Featuring
Hannah Moore, CFP®
Guiding Wealth Management
What if taking over a firm through a succession plan was just the beginning, not the end, of the story?
When Hannah Moore entered into a succession plan in her early 20s, she wasn’t just buying a financial planning firm; she was stepping into a future she planned to rebuild from the ground up.
Today, Hannah owns Guiding Wealth Management, a thriving RIA she reimagined after purchasing the business from a retiring advisor. In this episode of Behind the Advisor, she shares how she navigated the transition from broker-dealer to RIA, revamped the brand to reflect her vision, and made bold decisions, like reducing her client roster from 300 to just 18, without losing revenue.
We talk about the power of knowing your value in negotiations, filtering out unhelpful advice, and standing firm in a male-dominated industry. Hannah’s story is a masterclass in taking over and taking control.
If you’re eyeing a succession path or wondering how to reshape an inherited firm to reflect your voice, this conversation is for you.
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Read the Transcript Below:
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welcome to xypn radio where your host Alan Moore brings you into a community of Fe only financial planners who want to profitably and successfully serve Gen X and geny clients if you're ready to get the knowledge you need from leaders in your field learn from Forward Thinking advisors and take action on your own goals xypn radio is the show for you here's your host hello and welcome to this episode of xypn radio I am your host Alan Moore and today's episode is an interview with Hannah
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no relation actually but she's the founder of guiding wealth management a financial planning firm based in Dallas and she is a total rock star Hannah has had what many assume would be the golden ticket for her career which basically involved her becoming the succession plan for an older adviser and was actually introduced as a successor before she ever met the clients before she was barely hired while she did end up buying that firm and now owns her own ra it was anything but easy and I think
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her story is one of cautious optimism she has persevered but it has been a long and tough road and what I think is so awesome about her story is that she's gotten to a revenue point that she's actually backing off the gas pedal a little bit and focusing on some other projects that she's passionate about in her words she's having fun in her business and that's not something most folks can say as always you can find additional resources that we mentioned during the episode at XY planning
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network.com 61 also be sure to go to XY planning network.com to join our private group just for xyp and radio listeners you can interact with other listeners ask guests questions and more so without further Ado here is my interview with Hannah hey hey Hannah welcome to the show thanks so much for being on yeah well thank you for having me Alan I am excited cuz you have a very cool story that is going to broaden the horizons a little bit here because I'm going to go ahead and just tell everyone the dirty secret Hannah's
00:01:56 - 00:02:49
not the only and that's okay but it's very in line with kind of other guests that we've had on the show but you've kind of taken a different angle particularly when it comes to insurance so I want to learn all about that and kind of hear just I guess the way you operate your firm so I guess to get started just tell me a little bit about kind of your career path did you have you always been in financial planning did you get your degree in financial planning yeah well when I was in school I started off I wanted to do
00:02:23 - 00:03:22
nonprofit management and had built my resume up really really well in that regard I had been working at a nonprofit doing everything from their payroll for 50 plus people to grant writing to all of their accounting it was awesome and I came home one day and it was just like I can't do this anymore and just kind of how fate happens the next day I had taken intro to personal finance class and the professor was like you need to change your major and literally in that moment I was like okay like this is done
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and then the next day I was supposed to sign up for my last semester of classes so there was definitely I feel very fortunate to be in the financial planning World cuz it was so close to not happening but yeah so that's kind of how I got into it I had no idea what I was doing I just knew that I had always Lov personal finance I always figured that I would be the person you know at her church leading you know one of the classes that they had on money you know not a Dave Ramsey class but like you
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know the Money Matters or whatever program there was and I never considered it as a career field so yeah I got in I had to stay an extra semester so that allowed me to intern at a firm at a financial planning firm one of the large ones here in Dallas for summer and it was great I ended up doing like scanning the entire summer a beautiful internship oh yeah the other interns got to do really cool things and I got to scan uh but it was really great because I learned like I read everything so like I
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knew like I had read divorce decrees I had read financial planning recommendations all throughout the years for all of these clients and I felt like even though I was so glad for that summer to be over I learned so much and it was so foundational for where I went that is a very positive outlook on a very terrible internship experience yeah you know that's one of my big things I always hear people grive about where they're at and I'm like but you can learn so much and if you don't
