It is my pleasure to introduce you to our speakers, Diane Bordo and Gretchen Halpin. Diane Bordo is the president of the Humphreys Group, a woman-owned and operated wealth management firm and certified B Corporation. She is passionate about helping women get smarter about money and co-authored Rewriting the Rules, Telling Truth About Women and Money with Hallie Krauss. Under Diane's leadership, the Humphreys Group was named a 2021 ThinkAdvisor Luminaries for Thought Leadership and Education. Gretchen Halpin is the co-founder of Beyond AUM. She specializes in pioneering strategy and growth initiatives that drive success across every aspect of a business, from vision and objectives to marketing and business development to the overall client experience. In 2021, Gretchen was named to the class of ThinkAdvisor Luminaries under the Thought Leadership category, and Beyond AUM was recognized for executive leadership. Please help me in welcoming her session today. Thank you. Thank you for that introduction. It's weird to hear someone talk about you. But to add to what she's saying, I think it's important to level set why Diane and I are so passionate about this topic. As part of my work, I help lead the FPA's Women in Finance Knowledge Circle, where our charter is really to help elevate women in the financial advisory industry, as well as provide tools and resources to have them be more successful in their businesses. And I've also had the pleasure, with Diane, to take part in Dimensional's Women in Wealth community. Diane and I were on the Trailblazer committee before they had a Women in Wealth initiative. And just last week, I was in Austin and was happy to see that their community has grown to over 1,800 women. And it was so great to see an entire forum of 200 women filled at Dimensional. There was a time when you didn't have to wait for the restroom, and now there's a long line. So I was very excited about that. Diane, do you want to share what this topic means to you? I would only add to that nice introduction that we work primarily with women clients. And as she said in the intro, the idea of helping women get smarter about money. But the real thing that I've realized and I'm really passionate about is helping women see how they're already smart about money. You might hear, like I do all the time, we have new clients and they say, I don't know about this, and I don't know, and I'm not good at this. And it turns out they're really good at it, and they just don't know it. And it's maybe an issue of how we define that idea. And the other thing, and we'll certainly get into a lot of this, the other thing I think, in our industry there are two big questions that we're constantly talking about. How to get more women clients, and how to cultivate and keep top women talent. And I think it's the same answer. If you solve for one, you've effectively solved for the other. And we'll talk about more what I mean by that. But I feel really strongly about this and changing the narrative in our industry in a meaningful way. And there are glimmers of it, but we have a long way to go. So one trait that many of you probably can relate to is that women tend to over-prepare. We have all of our notes. We will be looking at our notes, but part of our preparation was Diane and I put together a survey. And we reached out to our broader communities of women, both in our networks, but also through email and social media. And to our surprise, we got over 100 responses. And we focused the survey on preparing for our discussion today. And so we're going to be discussing things around leadership, around how women are feeling in their firms in terms of opportunities that they have, as well as their relationship to their clients and how they're best serving their female clients as well. And so we're going to kick off. Diane's going to run us through some of the demographics of the survey. OK, so as Gretchen said, we had exactly 103 responses. And we're not statisticians. We're not academics. This is really just a simple, we're not social scientists. It was really a simple survey to sort of get the pulse of our peers. But we did, I'm sorry? Yeah? It's green. Is that right? Can you guys hear me OK? Yeah, OK. So we perceived a great deal of enthusiasm and engagement for the study. And from our perspective, it really tells us that women want to talk, they want to be understood, and they want to be seen. So I think that it's really important. The other thing I just wanted to mention before we look at the demographics, I just wanted to refer to an academic study on the same topic. Maybe some of you have seen the Carson Group in 2023. They updated the state of women and wealth management. It's much more of that academic thing that I was referring to, but it's quite good. It's easy to find, and I encourage you to get a copy and read it. So I'll just put that there. And if any of you want to look through it later, please feel free. OK, so looking at who are we talking about? So on the left is the age breakdown of these 103 respondents. So you can see 42% of the participants were age 55 or older. 57% were between the age of 35 and 54. So what does that mean? So we're talking about women with experience under their belts. They've been around long enough to have a range of experiences in terms of how this industry operates. And that's really underscored on the right. You can see the position or title demographic. And owners, founders, and partners accounted for about 60%. So the respondents, there was a heavy concentration of women with a lot of experience and leadership and senior roles, which is really cool. Looking at the next slide, years in the industry, again, sort of the same story. 