Hi everybody, welcome to the program. I'm Heidi Tennant, NAPFA's Senior Coordinator of Membership and Continuing Ed. Please ask your questions for our panelists today in the questions box. This is going to be all discussion, so we'd appreciate your input. You'll earn one NAPFA CE for the program. The recording will be available in NAPFA's Learning Center tomorrow, and there will be two polls that we conduct, so please keep your mouse handy. Thanks. Good afternoon everybody. My name is Amy Irvine, and I am going to be moderating today's event. Before we get started, I would absolutely love to have each of the panelists on this webinar to get the opportunity to introduce themselves, talk about their firm, who their clients are, what their focus is, how many folks they work with as far as their team and employee-wise. So I'm going to just start, and how my screen goes around, and Chloe, you get to draw that number first, so if you want to just take a chance to introduce yourself. Yeah, absolutely. My name is Chloe Moore. I'm the founder of Financial Staples, which is a virtual fee-only financial planning firm based in Atlanta, Georgia, and I serve clients all across the country. My focus is tech employees. I typically work with women, people of color, and LGBTQ clients in tech, and I focus on equity compensation and comprehensive financial planning. And I have a team of three, so I'm the primary financial planner, so really a solo practitioner, and I have a part-time admin and a part-time paraplanner. Thank you, Chloe. Mike, how about you? So I'm Mike Walther, founder and president of Oak Wealth Advisors, a special needs financial planning services firm headquartered in Northbrook, Illinois. We've got offices also in Salt Lake City and Madison, Wisconsin, and we're a team of six. All of us on our team have a loved one with special needs, and that's what kind of drew us all together. And I started out as a solo practitioner, like I think many folks in NAPFA did, and then added two associates, and we've been growing ever since with people finding us. So really blessed to serve the special needs community and happy to contribute to the DEI mission. Thank you, Mike. And Jordan, how about you? Yes. Hi, everyone. Jordan Dyson, manager of associate development and the chair of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Council at Buckingham Wealth Partners. We've got locations throughout the country, I think 55 plus locations now, and about 650 teammates, give or take. And so just really excited to be here and to share a little bit more about what we've been doing in the DEI space for the past few years. Thank you, Jordan. I had to chuckle, 655. Our small firms are... As I mentioned earlier, my name is Amy Irvine. We have a firm mostly based out of Corning, New York area, although we do serve clients across the country. We have 19 members at this point in time. And one of the most exciting things I think that we get to work with is across our team is the various generations, because we mostly work with women ourselves, but they're within our generations. So we've got the millennial, the X generation, and I forget what the one after the millennial is, but younger. So we're all women on our team, and we're very excited to be participating in today's conversation around diversity, equity, inclusion. And one of the things that whenever I'm talking in a panel type environment, I love to glean information from what everybody else is doing to see what can we do better as well. So Jordan, I would love, since you're such a big organization, I would love to have you tell us a little bit about your employee resource groups and how they've helped Buckingham to foster a more inclusive culture. How'd they get started? Sure. So part of our strategic roadmap for the DEI program was to make sure that we were standing up in what we call associate resource groups here, ARGs. So when we started our DEI council, which I believe was at the start of 2021, we were also thinking how we could make sure that we were getting the ARG program started shortly thereafter. So I think by the end of 2021, we had our first two ARGs launched. That was a women's ARG and black associate resource group as well. And from there, we've just been trying to keep all of our associates deeply involved and invested in everything that our ARGs are doing. So whether you're actually a part of that ARG or not, you're invited to engage in some way. So with the women's group and the black ARG, for example, we do host mostly closed meetings to make sure that we're providing a safe space for those folks who identify as part of those groups to be able to talk about issues that are specific to them and the experiences that they have in the financial services industry and in our company as well. But in addition to having those safe spaces, we're also trying to be intentional about doing education and making sure that our ARGs are also engaging with the broader Buckingham community and truly with the communities where we find our offices to be in. So our black ARG, for example, does an awful lot of community service work and wants to tell folks about financial education and those kinds of things while also providing for real tangible needs that folks have, making sure that they have hygiene products, if it's a women's shelter, or all kinds of different things that can be supportive in the community. So each ARG kind of has its own flavor, its own thing that it focuses on. I think we are now up to seven or eight. I'm looking at my list here because we're about to launch a couple more, but that has definitely been one of the pillars of our DEI program and it's been a really cool way to get a lot of people involved in a lot of different ways. What's the best way to get started if you're a firm looking to implement a program like this? I mean, this is amazing. Yeah. So I would say, honestly, involving your teammates. That's been the number one way that we've seen growth come through our ARG program. And that's by asking folks like, hey, do you see a need? Is there a group that you're a part of that you feel strongly about making sure is represented in the associate research group program? And if so, how can we come alongside to support you as you step into this leadership position and try to figure out what it is that, what is that special flavor that your ARG could bring to the greater ARG community? So I would say making sure that you're talking to your people, hearing what's really on their minds and on their hearts and what their needs are and going where that leads. I don't think it will work for you to say, we're going to start a black ARG. It doesn't matter that there aren't any black people in this room, but we're going to have one, gosh, darn it. That's probably not the direction you want to go. You want to go with whatever it is that your associate base or your employee base is really needing in that moment. And you never know, even if you do have a bunch of black associates, they might say, well, we don't really need that right now. Maybe they will in another year or two or three, but really going where they lead, I think is probably the number one piece of advice I would give. Yeah. And then Chloe on the opposite end of size and spectrum, tell us what DEI looks like for a smaller firm like yours. What are some of the ways that you've been able to put DEI in front of your