm really proud of the fact that it's only been three.

Lauren (13:31):
Okay. That's great.

Sheryl (13:32):
And they were, and I'll also be transparent, because the other question, why were they removed, is because they attacked women of color and I will not tolerate that.

Lauren (13:40):
Oh yeah. Yes. That is bad.

Sheryl (13:42):
I have a zero tolerance policy.

Lauren (13:44):
Wow. It's shocking, and it sounds like in a public forum too.

Sheryl (13:49):
Yeah. I mean, we are a closed private Facebook group. But people can go to the website and register and sign up. We've always had a free option too from day one. And we've kept that to this very day. So people can come and create an account, register, get access to Facebook and LinkedIn, the groups. 

Lauren (14:10):
Good for you though, for holding their feet to the fire. And putting your foot down regardless of whatever's being said, you're holding to those standards, which is critical, right? It takes a community to be able to do that.

Sheryl (14:24):
It really does. Yeah. It's an African proverb that says it takes a village. It does; it literally takes a village of people to make a community happen. And going back to that question about the stickiness and why people do it, let's put it on the things that you're really good at, Lauren. I'm very dependent on you to be able to do your thing well, and I do my thing well, and I don't know if you're familiar with Glennon Doyle, she's married to Abby Wambach, but she wrote a book called Love Warrior and a few other books, including Untamed. One of the things that she said is people don't realize that there is an architecture; when something becomes a little unstable they'll introduce another piece of wood. A lot of times people think like a shim or something like that, where it comes in, it bolsters that piece of wood to keep it stabilized. That particular act is called sistering.

Sheryl (15:23):
You are sistering the wood so that it stays strong and foundationally will be there for a long time. And that act of sistering is what we do at Females and Finance. We are sistering in bringing in women and male allies so that we can create better communities of professionals for tomorrow. 

Lauren (15:50):
Now that's incredible. So it sounds like recruiting hasn't been as much of a challenge, but I know you've got some big goals. Just looking at a little bit of what you've put out there is the advancement of a hundred thousand women; is that right?

Sheryl (16:07):
That's it?

Lauren (16:12):
Yes. You put it out there before I could. So yeah. How did you come up with that number?

Sheryl (16:16):
Oh my goodness. Well, because I have a business coach, Lauren Laforge, and she asked me what would be a number that you could do? Well, in three years I've already got 3,000-plus members. So what is a crazy number that you could put out there and you could hire, mentor, and train in advance too. What would that look like? If organizations, all of them, came together, I firmly believe that we could hit a hundred thousand, even though it scares me to death. That number's like, oh my gosh. And so people have often asked me too, well, what if you only get to 53,000 women.

Lauren (16:55):
Yeah.

Sheryl (16:55):
You know what I mean? So I'd still be proud because that's the other part of it too— you pick these big, hairy, audacious goals. And then the goal is to get them to them or even go past it. Well, you know what, I wanna know that even if I don't for whatever that reason might be, I will do my darndest to make it happen. I wanna be really proud of the number because when people ask me about our membership and you asked me at the top of this chat, how many members do you have? And I said, 3,298, right? Every person counts; I don't round. I don't say more than this. I always know the number because every one of these women count in our community

Lauren (17:37):
So what has it been like with COVID going on? How has that slowed down or increased membership?

Sheryl (17:44):
That's a really good question because we were already online before COVID happened. So I was totally ready again. It's like, wow, got that one through too. And we were already meeting on Zoom calls and doing Facebook lives and things. So it was kind of business as usual to some degree. Now I say that, but I've got women in different communities regionally, cuz we've broken it out. We have 15 communities plus Canada; we went international this year. It's our first one. We have a few more that are coming because I wanna be an international financial service professional space for all women. But they wanna meet in person. So I was like, hey, we need to be safe. I have my Southern people who were just like, we love to hug you; I'm like, I know, I know, calm down, calm down. But now pretty much everywhere's open. I live in Missouri and it's pretty much everything's open at this point. So we've gone back to in-person. And I think it's beautiful because they'll go to an event, maybe they're going to the X, Y planning network event and they wanna know who else is gonna be there from Females and Finance so they can meet up.

