Thank you, Heidi, and thank you to everyone who is joining us this afternoon for this webinar on career pathing. I am Janelle Woods. I'm one of the co-chairs of NAPFA's Women's Initiative this year, and we're really pleased to have several of our Women's Initiative members on to talk about career pathing and what that looked like for them and for them to share their experience. Just wanted to give you a little bit of information on Women's Initiative and what we're trying to accomplish as far as NAPFA goes in case you're not familiar with the Women's Initiative. We are a group that is committed to enhancing the experience of female advisors in NAPFA. We're also committed to helping to encourage and bring more women into the financial planning industry and profession as well. We do this through many different things that we offer to members of NAPFA. Most recently this year, I'm really proud of a couple of things we accomplished. We were able to start a scholarship program where we have scholarship money to help give to female students that are in financial planning majors in college, and we also rolled out a program of mentorship for women within NAPFA to help engage women with mentorship types of relationships. We had an outpouring of support for both of these initiatives this year. So I encourage you to follow the Women's Initiative. If you're on Facebook, we have a Facebook group available. You actually don't have to be a member of NAPFA to join our Facebook group. We can hopefully, maybe Heidi can post the link to that, or we can send that out as well at the end of the webinar for your reference in case you're not on the Facebook group yet. So without further ado, I would like to have each of the panelists today introduce themselves. Amber, I'm going to go ahead and toss this over to you to start. Thanks, Janelle. Hi, everybody. My name is Amber Miller, and I am the recent founder and lead planner at my own firm called Rising Financial. And we were really founded to help clients do good with their lives and their money. So we have a focus on sustainable and impact investing. I live personally in Minneapolis in Minnesota, but I do serve clients virtually from anywhere. And while I am now the proud business, a proud business owner, I was a career changer. And I guess this panel is really exciting and interesting to me because honestly, I wish that I had found a resource like this 15 years ago when I was in a place where I really needed kind of some of this tips and insights. So I'm really excited to share what I've learned. It's not everything, but I'm happy to help and I'm excited to be here. So with that, I will pass it on to Sona. Thank you, Amber. So my name is Sona Huck, and I am a financial advisor at a firm called Janola Financial Planning in Columbus, Ohio. So we're a small firm, three advisors and three support staff. And I've been doing this for 10 years. I'm sort of interested in being part of this panel because I started off as a paraplanner, became a lead advisor, and now I'm going to be an owner partner. So just happy to talk about my experience and the transition and the different roles that I've had within the firm. And looking forward to this panel discussion. I'm going to pass it on to Amy. Hello, everyone. My name is Amy Irvine. I also am a firm owner and a founder of Rooted Planning Group. Our main office is located in Corning, New York, but I actually spend half the time in New York and soon to be half time in Florida. I'm counting the days at this point. We are a small firm. We have eight employees in total, five financial planners and three support staff. And we work mostly with women, although not exclusively. We work mostly with professional women. We joke that we have just about every age group or every generation within our firm as far as what we represent. We are an all women financial planning firm as well. And I have been in this profession since 1994, although I would consider myself a financial planning mutt because I have experienced my career has gone a lot of different directions over the course of those 28 years. And hopefully I'll be able to share that experience with you today and give you some ideas of some career paths that you might be interested in. All right. Wonderful, Amy. We are looking forward to hearing your experience and the experiences of all of you so that we can gain some insight and knowledge and hopefully some usable steps to help everyone who's on board with this webinar today. So we've got some questions. And as Heidi mentioned, feel free to put your own questions in the Q&A. I'll be monitoring those as we go through the webinar. And we'll try and answer as many of those as we can. But to get started, Amber, I'd like to toss a question over to you. As a career changer, could you comment on how career changers should go about or how you went about getting exposure to the industry and gaining the skills that you needed to be successful with that career change? Yeah, thanks, Janelle. So I've been thinking about this. And I think bottom line, and this I suppose goes for like any industry, but having a kind of insatiable curiosity and a yearning for learning, I feel like is going to get you, me, any one of us just as far as you want to go. And that's kind of the overarching that I think ultimately led me to be where I am, because I just kept asking questions. And I kept saying, well, can you introduce me to somebody else? And what tell me more about that? And how do I learn this? And it ultimately led me in two ways, right? So one was the networking, which was I started with my parents' planner. And then who did she know and who could she introduce me to, which led me to attending some conferences as actually a scholarship recipient, career changer, even though I hadn't even changed careers officially yet, I was just curious. And doing networking during the happy hours with some X, Y, P, N members who kind of said, oh, well, you should meet this person. And it was just kind of keep doing that. And it did ultimately lead me to from saying, I'm going to do this to having a job and a different career within six months, that I was just diligent to do that. And then as far as kind of the education, I think, you know, I went the route