32% of the respondents had experience of 20 years or more, 39% with 10 to 20 years, and leaving only 30% with 10 or fewer years. So it really is all just syncing up with women who are not overly new to the industry, have been around, and have some great experience. On the right, you can see it says entrepreneur. One of the things that, in fact, the Carson Group study that I just referenced talked about this idea that was actually, I hadn't heard before, the idea of forced entrepreneurship. Looking at when women can't find a good spot with a firm, they tend to become a forced entrepreneur, starting their own firm for a whole host of reasons. And we'll talk about this more, but that list of bullet points at the bottom talk about the reasons why. Pride of ownership, flexibility, and especially control, advancement, service to clients in the way that they want to do it, equity, which maybe they didn't have access to in their previous lives, and lifting other women up. And by the way, we should say, any questions, please shoot out your hand, and we can take questions along the way. So my question, do you consider yourself an entrepreneur? Should I ask no questions? No, this was with regard to women who had become entrepreneurs, or had started their own firms as a result of not finding a good environment with a larger firm. Does that make sense? So they're essentially business owners. Yeah. What was the question they were asking? If they had their own firms, why had they started their own firms? So the question was about identifying your role or position within a particular organization. And one of the options was business owner, entrepreneur. And so that was the response checkmark, essentially. It was a multiple choice question. But how do you know if it's forced or not? Oh, it was just a comment that I was making from the Carson Group study, the idea of forced entrepreneurship. Should I stay, or should I go? Right, yeah. OK. So based on that, Diane, I mean, what are you seeing in terms of leadership and the leadership skills related to women versus their male counterparts? So it's really interesting. We all have a lot of anecdotal experience. But I always like to look at the numbers and see if there's data on the subject. And I came across a whole bunch of research. But a couple of things caught my eye. There was an article in the American Psychological Association publication. And bottom line, their conclusion with their studies is that women leaders make work better, right? That even though, even still in 2023 when this study was done, women still face challenges to their authority and success that are greater than those faced by their male counterparts. But on the other hand, women leaders demonstrate more transformational leadership styles. They're more likely to be collaborative. And to be seen as equally or more competent than men. Team collaboration, as I just mentioned, is greatly improved by the presence of a woman in the group. The more women in the group, the great the women's group collective intelligence. And then there are all these other studies about the traits of leadership. And it turns out when you do sort of a survey on it, women really show up really well compared to men in leadership. The conference board did a study and concluded that organizations with at least 30% women in leadership roles are 12 times more likely to be in the top 20% of financial performance. And you may be familiar with impacts. The mutual fund company has a mutual fund that focuses on companies that have greater gender diversity in their management and board membership. Because if you look at those companies, they have better financial metrics. That's the idea. The other thing that this conference board study talked about was creative competencies and reactive tendencies. So creative competencies are things like, from a leadership standpoint, are things like relating, self-awareness, authenticity, and achievement. And reactive tendencies are things that are self-limiting beliefs, and compliance, and protecting, and controlling, and more of an autocratic micromanagement. And you can guess where this is going. Women really tend to lead with those creative competencies that I was talking about much more than men do. And so we might all experience women leaders in a particular way. But it's also interesting, I think, to look at the data to see how these things play out from an academic standpoint. All right, thank you. All right, we're going to move on to mentorship and sponsorship. And on the screen, you'll just see a couple of the open-ended responses that we received from women who did take the survey, whether or not they had experiences with mentorship or sponsorship, and what their experiences were like. And so to start, I thought we would just level set the differences between each. Many, many organizations have mentorship programs, or you might have a younger advisor who comes to you and asks you to be their mentor. And so traditionally, the role of mentor is really someone who someone has an opportunity to go to for advice, can get shared wisdom about knowledge in the industry as a whole, and ultimately helps them navigate the nuances of what it means to be in their role in business. On the flip side of that, sponsorship is more about having an advocate in your organization who really lifts you up, positions you to advance in your career, and helps set opportunities for you that you might not otherwise get if you did not have that sponsor. Some of the things, well, maybe not on this slide. On the sponsorship slide, I thought things were also about impact. And so what impact can you make? And can there be a formal sponsorship program? Or is this more ad hoc? And I can really speak to my own experiences around this. I have had mentors throughout my career who really helped teach and guide me to certain areas or expertise associated with what I do. But what I valued most in my career has been the sponsorship side of things. And that sponsorship side can be something as simple as, I served on a leadership team for a large RIA firm. I worked as their chief strategy officer. So on paper, I was in a position of great authority. I was making policies associated with that organization. But if I was in a boardroom and I had an opinion, oftentimes the other people, mostly men in