It's my pleasure to introduce you to the next speaker for our final day, Danica Waddell. Waddell is a certified financial planner professional and the founder of Zena Financial Planning. She holds the registered life planner designation, is currently working towards an MS in advanced financial planning with a focus on life planning at Golden Gate University. Waddell has sat on NAPFA's West Region Board of Directors and has previously served in various volunteer roles in both NAPFA and FPA. Please join me in welcoming Danica. Take this away. Anybody want some old orange juice? Good morning. How's everybody feeling? Fun party last night? Some of my dancing friends? Well, thanks for coming. Now it feels really loud. Am I wrong? Too loud? Okay. Thanks for showing up. I know Saturday morning after a closing party is not the most exciting time to come to a session. But I appreciate everybody being here and I'm hoping that this can be a little bit interactive. So, you know, I don't really want to talk at you for an hour. So please ask questions throughout. If you have a suggestion, do not hesitate to raise your hand and call it out. But we're going to talk about diversity, equity and inclusion today. And I want to just give a little background on why this is important to me and why I'm talking about it. So I'm a career changer. I've been in the industry for about nine years. And I worked for a variety of firms in Seattle and ended up launching my own RIA in 2020. And when I launched, it was really important to me to make diversity, equity and inclusion a big part of the practice. So I personally did not feel welcomed by a lot of the industry. And I think a lot of our clients do not feel welcomed by much of our industry. And I just wanted to create a place that was a little bit more inclusive and representative of the actual population. So from the get-go, I've been pretty intentional about how I go about doing this. And I hear from so many people, you know, it's just me. Like, what can I do in a solo firm to contribute in a positive way? And I have a lot of ideas, and I hope some of you have some ideas too. So we'll kind of talk through just some strategies for how to do this when you are solo, you're not necessarily growing a team. So when I think about DEI and how it shows up for me, I think about it in kind of three big buckets. And we'll talk mostly about two of them. But for me, it's about the clients that I serve. So am I working with a diverse clientele or do most of my people look really, really similar? I think about it in terms of my team, which I have a very small team. And again, many of you might be solo or very small as well. But in terms of the people that are actually working in the firm. And then the third big category is kind of the industry, right? So how is our industry represented? What are we doing to kind of advance the profession? And I know there's lots of people that are working on that. So we're going to do less on that side of things, industry stuff. But I have lots of thoughts. So if you want to talk about it, I'm happy to do that after the fact. But I would be really interested to hear, first of all, who in here is a solo practitioner? And of the people that are solos, how many people plan to stay solo forever? Never planned to hire? Okay. And of those three buckets, so I did a similar presentation at XYP and Live last month. And really was interested in kind of the dynamics of the room and who wanted to talk about which of these three things. So who here is interested in serving a diverse client base? A diverse client base. There's no judgment, by the way. And who cares about hiring a diverse team? Okay. And then who's interested in kind of the industry side of stuff? Okay. So pretty evenly split. Like I said, industry stuff is going to be kind of the last, the lowest of those three things that we'll address. So before we get into it, I want to start by just defining what diversity, equity, and inclusion is. And I also want to say, I know this topic can be really sensitive. People are worried about saying the wrong thing. So I want this to be a safe space. If you do contribute, please be respectful. And also, I would hope that we can keep whatever's shared in here confidential. So some people might say something here that they don't want the rest of the world to know. So this is a pretty kind of generic definition. But diversity, equity, and inclusion are three closely linked values held by many organizations that are working to be supportive of different groups of individuals, including people of different races, ethnicities, religions, abilities, genders, and sexual orientations. So, I mean, there's so many different facets of diversity that we can talk about. So that's a pretty short list. But I think most people do think about race, gender, sexual orientation. Those tend to be the ones that we hear about the most. There are lots of other facets of this. But this is a pretty good starting point. One more comment on just kind of like the definition and the case for DEI. I'm not here to make a case for it, right? I'm assuming everybody in this room already agrees DEI is important. There should be a lot more people in this room, frankly. But those of you that are here, I think we all agree that this is, it's vital. And so we're not talking about why it's important. We're just assuming that that's already understood. And we're going to talk about how to do it. Okay, so the primary things we're going to talk about. So most of these fall into kind of those first two categories of our practice. The first is kind of going through all of your outward-facing materials, social media stuff, anything on your website, any print materials. I don't think most of us do print materials anymore. But if you do, really reviewing those to examine kind of who are you targeting and who are you excluding with the language and the photos and all those things. The second one, I mean, I guess this spans a couple different areas, but it is really about expanding your network. So I hear from a lot of people things like, you know, we really wanted to hire, you know, we want a diverse team and we wanted to hire candidates from different backgrounds and we put out this job posting and everybody looks the same. And it's like, well, you got to expand your network. That's a really easy way to start to, even if you're never going to hire, I would encourage everybody to expand their network. But kind of how do you do that, right? Like, what does that actually look like? And then the last one, this is one that I don't hear a lot of people talking about. It's something that