practice? Yeah. So I naturally think through the lens of diversity just because I am a black woman and entering into the industry. I had a lot of interesting experiences just working at different firms, which is what led me to start my own firm. And so just my experiences early in my career gave me a big motivation to help others who are underrepresented in our industry. So I kind of think of it as three different aspects. The first is my clients. So my target clients are, like I said, women, people of color, LGBTQ clients that are in tech. And so I'm able to share a lot of experiences that I have personally because the diversity statistics are very similar in tech and finance. And so just that being able to help people who look like me in my community is very important. So that's a big part of what I do as far as DEI. The second thing is staff. So as I mentioned, I only have two part-time employees, but they are both women. And so one is actually a Latina. And so she lives out of the country in Mexico. So just being able to help people who want to get into the industry or learn more about the industry is also super rewarding for me. And then the other piece of it is service providers. So this is another way that I think small firms can get involved in DEI. So when I think about just the people that I refer my clients to, whether it's CPAs, attorneys, insurance agents, or just other providers in our industry that can help our clients with the services that they need, I always try to look for women-owned businesses or minority-owned businesses, even the vendors that I use when I look at technology vendors or other companies that I'm working with to support my business. I try to look through that lens as well. Thinking about the fact that you have somebody who works outside the country working with you on your team, have you found it easy to overcome the challenges of working 100% remote? I mean, we had to do it for a couple of years, but now that people are starting to kind of come back into the office, I've heard some rumblings about people saying that that makes it so much easier, but just full disclosure, I'm a virtual team too, so I get it, but are you finding any challenges there? No, I was virtual before COVID, and so I've always had a virtual practice. Even with my clients, I work from home, have always worked from home, never had an office space. So yeah, it's been pretty easy for me to to kind of navigate through working with both clients and my staff remotely. And so just training just has to be adjusted, right? You just have to figure out a way to do it remotely. Very interesting, and I 100% agree with you on the vendor side. I think it's really important when we're hiring this, our tech stack even, that we can ask those questions about what are their efforts, what are they doing to try to, you know, increase the diversity equity inclusion within their companies. Mike, can you tell us what inclusivity means to you in the context of the families you serve? When you were mentioning who you work with, how do you live your values at your firm? You're on mute. I would figure the oldest guy would screw up the technology, and sure enough I did. So the beauty for us is that for all of our employees, we've got loved ones with special needs, and for 53 years I've had the blessing of having a brother on the autism spectrum with other developmental delays, and I saw my parents struggling with lots of the planning things for him as I became a professional and saw the kinds of planning that we're doing for traditional clients who don't have special needs. I'm like, wait a minute, that's not going to apply to my brother. That doesn't apply to my family. I started looking around for firms that would do what I thought my family needed and really couldn't find anything. So launched the firm 15 years ago, and the thought's been from day one, let's figure out what that community needs, what's unique and special about their challenges, and let's figure that out. So as a lifelong learner, it's been a great passion for me to keep learning, and even five years into the start of our firm, we had very few clients who had mental health challenges. I was trying to figure out why that was, so I went to the National Alliance on Mental Illness annual conference. I just sat there and listened. I was like, there is so much stigma that these people feel about talking about these issues, and I realized that probably permeated far beyond the mental health area, that we need to make sure we're reaching out more proactively as a firm to find the agencies and to find the people where they are, let them know that, hey, there's a service provider that gets you, that wants to help you, that feels some of the same challenges you have, because we're doing it all personally with our own lives, and so what we've done is, because the stigma is so pervasive with special needs such that the numbers are staggeringly low for employment, it's like 80 plus percent of the mentally disabled are unemployed even though they want to work, and so chipping away at numbers like that are what we try to do every day, and so to find those families, it was ironic that one of the firms I work with had over 700 clients, and I asked the leadership, I said, okay, go through your client lists and tell me how many of your families have loved ones with special needs, and I define that as intellectual and developmental disabilities, and they came back at the next meeting and said, okay, we have three in total out of 700, and the math suggests it should be 20 to 25 percent, and I realized it wasn't so much lack of depth and knowledge of the clients, it was just the clients weren't sharing that, and I think society's gotten better year by year, decade by decade about being more accepting and inclusive of people with disabilities. You see it in the school districts where there's more programs, and so that's what we found out was a great way to reach these people. They're in schools, they get supports through the school system, let's go talk to the families through the school districts and share what we know, what things they should be thinking about, and use that as a way to leverage what we do in our own families' lives to help so many more families, and so if we're living at the values piece, it's okay, I want to help my family, how do I leverage what I learned about doing that with other families, and then finding other advisors who share that same mission to do it in their school districts in their part of the country, and then as we're joking before this session started, I actually taught a class at the University of Georgia this morning on special needs estate planning to help future financial advisors at least be aware of the fact that when they hear that a loved one in a family's got Down syndrome or autism or cerebral palsy that, you know, pause, ask more questions, and then find other outside resources that have the expertise to serve that, because I think that's one of the things that's beautiful about financial planning is we don't have to be experts in everything, we just have to know how and where to find the answers for our clients, and so that's what we try to do with our firm, is find the resources our clients need and learn more from our clients about what they need and get better at doing that so the next client who asks the question, we can be more informed in answering