the boardroom, if they parroted my exact same opinion, that was given much more credit than maybe me saying it. I think that's something that happens pretty regularly for women. And I do think it's an unconscious bias. I really respected the men that I worked with. In a sponsorship position, I went to one of my male colleagues. And we talked about it. And he said to me, from now on, if that happens to you, I will say, Gretchen, that's a great point. To make sure that the credit is where credits do. I mean, you hate to think about it that way. But it's showing the people around the room that what I'm saying is a credible thing. That's sponsorship. That's something that any of us can do when you see that happening in any situation. Sponsorship can also be within your networks. If you're identifying ways that you can help someone, if someone's saying something and you're like, oh, you know what? Susie would be a great fit for that. Bringing someone to their attention that might not be the normal person that they would pick as part of that programming or opportunity to speak, maybe, or to present, or to host a client event, to take over a meeting agenda. So all of us can play. It has an incredible impact on confidence, opportunities, as well as a change in thinking, particularly from our male colleagues, on why that's happening and how they can change those actions within any situation. Thinking about that same boardroom situation, if it was a young female advisor who was in a meeting and, as a more seasoned female advisor, you see that happening, sponsorship could be going to that male colleague and saying, hey, I noticed this happened in a meeting, bringing it to their attention. Because it might not even be something that they're aware that they're doing. Does anyone have any personal experiences on mentorship or sponsorship? Well, first of all, everything you're describing has been going on for decades. Yes. And not just in financial services. So it's so frustrating that it's still like this. I also think that the difference when I think mentorship and sponsorship is like, mentorship is one-on-one. Nobody kind of knows about it. And sponsorship is you're bringing it out in the open and getting other people involved to help the person. That's a good distinction. Yeah. It takes more depth to do it. And you really putting yourself on the line, which is important and good. Yeah. Yeah. The thing that I read about in the work room is if you hear a woman have an idea that you kind of ignored, and then you hear a man saying the same thing that a woman said, it's to point out, didn't she just say that? No. So whether or not you're a woman or a man, I feel like that's a powerful thing to watch for, so that it's not like, oh, she got crushed off, and he said exactly the same thing. Didn't she just have that idea? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Can anyone share any experiences they may have in seeking out a mentor or sponsor? Have you guys had any positive experiences or obstacles associated with either? Sure. I do. I have a mentor at work right now who's in order of age. And it's very helpful, but there was a thing that might still be on the screen right now. He's a wonderful mentor, and he gives me great advice. But there's still a level that he can't relate to some of the issues that I think I deal with on a day-to-day basis. So there's a little bit of a disconnect there, but I'm able to still kind of see past that and kind of focus on the positives that I take away from that relationship. But I previously had a mentor. We change mentors about every two years or so. I previously had a female mentor that was very helpful also, especially when I was starting out my career. And having mentors, and now I am a mentor myself, too. And I kind of feel like I'm a mentor. That's great. Are you looking for anything? A little bit. Sometimes, you know, old dog, I mean, that's a different kind of thing. But for my mentor, it is a younger individual starting out their career. So I feel like I'm really able to make an impact on them. That's great. Thank you. Yeah? I came out of the corporate world. I was with Merrill Lynch for many years. And, you know, many women in that setting, they had to fight really hard to get to where they are. And they just didn't want to reach down necessarily. And some of them did. Some of them were amazing. But being on my own as an RIA, I have found it very challenging to find mentors. And so some of us, like many people in this room, you form a mastermind group for years. Maybe you've been doing this longer than you have on your own, but I think that's something missing with small firms. I have advisors who belong to NAFTA. There's really nothing available, unless I'm missing that, because I don't know about it. Well, there's the Women's Initiative and the Entrepreneurship Program. Are you going to apply for it? I just think it's going to be around, like, recently, but I don't know if it's going to be matched up in that form. Yeah, I did see a QR code out in the hallway. It says Women's Initiative and a QR code. So right there on the— For the CFP? For NAFTA. Yeah, for NAFTA. There you go. Marketing. Yes? I've tried to run a couple of mixed groups as a mastermind group, because I find it extremely helpful, and so are RIAs. I also talk to other RIAs. But it's just hard to get people to come every month, and I wish NAFTA had a thing like that. So I wasn't trying to get this thing going, and maybe not communicating as well as I should, because it's been so extremely helpful when we have had people come together and be like, hey, I'm sitting in my office, and you're sitting in your office. What are things that we can help you work and help work through? Yeah. Well, community is obviously very important. We're going to kind of switch gears a little bit and talk about Diane's favorite topic. I'm joking. Imposter syndrome. Yeah. So one of our questions was, do you experience this and all that kind of thing? And I'm sure you can imagine