I've been pretty intentional about from when I launched. But, you know, if you're solo, you are still making decisions, conscious decisions about how to engage with vendors, partners. There's all sorts of people that we do business with as businesses. And really evaluating, you know, where are your dollars going and how can you make a difference in that aspect? So that's one of my favorite ones, actually, just because I don't think it's on most people's radar. Questions? Comments? All right. Well, that's not really what it's supposed to look like. Okay. All right. Website marketing. Hopefully this works. Okay. So this is... What am I doing? Am I doing this? Whatever. All right. Good times. Good times. I am not going to fix this now. Let's do that later. All right. Can we stop here? This is a screenshot from my website. It is on the services page. And, you know, I have pretty mixed feelings about using stock photography in general. So this is obviously stock photography. There's very little stock photography on my website. It's mostly me and my team and, you know, us meeting with clients or really mostly my friends. But things that I hope are a little bit more natural. So this is a little bit more obviously stock photo which I don't love. But I do really love this particular presentation. So this is credit to my web developer. And you can kind of see... I don't know how well you can read the questions, but there's, you know, nine different squares there. Each person has a question. It's very, very specific to my target audience. So it's, you know, working with people in tech. So a lot of stuff about equity compensation. Hopefully some different representation of people from different backgrounds. If people are going to your website and they're only seeing one type of person, you're turning off a huge amount of people. The number of times I talk to a prospective client and they come into the meeting and they say to me, you get me. I went to your website and you understand me. This is huge. So I really encourage you to go through your website in close detail and share it with as many people as possible. So this is obviously easier when you're building or refreshing your website, but it can still be done, right? So if you have an existing website, you can absolutely be, and you probably should be, changing photos periodically anyway. But really look to the types of people that are represented. And if you just have some kind of like United Colors of Benetton picture somewhere, I'm sorry, but that doesn't really cut it. I mean, that's like bare minimum is to have some people of different backgrounds represented. I would also really encourage you, especially if you're going through like a rebrand or refresh of your website, to get a lot of people's input. So share it widely and say like, what do you see here? So when I was doing mine, right before I launched, I was just kind of sharing it with friends and family. I sent this to my mom. And my mom is hilarious. I love her. But her very first comment about my website was, you've got your fees listed right there. And I was like, yes, I do, mom. She's like, are you sure about that? And I was like, yes, I am. But then specifically about this grid, she looked at it and she said, there's no old people. And she's retired. She's an older person. She said, everybody's kind of young. And I was like, well, I work with young clients. Like that's by design. So this is very targeted to my demographic. Then she said, everyone on your website is thin. And I was like, wow. That has changed because I made some adjustments to the photos. Didn't register with me at all. And I thought, wow, if you get a number of different people looking at it, everyone's going to see something different. So really circulate that sort of material as widely as you can. Don't just ask the people in your town or the people that are on the board with you or something like that. Because you're going to get a similar, people will see similar things if they have the same background. But getting as much input as possible into what is represented on your website. Same thing goes for language. So I'm a really big fan of being explicit about the types of people that I work with. So I have very clear language that says, I work with people of all backgrounds. I welcome people from the LGBTQ community, different genders, all of the above, the different race. I'm very explicit about that. If you don't have that on your website, people might come and say, oh, there's somebody that looks like me. Cool. You're not going to target every single demographic out there. But if you're not explicit, people will wonder. So I was in the session that I did at XYPAN Live last month. One of the women who attended is now married but was getting married last year and she was marrying another woman, so, you know, queer couple. And all of the vendors that they were looking at for their wedding, she said if they did not have something on their website that said we work with LGBTQ couples, she said we just didn't even contact them. Who wants to get halfway through their wedding preparations and find out that the cake, you know, the person making the cake isn't going to do it for them. So she specifically looked on every single website to see do they say they work with LGBTQ couples. So if you're not explicit, you're going to miss people. Any questions or comments on this? What are your thoughts on not using many people's websites other than your community? Other than team members? I mean, I think that's a personal choice. I do, I mean, team members actually is a good point because people are also looking, I mean, 100% they go to your team page and if the first three rows are all white men and then you finally get to a woman or a person of color on the bottom row who's an admin, people notice that. So, I mean, I think it's fine not to have any pictures of people's websites. But I think there can be very targeted language still. Yeah. Anybody see something else? I mean, I'd love to hear just like my mom's comment, but anybody have anything else that jumps out at them about this? I also work with women. Yeah. Very true. Yep. No, that's a great observation that my target audience it's definitely very skewed to that, but yeah, great point. Yeah, yeah. Gender, okay, so we, I mean, we've talked about sort of the photos and all that and again, I think this is like if you have no photos at all, that's fine, bare minimum. And I'm not talking about like that's not adequate. Gender neutral language is one that I am a big proponent of and I don't know how many people in here have kids and in particular if