it. What challenges do you see, because I always think of inclusivity as, you know, sort of putting my arm around somebody and saying, come, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna work on this together, we're gonna, we're gonna, you know, really focus on something as a team here, what challenges do you find or what, what do you feel is the barrier sometimes for people reaching out for help, for your clients reaching out to help, because I know I get this sometimes too, like, I felt stupid or, you know, like different comments like that, what are some of the barriers that you've seen over time or heard? Yeah, I think it's back to the stigma thing, I think that for a lot of families, they're worried about sharing what they don't know about their own personal finances or how poor their planning might have been, so they wouldn't talk to us in general. I think it's even more difficult for those with disabilities within their family to share what that means and how scared they are about their own personal finances, so by us sharing our own personal stories, excuse me, with different vignettes we have on our website, on our YouTube channel, so that they can get to know us better before they come in the door to know that it's safe, it's okay to talk with us. We actually have Kleenexes in all of our rooms where we meet with our families, and in fact, our primary meeting space is a couch with two chairs and a low table. It's very relaxed, it doesn't look like a typical boardroom, and it's meant not to be, and then I'd also say back to the comments we talked about earlier about the use of Zoom and virtual meetings, COVID was the greatest thing ever for our practice because so many families are worried they can't get to an office when they've got a loved one at home needs 24-7 oversight, and they're concerned about bringing that person into a professional office that it might not be appropriate, or they might not understand, or whatever the concerns might be, so by doing virtual meetings, we get to meet that loved one in the household, and it's so great for us to get to meet more of the family that way. We get many more opportunities, and obviously you can leverage your time better using Zoom or other virtual meetings as well, so I would say the biggest challenge is still stigma around concerns and sharing details that they're not comfortable sharing, and then us creating a safe space, and I'll share anecdotally that to really get people to loosen up, we're in the process of writing a book to literally share all the funny moments that families that love with disabilities actually incur, so we had about 50 of our own stories, we've collected 150 more, and we're about to go to an editor and put all together a book, it's gonna be called Okay to Laugh, because we want people to know that just because your loved one's got a disability, and they do something funny, it's still funny, and we want to make that feel normal to everybody, so we'll give the book out to all of our clients and friends, we'll have in-earth speaking engagements, and we'll also have it available online, so families who don't know anything about us, but need that mental break at the end of a long day, have a book they can turn to and laugh where they go to bed, so that's part of us showing we get it, and I think that's a big part of everything in DEI, is showing that your firm understands the communities you're trying to serve. I think that that is true, you're showing the communities that you're trying to serve, and Chloe, I know this is not something that we talked about before, at least part of this session, but you've been very ingrained in your community, you've been, you know, you're, the speaking that you do, the public speaking, not just for your clients, but for the financial planning community as well, what are some of the tips that you would give to others that, you know, would help them feel comfortable doing that, because you do it amazingly. Oh, thank you, so I think the biggest thing for me is just giving back, you know, I've recognized that, I mean, just even looking at myself and my situation versus many of my clients, a lot of my clients are the first person in their family to graduate from college or make this much money, and I, you know, I grew up in a family where everyone, including my grandmother, graduated from college, and so, you know, there's a level of privilege there with just, you know, even understanding the process of getting into college and learning the basics of finances that I learned from my family, so just, it's important to me to help, you know, other people in my community with financial education, financial literacy, so I definitely am big on, you know, doing volunteer work when I can, also just a lot of speaking and writing, so I write for publications, I try to do a lot of speaking in different communities and different organizations to help people learn the basic, you know, building blocks of finances, so that's something that's just been always important to me. In addition, I also just enjoy mentoring and kind of helping the next generation coming up in the profession. And so, just like I said earlier, thinking about some of the experiences that I had early in my career that weren't necessarily positive and just wanting to make sure that if other underrepresented people are coming into the industry, how can I make this a better place for them and a more welcoming place for them? So just through that, I was able to get with a couple of colleagues and form a BLX internship program, which is a program to help aspiring black and Latinx financial planners get an entry point into the industry through paid internships. And so that's something that I work on a lot as well, just helping to facilitate matching firms that are interested in hiring more diverse talent with a qualified pool of applicants. So we really want to help firms build that talent pipeline just through sourcing all of the different students and career changers and people who are interested in getting into the industry. It's really opening up some doors, Chloe. I mean, that program is really opening up some doors for both firms and for the individuals wanting to get that internship. If I remember correctly, you had more applicants than you did firms. Is that correct? Yes. Yeah, so that's been a big struggle for us is just trying to get more awareness out there to firms that are interested in hiring. And like I said, we really helped to build that pipeline. I know, I feel like sometimes there's a disconnect between firms that say they can't find the talent and then we're steadily building that pipeline. So as of right now, even for summer 2024, we have 120 something applicants right now that really are looking for internships. So yeah, if you're interested in hiring interns for next summer, applications are open through the end of this year. So yeah, we encourage you to apply. I mean, also if you're just looking to hire full-time, we have previous interns and we keep track of all the previous interns and people who are looking for full-time employment as well. And I know we need to do a poll question, but before we do that, thank you. I was gonna ask if you could post the information in the chat. Try to anticipate. So the other thing that about the BLX program is if you feel like you can't necessarily, your firm can't support hiring somebody because of