the response. I don't have the percentage, but it was over 50%. And so Gretchen, it isn't exactly my favorite topic, but what's interesting is that my thoughts about imposter syndrome have really changed in recent years, and it was really impacted because I watched a video of Reshma Saujani, who is the one who founded Girls Who Code, and she gave a commencement address for Smith College a few years ago. And if you go to YouTube and Google Reshma Saujani bicycle face, you'll find it. I'm not going to tell you what bicycle face means because you'll enjoy the story like I did. But basically watching that helped. You know, I used to think of imposter syndrome as really a function of my lack of confidence and, you know, just feeling like I wasn't good enough, right? Maybe we can all relate. But in reality, now my thinking is that it's really more rooted in a feeling of not belonging. You know, when we feel like we don't belong, or we don't have a seat at the table, or to your point earlier, the person in the second to the front row, having to fight to keep that seat at the table, right? And so, you know, most people, or even myself a few years ago, we think of imposter syndrome as like a problem that each of us individually have to figure out. We're going to lean in. We're going to work harder. We're going to somehow get more confidence. We're going to network ourselves out of this, right? But the truth is it's a systemic cultural problem, right? We're expecting individual women to solve a problem that's much bigger than any of us and a problem that's so ingrained in our society. And, you know, the sort of subtext is that there's something wrong with us. You know, that if we feel unqualified, it's because we are, or if that we worry that we don't have what it takes, it's because we don't. And, you know, that's completely crazy. You know, feeling discomfort and anxiety are really natural human emotions. And the truth is it's normal to feel like you don't fit in when you don't fit in, right? I was looking at the numbers. When I, I remember, I've been around for a long time in this industry. And I remember at some point seeing this statistic that women's CFPs were 26% of the total CFP number. I just Googled it. It's under 24%. Like, it's a little bit crazy making. And the frustration, you know, like why are we still talking about this, right? It's a little bit crazy making. And, you know, the message, we were just talking about mentors and sponsors. And I think that, you know, that's great advice. And there are certainly, those are tips and tricks that we all know to sort of boost ourself up. But bottom line, we're putting on a cultural level, when we talk about imposter syndrome all the time, we're really putting the burden on women. It's one more thing that we need to figure out. And so let's take an example, the gender pay gap, right? How much has it moved in the last couple decades? Not much, right, depending on how you look at it. Again, I'm not a social scientist. But we tell women, fight for your worth, get good at negotiating, ask for more. If you look at the data, women ask for raises as often as men do, but they're turned down more often, right? And so we could just tell companies, hey, pay people equitably, right? Pay women fairly, pay transparency, all of this stuff. So women, I mean, not women, companies can actually move the needle on this. But they choose not to. Oh, I'm so in rant mode, I don't even notice. Turn up your, turn that one up. Okay. What should I do? I'm just speaking to that. Can you hear me now? Yes. I won't start over. You go. You go, right. I mean, as an example, Salesforce in San Francisco, Mark Benioff, he does a really good job of paying attention to this and working with his people on a regular basis to review the issue of pay equity, as an example. And so just this idea, you know, and this video that I was talking about, she does a really good job of walking through this. We're all working so hard to get over imposter syndrome, but there's so much working against us. And I hate to say this and to be a big, fat bummer, but a lot of it really hasn't changed, to your point earlier, right? So in any case, what do we do, right? And what I have learned to do, and I'm curious what any of you, how any of you might answer this question. I now just, I stop myself and I take a deep breath and I really try to analyze what's really happening. Why am I feeling this way? Is it because I really am unprepared or is it because, you know, of the situation I'm walking in and sort of the setup? And then I just, you know, try to do some positive self-talk. I say, Diane, you know, remember who you are. Like, you have a place here. And, you know, some people talked about it earlier, just being present. The power of presence and authenticity is so crucial. And then, of course, we all have to summon our courage and just do it anyway. But for me, it helps to know that it's not the problem. It's not me, right? Somebody alluded to Taylor Swift in that AI thing. So I'll talk about Taylor Swift, too. Anyway, we're not the problem. It's really much more structural than any of us. I don't know if you noticed in the speaker this morning, the first speaker, he actually talked, he put a definition up of the metastasis syndrome. And it said high-achieving individuals who feel this way. And I wonder, I really wonder, is it only high-achieving individuals who put a lot of pressure on themselves that's creating this metastasis syndrome? Or is it, if you're thinking optically, high-achieving individuals who still feel that way? And, you know, sometimes people have different definitions of metastasis. That's right. That's right. I can speak to, is my mic working now? Here. Okay. I think yours is working. Mine's working? Okay. I can speak to my metastasis syndrome moment. And I recently spoke about this in another group. But, you know, I've been in the industry now 18 years. And in my first couple of years, and sometimes this picture comes up, I, you know, I have