you have tweens or teenagers, you know that this is huge. Pronouns, how people identify in terms of gender is it's changing pretty rapidly. And I think it's really important to do things like include your pronouns, don't have everything be like husband and wife. So I've worked really hard over the last few years to use spouse, partner. I almost always use they, them pronouns unless I know otherwise. I love, who's got pronouns on their name badge? Did everybody get the little sticker from NAPFA? Kudos to NAPFA for having that option, by the way. So there's these little ribbons on the badge that said my pronouns are. So my pronouns are she and her. You might think it's obvious what your pronouns are and you don't need to have that. I would encourage every single person in this room, wherever possible, to include your pronouns. Anybody know why that's important? Who cares? If it's obvious what your pronouns are, why do you need to declare it? Yeah, you're creating space and you're letting other people know that you're normalizing it. You're normalizing people saying what are your pronouns or my pronouns or whatever they are. So you can put these in your email signature. You can put these in your LinkedIn profile. As much as possible. It doesn't hurt to have them there. You might think it's totally obvious that my pronouns are she and her. But when I call that out, I'm letting other people know, hey, I'm interested in what your pronouns are. Let me know because I want to be respectful and call you what you would like to be called. I don't have it on here, but I think it goes without saying this also applies to names. So please, as somebody who's had my name mispronounced this morning my entire life, make an effort to get people's names right, to say them right, and to spell them right. It never ceases to amaze me the number of times, when I'm anxious about names, I'll meet someone and I'll be like, oh, Anna, so nice to meet you. It's Anna. I'm like, oh shit. Or Andrea. Nope, it's Andrea. So you might think it's super obvious you don't need to ask. Sometimes it's a Michael who you might call Mike and they say, I don't go by Mike. So do whatever you can to make sure you're getting people's names right. Just a simple, what would you like me to call you? So, very basic. If you're not getting people's names right, that's a problem. Consider adding a DEI mission statement. So I talked about being really explicit. So from day one I had something, we had like a values section on our website. And one of the values was be inclusive and so it was very, again, very explicit. We recently added a DEI page. So we have a mission statement on our website. It lists our, what our intention is around DEI in general. And then we have some specific initiatives that we're doing. And I just think that that is, you know, we're letting, again, we're sending a signal to potential clients that this is a priority to us. So I have just the top of that DEI page. So this is from my website. Diversity, equity, and inclusion is at the core of what we do. We're promoting diversity and inclusion with our clients, within our firm, and in the financial services industry. So I think this is really, I'm really proud of this page that we created. And, you know, some of the things, like it's fine to say, yeah, sure, we work with people from all backgrounds, but what are you actually doing? So we are very clear on that page about some of the initiatives that we're doing. We have a day of service. We're also tracking, you know, we'll talk about the vendor breakdown a little bit, but very explicit language on the website about working with vendors from different backgrounds. We have the percentage of vendors from different backgrounds that listed right there, so it's very transparent. So I would consider, again, if you, at the very least, say something like we welcome people from different backgrounds, that sort of thing, that API page is just taking that to another level. Questions or comments? All right. All right, so we're going to shift a little bit to sort of the team side of things. So even if you're not hiring, I still think that there's, you know, there's work to be done here just in terms of who you're interacting with, right? If you are a solo firm, you still need other people in the industry, right, to learn from. So regardless of whether or not you plan to hire, I would argue that you probably need to diversify your network. So my first suggestion here is to consider some of these organizations, I'm going to talk about all of them, but you know consider engaging with some of these professional organizations, BLX internship, take some training. I mean I have lots of other ideas and I would love to crowdsource here, so if people have suggestions feel free to shout it out. The first one on this list is Quad A. Does everybody in here know about Quad A? Okay, awesome. So Quad A is what you know sort of the short version, but Association of African-American Financial Advisors. If you're an XYPN member, they subsidize your membership to Quad A. I am a member of Quad A, I am not African-American, but you know what I've gone to some of their events, I have networked, and so and I support their mission. And I you know felt a little weird about it, like I definitely checked with some friends who are already members, some black women, and kind of said like, can I join? I'm not African-American, and I said but I you know I think the organization is doing great work, I want to support you know financially by being a member, so I joined. And I haven't gone to the, they have an annual vision conference. I attended in I think 2021 as a virtual attend, because it was 100% virtual that year. I would like to go in person, but I haven't haven't quite made it yet. But making the effort to go to these sorts of events or participate in these organizations. The second one on there, I don't know if everybody knows, but both the Diversify and the Women's Initiative have Facebook groups. They're sort of active, like there's some conversation there. Sometimes people post job postings there, articles, you know, so I would encourage everybody to just, if you're on Facebook, consider joining those two groups. Has everyone heard of Choir? Hello Choir? Yeah, Choir is relatively new, I think about a year and a half old, and they are really working to diversify client, or not client, conferences and speaker lineups and all that kind of stuff. So you can, if you are a speaker, you can join and be, you know, sort of listed there. So when conferences are looking for people from different backgrounds, they'll go and look at the people that