of the CFP. But, you know, I think that's just kind of the start for some of this is what else interests you, you know, like, is taxes, or, for me, and, you know, sustainable investing, or kind of getting your SEMA or some other kind of advanced investment degree, and just kind of, again, kind of networking and going from there. Okay, so the last thing I'll say on this is also kind of really knowing who you are and what you want, right? So like, I found the fee only world, almost by luck, right, from networking and going, I have a good feeling about these people. And they happen to be that. And I don't think I would have lasted if I had ended up somewhere else. And so kind of trusting your gut, but then also kind of understanding, you want to be a salesman? Or do you want to, you know, give advice kind of thing? Saleswoman? Yeah. Right. No, I think those are those are all great points. You know, I love what you said about the insatiable curiosity. So I think that applies to a lot of things in life, but you know, when you want to find out what you want to do, and what you're really good at, that curiosity can really pay off. And when you change careers, Amber, you went to a firm, correct? So what are the way what are some of the ways that you found with the firm that you went to that they were able to really help support you with this change? And I don't I could you tell us a little bit about what you were doing prior to making the change and how those skills maybe lent themselves to this new career that you had entered into? Yeah, well, so in part, the answer is those skills did not lead me to this. It was a life transition. So I was actually working at a Fortune 500 company, I was a graphic designer and was laid off in the in the recession in 08 and was didn't know my 401k for my stock options and was lucky that I had some savings. And that somebody told me I could go to the unemployment office, even though I had a severance. So I was like, I felt very, very lucky about all of this stuff. And then this curiosity that I had directed in other places until this point was like, oh, I should pay attention to this and then kind of kept digging and digging. So once I did find the firm that I previously worked at for years, I would say, you know, a couple of things. One, they ultimately paid for me to finish my CFP, that that was as a career changer, that wasn't something that was kind of the way for in previous industries, we don't pay necessarily pay for further education. And so that was kind of almost like a shocker for me. And now it seems very standard that most firms will do that. And then depending on the size of the firm, mine was relatively small that, you know, ask for a direct, you know, kind of a mentorship relationship, and ask as many questions as you possibly can. I think that really helped me that I just, you know, kind of and then dug into the archives and said, what can I learn from what they've done in the past? And then I, you know, kind of I came in and was part answering the phones, and part sitting in on client meetings as frankly, note taker, second chair. And over the, you know, the years that kind of went from, oh, no, somebody else answers the phone to Amber's leading the meetings, and it was kind of this big transition in the middle. And in part, because I kept saying, Well, okay, you can hire me for this. But really, I want to do this until I was clear on with them that this is where I wanted to go. And, you know, drive your own future, because that's where you're going to go, right. And so I did a whole bunch of paperwork, which I think helped me I did a whole bunch of plan creation, which certainly helped me. And then I started doing, you know, I would leave like one section of the meeting at a time, and then kind of just build from there until I was leading the meeting. And, you know, the lead advisor was, you know, sitting there, supporting me taking the notes to them leading solo, so it was kind of a good journey. And I feel very lucky that, that I had that opportunity, because I think that some firms you can spend years and years before you get opportunities like that. Right, that's, that's a good point, because not every firm has a dedicated way of bringing up new people into advisor positions. Amy, or Sana, do either of you want to share things that your firm, I know you both have teams that your firm does to support new folks that you have coming in, whether they're career changers, or, you know, just new to the industry? Sana, do you want to go first? Sure. Yes, we, so we do have sort of a schedule that we follow with new hires. Very similar to what Amber explained, you know, the first year a new hire will prep for the meetings and sit in on meetings. They don't really have a speaking role, but they go through the whole cycle, because we see clients three times a year, we do their tax preparation, we do investment management and cash flow, we do tax planning, so they get to see a whole cycle of clients and prepare for three different types of meetings. We do tax preparation, so they get a lot of practice with just entering data. And then the second year, they get to speak during a part of the meeting. So whether it's presenting the taxes, or running an e-money cash flow projection, or, you know, talking about Social Security and Medicare, they'll have a speaking part in the meeting, because our goal is that in the third or the fourth year, that new planner is running the majority of the meeting, and now the client knows them, they know the client's situation. Some relationships can be very sticky, but I think our goal is to let clients feel that they are clients of the firm, and not clients of an advisor. So it's not easy, because some clients just want to be with the lead advisor. In that situation, we use new clients coming in, they will start with the new planner, and you know, the lead advisor will sit in and assist. I think it's just a lot of letting the new planner sit in as many meetings as they need to start feeling comfortable, and then after that, helping them prepare. So I will even sit with the new planner and say, you know what, I know that this client is interested in talking about retirement or health insurance, why don't you come up with