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learn that you're not going to be set up to go further it's true now I will tell you that most of the time when someone says oh I took an extra semester an extra year to finish up school that generally means they wanted one more football season so this sounds like the most legitimate reason to actually stay a little bit longer in school yeah and I went part-time and yeah I know I I never thought of myself I usually thought of myself as a person that finished in three years but that was four and a half
00:04:42 - 00:05:51
but so yeah so I got out of school and it was I graduated in December 08 so jobs were hard to find at that time oh great time to be getting into financial planning yeah so I had signed up for a career day here at the Dallas FPA their chapter here and I somebody found my resume called me interviewed me while I was home for Christmas I drove up and they offered me a job in like January of 2008 yeah and so I had been talking my professor had connected me with this planner in Dallas and he was just like
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you know I saw her at this conference she said she was desperate to find somebody good she doesn't know what she's going to do so we had been talking probably since like September or October of the prior year like when I was still in school and I called her up and I was like I got this job offer you know in Dallas I'm very interested in working with you and she was just like I can't hire you right now there's just things going on we can't meet you have to take this job because jobs are
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so hard to find and so I did and it was a disaster and so I was there for a whole month oh no oh no yeah it was a bad situation on many levels and so I had it was just a really weird spot and so the firm owner and I basically were like okay this isn't working and I called the lady that I went to work for spoiler the lady that I went to work for and I was like Hey like this isn't working it was like a Friday afternoon that I called her and we had a Sunday lunch or like a Sunday coffee and then I had a job offer
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on Wednesday and so the week that I started was the week where the market hited slow in March of 2009 so it was which is miserable yeah I know so I well it was great because like I show up and as soon as I show up the market goes up so I had like the mightest touch with my with the clients and you're a winner and you're a winner right like it's so so easy so yeah that's kind of how I got into it when I was in that interview at the Starbucks she was in her late 60s at that point and she said you know she was
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like whoever I hire I want to be my succession plan and one of my I guess you could say character flaws is I'm always like sure of course I know no idea what that meant and so I was like absolutely like I'm absolutely interested in that and then I'm like going home and being like what's a succession plan so it was a very interesting kind of place where I got so when we started out like meeting clients I mean I was meeting clients I'm 22 years old meeting clients for the first
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time janah is the lady that I bought the practice from she had already positioned that I'm her succession plan that I'm amazing and I can't wait for you to meet her so I was walking into meetings 22 years old 4 weeks on the job and people are like we're so excited to meet you we can't wait to get to know you better and I'm like what wow yeah so I'm not sure that that's exactly the best way to go about it but that's what happened you know it is a great point though for the
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firm owners out there that I I know there's always questions around like how am I going to introduce this young planner two clients are they going to trust them they're used to meeting with me and here's a great example of whenever the adviser trusts you you and believes in you and thinks you're a rockar and they tell their clients that the clients believe it before they've even met you they're excited to meet you so it is pretty easy to build up a young planner in the eyes of a client by just
00:08:11 - 00:08:54
saying they're awesome which you wouldn't have hired them if they weren't awesome so you don't have to be scared of that because that was kind of my experience too with Rick Kaylor you know he's saying like you know he's my succession plan and he's awesome and clients go awesome that's great yeah and it's it's really unnerving so like now I have an assistant and so I've been trying to introduce her to my clients and we were in a meeting a couple months
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ago and like she H it off with these clients I mean they're talking about like they're going on a trip to Hawaii this you know this fall and she's done that exact same trip like I felt insecure about it and then I'm like wait a minute like this is what I want like I want them to have a good relationship and so there's it's hard being the firm owner and passing off that like they're awesome like there is a sense of insecurity on that which shouldn't be because you know if you're younger
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adviser your client views them as a rock star then your whole firm is built up but I mean I think advisers need to get over themselves a little bit on that well and for the young planners out there I think we've all been in this position where we feel like you know we don't understand why advisers hold on to things and and it just seems so obvious that they would hand off client relationships and do things like this and but when you're in the position of the lead advisor trying to hand things