Lauren (18:50):
Yep. Yep.

Sheryl (18:50):
And that's what we facilitate for a lot of those events. That's fantastic and they may not know it.

Lauren (18:55):
Yeah. That's fantastic. So for someone who is entertaining building a community, what tips would you have? You started to allude to it earlier, right? You talked about asking really tough questions, putting out value through those questions, just knowing what's trending. It sounds like you're creating opportunities to connect on and offline, but it's not an easy thing to do, you know?

Sheryl (19:27):
It's not.

Lauren (19:28):
Yeah. Talk to me more about that community aspect. Cause my hunch is that's probably really a critical KPI, if you will, to reach that goal.

Sheryl (19:41):
Yeah. And I have to tell you, I'm so glad you asked that question in particular because I think people sit back and they think, oh, I could do this too. So you might, you very well might, but I'm gonna tell you, you have to wake up every single day, whether it's vacation, you're at an event. It doesn't matter what it is. You are responsible as the leader of an organization, especially as big as mine, to every single day, bring it. You have to be excited. You have to believe in your mission. You have to be passionate and you gotta be there. And be thinking about what that looks like and changing like an amoeba flowing through. Some people are so rigid and that's not gonna work. So your rigidity is gonna work against you. You gotta have flex and flow.

Sheryl (20:24):
You have so many different opinions when you have 33 or a hundred people, you have 3,300 different opinions on things. So you're trying to crowdsource what that looks like, making certain that you are honoring what the ask was. It takes a lot. So I tell people when I look back at the time, when I said I was gonna do this, I am proud of the fact of what I've built, but I have the tenacity to make it happen. I get up every day, this excited, every single day to do this work. I dunno if I would be this excited about some other community or something, I'd be like, nah, I don't know. So you really gotta look at yourself and say I am ready to take this on and do this well. And not just plunk a bunch of people into a membership community like Circle or MemberVault or whatever else. You really have to see them as the humans that they are too and still love it every day.

Lauren (21:26):
So like you said, you could plop a group of people into this, but just to get a little bit more tactical, are you sparking questions daily? 

Sheryl:
Oh yeah.

Lauren:
Are you actually policing the forum? 

Sheryl:
Oh yeah. 

Lauren:
Are you creating questions where people can vote and articles?

Sheryl:
Oh yeah.

Lauren:
Sometimes you can throw stuff out there and it can be radio silence. How are you encouraging that?

Sheryl (21:53):
So I think part of it is using those really good content ideas trying to spawn some dialogue and stuff. We do a lot of times where we have let's discuss posts where something got published, you know? And are we really okay with this? Do we like this? Was this a good idea? And what I usually do is I look. Remember, because I interview every person, I have a very systematized and very intricate CRM system. So I can actually search in my CRM for people who specialize in those dialogues, tag them and pull them. And then they start the conversation flowing. And oftentimes they will then take the ball and run with it. So that's another thing too, for those of you who might be listening thinking I'm gonna start my own membership or they might have one, if you are not keeping copious notes on your members, on what they talk about, you're missing out on an enormous opportunity to pull them into conversations that will help keep your engagement high.

Lauren (22:54):
Yeah. These are real relationships. So is it a HubSpot CRM?.

Sheryl (22:58):
Yeah. So I use ClickUp. Everybody knows I'm a ClickUp nut. I use ClickUp for everything. So our accounting, our CRM, our project management, our document center; I’m a ClickUp warrior.

Lauren (23:13):
Well, once you've got a tool you love, it's good to maximize its use.