what you're going to say? We'll talk through it before the meeting so that you feel confident presenting that at the meeting, because ultimately, I want the client to work with this new advisor, and I want to help them with, you know, their presentation and their advice. So it is a lot of, I guess we don't call it that way, but it is in a way role playing, where you run through some of the recommendations beforehand so that the new advisor feels confident in the way that they're presenting. And we kind of like to hire them before they're an advisor. So we're looking for that next person to come into the firm to do exactly what you said you did, Amber. Answer the phones, prepare for the meetings, take the notes. So we learned that through experience and finding what has worked well with the firm. And so now when we hire somebody new, it's not the role technically isn't an advisor role, it's that of more that administrative manager role, with the idea that they're going to work up into an advisor role or that they want to. Now that we may find somebody at some point in time that doesn't want to do that, but that's kind of been what we have found to be very successful. And the way that I've sort of framed it with new hires is it's sort of like a residency in a hospital. When you first get out of college, you're doing things in your first year that's, you know, very elementary in nature, but it's creating such a solid knowledge base that, you know, you're not going to make some of those mistakes that people that just go from college to being in a financial, full financial advisor role. And that is something that I've heard time and time again from members of our team that that has worked really well for them. And all of us, except I think one of the advisors, all of us have come up through that way. So we have that knowledge and experience to be able to understand realistic expectations with the clients, how something actually gets done, what we're asking other people to do. And Amber, that curiosity, I think is so, so important for anybody coming into that role and wanting to move up into that role. I love, I love it when they go get the answer and bring it to me for discussion. You know, so the answer may be wrong, but it's still great that they go get the answer because how much more do we learn when we go out there and do research and then we bring it to the table for topics of discussion? And I know me personally, I have learned so much when I've researched something completely unrelated to the topic that I'm actually trying to find the answer for. So I think from a, you know, if you're somebody who's looking to join a firm, the progression at which you move up into the firm really does depend on how much you're willing to take that initiative to learn it, own it, you know, make that your determination to, I'm, you know, I'm going to take this off from this person's plate and be the expert in it so that when the next person comes along, now I can train that person and I can move on up. And especially in small firms, that's such a critical role to play, I would say. And sometimes it shows you that this isn't the profession that you want to be in, in that particular role. It might show you that you want, you don't want to be the lead planner. Maybe you want to be in operations or maybe you want to be in compliance or maybe you want to be in the back office doing the tax preparation and tax analysis. So I think that it's so interesting to explore those different avenues so that people realize that us lead planners can't survive without people that are interested in other avenues and to support that, you know. That's so true, Amy. Everybody, everybody can fill a very valuable role in the firm and the firm needs lots of different people. So I do want to pivot just for a second. And Sana, I want to talk about culture a little bit. When it comes to selecting a firm that you would like to work at, or maybe taking a role at a firm, what role does culture, and how do you find a good cultural fit? Sure. I think it has a lot to do with knowing yourself. When we start out of college and we start looking for jobs, I don't know, it's always the bigger the firm or the bigger the name, you're like, well, that shows that I'm successful or I've done really well if I go with the big name. But I think we have to understand that there is a very distinct difference between a small firm, environment, and being part of a big firm. I've done the big firm thing. I've worked at Merrill Lynch and mutual fund reporting, and I have worked at Nationwide Financial and Internal Audit. It was a huge floor with cubicles, lots of people, lots of opportunities to socialize with people at different levels, lots of opportunities to network. But it didn't fit my personality, and I didn't really know that. It's not like I went out looking for a small firm. It's just that now that I am with a small firm, I am totally comfortable with myself. I'm not sure if this is something that you can figure out without trying both sides, but I think there's a little bit of a risk that you should be willing to take if you don't feel comfortable in an environment. If you always feel anxious or stressed or not being able to fit in, then maybe there is a culture mismatch. But now that I'm in this place, which I just happened to be in because Jill, who is the owner of the firm right now, and I'm buying from her, she was my financial advisor. When I met her, that's how I changed. I was like, well, I want to do what you do. I had an MBA in finance and I had no idea how to manage my money, how to invest, how much life insurance I need. Even a finance degree doesn't teach you any of this. This culture is a homey environment. This is where everybody knows when you're going to a soccer game, when you have a doctor's appointment, whose wedding is coming up. This is also the culture where you are required to wear different hats. I have done compliance. I have participated in hiring the next new person. I have picked software, like which is the best technology to go with, which Cloud environment. I do my own trades. I have done my own forms and my custodian forms. There are not different departments that I can hand over the follow-up to. I did my own