time or whatever, you can donate to support the actual organization. So I just wanted to throw that out there. And I don't know, Chloe, if you wanna, I think that the information was in the chat section, but I do believe that people can just go out to the website and find where they can either participate or donate, correct? Yeah, absolutely. We are a nonprofit organization. So we do take donations from individuals, from firm owners, and then we have corporate partnerships as well. So if you know anyone who's interested in becoming a corporate sponsor or organization, we'd appreciate that support. Excellent. Well, thank you for all the work that you're doing with regards to that. I know all of you that started this program have really put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears, and energy into the program itself, and it's getting rave reviews from what I've heard. So I think, were we gonna launch that poll or we did launch the poll? I'm not sure. There we go. So just out of curiosity, if you could take a moment, what size of firm do you actually work in? If you could fill that out, it would be interesting to key some other questions based on that, and we can kind of go forward. While we're waiting for answers to come in, wow, we've got, I'm surprised, there's teams of six or more are 60%, teams of two to five are 16, and there's about 24%, nine people listening that are solos. Excellent. Got a nice group, nice mix. Jordan, I'm gonna ask you a little bit of a few questions or a question I should say. Tell us a bit about the internal education that Buckingham has taken as part of its program and its efforts, because you talked about the external a little bit, but what's kind of going on internally? What education is there to help inform? And what do you think the focuses will be in the next space? Yeah, so- That was like three questions, sorry. No, all good. I will try to hit all three, and if I miss one, please have me double back. But since the start of the program, we've been thinking about how we can be very intentional about our internal education, because a lot of folks have different connotations with what DEI is, and so we wanted to all be on the same page about what do we mean by that here, and what is the expectation for inclusion and belonging at Buckingham? So since the start of the council, and I guess I think it also predated the associate resource groups, we've been hosting two-day workshops called Foundations for Belonging, where all of our associates come together in smaller groups, usually somewhere between 15 and 20 associates at a time, to talk together with a couple of internal facilitators about what does it mean to do inclusion well here at Buckingham? What is just some of the basic vocabulary around how we talk about diversity and equity and inclusion and belonging too, because that was something that we found was really, really important, especially in our advisory population, that they really wanted to talk about what it meant to help people feel a sense of belonging, and that has also definitely been brought to the forefront of the DEI movement over the past couple of years too, and so it's been really exciting to see our folks engage and connect personally in these smaller groups, just to hear each other's stories, to hear what it's like as a person in an underrepresented group in the industry firsthand, because it's one thing to share a bunch of facts and figures about what does DEI look like in our industry? What does it look like in the country? I don't think there's any personal or human connection there, and just spouting off numbers, even though you would think in our industry, folks would be like, yeah, we really appreciate those kinds of stats, but I think to some extent they do, but where we're seeing the real change and the real buy-in and the real drive to make change is by having that personal connection, so allowing people to share their stories in a confidential space where they know that like, okay, in this small group of people from all across the firm, so it's not just folks that are on their immediate team, but it's people in other business lines, the marketing person with an HR person, with an advisor, with a client service person, all coming together to talk about what is DEI and what does inclusion look like in our neck of the woods in Buckingham, and what has it been our personal experiences and how could that potentially translate to your area and your business line or whatever across those different diversity dimensions? It's been one of, I think, the most powerful things we've been able to do on the education side, but then looking forward, we're trying to figure out how we're going to expand Foundations for Belonging to be some kind of 2.0 experience. So we've been looking at talking a little bit more about what allyship looks like in the workplace, and that's something that we're hoping to roll out sometime in 2024. But then also, as the manager of associate development, I've been trying to think about how we weave DEI into just our general learning and development program and experiences. So it doesn't have to be that we're all sitting down to talk about belonging for the next hour. It can be that we're talking about how to deliver an exceptional client experience, and that also happens to include, how do we make sure that everyone that's around the table in that client meeting feels invested and involved in what we're talking about, no matter how they identify? And so that's something that's very much on our roadmap as a DEI team, and for me personally, as the manager of associate development, making sure that DEI isn't just on its own island, its own educational island out there, and that it's definitely being woven into all that we're doing from an educational standpoint. Yeah, and I think from a standpoint of thinking about education in general, so you don't know what it's like to be the only, like for me, starting out 29 years ago, it was so common for me to be one of 10 women in a room of 500. It was pretty unusual to have very many of us, and unless you've ever experienced that, you don't know what it feels like, and people don't do things necessarily intentionally, but they don't do things intentionally either. Does that make sense what I'm saying? So having that like awareness around it to say, okay, look around, how can you be an ally in the situation that you're in? Be aware of what's going on, be intentional about what's around you, be inclusive, make an effort for us, so actually be aware, and having that education, one thing that I've always said is that we're only as smart as we're taught, and we're also as dumb as we're not, right? So if we don't necessarily do things intentionally sometimes, but that lack of intentionality can actually be very harmful to the environment that we're in. Absolutely. Love to hear more about what's going on and what Buckingham can actually teach, being such a large firm and having such a large influence can teach the rest of us. I know for me, our firm's education is a top priority, so it kind of leads nicely into that, and we've been, NAPSA has the great program that all of our team has basically gone through, and we are learning more about ourselves and our unconscious biases and thoughts and actions, and it's so important for us to try to continue to be aware of those things, which is, again, why we all