are in the database. You can join as an attendee, so you can sort of just sign on. It doesn't cost anything to be, to sort of sign, there's a Choir pledge that says I'm not going to go to an event that's, you know, every single person is a white man or something like that. So Choir is doing some really cool work. I'm a big, big, big fan of the BLX internship. Has anybody in here had an intern through BLX? I just did my first one this summer. So the founders of BLX, I believe, are all NAPFA members. It's a really great program. I would really consider, even if you never want to hire, even if you don't really need the help, honestly, like it's not that much money. And this makes a huge difference to some people that are trying to get into the industry. I think the applications are open already for next summer. End of December is when you have to apply. Yeah, yeah. Oh, thank you. Black and Latinx. Yeah, so this is for Black and Latinx people that are trying to get into the industry. So I did my first intern this summer, and the people that I interviewed were mostly graduating college students, but there were, the person I ended up hiring was actually older, and I was looking to career change. But yes, it's a really great program. I'm happy to answer questions if anybody wants to know a little bit more about what that experience was like, but I can also tell you that last year they had a huge number of interns and a very small number of firms. So they really need firms. So if you have any capacity to hire a summer intern, I would definitely suggest checking out BLX. I haven't engaged much with FPA Latino, but there is a group that has, you know, they have like monthly conversation circles and things like that, and they just put on their very first Latino Advisor Summit. So it was a one-day event the day before the FPA National Conference in Phoenix, I think. So again, if you're going to an event, if you're going to FPA National, and there's a day before, go a day early. Go to the Latino Advisor Summit. This is not exclusive, right? This is for anybody to attend, and I think you'll meet some really great people. So again, I haven't been to that event yet, but I probably will at some point. CFP Board has been doing a Diversity Summit for many years. I think it's usually in DC. That's another one to check out. And then another plug for NAPFA's DEI certificate. So that's a program, it's been a year and a half, two years? Four cohorts? Okay. Has anybody in here done the DEI training? Nice. Very cool. Yeah, highly recommend this training. It's pretty reasonable, and you know, it's kind of just a relatively entry-level, but it's like a really good baseline for how to think about like, you know, what do some of the terms mean, how to sort of, it's a good way to dip your toe in for sure, and just get a little bit more comfort, I think, with some of these topics. Does anybody have any other resources that they would throw out here? There's also Pride Planners. FPA has Pride Planners, I think, which is a group. There's Onyx. Onyx is another newer organization, kind of like XYPN, but it's a membership organization. I've seen those come in emails. I didn't know it was on the website, too. Okay, so case studies for firms that are doing DEI stuff at different sort of sizes on the NATFA website. Okay, I think, so I was talking about the woman who was getting married and, you know, was kind of looking for LGBTQ stuff on people's websites, and she said there was a, there's like a designation or a, I can't remember exactly what it was called, but there's some kind of like certificate, you know, some people you'll sometimes see like LGBTQ owned, but there's another way of, there was like some kind of badge or something. Okay, another one that came up at the XYPN Live version of this talk was something called AccessiBe. Has anybody used AccessiBe? It was something about making your website more accessible, so, you know, for people that are visually impaired, things like that, which I don't know a lot about, but I think it's like a pretty easy, I don't know, some kind of widget that you add to your website that makes it easier for folks that are visually impaired to read. Okay, hiring practices. Again, many of us are not going to ever hire, and that's okay. If you are hiring, you know, there are a few things that we can do to make our job descriptions a little bit more appealing. I don't know how many people are still hybrid in the office, remote, whatever, that makes a difference, but I want to share, actually, this I pulled from, I can't remember which website I was on. I see this all the time. It drives me absolutely crazy. These associate kind of entry-level financial advisor postings. Bachelor's degree in business finance or similar, advanced degree desired, minimum of three years of experience, knowledge of the industry, and these FINRA registrations required. So if you are hiring for entry-level, how many people are going to meet these criteria? It's an extremely high bar. I'm a really big fan of thinking outside of the finance industry just in general. I was talking to Amy Irvine yesterday, and she has an intern right now, not through BLX, but she found this intern at a coffee shop. So the coffee, this was her barista, actually it was one of her employees found the intern, but the barista and the employee got to talking, and the barista's like, yeah, you know, I'm in college, I'm like studying finance, I really want to, you know, kind of figure out like what do I want to do, and now she's an intern at Amy's firm. There's a woman named Stacy McKinnon who I've seen present before. She works at a company called Morton Financial or Morton Capital, and she has hired, she came from the service industry, she's hired like, you know, half of their team came from the service industry. So many of the skills that we are hiring for are technical and they can be taught, right? So you do not need to hire somebody that has three to five years of experience and a bachelor's degree in finance. You're just limiting your pool. You're gonna get a much, much less diverse pool if those are your requirements. So thinking outside of the finance industry, also considering candidates that don't have a college degree. So I know that we all love bachelor's degrees and, you know, that's a little bit of a topic around the CFP designation, about whether or not that should be a requirement. There's a lot of great candidates out there. I mean, if you are interested in getting a more diverse pool, think about making that more of an optional, right? Or maybe it's a college degree completed within the next, you