this little straight bob. And I have my pearls on. And I'm, you know, playing a role. And I remember being around, you know, a conference room table with all of these people. I was the only woman. I'm a Creole woman from New Orleans. You know, so I'm Southern. I'm a woman. I'm Creole. And thinking, you know, what am I doing here? Like, why am I here? Do I belong? And I was not being my authentic self. Recently when I talked about that, I was having a bad hair day. My hair, I had wild hair. You know, and I'm telling this story about the little bob. And it was a Zoom meeting. And I could see myself in the Zoom. And I thought, that's who you are, you know. And so I think being able to show up as yourself is one of the biggest things that you can do. And not apologize for being yourself. You're bringing something to the table. If you're at the table, you're bringing something to the table that is needed. And a different perspective, a different way of thinking, new ideas, expertise. All of those things are things that you're bringing to the table. And I know you have a less dramatic, but probably not for you, moment. Your ceramic moment. Oh, my ceramic. So this is really a story of the environment. So a few years ago, I was really interested in doing ceramics, right. There is a point to this story. So I was really excited to take ceramics. You know, it's a big thing. Okay, I have to pay attention here. And so I waited to take this class. I was so excited. It was six sessions. And it was with the wheel and the whole thing. And I was terrible at it. I was so bad. It was like the stuff that I would throw on this wheel, it was like not even kindergarten level. It was so bad. And I still kept trying. And, you know, I'd see these people next to me. It was bad. And so finally, on the second to the last day, it came up that I'm left-handed. And the instructor said, oh, the wheel goes a different. You should make the wheel go in the opposite direction. And I'm like, what? You're telling me on the fifth time I'm trying this that, like, the system is working against me, essentially? Like, the whole design of it was not for me. And I was working against my nature, right? And it wasn't set up for me. It was set up for right-handed people. And not part of her, the instructor never said, oh, by the way, if you're left-handed, flip that switch. And so as a result, I was totally demoralized. I was so embarrassed that I was so bad. My enthusiasm went, like, negative. And I didn't even go to the sixth class. And I haven't been back. And I, like, the stuff that I made, I should probably throw it away. And so the idea is just how we think it's us. But really, a lot of times, it's the setup. Yeah. I love that story. No ghost moment for you. No. Okay. Oh, right. No, not that movie. No. Okay. We're going to move on to male allyship. And I'm happy to see men in the room today. That makes me very happy. You know, I think men can play a very pivotal role in moving the needle forward. Outside of sponsorship or mentorship, especially key leaders of organizations who are responsible for hiring practices, looking at compensation, structures associated with fair and equitable compensation for women that are coming into the industry, as well as what the promotion process is for women in your organization, making sure that's fair and equitable. Those are three of the biggest things that men can do to help move the needle forward for women. In the organization that I was in, luckily, we hired a chief people person who came in and did an entire analysis of the compensation across the organization based on tenure, capabilities, and role. And what we saw was a lot of disparity in terms of promotions and compensation as it relates to the women in the organization. And so equalizing that really put all of the women on a much more level playing field as it relates to their earning potential, their career pathing. Everyone had the same career path. When hiring was done, whether or not they negotiated for salary increases, there was very clear guidelines associated with all of those things related to career pathing in an organization. And if you are a leader in your organization, that's one of the key things that you can do to get women more interested, more engaged, and more motivated to grow within your organization and to provide the same level of who wants to put it all in when you're getting less than the person sitting next to you. Nobody wants to do that. And so being able to up their game, pay them fairly. One of the other things we already talked about, listen and amplify, giving credit when credit's due, acknowledging ideas in meetings, promoting achievements of women in the organization, all builds confidence and builds opportunities for them to be recognized for the worth that they're bringing. And when I say that, I don't mean like no one wants to be placated to. Nobody wants to get things that they don't deserve. I know I don't. But when it happens, amplify it. When something good happens, put them in the spotlight. Put them forward. It's definitely an unconscious bias that happens. But I see so many young men in organizations who come in with so much confidence. And I think part of that confidence is because they're seeing what they want to be on a regular basis. And oftentimes, women are coming into organizations, and there's no other women there to see what they want to be. And they don't want to be a man. They want to be a woman. And there's distinct differences there. And so you often see young men moving up the ladder much more quickly because they have someone to emulate, just like parents and children. Children emulate what they see in their parents. Did you have a comment? Yes. I've always struggled a little bit with unconscious bias because sometimes, if you don't know, you have it. We had an incident a couple months ago. We had three interns. And they came in with two women and a man. And it was young. And we had a breakfast. Everybody was around the table. And my boss, who's