attended the D&I training, and many of us have also done, not just within this industry, within the financial, but within our community boards that we serve on, trying to take that additional education out there, bring it to those boards, what we've learned, or what we're learning from those boards into our practice and into our journey, our educational journey. So kudos for all the work that Buckingham is doing and continuing to grow our overall knowledge in the profession. Changing gears just a little, thank you, Jordan, for sharing all that information. Changing gears just a little bit, Mike, what's your advice for those trying to get started in the DEI space? Well, I think I'd probably just jump on the back of what Jordan said, that Buckingham's doing really well with stories. I think if your heart's in the right place, you know what you want to do as an individual practitioner, and you just start talking to people about your own personal stories, getting them to share their stories, and then expanding upon that with a network to then keep sharing stories more broadly, it's incredible how well stories resonate. People learn from that, they get more comfortable with you, and the stigma comes down because there's a greater level of understanding. And also I think stories are a great way to educate clients about the planning things you think are important for them to actually implement, because it's easier to forget all the facts and figures. People forget about the numbers, they just want to know they're going to be okay. But if there's specific elements you want them to do in a plan, if you can give them a story around why that's really important and how it helps somebody, they're much more likely to do it. So I think storytelling in the process of growing a firm is really important. And then following your heart. I could not be a great advisor to the Latinx community. I've never lived a day in their shoes. I wouldn't know how to do that on a personal level. I can certainly hire people who have that background to help serve them more personally, but I can't do that myself. So as a single practitioner, and I'm thrilled to see how many people are on the call today that have solo practices and want to do more. That's the first step of saying, hey, how do I do this? And talking to great people other than me that are on this presentation and learning from them is awesome. We try to integrate it everywhere we can with our network. So the storytelling we do, we even get down to the level of when we send out holiday cards and birthday cards, which we actually hand sign, they're all designed, the cover art's all designed by people in the disability community. As many times as possible, go to an organization and say, look, we want to have an art contest. Have your members produce art around this topic. We'll pick one. You'll get a monetary prize. They'll get a monetary prize. We'll have a little event at your location. And then we'll use the artwork and tell that person's story on the inside of the card, along with whatever greeting we're trying to give to our clients and our friends. So it's another way to both share that story and reinforce the message of the firm and our focus to all the folks who get our cards. We even do that with our holiday gifts. We send a small gift of appreciation to all of our clients. We always source those from businesses that are either founded by or heavily employ those in the disability community. Another way to get the message through that, hey, here's what we're doing. Here's a success story. Because for so many of the families we serve, they're worried that they've been told from birth, your child will never fill in the blank. And so if you can give them positive success stories, showing them examples of where people are breaking through and having amazing happiness in their lives, what a great feeling that is for us as advisors to get to share that. Wonderful, those people get their stories told. And I think it really hits people in a good way when they see those stories. So I think being passionate, sharing stories, building a network of people who you find commonality with, whatever that thing is you're trying to serve, to do that. Don't be something you're not. Don't feel like, oh my gosh, I can't do DEX. I can't serve everybody as well as possible. And there's so many groups that are underrepresented. Okay, be open, be kind, and figure out what's most important for you to help and be great at that. Like I can't be a great estate planning attorney. That's not my specialty. I know enough to get that to someone who is. My special sauce is around knowing as much as I can about the disability community and helping them find resources and being well-networked. So that's our thing that we're good at. Don't try to be good at everything. Be good at one thing and then tell that story about how you can help. And it'll resonate and it'll help you grow your practice. And I think it'd be greater satisfaction. I can't begin to tell you how much happier I've been the last 15 years than I was in the first 15 years. First 15 years was helping wealthy people get wealthier. The end of the day, they bought a bigger boat. Who cares, right? You didn't make a difference. I mean, every day I go home exhausted emotionally, but I'm really happy that the people I got to talk to, you know, feel like we had a good experience together in our communication. So I'd share that. Yeah. And Jordan, I think you wanted to add to that, correct? Yeah, I just, so much of what you shared, Mike, just resonated and something, it reminded me that one of the things that's kept a lot of folks from engaging in the DEI conversation is being afraid of getting it wrong. So, you know, being afraid that, well, I'm not a black advisor or I'm not, you know, Latinx, LGBTQ to enter whatever diversity dimension here. But I think what's so important is showing that you care and that you are willing to step into that space and to engage and to support and be an ally and being aware that like, we're going to get this wrong. That is just a guarantee. If you're in this space, you're going to get something wrong but that's how we grow. That's how we create stronger bonds and stronger connections. And those are really important stories to be able to share with other people too. Those getting it wrong stories are just as important as those getting it right stories. And so, yeah, if there's anything that I would want to impart on people, especially as I reflect back on the past few years of Buckingham doing this work, is that like those getting it wrong moments are really, really, really important to show growth, to show humanity and to show people that you're willing to step into an uncomfortable space for the benefit of the community. And Jordan, if I can jump on that too for a quick second, I think one of the greatest lessons I learned what you just said, I was always afraid to make a mistake for a client and I've since learned I'd rather make mistakes and then fix them and show the client I cared enough to want to fix it. Yes. That creates such a great bond that the trust level goes from wherever it was to a much higher level because it shows that you followed up, you were willing to admit a mistake and then you worked at fixing it. So I think across the board, whether it's a DEI related issue or something else in financial planning, taking risks, making