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off and you started the firm and suddenly you're giving up control it is really hard even if we know we're supposed to do it and we should be doing it it's hard to give up to hand over the re on some of those things so be patient young advisers it is not as easy as it looks until you're in that position and it's not even just like the emotional insecurity I mean there's a lot of dollars on this like very true like it's you know if you sit back and you're like okay fine I can get over myself like I
00:09:49 - 00:10:46
want them to do that then you step away and be like how much is that client relationship worth so this young advisor you know I groomed them for 10 years or two years it doesn't even matter and they leave there's some money concerns there too absolutely so I'm curious how that succession plan conversation went it really was just like if I hire you I plan to make you my succession and that was just kind of it or was it put in writing like how did that all look I guess from a just a contractual
00:10:17 - 00:11:21
perspective I was clearly at a disadvantage because I had no idea and that was one of my really big struggles cuz I felt like I was thrown in the deep end I mean sure like I was I was completely thrown in the deep end and so there was probably a year two year I can't remember the timeline on it but it was a while before we even got down to the nitty-gritties of like the details of the succession plan just because she still had to see if she liked me I think maybe part of this was a Hail Mary pass
00:10:49 - 00:11:51
on her part but we were very similar personalities like I would imagine that when I'm her age we're very similar so I think that helped her comfort level right off the bat but what was hard for me is that nobody I couldn't find anybody who'd been a succession plan so everybody was like oh my gosh this is amazing you're a succession plan and I was like okay great so are you a succession plan and like nobody was and I remember going to it was like my first nextg meeting and it was one of there's
00:11:21 - 00:12:09
like it was back when there were like 30 people and I remember going up to somebody and saying I'm a succession plan I have no idea what I'm doing I need to talk to somebody who's been a succession plan and I'll never forget this this lady just walked around the room they tried they tried they tried they tried and they tried it was like five or six people and she's like I'm sorry there's nobody here who's done that and it was like such a punch to the gut because I'm like I'm trying to do
00:11:45 - 00:12:43
this I want to be smart about it I want to be I want to be a good business owner I don't feel like there's I feel like I still have this opinion that financial planners are terrible business owners oh absolutely I totally agree with you yeah like exceptionally bad and and I was like I don't want to be that so I'd already identified that but it was just like how do I do this and so there was definitely like a long time where it felt just completely overwhelming because there was nobody who had done it
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so what I started doing was I started talking to every single person who tried it and failed and what I found was that everybody's story was very different and like their situations around it were very different but in every one of those cases I learned something so I learned something not do or to do or you know all of these things so I started piecing them all together and so that was really how I learned like all the basics of succession planning did you write all of this down because that sounds like an
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ebook because I too failed at this twice and just gave up I didn't continue to pursue it the irony is that I'm really cynical about succession plans because why would advisers leave like you have to be able to answer that question so you know for a lot of these firms these advisor making six figures and if they do it right they don't have to do any work no it's very true if they can bring in a young Hannah and let you do all the actual work and they can reap the profits exactly so there was a point
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where I had just drawn the conclusion that like I can't wait for her to retire so there was a point where this didn't end up happening because of various other factors that we'll get into but there was a point where I was going to talk to her about going part-time like I'm still going to be your succession plan I want to go part-time with you and then the part time I want to build up my practice so I don't think Young advisers value what they could build on their own enough like the opportunity cost if you
00:13:37 - 00:14:30
would no it's a great point and you know for the young planners out there again like whenever you actually do the math and you sit in the firm owner's seat and you think okay I have this business that's producing I don't know $500,000 in income I'm sorry in total revenue and you're walking home with probably half of that if not more CU we run really high margin businesses and you say okay well I could sell it for a million dollar cuz two times gross revenue that's kind of the general number that
00:14:04 - 00:15:00
everyone throws around so I could either sell it to Hannah for a million and be done or I could wait a year and make my $250 to $300,000 net again and then sell it to her for million dollars and you do that year after year after year because you realize it's a really really sweet annuity that pays out a heck of a lot more if you hold on to it than if you sell it so not to ramble but just to say again I was in that position too of doing the math and think like why won't they just you know give me equity and
00:14:32 - 00:15:27