know, X years or something like that. But you will definitely get more candidates from different backgrounds if college degree is not a requirement. I'm kind of jumping around a little bit, but has anybody ever seen or heard of Textio or used Textio? That's just one example. There's a few of these websites now that are services where you can kind of run your job description through it and it will identify kind of gendered language, you know, anything that's really gonna be off-putting to people and help you craft a job description that's a little bit more appealing. So, you know, if you're using words like results-driven and ambitious and hard-working, you're gonna appeal to a more, you know, generally male demographic, right? So things like that. So Textio is one of the examples, but there's a few of them out there. So you can, you know, kind of use the app or website version of something, a tool like this. You can also work with an actual consultant. So a friend of mine was hiring last year and paid a consultant, I don't think it was very much, but I don't really know how much it cost, to help them write their job posting to appeal to a more diverse candidate base. And then posting your job opening across a wide variety of sites and job boards. This one seems pretty basic, right? I mean, yeah, we're all gonna post on LinkedIn and Indeed and maybe CFP board and all that kind of stuff, but what about HBCUs? Who lives in an area where there's HBCUs, historically black colleges? Yeah, think about posting on the HBCU, you know, job board, right? Things like that. Thinking about sharing it with, you know, maybe you posted at the coffee shop, but really thinking about getting that job posting in front of different people, right? And if you're posting it on LinkedIn and everybody that you know on LinkedIn went to the same college as you, works, you know, lives in the same town, you're not, you're not going to reach other people. So if you're just doing that, really start to think about some other, other places. I mean, HBCUs is a great, yeah. I've never heard of it. That sounds great. It's called Handshake? Yeah. Cool. Love it. Any other suggestions? Yeah. Yeah. Right. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, no, that's a great observation. I mean, I think one of the things that I think about all of this work is clients are really aware of this stuff, all of it, whether it's a college degree, the diversity of your team, all of it. People care, and I mean, people are looking to do business with, with someone that they think is doing the right thing. I think many people, like, you know, you think about the companies that, that you like in the world, you know, whether it's like Nike or whatever, they, they take a stand about stuff and they're very public about some of the, you know, the things that they're doing. And I, you know, clients know, like I've had clients go through my, prospective clients, go through my ADV, pick out the name of the TAMP, go to the TAMP website, and then question me on the diversity of that team. People are paying attention. So they will, so to your point about, you know, college degree or not, people will notice that. I think if you can show that you're training up, you're training up that individual, yeah, cool. They're getting a college, they're gonna get a college degree. I'm not saying they should never get one, but I, I don't think it's essential. And I guess, you know, are you gonna put that person in front of a client? Like, you know, they're not gonna be a lead advisor, right? But I think it's okay to, I mean, I don't know how many people really care about a support person's education. Maybe. You might, I guess it's possible you might lose a client. I also think you might attract other people. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yes. Yeah. Mm-hmm. That's a great point. I think, like, educational diversity is another form of this. Like, I mean, I don't live in a place where, you know, there's a school that everybody went, I mean, a little bit, but there's some parts of the country where, like, it is really important what school you went to, right? And if everybody on your team page went to Duke, you just lost. Any other comments about just kind of, I mean, there's, we could spend all day talking about how to hire a diverse team. And one thing, just to be clear, that we're not talking about at all, is then how to be inclusive once they are on your team, right? So it's not just as simple as, like, oh great, check the box, got a person of color on the team, I'm done. There's a lot more to this. But anything else about the actual process of hiring or recruiting? Okay. I'm gonna move on, because I think I'm running out of time. Vendor choices. So like I said, this is something that I've been pretty intentional about from the beginning. I'm not suggesting that you make vendor choices solely based on the demographics of that vendor. But I think that we have the opportunity, you know, the same way that we all spend money in the world and we are choosing, you know, voting with our dollars, so to speak, we as business owners also have that opportunity. So we did this kind of comprehensive vendor review this year, and we looked at everything from scheduling software, custodian, business coach, I mean, literally everything. Some of them we don't actually pay. So to be clear, like we don't pay Schwab, but they are our custodian. And as much as we could, we, you know, we now have a spreadsheet of, you know, are these companies owned and or run by a person of color or a woman? And again, when we can, making a choice to choose to put our dollars to a community that, you know, there's very significant racial and gender wealth gaps in this country. So if I can, as a business owner, I am choosing to make a conscious choice to put my dollars back into that community. So an example is, and again, it's a little easier when you're launching. Some of these, you know, how many of us are going to change our custodian over because of this? Probably not anybody. But something like scheduling software is a really easy, you know, that's a pretty easy thing to change out. So when I was launching, I was looking at, you know, schedule once and Acuity and Calendly. They're all pretty similar. Pricing is pretty similar. And I found out Calendly is black owned. Great. Done. That's my decision, right? So that was enough to just tip the balance, right? Again, I'm not suggesting anybody says, I'm only going to do business with companies that are owned by women and people of color. But if you have a choice and, you know, you can choose to go with a