prep and I did my own follow-up, and a lot of it is being done by other people now, but I've seen the cycle. I loved it because it just gave me more control over my work. I think going with a small firm, you are most likely going to do much more than what you would in a large firm, because over there, the roles are very defined. If you do have an entrepreneurial spirit, then a small firm will give you the opportunity to make those executive decisions. That might make you more satisfied with your job. The culture thing, I almost fell into it, but I can see it now so clearly how I can thrive just because I'm in the right environment for myself, which suits my personality. I wanted to add one other thing, which I have to give credit to my partner for this idea, frankly, and maybe many of you already have this idea. LinkedIn is also a really good resource for contacting people who either work or used to work at a firm. You can learn a lot either from just creeping on their profile or reaching out to them and saying, hey, tell me about, if you can, if you will, tell me about your experience and I think what it's worth probably. I think it's a valid question to ask when you're at a job interview, because they ask you, do you have any more questions for us? Ask them about their culture. Can you see them be excited about their role and their environment and their colleagues? I think you can read that. And it's something that we talk to when we are with our, you know, when we are hiring, because some people thrive in a large, busy office, and that's what they need. And they may feel bored in a smaller office with just four people. So, you do need to know yourself. That's a, oh, sorry. Sorry, Amy. We're interrupting, but I think that's also important in today's virtual world, because, you know, like our team is a team of eight, but we're geographically spread all over the place. So, we're rarely ever in the same location together, and it's pretty random when we are. And for somebody that needs the in-the-office cultural experience, we are not the right fit for that person. If you, unless you can blend it with, you know, some in-person meetings and some Zoom meetings, that's, you know, that, people need to ask themselves what they are looking for, just as much as the company interviewing is asking, can they do that sort of thing? So, I think culturally, that's super important to know. Like, I'm, you know, I'm fine sitting in my home office, you know, never leaving the building, but other people are not that way at all. And you kind of, I think it goes back to one of you said, know thyself, you know, that's super important. These are all great tips. That's a great point, Amy. Knowing yourself, and Amber, I love the idea of talking, maybe reaching out to some people who have left, you know, finding out why people leave a firm could give you a good hint into what the culture there really does look like. So, good actionable tips for folks. Amy, I do have a question for you. You talked a little bit about, you know, what you do with new hires and to try and build up their skills, but could you elaborate a little bit more on what you might do in your firm with folks who say, okay, I'm at Amy's firm and I love what I'm doing here and I want to grow my career path here at the firm. You know, can you tell us a little bit about what you do with your team there? Well, I think the number one thing that I usually ask when that's the case is, you know, what particular area do you want to grow in, right? So, what is it, you said you want to grow your career, but what particular area do you want to grow in? Because as a growing firm, there's going, again, sort of like Sana said, you know, we're small. We kind of all do a lot of different things, but as a growing firm, I think there's opportunity to create sort of sub-niches. So, one of the reasons I launched my own firm was because I was at what was considered a large RIA, small in staff, but large in size. And I kept saying, there's this whole group of women that are my generation that I want to work with. Can't we like niche that out just a little bit? And the answer ultimately was no. And so, I decided, well, then I'll create that, you know? So, I think it's because of that experience or because, you know, I had that experience, I never want to pigeonhole somebody into a particular direction. And I want them to be curious and creative and be a business partner with me in the direction that they go and help. I want to help them build, but I also want them to feel like they have their own little business within our business. And that takes time and energy and effort, but I, you know, when people are curious about their next direction and they've done their own research and they want to try something, I think doing it in a firm where, you know, the net is there to catch you so that if it doesn't pan out to be what you thought it was, we go to the next phase and say, okay, what next? You know? So, while you're doing that, there is that supportive role that you can serve in where you are helping prep and helping participate and helping take notes. So, it's still continuing that path while you're figuring it out. And I think that that's what... I like to joke and say that I would love to have everybody on the team say what I say about me, and that's that I'm unemployable because going to work for a big company, I just can't see myself ever doing it again because of the changes that, you know, I've been able to implement within my life running my own firm. But I'd love to think that people feel that same way within their career within our firm or any firm that you work at. I think that those are good points, right? I'm seeing a theme sort of come up here with ownership mentality. Maybe you're not an owner of the firm per se, but you have ownership on what you would like to be doing within the firm. And then having the initiative, right? Taking the initiative. I think several of you sort of talked about, you know, having the ability to sort of take the initiative. This is what I'd like to do. Kind of talk to the owners, talk to your boss on this is where I would like to take things. So, you know, good feedback. I, you know, let's take this a little bit further and