a male, immediately started talking to the guy about sports. And they got along great. And they were talking about sports. And the woman who sat there quietly basically would have cut it down. And so when that was over, I went into his office, and I pointed it out. I said, I know it's easier for you to make conversations. But you completely left out the woman. So you have to make an effort to overcome that. Thank you for bringing that to his attention. Because he probably didn't even realize it. Like you're saying, that was a comfortable thing for him to do, was to walk into the room and start talking to the young man about sports, right? And so I think part of that is having our male allies step out of their comfort zone a little bit and maybe think about. Or if you don't know what to talk about, get curious with questions. Yeah? I just had a discussion earlier today with Caleb Brown. He was talking about hiring and so forth, what different generations are seeking. And you mentioned the fact that 75% of the profession is men. And so is that what's looking to come into the profession? And so now I'm thinking of that study. If I'm looking to hire and have more women employees as part of my company, what criteria or data am I supposed to use as far as what is important in priorities for their lives? Like I think of work like balance. That was actually quite high for in, I forget if it was X or Y, which gen. But I want to make sure that those are the variables that are paid the most attention to, plus everything else that I'm hearing. Is there anyone that breaks these things down so you can get right to the root of it? Well, I'm sure you have something to say here. But I would say, again, get curious. Ask questions. Because work life balance is different for a man than it is for a woman. And so what does work life balance mean for a man? It could mean spending more time with his family. It could mean not needing to work 70 hours a week, having time to do hobbies or sports. What we're seeing from a woman's work life balance is, how do I manage my career, the house, my parents, and all of the other mental load that is associated with that? Or my babysitter just quit, and now I need a little more flexibility, whatever those things might be. It seems nuanced, but it could be very different. So looking at, you might have on your website, we're hiring and we create a work life balance. What does that really mean? And asking that question in an interview, what does work life balance mean to you? And it doesn't mean that all women have all this load and they're walking around with this big world on their backs. It could mean that I want to go explore the world or whatever that might be. Diane, I know you want to add to this. I think that you can make it really complicated, but I think it's also very simple in the sense of, as I said at the beginning of this, this is the big question. How do we get top talent, women and women clients? And even as recently as February 14th of this year, there was an article in some financial advisor magazine that women still are not happy with their male advisors. They're leaving them. Why? We all know the answer. The answers have been the same for the last 20 years. They don't listen. They condescend. They speak to the man, all of that. We know all of that. And so I think if I were you, I would do everything I could to figure out how to ask good questions and then be quiet. No, okay, no, no, no, it's the same thing, how to be curious, how to not center yourself in the conversation, because when we were in hiring mode, mostly what we heard from women is that they just wanted a non-toxic work environment, and that means different things to different people, that you walk the talk in that way, right? Did you have a comment? Yeah. Right, and you can't figure it out just when you're writing a job description. It has to be like authentically part of your firm's culture because you can smoke it out in a minute. Right, you have to really want to. In the back. Oh, and then. Yeah. Yeah, thank you for that. One other thing also. When I came on to the firm that I'm now a partner in, it was just two men and me, and that was it, and one of the things I heard just at the interview, because they specifically said, what would make me happy here, because that was the reason I left my other firm, which was not conducive to my young kids, and all my male counterparts in my whole career, their wives stayed home. They had their wives home, and they did all the stuff, and I didn't have that luxury. So them asking that just made me feel like that was it. I said, okay, they actually care, they actually want to know, and they followed through with it, and now we also allow that with all of them, and we've grown substantially. We ask that to all of our employees, what works for you, as long as it's not something that they do to us. Yeah. Right. Well, and knowing that they followed through on it. Part of the work I do with advisory firms is I help match-make for mergers and acquisitions and buyers and sellers, and I was on a call with a seller yesterday, a woman-owned firm, and she said, it's so refreshing to have this conversation because everyone wants to buy me because they want more women in their organizations, but when I start to dig into what that really means to them, it's just that they just want more women in their organizations. And so, you know, digging into what that really means, what does it mean for your organization to support women in the industry, but also support women clients is, it needs to be real. It can't just be lipstick, right? Oh, interesting. That's great. I want to just ask the man who asked the question, do you have women on staff now? I mean, one of the issues before COVID, we would have some remote work, but not a lot, and they wanted the ability to work in different locations. That wasn't a part of our culture. Now it is, it's more regular to be able to have freedom to work from home on a more regular occasion. We've chosen