sell me the firm and then when you do the math you're like oh that's why cuz I wouldn't sell this to me either yeah well and the messaging around succession plans is I think it hurts young advisers I mean I can't tell you every time I go to any conference event they' be like oh my gosh your succession plan you're so lucky and I'm like that was what was fed to me literally every single person that I said that I was sucession plan to so again one of the nextg Gatherings they
00:14:59 - 00:15:53
had Elizabeth Jaton was there and she does a lot of work in the succession planning space and I remember just like having a conversation it was like a 20-minute conversation and I was like here's the deal and I just laid out everything and she looked at me and she was like you need to go back and you need to quit on Monday wow she's like this is not a good deal for you and it was the first time where anybody said like this isn't such a great deal like it was one of those like pivotal moments
00:15:26 - 00:16:27
where I was just like oh my God you're right like this isn't the silver platter everybody has been telling me that it is like this is a business decision and like I have options and it completely changed my mindset going into the succession plan and going into all of negotiations if you would call it that completely changed everything for me try to remember the adviser to give credit to for this quote I think it might have been Sunni I've mentioned on the the show a couple of episodes ago but out of
00:15:57 - 00:16:47
Colorado but I believe he was the one who told me as a young adviser always come from a position of power not from a position of weakness because you don't realize the power you have and the options you have anything that you're doing whether it's negotiating a succession plan or deciding to go start a firm or anything that you're doing you know negotiating that first job you have a lot more power than you realize and and I think many of us kind of come from this scarcity mentality we watch all of
00:16:22 - 00:17:11
our friends you know struggle to find jobs after college and and they they're scared to leave their job because they don't know if they'll find another one that is not financial planning I don't know many outof workk financial planners we get gobbled up really fast and you probably get a lot of job offers after you are a firm owner because people are very attracted to hiring prior owners so like to your point come from a position of power you do have an infinite number of options I think it's actually
00:16:47 - 00:17:41
challenging to narrow them down and decide what you actually want to do yeah I completely agree the people that I have the most respect for like the young advisers are people who've been offered equity in firms and they're just like you know what I'm not ready for this like I don't know that your vision is what my vision is and one of my big things with succession planning is you have to have a bigger story like the section plan cannot be your story in the industry so like what is it that Hannah
00:17:14 - 00:18:12
Moore wants to do with her career and does a succession plan fit into that rather than this is it like this this is the end goal you know it's a fair point that succession planning is held up as like the ultimate and no one ever asks like is that what you really want is that a good fit for what you want you know to buy a book of business of 65 70y old clients like maybe that's a great fit for you or maybe it's not well and who are those clients and how is a business run I mean there's just so many
00:17:42 - 00:18:40
things that go into it so you come back from the conversation with Elizabeth who is fantastic by the way so very very instrumental in FPA particularly with the retreat conference but so you come back from that conversation you go sit down with your employer what do you do on Monday do you just quit no I do not quit I really it was up north and so where my family is and I ended up going with them to a baseball game afterwards cuz they're up there and I I told my mom I was like this I'm like Mom like this
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is what I was just advised to do and my mom was just like well don't be a fool and don't listen to her like you have to listen to what she's saying that doesn't mean that you have to do that action but like you need to understand why she said that and then you need to like let those reasons inform whatever you do and so I think that's what really happened and so like I went Eyes Wide Open going forward so how my deal kind of worked without getting into too much DET well you can
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share as much or as little so folks out there sometimes we fall under very strict non-competes and non-disclosures and we don't want to embarrass folks that we have worked with in the past so share as much or as little as you can yeah so the thing with Joan and I was that we we were so similar like everybody was trying to make this up into this like thing you have to negotiate but like we already knew what we wanted to do and what was neat about it is that we were protecting each other in it so like I was putting I was being
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like okay so here's our terms but I think we need to add this in to protect you and she was saying I think we need to add these things in to protect you so it was a really cool like negotiation not negotiation but just like this coming like we just agreed and so that was really neat so when we get down to sign the contract unfortunately you're not the only parties when you work in different systems and so we brought in somebody else cuz I mean because we don't know how to drop these
00:19:37 - 00:20:35
documents and she was going away on a trip for 2 weeks and she was like I want this done I'm leaving Saturday morning and I was like okay well I mean we have our sheet here of everything that we agree with and we somebody from the broker dealer came in and Thursday afternoon came into my office and threw down a Buy sale agreement and said here's your Buy sale agreement you're signing it tomorrow and I went home and I read it and I was like now wait a minute this isn't what we agreed to oh so they