Sheryl (23:17):
But it takes a lot of time to build it the way you want it. I did. I felt like we tried HubSpot for a while and I was like, that didn't work. And I didn't like it. I tried Zoho. I tried all of 'em. And for me, I literally spent my entire day in my Females and Finance ClickUp space, from managing all of that. And I built it the way it made sense for me. So if somebody calls me now, just to give you an example, the CLTC is one of our sponsors. They can call and say, how many people are in your group of the CLTC and I can literally search it and come back and be like, it’s 82. That's meaningful to them, you know? 

Lauren (24:00):
You must have a good search platform too. I wanna talk about sponsorship in a minute here too, but I'd love to talk a little bit about the tiers. I know you have these membership tiers too. Does everyone have access to this forum or tell me a little bit about the tiers, how you set that up and why you went that route.

Sheryl (24:17):
Yeah. So part of it is because I felt that there was a barrier to entry from a financial capacity for young people who are new coming into the profession. So we always started off with a basic tier, which is a free membership. They register on the site, they get access to the Facebook group and our LinkedIn group. We actually have a Slack board that's pretty active as well for the people who are like, I don't like Facebook. Everybody has a Facebook and they're all liars if they say they don't. But if they really don't like it, we have backups for things so they can still participate in dialogue. The basic tier has always been there when they wanted something more. We move into a Community Plus, which just means plus everything else. They get access to marketing classes, some specialized networks, some writing and speaking opportunities that we get. My Community Plus members are so much fun. We keep it very low cost because we offset it from our sponsors who came in and I see that's the only way we're able to do that. So our cost right now in 2022 is $9 a month.

Sheryl (25:27):
Very, very affordable. And then what we do is we work with some of the college students and really discount that down even more for them. So, I have to tell you, one of the best things that's happened is we have members who have been there since my OG, my original gang that's been in there. A lot of them actually sponsor anonymously, young people who are coming in, they're paying for their Community Plus and giving it away.

Lauren (25:52):
That is so awesome.

Sheryl (25:53):
Yeah. It's really beautiful.

Lauren (25:56):
And just in hearing you talk, I think one of the things I really appreciate, just hearing how you've built this, is that it sounds like you've got your ear to the ground. You're really listening to what people need. If they don't like Facebook, they go to Slack, we've got Community Plus, we're doing this, we're doing that. And so you can feel just that you're in it, the way that you're talking about it. And my hunch is too that that's probably why it's grown the way that it has, because you're hearing people. So you've got your finger on their pulses.

Sheryl (26:24):
I really try. We started adding mastermind. We did the first one this year to see how it did all. It was amazing. So we're gonna be adding more mastermind classes and groups to our membership as well. 

Lauren (26:41):
So then tell me a little bit about sponsorship or partnerships that have been a big part of the success too. We'd love to hear a little bit more about that.

Sheryl (26:49):
So when we got to be about 1,800 members, I realized that I couldn't do all of the educational pieces to it. And at the same time we found that there were companies out there that do a great job, and our members would want to talk about them in our group, but they weren't in the group. And I was like, okay, hold on a second. We gotta rethink this. And at the time I was a startup and I had actually funded 100% my own dollars on building this company. I took no outside investments. It was just me and Wal; if my husband were here, he'd say me too. 

Sheryl (27:27):
But that was very intentional as well because I wanted to see if I could make it. A lot of times what happens, and I see this in membership organizations, oftentimes they'll go out and start getting sponsors before they even have their community built. And that is a really backwards way of going about doing it because you gotta have a proof of concept, gotta be solidified. And I think it's really interesting that people think that women are a niche and I'm like, no, there's no niche. It's just us because without us, there is no other human on the planet. We're pretty important. So I would say that we're the only ones that matter, right guys, but it's true. But you know, it's one of those things where, when we opened the sponsorships, it allowed them an ability to have a very focused eye on how do we fix things or how do we offer things or how do we change products? A good example was we had one of our sponsors that had a technical flaw in software. One of the women knew about it and had mentioned it several times, came into our group to complain about it, which was okay. Like I said, we're not gonna love fest on everybody all the time.