let's talk about maybe, you know, pivoting to say, what if I want to take and take these skills and start my own firm? Amber, you mentioned, you know, when we started that you recently started your own firm. And I wondered if you could share some tips that maybe were helpful to you or some things that you learned along the way with starting your firm. And I know we have a couple of questions about that as well. So could you talk to us about what that was like? 100%, yes. I love sharing this. And the very first thing I would say is that I talked to a couple of other women who had done this before because they were people that I knew and they were just a resource for me, all of them. I mean, it was just like, they would share everything. So I think the first tip is, if anybody you know has gone before you and I will raise my hand if you, I mean, I don't even know you on this panel, but maybe hopefully my email will go out. If you ever have questions, you can please reach out. I will share what I know. More specifically, it's a lot of work. So start early. There was a couple of people that were like, oh, it was five months between when I put my job and I was registered and they're like, what were you doing? I was like, I was working like way more than full time for five months. I guess I would develop a list of your strengths and weaknesses and frankly, the holes. So things like for me, I was, I have a, so I don't know updated versions of Adobe Photoshop and other things now because it's been years since I've done that, but I have an understanding of the general concepts and how to navigate older tools anyway. So like I knew kind of making one pagers and kind of general design things was like, that was gonna be easy for me. That was gonna be the fun stuff, like creating my logo, but I had never built a website from the ground up. So like I found someone to help, to build that for me. Same thing, I had client face-to-face experience but I've never really run the trade desk. So learning and having, making sure that I had partners who could teach me how to do that or do that for me was really important and that's gonna take time too because there's a lot of people who can, who are competitors in each one of these areas. So you gotta interview a lot of people to find again, kind of the right fit for you. I think the other thing that was really helpful for me and then also for my husband, because this has a financial impact on our family, the choice to kind of leave my salaried position and go to nothing was be brutally honest when you build a budget and a multi-year forecast. I mean, I think I was probably something like $25,000 in before I saw any money come back and that's not even including any kind of income replacement for those five plus months that I didn't have. So, I mean, it's real money and it could have probably been four times that, 10 times that I don't know what other people spend but, and it probably could have been less. But so again, be really honest with what you want and how much that's gonna cost you because it's real dollars. Okay, I think I have two more notes on that, which was, who are your allies? Who's gonna be brutally honest with you and play devil's advocate with you? Because I think this can be lonely and has been from time to time of, oh my gosh, I went from this firm and I had partners and people to talk to and now it's just me making these, frankly, like huge decisions. Consider your compliance department. So this is maybe a tip that I didn't realize. There's a lot that's not public before it's finalized and depending on your compliance department, it might be better to quit your job before you start that and it might be possible to do both at the same time. So I'm not gonna give advice on that one. I think people will have to figure out what's right for them. But that was kind of a learning for me. And blog, oh my gosh, blog, blog, blog, blog, blog. Like you can write a hundred blogs on a Word document and not publish them and they will be useful later. For me, that's like the time suck. That's the thing I don't wanna do. So if you can get a little bit in here and there, I think I would recommend doing that, yeah. So a couple of follow-up questions for you on that. First, were there any, and maybe there weren't, but were there any specific areas of NAPFA or did you connect with some of these other people who had set up their businesses through NAPFA? Is there a way that you could recommend folks who are considering this, seeking these people out? This is, as a member of a NAPFA webinar, this is probably not the answer, but I think, so I think there was a couple of people that I kind of identified on the Women's Initiative because I've been in those conversations now for a few years that I asked questions to. I don't know the resource. I mean, Amy or any somebody else jump in, I don't think I know that resource. I know NAPFA has, I mean, I did use a lot of the resources from like, there was discounts for software and other providers. And I'm in a mixed group through NAPFA about sustainable investing. So maybe it wasn't necessarily like business advice, but it was confidence building of, I've seen these other women's and the Women's Initiative do this. I've seen these other business owners and planners do sustainable because that was what I wanted to focus on. I've seen them do that successfully at these other firms and I have a resource of how'd you do this to ask, but I don't know if there's a forum or something, or I mean the Facebook group. Yeah, that's the benefit, right? That that has been created since Amber. I mean, so when you were first investigating this, the NAPFA Women's Initiative wasn't really necessarily there and the mentoring program that's now available through their CFP board also has a Women's Initiative mentoring program, but I think it's very different than the one that NAPFA has designed. And NAPFA is more interactive from more from my, I get to see it from the other side. So I can say that I think it's a lot more detailed. And I do think Amber, what you said, it's just start reaching out to people and asking questions. And that is what I did. I started to just listen to a lot of podcasts. I started to look, I actually went on the NAPFA