company that's owned by a white man or something that's owned by someone from a different population, make that intentional choice to put your dollars back into those communities. Again, I mean, I already told the anecdote about a client, a prospective client going through my ADV, going to the website of my TAMP, and complaining to me that there was not enough diversity on that team page. Clients are paying attention. So we did this scorecard and we have it publicly posted on our website. So we went, like, we went through, you know, this whole exercise and we determined that 34% of our vendors are owned by a person of color. It's pretty good, actually. You know, I was like, oh, I was impressed. I was like, okay, we're not doing too bad. Our target is always going to be higher. So for this year, we said our target is 40%. And then when we get to 40, we'll move the target to 50, right? So we're always going to be increasing that number. When we did the the gender side of things, I was shocked. Because again, I've made some intentional decisions with my business coach, my web designer are all women. Only 16% of our vendors are owned by women. I was really disappointed in that number. Like, really disappointed. And that's not, I don't think that's necessarily a reflection on me and my firm. It's a reflection on what's available. But our target is 25%. So again, being really public about this, it's not comfortable to say 16% of our vendors are women. But we're working on it, right? I actually got this idea from XYPN. XY Planning Network has something on their website about their team. So they're very public. These are our demographics. These are our targets in management at this level, at this level, so very, very explicit. And I think that's something that our clients appreciate. Also, if you are hiring, potential employees will also be looking at this stuff. I'm curious if you're thinking about adding additional vendors to the women on the up or swapping them out, and then having to make the trust and relationship between vendors on the team. It's complicated, for sure. There's so much to think about. Like I said, it's so much easier when you're getting started. And you're like, great, I have like 17 vendors to choose. Where can I make a decision? When you're established, it's going to be harder, right? Like I said, nobody is going to change their custodian based on this. It's so much work. I don't really intend to just bring on new vendors to change the numbers. To me, that's not really the right strategy, I don't know, the way to go about it. But I do think it's going to be more as we add vendors. But I would like us to be re-evaluating vendors as well and saying, is this still working? Do we want to make a change? Or can we make a change really easily? Again, scheduling software is very low-hanging fruit because it's just, I mean, nobody's going to really notice in terms of functionality. But yeah, I mean, it's complicated. None of it's easy. But I think being transparent and being intentional about it sends a signal. And then it's also telling people, as we are making vendor decisions, this is the lens that we're doing that through. This is what we're considering. Other questions or comments on this? Sir, like, what would be great about being a Schwab? Can you include them in this? Or do you say, you're a Schwab? I mean, I included Schwab. I'm not sure how many other publicly-traded companies we do business with. I included Schwab, but yeah, I mean, it's also like, for the most part, a lot of our vendors are very, very small. And it's very clear who the owner is. But sometimes, like a Schwab, it's like, there's an owner. And then there's the management team. And it's like, well, which thing are you looking at? So again, it gets complicated. But I think you just have to kind of pick something and then just do your best. Yeah. And then, like, how do you do that? Do you always make sure that you do that? I'm not sure if it's all in there. Or how do you do that? That's a great point. So looking at the companies that you are doing business with and what they're putting out. So a lot of these companies that we're doing business with also have DEI language on our websites. They are also intentional in their hiring practice. And they're saying, like, this is what we're doing. And so that says a lot to me as well. They might not have the most diverse team, but they're making a commitment publicly to do that. And that's important. Go ahead. So what we're going to do is go off of some of the vendors who are restricted in this way. Sure. If you want Microsoft Word, you're going to go with Microsoft Word. So it's not impossible. I'm serious. There's a way to make it easy for you to work through that. Of course, the customers will come in when they are on the force of the vendors there. There's a couple of companies that do this stuff. Yeah. I mean, if you're, yeah, go ahead. Well, I have a question, too. No, no, no. I want to hear from you. So you mentioned you had a client who went through a great deal with your team. Have you had a client who was able to add to your squad? I haven't, actually. That has not come up. I'm sure it will at some point. My clients are pretty savvy about this stuff, clearly. I can see your agency is developing donations and managing stuff. Yeah, I actually haven't gotten pushed back on shop. I have had people worry that Schwab is going to collapse. After Silicon Valley Bank and stuff earlier this year, it was like, what happens if Schwab goes away? And I was like, if Schwab goes away, we're all in really big trouble. But I haven't actually had that. But I'm sure it will happen at some point. And I should probably be prepared better than I am right now, because I'm kind of like, we just don't have, I mean, limited choices. So for Americans, it doesn't have to be the kind of small stores that they want. TD and Schwab, yeah. I mean, I'm set up with, I do have the ability to custody at Altruist. And I don't really have clients there yet. But I think that's an option I could present to somebody as like, hey, if you'd rather be, I mean, Altruist is also owned by a white man, but maybe not as problematic as Schwab. And say, if you'd rather have your accounts here, that's an option. Yeah, good question. Okay, mentorship and pro bono. So this is kind of more on the, well, they're really two different things. Talk about mentorship for a second first. So again, if you're never gonna hire, you can still mentor, you can still sponsor, you can still help people that are trying to get into the industry. There's lots of different ways to do this. You can do