Lauren (28:33):
Right, right.

Sheryl (28:34):
But we made a courtesy call to that sponsor to say, I know this is gonna come down and I want you to be prepared so that you have an answer versus just getting caught off-guard. They were able to bump that to the top of their queue, fix the problems in a matter of 10 or 12 days, and then come back and say to that person, I hear you. Thank you. And then great. And present the problem. So guess what? We had a win for the sponsor. Yeah. A win for Females and Finance, because we gave them a place to commune and to communicate. And a win for the advisor and their client so they could continue to do the work that they needed to get done. So I just think that literally because of it, besides the fact that it was wonderful, but more importantly, their sponsorship dollars allow us to keep our cost low so we can invite those women in. Remember they're all vetted. So not everybody's making the cut, but they're there to have meaningful intent, intentional dialogue around how to be better stewards of financial services as a profession. And I think that's how you do it. Not go slam 'em on Twitter because they did a stinky job on something. That's not fair.

Lauren (29:42):
And this is a forum where you can talk. That's fantastic. Well, one last question for you before we wrap up here. As you look ahead, any big challenges you see as you're navigating forward?

Sheryl (29:59):
So I think that the first thing we're doing and putting in place is some updates on our site where we're gonna be measuring and asking people how to measure, because that is number one. How do you get there? Well, that's a good question, but I already have some ideas of course, on how to measure out our fearless pledge—what we call taking the fearless pledge, empowering the pledge of hiring, mentoring, training, advancing a hundred thousand women by January 1, 2025. And I think beyond that, some of the other things that I see that we really need to get a better handle on is the fact that I love to see what other people like Sonya Dreizler are doing and a few others, but I think that if we're not openly dialoguing around why there are not enough women, people of color speaking, but it's even more than that.

Sheryl (30:47):
Neurodiverse candidates, Andrew Komarow at Planning Across the Spectrum. I think that we really need to start looking at each of these areas. And we have to stress of the muscle inside of us to say, are we actually doing the best by our profession or best by our conference or the best by our presentation or whatever it might be, or their podcast even, are we showcasing not just the best of the best, but sometimes it's the voice of the people that they don't get to hear as often. You know what I mean? And I think that there's a lot of times where I love nothing more than actually going to conferences. Sure, I'd like to speak, but I actually like going and participating and listening to others and putting people whose voices may be just not as loud and pushing them up to the front saying, you're gonna go up there and speak.

Sheryl (31:34):
We do something at Females and Finance called a Tuesday topic. And every Tuesday we feature a professional in our group and they get to talk for 30 minutes about a particular item. That has done so much for people speaking, because they're like, I didn't know that they did this. I said, no, because we have too many people who are glittering gold. We've got some awesome bronze and silver people. We gotta bring those people through. And that's what I'm trying to do is kind of give them that hoist to push 'em into those spaces as best as I can. And I think that's what some of these other organizations that are coming up are doing. So I think the more we're focused there, the more change, positive change, we're gonna see in financial services, because I love the profession. And the only thing I tell everybody is this, when our clients come to us and say, am I going to be okay, it is our responsibility to have an answer to that. And that's a really big question and very broad; it takes a lot of professionals to make certain that we are able to say to them, we got you. You're gonna be all right.

Lauren (32:38):
Yeah. You've got that community, that tribe, right? So fantastic. Well, thank you so much for sharing a little bit more behind the scenes and congratulations to all the success. I mean, you'll be cheering for you and it's gonna be fun to keep watching it all grow. I appreciate all you're doing in the industry as well.

Sheryl (32:55):
I'm really grateful for this opportunity to talk about this and the women and the male allies. They're really important to us and anything we can do to support you and others in this profession, please let us know we're there.

Lauren (33:06):
Oh, absolutely. Well, thank you again for your time today.

Sheryl (33:08):
Of course.