website and started looking down through the members themselves just to see who they were, and then reached out to have discussions with them and found a business model that I loved. And just ask them if I could borrow some other language, right from their ADV. And could model. And one thing I would say about NAPFA members is we're a very sharing team, right? So you wanna use some of my language, have at it. Still have your compliance person look it over, whoever that is, but you wanna use it, have at it. I think those are the resources that I would recommend people that are thinking about starting their own business. And I just, I want to accentuate what you said about running two budgets, your business budget and your personal budget. If you're gonna do this, if you're gonna go on your own, running those two budgets is really important. I had two years worth of revenue saved up and I was so thankful because things happen. Things happen when you're starting up, things get delayed, expenses are, you know, change something that you inevitably didn't think of, now you have to pay for. So I would, if somebody, you know, asks and wants to know what we spend on different software, I'm always willing to share that. Not all that we spend would be something that other people would need, but it's still like, oh, I never even thought of that. And then know what software you need for your firm. Because I think for us, we went with, or for me anyways, I went with software that I had at the prior company, but I didn't necessarily need. So knowing what you need versus, oh, well I have this, so I must need that, right? So I think it's those kinds of conversations that are really helpful. Those are good points, Amy. And I don't know if either you or Amber have any sort of, wish I would have done it differently other than maybe the software, or absolutely don't do this if you're thinking about starting your own firm, is there anything that you might want to share from that standpoint? Do it now. Yeah, I mean, I'm in the honeymoon phase, so like absolutely, you know, I think do it now, but I do look back on kind of the years that I spent planning and saving, and that was needed 100%, a second thought, but there were moments that I thought, what if I did it now, you know, and then as long as it worked out financially, it probably would have been, you know, this is great to do it then, and I would have, you know, I'd be years in now. I agree, the do it now, I was too afraid to do it, and it just got to the point where I'm like, I'm going to go crazy if I don't do it, so if I had done it years before, and there's the always the would have, could have, should have, but I spent a few years just sitting there thinking, is this really going to be the rest of my life or the rest of my career, and now I don't even want my career to end, like I don't know when I'm going to retire because I love what I do, and I get to do it in a way that's fun, and you know, I work with wonderful people, and now it's going to be my mind that's going to stop me versus wishing my life away that I can get to a certain age and retire, so I would 100% agree with the do it now, and don't suffer from analysis, paralysis, right, don't overanalyze everything, you're going to make a mistake, I will guarantee it, and we don't get to use that word very often, right, but the thing is, you can pivot, and a really, really, really good friend of mine framed it up for me when I was on that fence of, do I do this, do I not do it, and she said, Amy, what's the worst that's going to happen, and I said, I'll have to go get a job, and she laughed and said, that's the worst, yeah, pretty good, that was a good sounding board for you, oh, well, good advice, you want to have those people that you can talk to that can really give you the good honest feedback, sounds like it worked for both you and Amber so far with her change, so we're talking a little bit about, you know, owning your own firm, but let's talk a little bit about, you know, adding partners, right, so, you know, Sana, you mentioned that you're, you know, buying out the firm or part of the firm, so do you want to talk a little bit about what a partner track could look like, what it looks like in your firm, and how the firm factored in succession planning when considering the partner track? Sure, so I have been here for 10 years, and it looks different for everybody, we didn't have a plan, because small firms rarely have a plan, but I'm just, I'm going to say that there is huge demand in this industry for young advisors, and there are a ton of senior advisors who are sole proprietors who are looking to retire and did not plan for it, so now they are maybe two, three, five years away from retirement, and they don't know what to do, so another way to become an owner instead of starting your own firm could be to get in to a small firm and sort of grow organically with that firm, it wasn't really my plan, I literally was just looking for a job in financial planning, I never saw myself as an owner, but it just happened organically, because I've done so much of the work being part of a small firm, I was just doing many of the things that an owner does as an employee, so I felt, you know, when the conversation started about succession planning, it just was a natural fit, I think it has a lot to do with connecting with the values of the firm, because I felt the way that we serve as clients, the values that we have, the work ethic that we have, I can carry that on, and that made the owner feel really comfortable with this transition, our timelines matched, sometimes that doesn't work, because the younger planner wants to really quickly become an owner, or, yeah, because I wasn't in a hurry, it's, you know, it's now I'm going to be the owner, but sometimes you can start this conversation five years in, I think five to seven years of working with a firm, that's how it is with law firms as well, you kind of have done enough to feel that the owner feels comfortable that if I let this person buy in, they're not going to just walk away, I think that's a good amount of time to be with a firm and know that you're going to stay, so from just a buying in perspective, the numbers have to work, we worked