mistakes, then fixing them is a great way to build that client trust. Thanks for sharing that. And I think there's two things that I just want to kind of accentuate on that if I heard. So collaborating is a great way, I think Mike too, because you said, there are lifestyles and families that I don't understand. And so I couldn't work with them, but I might know or I might have a network of people that I can go to to say, you might be a good fit for this person, right? I think making that collaborative effort to know other planners, their specialties, who they work well with and who you don't work well with is actually, because you don't understand, is really important. And I think also that know about, Jordan, about getting it wrong, also apologizing when you realize you got it wrong. I think that's really important. There are definitely, I'm going to raise my hand to say there are things that, phrases that I was raised with that I did not know were wrong and when I found out they were wrong was so apologetic about that. And meaning it, like, I am sorry I said that and I didn't realize how it was coming across. I think that and accepting it, right? It's both sides, accepting the apology and declaring the apology, I think is important. Yes, agreed. In our Foundations for Belonging course, we talk about intention versus impact and how we may not be aware, like we may have the absolute best intentions when we go into a conversation about difference with people, but the person on the other side of the table may not gather that intention just based on their own experiences or based on something that maybe you're not aware of as you're sharing that story. There's so many different factors at play there, but just entering a space with humility and a willingness to say, I'm sorry, I was wrong. How do I correct going forward? I think is really like the basis of any DEI program, no matter the size of your firm. Yeah, and the grace of somebody saying, kudos for you recognizing it or owning up to it instead of being defensive about it, I think is super important. I'm so curious about your hiring practices, like from all of your angles. Jordan, since, oh, you were off mute. I was gonna say, can you tell us about the way when it comes to like hiring some of the ways that you can reduce biases and grow a more diverse team? Sure yeah and I'd really love to hear especially Chloe's perspective on this too since you've got folks that aren't even in the country I think that's phenomenal. A couple of the ways that we've been thinking about this is just going to spaces that we haven't gone to historically. So if there are a couple private colleges that we would always go to or private universities now thinking okay what are some other organizations other universities other colleges other community colleges in the area where we can find talent because we've got a variety of roles that aren't just wealth advisor. There are people that we want to start tapping these underrepresented groups who they may not even know that we exist so how can we go to them in their spaces to say hey we're here and you may not have thought of us at all before or you may have thought that like we're just here to help clients buy their next boat or like you know that's not the work that we do and like there's so much more to it there's pro bono there's an incredible amount of ways that you can get involved and and do well in the world do good for yourself and for your family build generational wealth but also do good in your community too and so I think it is very much a two-part thing going to spaces where we haven't before to do active recruiting and two going into the community going to spaces where you wouldn't maybe necessarily expect to see financial advisors there just to talk about who we are the work that we do and how lives can be changed by entering this field both on the the workers side and on the people who benefit from the work being done but yeah I would really love to hear what others have been doing too. Yeah and Chloe I'd love to know you know how you mentioned that you have your team of three but how did you source your growth? How did you source your your team's development? Yeah so my team members are career changers and I'd say just even from just from my experience of running BLX for the firms out there you know definitely consider career changers. I think a lot of people go to universities naturally and want to source talent there but there's so many people who are learning about financial planning you know later on throughout their professional career and I mean a lot of people have so many transferable skills even if they're in a career that's not you know considered complementary to ours there's so many you know just different things that people can bring to the table from their experiences working in other careers and people really have a desire to you know to help others and and to really you know participate in this industry. So I'd say that's something that's you know been a big thing for me and I've seen a lot of our career changers just looking at our interns. We take college students and grad students and career changers but a lot of the career changers are are the ones that you know really make it far and they end up getting a lot of the permanent positions in firms and really excel. Do you think Chloe that's because they have some of the basics out of the way you know they have some of the this is the level of professionalism like you don't have to teach some of that it's already some of that's ingrained so they're just you're able to kind of scoot the work their direction and it's a learning curve around the work not the behavior like the the entry-level behavior knowledge. Yeah absolutely you know there's definitely a level of professionalism and maturity that comes with working with someone who's a career changer. But also I think just the desire to really to really be hungry and so you know if someone is changing careers they're they're often starting their CFP coursework they've gone down the path and they're really putting forth the effort to show that they're interested and they really want this change in their career. And from your angle of the BLX program how how can you tell or can you provide any suggestions on how firms can be looking at their hiring practices to reduce you know the biases the same question that I asked Jordan but from a different angle because you're you know you're running this program what are some of the ways that firms can can look at this differently or improve their hiring processes? Yeah so I think some of the some of the easy ones are you know just even take a look at your websites because you know when people are looking for a position whether it's an internship or a full-time job they're they're going to check out your website. And so see you know just are are the images on your website representative of you know diverse clients and you know do you do you have kind of friendly a friendly approach to the way that you present yourself online? What is your how does your team look and you know do you have a statement towards you know your commitment to diversity and inclusion? So some of those things are really important. Also just looking at the job descriptions and how they're written you know is that something that is is written towards you know hiring you know more women or or more diverse team