00:20:07 - 00:21:07
changed up basically she had kind of her intention they kind of messed with it a little bit probably to make it their own yeah so one of the things that she was really insistent on was that I could leave the broker dealer if I wanted to in that by sell agreement I was signing that I would stay there for 10 years whoa and I mean there were just a lot of things like that that were in there that were definitely definitely were not what I agreed on and so the next day we go in and had a very very contentious meeting
00:20:36 - 00:21:34
and they definitely had the the people involved definitely had the perspective that I had no room to negotiate that I was getting my career handed to me on a silver platter and you have no room to negotiate was actually the line that they said so it was very heated and I was like I this isn't what we agreed to and so I've left the broker dealer since son but one of the things that I realized even after this is that I was always going to be like the little girl Hannah like regardless of what I did
00:21:06 - 00:22:03
just because that was just how that culture viewed me because the average age was like 55 or something crazy and so I was just this young person and I was never going to be able to really stand on my own so anyway at that meeting I was told you know well we'll we'll just talk to you and we'll just answer all your questions next week you know when she's out of town like when she's out and like then you'll understand that this is a good deal for you and so it was is a very interesting
00:21:34 - 00:22:30
time and so the next week say why when I talk I've already harped on this a little bit but it drives me crazy when I hear young advisers being like I'm only doing paperwork well yeah you better know that paperwork better than anybody else does and like you better know those systems better than anybody else does because the next week I'm sitting in this meeting and like they're telling me these things and I'm like but I know for a fact that you're wrong and and they're just like well no
00:22:03 - 00:23:03
this is how it is and I'm like no it's not like I know what you're talking about better than what you know you're talking about and I know that you're wrong so all of that went down and when Joan got back the conversation was yeah we have a buy sell agreement that's in place but if something happens to you I'm walking like I cannot agree to those terms and so we had lots of different conversations about this and this was like this on going thing and just how succession plans happen I mean it's
00:22:32 - 00:23:30
never it's never easy and so we ended up going to our own attorney and drawing up all the documents ourselves that overrided that original contract and just kept it between the two of us so that's kind of how we did that but so just to be clear here for the people out there do you so you don't have to go through your broker dealer if you're going to be doing a buy sell or anything or a contract it sounds like y'all did that because out of convenience sake but it was not necessary I would talk to
00:23:01 - 00:23:45
your brok dealer each one each one's going to be really different so we were at an independent Burger dealer and so we had a lot more freedom than like some of the captive agents that are out there that's very fair because some I mean some like Edward Jones you cannot sell your book I remember a guy was trying to sell to his daughter and he couldn't Edward Jones owned it there was nothing to sell and and when he left he basically had to give Edward Jones all his clients and his daughter couldn't do
00:23:24 - 00:24:24
anything so you now that's an extreme example but that's a captive audience there point there are probably a lot of different ways this is done well and you have to know I mean like so where I was at like you owned your clients that was like a really big deal so all of the paperwork that you sign when you start is actually really important and even if you don't I mean because I had no idea what I was signing when I was 22 like no idea but I kept copies of everything and then I went back and I read it and then I kept
00:23:54 - 00:24:47
talking to more people to understand how their systems were set up so I could better understand how was I think that was is so incredibly important and it's annoying I know to go through and try to read every detail of every document but you do need to know I mean one before you sign anything especially if you're getting your first job or getting in with a firm like you need to know what life looks like and that it sounds really Rosy when you're getting a job but you know what happens when things go
00:24:20 - 00:24:59
bad what are you going to do you know you need to be looking at it from all angles and sometimes it's you know it's probably advisable to go have an attorney review anything you're going to sign just to be sure that your bases are covered and you're not you know setting yourself up for a bad situation later on yeah and you know when you start a job I mean you don't know like you don't know if you're going to be there for like a year or two then it's like well who
00:24:40 - 00:25:31
cares right but when you start getting serious about things like if you don't understand those things you're not ready to be a business owner like I talk to people fairly regularly who want to be succession plan you know I'm in the sucession plans like well do you have documents well no not yet well if you're not willing to have those conversations and have those hard conversations you're not ready to be a business owner because those are like you're just going to have to keep having those conversations
00:25:05 - 00:25:55