to continue that after COVID. So if there were people here, like it's important, I'm very open and advocate to try and make it happen. I just, either sometimes I become blind to it, as we're talking about your workspace, right? We were all men for the longest time, so I have to give thought to the workspace and how it affected other people in the workspace. And so I had this stupid awakening one day, and I'm like, looking around, this place is not conducive at all for a female to work here. You don't have facilities set up the way they should, so it's just something so stupid, so minimal. On one side, I'm looking for men to hire on operations, because I don't want to have this men do the planning and women do it. So I'm trying to break up gender roles. Have the balance. Because what and where, it just doesn't work. Well, you've taken the first step of awareness. Seriously. Yeah, I agree. And I would also add, you can focus a lot on the logistics and the practicalities, remote, at home, time, flexibility, all of that. But I think it really matters, obviously, the culture, but your client service model. A lot of the feedback that we got in this survey, when women were maybe not so happy at their places, it was the way that they wanted to serve clients was discouraged. There's a lot to think about. How do you serve your clients? What are the priorities that you're espousing in terms of your client service model? Do you do things like money quotient or sudden money? What? Right, right. There are a lot of really cool financial planning tools that combine the qualitative and quantitative, and really for you to stretch your empathy side, because that's what people want to see. We all have the expertise, and most women I know have the empathy side of things. Most men I know don't. And so if you want to distinguish yourself, you have to authentically do some personal growth work to say, okay, where am I here? Sorry, that's not an easy... My wife is a therapist and a psychologist, and I went through a lot of coaching courses, and we ask one question and shut up for a long period of time. I'm fine with silence and pauses and just allowing. We make an effort where a man will be talking to a client, and I won't even look at him. I'll be checking with her. That's great. And the training that we do in our office to make sure that we hear equal time, and I'll ask the question sometimes straight to the woman first, and then we'll start to respond. That's great. I didn't ask her. I didn't ask you that question right now. And it's abrupt sometimes, but that's where it needs to be, because I need both sides of the equation. We have our own goals. Hires might be different, and they need to go to the herd, and then we'll discuss that. So I'm just in a struggle. There's still a gap, and I'm trying to figure out what that is. So whether it's me, what you're saying, or... I don't even know you. I'm just... Yeah, and let's take one more comment, and then we... I know our time is very limited here. No, go. Go for it. My husband, I'm near him. We have a big construction company out of Oregon, or Seattle, I guess. And he... And we have daughters. My mother still works in the company. And he... I wish he was here, because he is such a good team builder. He's so open, honest, willing, everything. He's 70 now. He's in a company... I've heard this over and over and over, and he's supporting women, because they're good. Women in business, they show up. They work. They're smart. Yeah. Yeah. And he's always... No, thank you for that. He always runs into this, too, with the union and all that crap, you know, the guys, you know, guys with guys, and the female workers, they do... Women, they do. They do them differently. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Don't. This is your time, and I'm like... No, but you know what, it's... So I'm just gonna... I'm gonna say this, and then we'll move on. I don't think... Don't ever think that you're taking our time. Part of our time is educating and making our male allies aware of some of our feelings and what is happening to women in the industry as well as female clients. And so it's just as important for you to speak up and be curious as it is for us to talk and voice opinions. So I appreciate you speaking up, and, you know, I think that, you know, hopefully through this, we all have a lot to learn, right? And that's a good thing. I'm gonna quickly go through the next couple of slides, and I'm gonna summarize, Diane, on queen bee syndrome here. Great. Because basically, you know, we see women who really have struggled to pull themselves up the ladder, and there's some women who feel like, why should she have it easy? I work so hard for this. And basically, my point here is, if that's how you're thinking, get over it. Get over it. By sharing your knowledge and wealth and being an ally, being a sponsor, being a mentor, you're building yourself up just as much as you're building up someone else. And so, you know, if you see this happening in the environment, you know, queen bee syndrome, basically, you're being mean to other women because you've had to work so hard. If you, as a man, you see it happening, point it out. And if you're a woman who sees it happening, point it out. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So, DEI initiatives. Oh, we're all, you know, DEI is all over the place. But first off, I purposefully picked this picture for DEI because if you look across organizations, more often than not, the person leading DEI is either, you know, an African-American woman or an African-American man or another person of color or some marginalized group. And as, again, a Creole woman from New Orleans, this offends me. This offends me because it just means that, as Diane said, for women, you're forcing the work on us. When I would love to see an older white man leading a DEI initiative and being curious about finding out what needs to change versus a marginalized group convincing everybody what needs to change. You can see, based on our responses, Diane, I think I'm supposed to be turning it over to you. You know, I mean, I think from a business perspective, it's very important. I think more and more organizations are, from a regulatory perspective, more and more organizations and industries are being forced into DEI initiatives. It definitely has, depending on your client makeup, younger people are looking for diverse workforces. They're looking for DEI initiatives, values-based initiatives. And it also is important that if you do have a DEI initiative in your organization, that there's measurables and KPIs associated with what it looks like in terms of success. Because otherwise, it's just a label. And then, Diane, I think you were going to talk about, you can see some of the responses from our 100 women. It's looking pretty dim in terms of the success rates of these DEI initiatives that are out there. You know, I think many organizations started them as, you know, something that was popular to do. And so, you know, everyone jumped on the bandwagon without a real strategic plan around it. Yeah, so the next slide, elevating DEI and financial advisory firms. A lot of this is in some ways reflective of the conversation that we've been having. And, you know, I'm going to just pull out some of the two largest. These were responses. 29% saying that implementing mentorship programs specifically tailored for women and underrepresented groups. We talked about that a lot earlier. And then increasing transparency. At 28%, increasing transparency in promotion and advancement processes to minimize biases and favoritism. And so you can see we did just a quick to-do list over on the side, you know, leadership and accountability. This is what Gretchen was talking about. Measurable objectives, diversity training, representation in hiring and promotions. And I think the most important thing, open dialogue and feedback. And really, I think I've come to believe that one of the most important career skills is being able to give and receive positive and negative feedback. And that's not exactly only related to DEI. But to your point about figuring it all out, really making it clear in words and deeds that you are open to negative feedback is such an important skill to, and giving negative feedback in a graceful way. Well, and I think that's half of it. Because the leadership needs to be able to hear it. Right, exactly. So, and I've run into that, where I can't hear feedback in such a different way. And if they weren't ready to hear it, it was like running into a wall. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So, Diane, while we're on this slide, I thought, oh. Where does it work? Does it exist? Where is this thing? So, you may have missed it in the beginning. We surveyed 100 women in the industry. And this is how they responded. Mm-hmm. Yeah. No, in the RIA industry. So, as financial advisors. Yeah. So, I was just going to have Diane talk. Are we over time? It's 6 o'clock. Okay. Quickly. Diane, I would love for you to talk about how you've introduced values into the Humphreys Group, associated not only with a B Corp, but what that means for things like DEI and other values-based initiatives in your organization. Yeah, well, maybe I'll focus on the B Corp because of time. And if any of you have questions, you can obviously ask later. So, we're a certified B Corp. We got it about three and a half years ago. And some of you may have heard of it. A B Corp certification has been around for maybe 20 years or so. And it's a pretty rigorous process where you answer a ton of questions about all of your business functions. And the idea is that you're running your business for the benefit of all stakeholders, essentially not just the owners. And so, what does that mean? The environment, your client base, your staff, your profitability, and from a legal standpoint, environmental standpoint, it's really a lot of work and very rigorous, as I said. But it was a way... We're always talking with our clients about values-based investing or financial planning, well, investing too, but really starting with their goals and their values and really making sure that they think about it and to the extent that they're interested, align their money with their values, right? And so, we like to walk the talk too, and so we went through this process to really, for our own self as a firm and from a cultural standpoint, but also to show clients what it means for us. So, as an example, some of the questions... And one of the reasons I was so interested in it, let's say you do a business valuation. I remember doing one a few years ago. All these spreadsheets, all these numbers, and you get some regurgitator report. And I remember looking at these numbers and I'm like, I don't see myself anywhere in these numbers. Like, part of what I really think of as the value and what I care about most is not conveyed in these numbers. And so, things like compensation practices, benefits, work-life balance kinds of metrics, it's really a great process. I'm happy to talk about it. I think we're out of time. We are. But I did want her to share that. And I highly recommend, I mean, if you go to the Humphreys Group's website, you can download Rewriting the Rules About Women and Money. And it's a great resource to use with your clients, but also just to read some of debunking the myths about women and money. So I highly recommend that. And we have both our businesses up there, so if you guys have any follow-up questions or want more information about some of the things that we talked about today, feel free to reach out to us. We're available. I'm always available to men and women to learn about what you're thinking and share information about what we do. So thanks, you guys. We appreciate it. Thank you for your questions. Thank you.

DEI initiatives

values-based approaches

financial advisory firms

mentorship programs

transparency

promotion processes

male allies

inclusive work environment

Queen Bee syndrome

B Corp certification