members. So there's certain language and you can find articles and resources out there to talk about how to structure your job your job postings including salary ranges is super important and that helps with a lot of the inequity in our industry and then just you know women and people of color being underpaid because you know there's not that transparency in salary. So so a lot of those things are important as well. Good tips, great tips. Mike how about you? What is your perspective? I'll answer the direct question second but let me brag about BLX first. I think the work that Chloe and the team are doing there is just fantastic. I was one of those employers last year that reached out to BLX said I want an intern for summer of 2023. Laid out what we're looking for and I said but they have to have a loved one in their family with disabilities that can understand the work we do on a level that we all understand it. And we we talked about it on one or two calls with the counselor I was working with at BLX to do the placement and he finally came up with a very very creative solution. So we can't ask people that question said I know that I'm not very good at HR but I know I can't ask that question directly. So what they do is they put out there to the community of BLX intern candidates that there was a firm looking specifically for this characteristic and if you had an interest in a firm like that you could reach out directly to Mike and Oak Wealth Advisors. So I thought that was an incredibly creative way so if you're a firm thinking about doing this but you're like well I don't know if BLX can source what I want try it. It's an amazing program, some really talented people working really hard to get some great people placed and I hate throwing enough firms absorbing all the candidates who want to be employed. So that's your BLX plug. I love it. People should be using BLX to find great interns and full-time hires. Anecdotally Oak Wealth Advisors has been really blessed beyond belief with finding talent. Our first full-time financial planning hire was actually an individual I taught at the University of Wisconsin class for financial planning a decade earlier who was nearing becoming a partner in the big firm he was with, was interested in doing more special needs financial planning work, reached out to me we had a dialogue and sure enough he's on his way to being an equity partner here. The other younger advisors we hired both reached out to us directly. They said hey you know I heard you speak or I was doing a web search and I saw that your firm specializes in this area, I've got a brother, I've got a this, I want to do that work. Are you hiring? So people have kind of found us because of our specialty area. I'd say in the DEI space especially because it's so underserved across the country, if you make yourself known for what you want to do and your passions there through the website and other ways of getting interaction with the community, people will find you. That includes employees. So we've been really blessed that most of our hires have come to us. We haven't had to go search for them and to be honest with that one prerequisite you have to have a level of special needs, I can't use a job board. I can't ask that question. So it gets trickier a bit. I think being known for something is really important whether that's orthodontists in the southeast, fine that's a good niche, not really DEI related, but that could be a niche you want to pursue. If there's an area in DEI you want to be great at, well then be great at that niche. Let the world know about it and they'll beat a path to your door to work with you. That'd be my only advice there. It takes time but I think if you keep following your heart and the whole process it'll work out and then eventually you have to hire someone who's really good at HR because that's not me. Yeah so I'm curious from the audience perspective how did they all feel they're doing in the DEI space? So I think there's gonna be a poll. Yep so if you could just take a moment to vote on where you think you are right now in your journey in this space. It'd be interesting to see what the audience is thinking. I guess what's next for you all? Chloe I'll start with you just because you're first in my box again but where do you plan to focus your efforts and what resources and tools are you using are you planning to use to support your work? Yeah I think for me it's more speaking and so one of the things that I mentioned before is just a lot of people find financial planning later on in life and even with me I started college as an athletic training major and exercise science minor and so I heard about financial planning in college and switched my major and so a lot of people that I know that get into the industry they didn't really hear about it right away. So I want to help just spread that awareness so currently I do speak to a lot of college students and so I want to try to do more speaking even maybe at the high school level just to get people interested in this career path and so that's something that's you know I feel like it's next just creating that visibility around the profession so more people can consider this as a career and then also just continuing to grow BLX trying to get more people who want to enter enter the industry placed into internships and full-time jobs and making sure that they're staying in the career and not just getting the initial job but you know staying staying and helping other people. It's a big thing right the staying part is big yeah yeah and what do you think will help do that Chloe what do you think are some of the things that will help keep people in in the career? Yeah so I think it's just really having discussions like this and having firms that are really interested in creating that inclusive community within their firms so the more that we can we can all do collectively to just create good environments so that everyone feels welcomed, supported, appreciated in the work that they're doing and contributing to their companies and I think that really really helps and you don't have to do you know have some big effort you know everyone could just do something small to create collectively a big effort. Like support BLX. Mike how about you what's next for you and your your work in D&I? Well I hope we can actually have a workforce that looks more like our client base to the point about having a website more inclusive we've done that for years. I think there's probably still a concern with a future hire looking at that going well wait a minute I might be the first person of color to join Oak Wealth Advisors how's that going to work and I think what we've got to do as employees is keep being vulnerable like look there's things we're not good at we want to be better at this we want to be more inclusive you can be part of that process. If you want to share that mission with us we'd love to have you come join our team. I think just putting it out there whenever we speak whenever we're with groups letting people know that we're looking for that I think is a good way to do it. I've never been very good at intentionally getting things done. I think I've been lucky that the harder I work the more luck I have but it doesn't seem like it's linear. So I'd say that doing the right thing and putting ourselves out there in the right way hopefully will have it continue to happen in a good