there's some sense of like if you want it like you got to have the hard conversations and if the firm owner is not willing to have those conversations you're not the succession plan right you know if they're not willing to sit down and start talking about valuation and process for them retiring and all of those various pieces they're not ready to actually initiate this at all so maybe you need to start looking for something else so I complet completely agree with that you know you
00:25:30 - 00:26:44
work with the attorney you do your own drafting of documents so you purchase the firm from her at that point yes so it was later on she had some just outside situations that what caused her to retire so I got married through all of this and so we got married and 10 weeks later I bought the practice nice and so as you do you spend all your money on the wedding and so we had like $500 to our name and we were long distance so my husband had to move to Dallas and he still hadn't found a job and so it was
00:26:06 - 00:27:02
extremely high stress time in my life and so yeah I it was very very stressful and so we started moving all the client you know one of the things that I was really insistent on because it wasn't every Situation's different but with this one I was very much like you own it one day the next day I own it like I don't want to do any of this joint rep crap that I seen happen yeah so I own it and I'm like oh my God what do I do because this has really been truly my only job and so from just that outside
00:26:35 - 00:27:26
perspective I didn't have it so I knew all my bills were coming up with the broker dealer in that middle of that month that my $500 wasn't going to cover and it was high stress but what I did is I don't know if you know Deborah Fox the fox Financial Planning Network I had seen her stuff and it was how to run a financial planning practice and has like every process every everything you could want and so this is the only time I've done this in my life but I went and I put that on a credit card and I was like
00:27:01 - 00:28:07
I need to implement this right now from day one and so I started going through that and just being like so I had checklists for everything like I had the way that we had done it but I wanted I wanted something else like I wanted that various perspective and so I think that was very instrumental in helping me be successful so give me a timeline what at what point is all of this happening I B the practice January 1 2013 January 1 201 13 okay so we're 3 years in at this point and so just so folks know Deborah Fox
00:27:33 - 00:28:29
she's actually speaking at xypn 16 so she's doing a session on College Planning because she has a couple of different businesses she is a master of several different focuses but they have the fox Financial Planning Network which you mentioned which I believe is being rebranded so I'm not sure when that is kind of switching over but they're kind of a pro they're basically just a really really detailed process engine on on every step you need to take to do everything within your firm so if
00:28:02 - 00:28:52
building processes and such is not your thing you can you know license I believe it's an ongoing licensing and I think they just launched some nextg focused processes as well so so it sounds like that was really helpful for you in terms of not having to build that all from scratch and reinvent the wheel right and what was great about it was I'm very drawn to the financial planning side of it so with this practice that I bought I had one friend who mentioned it this way and I was like that's perfect any
00:28:27 - 00:29:24
product from like the 80s until now that's been on the market that was in the practice and so it was this hodgepodge of everything but what I loved about her processes it was like how to convert that into a financial planning practice so I took my existing clients and like she had scripts I mean she had the whole bit and so what I would do is I would find clients and I would like I would pitch them like I want to do a financial plan for you this is how much I charge and like would this be something that'd be of interest to
00:28:55 - 00:29:53
you every client during that point said yes and like I was coming back to them and asking them for more money and they were all saying yes and so I really started to develop like what does my financial planning process look like because before it was always like sitting across a table Yeah we'd run some stuff on money guide Pro and a lot of it was like back of the napkin type stuff and conversational and it really I really started transforming it into like a defined process this is what it looks
00:29:24 - 00:30:17
like this is the value that's added these are the deliverable everything like that so it was a really cool time to kind of see a lot of that come to fruition you know in it's the side of financial planning I think it's hard to shine a light and you've mentioned this in a few different ways but like on what it really means to run a business you do have to develop processes and that you know you may be a great financial planner but how are you going to do planning how are you going to sell that
00:29:51 - 00:30:36
planning how do you calculate a fee how there is so much that goes into running a business set it can feel overwhelming I mean it's but it's something that has to be done and you know it's probably why a lot of the older practices that have technology from the ' 80s you just kind of get this inertia where they just don't want to make any changes but if you're going to buy a firm from then you're probably not only going to be implementing all this stuff you're also
00:30:14 - 00:31:10
going to have to be implementing new technology and converting data and all that yeah and I think there were like years where I just felt like I was treading water and it was so frustrating and I was just so exhausted but I just like I was so compelled just to keep learning and keep consuming all this information and so there's several points in my career where it was just like you felt the reward from that and so that was one of those where it was like I had done all of this work beforehand where it felt like I was just