with, it's called FP transition, they valued the firm, and then, you know, you get a discount as an internal person buying in, you don't necessarily pay the market price, you get a discount based on that, and then there are different ways of buying in, you can either get a loan, and then pay those monthly or quarterly payments, or you pay from the profits of the firm, so it's a seller financed buyout, which basically is really cool, because, you know, you don't have to put a down payment down, you're getting your share of the profit, and then you turn around and pay part of that towards buying into the firm. It's, you know, FP transitions is working with us to create the contracts, so you always want to make sure that whatever you're signing up for, things are set up in a way that what if somebody leaves, or, you know, what if you want to leave, what if another partner wants to leave, what if somebody dies, what if somebody's disabled, so you kind of have to go through these scenarios to make sure that your contracts are set up properly. But the most important part is, if you're already doing the work, then it's a really natural transition, and it's a really good way to become an owner and not have that anxiety of starting your own firm, am I going to get the clients? Am I going to be able to build this up? So it's just another way of getting to the same place that Amy and Amber are at, but it's more of a long game, because you do have to get in, you have to, which worked for my personality, right? I didn't necessarily know that I wanted to be an owner. I just happened to be in a culture, in a firm with clients that I love to work with, and then I couldn't see myself working anywhere else or doing anything else. So it's sort of a different way of getting to the same place. But I think if you are more intentional about succession planning, I honestly think it can take five to seven years for a senior, for an owner to transition out. I really think that if you try to do it in less time than that, it's very rushed, because the clients need to be comfortable. There's a whole lot of stuff. And if it's a sole proprietor who has been doing this work for the past 20 years, they care about this firm. They want to maintain that service, that culture. So yeah, it's a long game, but it worked. It worked in this case. I have heard, I'm going to say I've heard the flip, that somebody comes into a firm thinking that they're going to be an owner, and the owner decides not to sell, or just doesn't want to retire. And then they're left hanging, and that can cause a lot of... And so communication, right? You set the goals, you set the timeline, you keep updating each other. It has to change, because things change. But we need good succession planning for sure. Right. So a lot of this comes back to culture, also to communication, and acknowledging that there's not one right path for everyone. Not everyone wants to start their own firm. Not everyone is financially in a position to be able to, to Amber's point, spend a lot of money before you make money. So the wonderful part about our industry is that there's a lot of different ways to enter. There's a lot of different ways to grow your career. So I know in the, in the planning industry, we talk a lot with clients about, you know, different life stages and planning for flexibility, whether it's, you know, having children, whether it's taking care of, of aging parents. So Ana, do you want to talk a little bit about ways that financial planners who might need some flexibility in different life stages can continue to be engaged in financial planning? And I know Amber and Amy have, have some thoughts on that as well. But I'll let you lead us off, Ana. Sure. I think this, after COVID, especially, we've all kind of adjusted to the remote work. And now, if you can break down the profession, you can absolutely do work from home in terms of preparing for meetings, following up, trades, compliance. There is so much to do in this field, that if you want to work part time, or if you want to work fewer days, or if you just want to work, do back office stuff, I think talk to your employer, because there is so much need, that they hopefully can work with you to carve out pieces of your tasks that you can do at a sort of a part time level. But the other thing is, I think, Janelle, we have some resources for finding part time work. So there is simply para planner and all with where you can do, you know, prep for meetings, etc. For me, personally, I really do think if you are interested in doing part time work, get in touch with fee only firms in your area. Small firms have a very small budget, they don't advertise, but they need help. If you know what you want to do, contact, you know, these other firms and owners, and find out what their what their sort of bottleneck is, because I think you'll find a lot of small employers are willing to work with you, they need part time help, and they can carve out the work. This is a really good profession in terms of flexibility, we're able to work with clients remotely, we're able to do back office work remotely. It's the best way to stay in touch with your career if you need to step back a little bit. Sure, is there anything Amy or Amber that you would like to add as far as things that you have experienced or things that you, Amy, maybe even for your firm that you've done with flexibility for employees that need that? Well, first of all, I work either in New York or in Florida. So you know, I've built my firm around the idea of being very flexible. But we also have somebody who is, you know, living out in Colorado, who has two young children who tends to work early mornings, and then afternoons. Becky on our team just had her first baby on Monday, which we're all so excited about cute as a button. And even though we're a small firm, I said, you know, take three months, because that's time that you need to get acclimated. And this is a long game, as Sana mentioned, you know, this isn't something that we're turning around and doing. For just a short period of time, we hope Becky is a long term player. I mean, she is my succession, hopefully. So I, you know, thinking with that sort of mentality of, well, well, what, what would make somebody