way for us. But the goal would be to keep growing and reaching more communities as we talked about today it's there's so many underserved areas one of the things that we do much like Chloe's with public speaking they may never hire us totally fine that's part of the mission is to reach as many families as we can in whatever way we can and if that's through having robust resources on our website that people can take for free and use with information on how to benefit from it we're going to keep doing that. We're going to start a podcast next year it's going to probably be awful don't tell people that but it's going to probably be awful we're going to try doing it anyway because people have said why don't you have a podcast like I'd have a good answer so we're doing a podcast. So we're going to keep trying to reach different people in different ways. I think that'll help us grow our firm both in terms of clients as well as employees when they see that we've got self-deprecating humor all over the place. I make fun of my lack of hair all the time. We've got all kinds of issues we can all look at and go you know what we've got insecurities ourselves if we let our clients and our employees know that they're more open and vulnerable too with us that's what we want we want the clients to share what's important to them and oftentimes it's pretty deep inside and you want to get that out so you can you can address those issues whatever they might be. That's amazing Mike thank you and Jordan what's next for you? Yeah so like a big plate yeah I mean there's I feel like there's so much and especially when you've got a larger firm it definitely takes a village to figure out what is the roadmap and it takes a little bit longer to implement some of those changes but I would say from a Buckingham perspective we're going to keep going. I know DEI has become controversial as the years have gone on and we are just reiterating that we are committed to our people to our community that this is a part of who we are this is a part of how we engage our community it's a part of how we engage with our clients and our teammates and that's not changing. So I think definitely looking to next year's council to continue to translate that into how we do business and building out that roadmap for the next three five ten plus years. For me personally I would say it's going to be digging a little bit more deeply into education through experience helping people learn more on an emotional level what DEI means both to them and to their firms and the way I've found that that is most effective is through experience and so figuring out how to do that well in the coming year is really important and then also just as Chloe and Mike said just being more visible as a person who is not an advisor and doesn't plan to be an advisor it's really interesting to be in this space and to be fully committed because I believe so much in the work that you all do I've seen it change lives it's changed my own and so it's really important to me that I go out into these non-advisory spaces where I have some kinship with these folks and I say hey you may not have considered financial services before RIAs before you may not know what that means I didn't know what it meant either 10 years ago but let me tell you how it can change your life and change your community and so I am personally very much devoted to that and so excited and grateful to be able to be in this community and partner along with all of you incredible practitioners it's just you guys are doing truly incredible work and and I am so in awe of all that you do every day. Well thank you Jordan for for the education piece that comes along with it we've got about four minutes left does anybody have any questions you've got some amazing folks that you can can ask right in front of you um if you want to learn a little bit more at this point in time I don't see any questions in there. I mean while we wait for a question we should probably also mention that if people are really passionate around learning more about DEI NAPFA's got a DEI committee they can join I've learned so much through that I mean I went in as a virtual idiot but I knew about special needs planning and very little else I took on some tasks and joined a subcommittee and I had people telling me stories about different holidays and how they celebrate those and some of those I'd never heard of I'm like that's really kind of cool and then they'd tie it into other things and I learned how everything is more integrated than I thought it was and how so many of these little communities that feel left out have so much in common with each other and so by being on a DEI committee you can see different perspectives and it's a wonderful way to learn from each other in a very rapid way if you want to get quickly up to speed on how you can be better at DEI just reach out to NAPFA and join the committee yeah and I'll also say last week there's the CFP board diversity summit and so that that's another great place it's a one day a summit in DC every year usually end of October early November time frame so that's just a great way to hear a lot of different firms and what they're doing to support diversity in our industry and no matter the size of our firm I think there's some influence that we can have to make sure that this this continues to go forward I know Jordan you made the comment that it seems to have pulled back a little bit and and and I hope that that doesn't I hope that we continue to push this I think you know as a group and the missions that we all have that we can continue to push this forward to be an important change in our profession because it really does need to change I want to thank everybody for coming today and please remember participants that NAPFA engage in the DEI work thoughts on the DEI initiative are out there things like women's initiative the genesis community the DEI initiative the training programs that are there I think Heidi may have dropped a link or is going to drop a link to this study project in in the actual chat channel and also Danica I think it's pronounced Waddell right Danica see I it's hard every time every and my apologies I always try to get it get the name right and and she's one that will will definitely if she's listening will definitely send me a note which I will apologize for pronouncing her her name incorrectly anyway she has an upcoming conversation circle on December 7th at 1 p.m. about strategies for creating an inclusive environment like pronouncing people's name correctly kind of important and hopefully everybody can attend and I hope that you've enjoyed today's session we'd love to hear your feedback for sure one other quick plug before you guys leave we are actually starting as part of our DEI initiative and NAPFA pride group for our LGBTQIA plus community so we're soliciting for volunteers right now if you're interested there is a form on the website where you can just let me know and NAPFA just send us an email we'll get you involved we've already had several folks reach out so it's our newest endeavor and we're really excited about it but thank you so much to everyone here for all your good work and and for participating in today's webinar.

diversity

equity

inclusion

underrepresented groups

special needs financial planning

inclusive culture

associate resource groups

power of storytelling

active recruiting