00:30:42 - 00:31:32
treading water and then it was just done there's payoff for just the grind if you would of just learning everything so is that really where the payoff came was when you kind of felt like you had you know line of sight on everything that was happening or was there something else in terms of just kind of getting to to that point I guess the biggest point where I would say the real payoff came when I started my ra so even with this financial planning I mean people thought I was crazy like people literally like I
00:31:07 - 00:32:10
was told multiple times you just like to spend money like what are you doing and I'm just like but I have to know this like like I have to do this so yeah I guess the biggest point where I felt like I was finally just like not everything made sense but all the work paid off was really when I started my ra so you bought the practice still with the with the broker de did you have your own firm name your own brand or were using the broker dealer brand so what I did I believe it was in 2013 I came up with a DBA so I wanted
00:31:39 - 00:32:42
the clients because the lady I bought the practice from she used her company name was a broker dealer name right and so I wanted the clients to see a transition not just from advisor to advisor but I wanted to see it from Joan to a company that was really important to me so I did guiding wealth management so in like the letter to the clients it was you know she's retiring and you are now going to be serviced by guiding wealth management and Hannah as a lead adviser so a lot of that was because I knew that I didn't
00:32:11 - 00:33:10
want to stay with the broker dealer long term and I wanted clients to be associated with that brand and so yeah so all my business cards I mean website the whole bit got changed to that did you have to get all of that approved by your broker dealer did they have any push back no I mean they're really supportive of that I mean I I think I was with a really good broker dealer sure you may be evil but you're not as evil as the other evil people no I understand it it is it can always be worse yeah so it was very independent
00:32:40 - 00:33:32
and so there were a lot of people who did it that way so it wasn't like some of those like some of the broker dealers were like that's really frowned upon people thought like people legitimately were like why are you doing this like this doesn't make sense in fact the majority of people that I was around at that point that was their feedback to me was like what I guess I'm confused other advisors were confused as to why you were changing the firm name yeah other advisers cuz everybody who was there it
00:33:06 - 00:34:01
was all almost everybody had it just by their name and they're just like well you're you're the person oh I see so it should be more financial planning or Hannah financial planning or something yeah or you need just need to keep it like as the broker dealer name because you know they're this big National Group and you're just the adviser like why do you want to create your own name like that doesn't make sense I Goa isn't it funny advisers especially younger planners out there know this already
00:33:34 - 00:34:27
because we we've all experienced it but advisors are just like anti- anything new any change any new technology any new marketing idea or niche market or you want to launch a podcast you're always going to hear negative feedback so just get over it you know like people are going to tell you how stupid it is and you just have to get over it and understand that like they have their opinion but they don't own your business and it's the beauty of being an entrepreneur is that we get the freedom
00:34:00 - 00:34:51
to screw up in our own ways and as often as we choose and so you will always hear negative stuff and just let it roll off you hopefully learn something from it maybe as you said earlier like try to see it or I guess as your mom said Mom tip of the day is you know try to see it from their perspective and then figure it out for yourself so don't be discouraged just because a bunch of advisers tell you something can't be done so you rebranded and then kind of in that process and then you went the
00:34:26 - 00:35:20
Raa route and kind of broke away from the broker dealer so what point was that from a timeline perspective so that was like March April of last year so 2015 2015 so okay so you stayed with the broker dealer for about two years kind of transitioned the brand and then started the transition over to the Raa so like you said you were independent so you owned your clients so you were able to just kind of open the Raa and transition away so how does that look and just because I've never been with a
00:34:53 - 00:35:51
broker deer how does that look from like an investment perspective did you just go you know start a relationship with like T Mar trade Schwab Fidelity kind of thing and then just you know repaper all your clients like what does that process look like so I did it differently than most everybody I hear so when I was at the broker dealer I was using primarily third party money managers for various reasons so okay and also when I was at the broker dealer I had anywhere between two and 300 clients so it was a lot to
00:35:22 - 00:36:16
manage and so with like the top tier of clients that's what we were doing with all of them so all advisory third party managers and so when I left I actually didn't have a relationship with any custodian I just have my relationships with all these third party managers that I maintained and so for the clients to move over they had because all of their paperwork was done through the third party money manager and so the paperwork was actually extremely easy to get them because basically all
00:35:49 - 00:36:41