actually, the question that I often ask is, what would make you leave? Because I want to make sure I'm not going to do it. You know, and thinking about it from that perspective, the number one thing that often comes up is removing flexibility, because the members of the team that we have really do need that they need to be able to jot off and attend something that their child is participating in. Last year, I spent, you know, the summer helping my husband take care of his mother, and I needed to just vacate from time to time. So I, I think as a firm owner, and others that are listening that, you know, could encourage their firm owners, we really do, we, we have one of the best professions, and there is absolutely no reason why we can't offer that level of flexibility within what, what we are doing with our clients, and encouraging them to get creative with what people's schedules are. If we can build our, you know, you won't see me working at seven o'clock at night, but you might see me working at five o'clock in the morning, you know, other people on the team, you'll never see them up at five o'clock in the morning, but eight o'clock at night, they're working. It's what our rhythm is, and, and we do our best work if we can try to help people work within that rhythm, and I would strongly encourage other firm owners to, to try to think, I'm not saying do it my way, but to try to think about how to grow this profession, and that's working, like that is something that seems to be really repetitively asked for over time. Absolutely. I, I think that the flexibility is something that, you know, obviously post-pandemic, everybody's looking for some sort of flexibility, and we've all learned how valuable it can be from a work-life balance, but also how much you can really get done, you know, whether you're in the office, whether you're not in the office, you know, times that you're working, so flexibility is, is really important. We've got just a few minutes left here. We did have one question that we didn't get to, so we've got about two minutes to cover it, but Stuart had a question about, you know, when you have a, an employee that you, or a new hire that you're trying to move up through different roles to help them grow, he wants to know, you know, how much of that transition and, and pace of that, that transition is that, you know, getting the new hire feeling confident versus the planner actually feeling confident in releasing control of things to the new hire, and Amy, I'm going to toss this one to you, because I know you've had the most experience with this. Yeah, it's a balance. I, I think that the feeling out both parties, right, I, if the person, for me, it comes back to, sorry, I keep using the word you used, Amber, but the curiosity feature of somebody, because if they're, if they're willing to say, I don't know, and be comfortable with it, number one, that automatically increases my level of comfort with their, their confidence. So they're confident saying, I don't know. I say it all the time, right? So having somebody feel confident with that, having somebody be really curious will let me let go. The other person has to be willing to also be confident in the role that they're in and not, not be timid by the relationship. So I can't say that I have a percentage per se, but I do think it's a 50-50 balance and both parties need to work really hard at it and really drive the point home that, you know, when that person is ready, Hey, I'm ready. And the person that is leading it, the lead planner needs to sort of bring that person along a little bit more, you know, what do you think? Now, what do you think about it? At least in my experience, when I put, I try to always plan out the meeting saying, well, I'm going to ask you about this. So be prepared to answer this question. So, you know, I never want to put somebody on the spot and make them feel uncomfortable, but I think it's real important to have those conversations before you walk in the room so that there is a discussion point and that person that's not leading the meeting yet feels like they, you know, are, they have a good sense of how to communicate and feel confident about it. I hope that made sense. I felt like I rambled. That makes a ton of sense. It's, it's confidence on both sides, right? So you're confident that the person that you have in there with you is, you know, is able to do a good job. And that person also feels confident in their ability to do that. So, you know, again, communication. This goes back to culture. We've had some resounding themes during this webinar today. So I, you know, we're, we're basically at the top of the hour. I do want to mention the resources that Sana mentioned on, you know, places that you can look to if you're looking for part-time work or new planner recruiting. Those were in handouts that Heidi went ahead and made available to all of the attendees today. I do want to also just sort of recap that there's a lot of opportunities when it comes to career pathing in this industry. NAPFA provides a ton of resources, whether it's just experiences that other members have, getting involved with mixed groups or study groups or things like the Women's Initiative, give you, you know, other planners to lean on and lean on their experiences like we're doing today. So I would like to encourage everyone to take advantage of the resources, take advantage of their NAPFA membership and reach out to, you know, anyone here on the panel that might be able to help you as well. So I want to thank all of you, Sana, Amy, Amber, for sharing all of your experiences today. And, you know, just, just appreciate you spending some time sharing your wealth of knowledge and experience with how you've transitioned in your careers so far. So Heidi, I don't know if there's any other housekeeping we need to do at the end here. I'm sorry. Thanks, everybody, for a great program. And if you want to share the recording with someone, it will be available in the NAPFA Learning Center in a few days. Have a great afternoon. All right. Wonderful. Bye. Bye now. Bye.

webinar

career pathing

NAPFA

Women's Initiative

financial planning industry

scholarship program

mentorship program

career changer

small firm

flexibility