something formal, you can do something informal. So if you're not already doing anything in this realm, like if you have a spare hour a year, I'm confident you can make a difference. So I just rolled off the Napa West region board, but spent two years on academic outreach. In that post, I guess. And we're always looking for volunteers to go to colleges and talk to people. And that's a one hour time commitment. One hour, who doesn't have one hour? Come on. And so getting in front of college students is great. And if you are from some kind of diverse background, it really makes a difference. They really can see, oh hey, yeah, there are women in finance. Or like, oh yeah, great, people of color, whatever. And I'm not saying that the white men in the room shouldn't do this. But if you come from another background, that's even that much more impactful for these people to see, again, different types of folks in our industry. There's a lot of formal mentorship programs as well. Both Napa and CFP board have programs. I think Women's Initiative, are they still doing the mentorship? Yeah, Women's Initiative started one, I think last year, two years ago. And DEI has a mentorship program too. Think about whether or not you wanna be formally involved with some of these things. One of my ways of doing it, because I don't wanna commit to a formal mentorship program, just don't have a lot of time, I do a monthly call, just a Zoom call, for people that are getting into the industry, come ask me anything kind of thing. I post about it all the time on, there's openings, come hear how I got into the industry, ask me anything you want. So that's another thing. It's one hour a month. People can come and ask me whatever they wanna ask me. But there's lots of ways to help get more people from different backgrounds into our industry. So if you have it in your, if you have the capacity to do anything to help somebody who's trying to break into our industry, I would encourage that. Pro bono, I mean, it's definitely a different thing, but one of the things that I feel strongly about is increasing accessibility to financial planning. And I mean, it's tricky, like a lot of us have minimum fees or minimum asset balances. From a profitability standpoint, I'm not saying everybody should lower their fees or anything like that, but NAFA, CFP board are all making a pretty concerted commitment to pro bono. And that's just a great way to offer our services to a demographic that can't afford to pay. These are a couple organizations that are doing really great work. So there's the Foundation for Financial Planning. I have actually volunteered with them. I haven't done anything with FinServ Foundation, and I have not volunteered with Savvy Ladies. Does anybody in here do Savvy Ladies? Nice, okay, everybody know about Savvy Ladies? So Savvy Ladies is a great organization. Stacy Francis is the founder. She's got a firm in New York City. And it's 100% pro bono, but really it came out of wanting to offer services to survivors of domestic abuse and domestic violence. So Stacy's got personal history with that. She tells a really powerful story about how that impacted her. And so she started this foundation. So they're always looking for people. So in the pandemic, I think their interest in services tripled. They desperately need CFPs to help. And I think very low time commitment, whatever you're willing to do. But I've heard amazing things about Savvy Ladies. I haven't actually volunteered with them yet, but highly recommend checking them out. Anybody have other suggestions for pro bono? Yeah. Creating content is one of the best ways to help people get the word out to their neighbors. Yeah. Yeah, if you're putting out free content, so if you have a blog, if you have a YouTube channel, any kind of video or written content that you're putting out there, it's definitely helping people, for sure. So that's another version where you're not directly speaking with somebody, but they're able to just come and access your content. And I would add on the mentorship side, it's not just getting people online, it's getting them on a platform. Yeah. And it's not just working with their users or their folks. It's getting them online, and it's getting them to get together and to get to know the content of the project so they're more aware. Uh-huh. So that you've got that little bit of experience. Yeah. And you get an opportunity to contact and to email those people. Mm-hmm. So I was thinking about how you created like a pathway for people like going online, or just coming online. Yeah, yeah. Working online and messaging. Yeah, yeah, great. Yeah, that's helpful. So thinking about sort of that pathway, it's not just sort of getting people into the industry, but also helping them advance. And then I love the idea of requiring board service of some kind of organization. I only have one employee, my associate advisor, but she's in her mid-20s. Doesn't even have the CFP yet, so she's working on that. But she is doing a mentorship program where she's mentoring a college student, right? So she's 26. And I just think that's amazing because at first she was kind of like, what do I have to offer? I was like, you know more than the 19-year-olds. You've been through a few things, right? You have something to offer. So early and often getting people into the habit of getting engaged in a mentorship capacity. I would love to hear if anybody has something from today that they're gonna take home and do. Something they're gonna implement. I'm trying to work with Accessibee. Accessibee? The youth service center. Are you already, you're already doing something like that? Or you want to? Yeah, I'm working with, I'm helping work with, talking to people and trying to get them to understand that we are disabled in some form or fashion. So we're trying to create more content so that it's more accessible. Yeah, cool, awesome. Accessibee. I actually haven't implemented that one myself. I just learned about it a couple weeks ago, but it sounds relatively easy to do. So I'll be implementing that one at some point, yeah. Anyone else have an action? Yeah. I was just trying to go change my profile on the website to say, what's the name of that website? Yeah, changing a profile to say, to include some kind of language, an explicit language about who you work with. Yeah. Which one? The vendor square card? Yeah, cool. Love it. Anybody else want to share? Yes. Well, we're actually in the process of trying to update our website, and we may have had some of the users comment a lot of the words where we haven't updated the website in three years. So we're like slowly getting through it, but I think it'll be more confidential like whatever it says. Yeah, I mean, websites should be updated. I'm sure you know this, but if you haven't updated the language on your website in more than five years, I mean, you should really be going in there and just changing a couple things. I go in and change a couple words of my bio. I just kind of tweak stuff here and there. Static is not good. I failed to mention actually kind of like questionnaires and intake forms is another really big one. So yes, review your website, but when you send client questionnaires out, is it all like husband and wife, that sort of thing, definitely is worth reviewing. I mean, there's some things that we don't have the ability to adjust. If you're using certain software and it's already gendered, it's hard to adjust that, but if you have a PDF document that you send to people, think about looking at pronouns and different gendered language that you might be using, that sort of thing. I did actually update those, but I don't know how to do it. Great. Or if you have something in Latin that's not in English. Yeah, and a lot of the sites that we work with, I know Right Capital has gotten better on this, Precise FP. Even CFP board used to have, it was like as advisors, we could only have male or female, and now there's some other gender options like on some of the advisor tools. So the software is getting a lot better, but yeah, definitely review all those kind of like intake forms and other things that clients are getting. You had one? I have two mentorship thoughts. One is, I think coming back to commerce is awesome if you know people, but if you're brand new, it's harder. So this may be at the start of the conference, it's exciting for somebody that maybe doesn't know anybody and introduce yourself and let them know you're welcome. Anyone's welcome. The second thing is I've heard, it's happened at each meeting I was there, but having a diverse role level or a mentor, like an upper level manager on diversity topics and issues. It's one-on-one peer mentoring. Interesting. Never heard of that, that's a cool idea. So two suggestions in case anybody didn't hear. One is at conferences, if you've been coming to NAFA forever and you know everybody in this room, like I know everybody in this room already, go find somebody that's got one of those first time attendee ribbons, or try and sit at a table with some people you don't recognize and maybe, and they have like a formal buddy program. Yeah, there's a buddy program, so if you have been coming again for a long time, you can sign up to be a buddy to somebody that's coming for the very first time. And I don't think it's a huge time commitment, you kind of maybe sit with them at lunch or something like that. Yeah. Right. And then Sunit's second suggestion was about more junior people, like a peer-to-peer mentor where the junior person is maybe mentoring a more senior person. I'm a little hesitant about the people from diverse backgrounds having to like educate, you know, upper management, but I like the idea of there being something a little bit less hierarchical, where it's like, I am the very experienced person that's gonna teach you everything you need to know. So I like that idea of doing some kind of peer-to-peer mentorship. Like one of the things we're doing, we have a DEI committee, there's only two of us, but it's the entire team, and we have quarterly meetings, and we've gone through a series that, you know, we have a schedule, a plan of, you know, kind of what our topics are gonna be. We went through, last year we went through Riyanka Dorsenville's podcast, 2050 Trailblazers, which is industry-specific, so she's talking about, you know, things that are relevant to our industry, and so we went through and listened to the different episodes, and then there were questions. Like she puts together, you know, question topics so that you can have, you know, a company meeting, like, hey, everybody listens to the podcast and then we talk about it, or everybody reads a book and then we talk about it. I think that's a really nice way to kind of bring the team in and get people engaged in this stuff, and then everyone's getting a little bit educated as well, different facets of this conversation. Yeah. Yeah. Uh-huh, uh-huh. Yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. Uh-huh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, your, these structures are huge, for sure, and that's also another topic, but certainly having a lot of minimums or significant minimums is exclusive. I would argue fee only is exclusive. I'm not saying it's not great. Like, I'm obviously a big proponent of fee only, but it's exclusive. A lot of people can't afford it, and so that's why, you know, people in a lower socioeconomic class more often than not work with a fee-based, commission-based advisor, because it's easier to get, it's easier access and it's cheaper. Yeah. Really think, oh, yeah. Yes, referring out is another great way to make a difference, right? So if you're a solo and maybe you're not growing, referring out, I have a list of, you know, very diverse, like, people that are similar, doing similar work to me, like Equity Comp, and, you know, they're almost all people of color and women, and it's like, if I can't take the person, here's some people to talk to. And I, you know, I had a conversation with somebody who's not here yesterday about doing that, so when I do meet with a client, this is a more in-depth conversation, but just real briefly, when I do meet with somebody that's not from my background, like, say, I meet a prospective client that's transgender or a black woman, I am usually pretty direct about it, and I will say, hey, I know a lot of other advisors. I want you to find the right fit. I'm gonna give you a couple other names. If you wanna go talk to an advisor, like, I'm, you know, I'm doing my best, but I'm not, I don't know what it's like to be transgender. I have absolutely no idea. So I'm more than happy to work with you. However, if you would like to work with an advisor who has more experience here and has maybe had the same life experiences that you have, here are some options. So that one is a little bit controversial, but that's another option is just having those referral sources where you can send people to other advisors in the industry that don't look like you. I'm happy to kind of hang out if anybody wants to come chat. Thank you all for coming, and next time, bring a friend. Thank you.

diversity

equity

inclusion

DEI

financial planning profession

career changer

clients

team

industry

mentorship