the third party money manager was doing was like this account's already established we're just changing who the adviser is so the money was with the money manager not with with the broker dealer being managed by the oh nice that's a convenient so I mean one of the things and this is where this is where I think it's so important for people just to understand the landscape and to just talk with so many other advisers is you know our the broker dealer was putting out like third party money manager like
00:36:15 - 00:37:07
products that they wanted their advisers to use but I mean even back to when you know Jonah was running it she was so adverse to it because she's like it gives them so much control like you are just at their Mercy at that point at their Mercy but you're tied to them a lot yeah you're more tied than you may want to be right and so they were trying to incentivize it with various things but I always was like no I want my own third party money managers like I want a relationship directly with them and so
00:36:41 - 00:37:37
yeah it turned out to be a really really wise decision for me when I started my own ra I had all of my clients what I told them I mean how I positioned it to my clients was all that's change the guiding wealth management is staying the same I'm staying the same the only thing that's changing like who I Outsource my compliance to was was kind of how I positioned it andan obviously there's more that goes into it than that but you know and and when I made the transition what you said about like like positions
00:37:09 - 00:38:00
of power I had a friend who was like change management she's like always the only thing that your clients care about is how this improves them so it improved my clients I had a nicer office to meet in I even though I paid less for it I had a nicer office I had better technology I started using the e-money portal which clients love I'm curious that the price of the third party money manager was different when you went with them direct instead of through the broker dealer because I'm sure the BD
00:37:34 - 00:38:32
was getting a cut yeah the price stayed the same to the client okay but you got to keep a lot more money I we've had people I've heard in here from 15% to 85% rev share so they're never good but you were able to pocket more money I don't know if you were able to lower fees but obviously you had more costs but it is a different world when you don't have to send that check every quarter to the broker dealer yeah absolutely and the irony was I took like 18 clients with me and my Revenue essentially stayed the
00:38:03 - 00:39:02
same how many clients did you have there I mean before you left it was between 2 and 300 there was a point where I just gave away a chunk of clients that were just low assets but yeah anywhere from 2 to 300 okay and again for the folks like me that have only worked F only like that makes no sense to have 300 clients is just an absurd number right like most of us have 50 to 100 but is a different world when you're primarily selling or doing you know smaller Asset Management that sort of thing so or you're just
00:38:33 - 00:39:29
taking orders I mean I would get phone calls from people being like okay so should I buy Coca-Cola or Pepsi stock today and I'm like I don't know like but you know and like you had to like jump through all these it was just craziness to me and I was like you know when I moved I was like I want people who value my advice so there were a lot of people who I had good relationships with but they didn't value my advice and so they didn't get the invitation that's how I put it the invitation to come with me to
00:39:00 - 00:40:08
my new firm it's like that's important so what was your in currently kind of what's your fee structure service model for your existing clients so I basically just do an AUM Fe when new clients come in I'm very insistent on like how important the financial plan is so like I have two demographics of clients one is like that near retiree and then I have my successful Sally as to call them who are seeing tremendous success in their profession and high income and so for both of those demographics I'm
00:39:35 - 00:40:27
charging anywhere from 3 to 5,000 for a financial plan and then investment assets on the back end okay yeah I now have a relationship with TD and so I'm managing all the Assets Now directly I do have some smaller clients and I'm trying to figure out like the best way to service them so not smaller clients but people who are coming to me and so I don't know there's I have a lot of thoughts on that not quite sure where I'm gonna land on that yet but well there's this organization called the XY
00:40:01 - 00:40:58
Planning Network honestly I mean that was the piece that we were all battling is like you know we we know how to serf prere retirees right like we we've got the service model and the business model it's like what do we do with everyone else and the first decision is do I really want to work with them am I actually going to do so and if so what's the service model and it can be a lot of different things from courses to podcasts to monthly retainers and any any in between so so how many clients
00:40:29 - 00:41:30
are you at right now or asset level just kind of what does your overall firm look like at this point yeah sure I am in like the low 20s on clients I want to stay a boutique firm like I right now and that could change I mean we have lifestyle things we don't have kids we want kids someday so for the near future like that's really important to me like that Boutique feel and that style I managed about 14 million total in assets it's the measure people like to use yeah I I don't like asking the question but
00:40:59 - 00:42:02
since you're AUM it's a gauge of kind of where you're at yeah it's fine I mean go pull my ADV yeah so yeah that's where I'm at I work primarily from home I'm at home right now I have an office it's like a Regis office except it's nicer then I rent conference room hours it's like 350 bucks a month my clients love it it's a great location so I work out of my house primarily I mean it's like an office setup I brought in a professional organizer to help organize
00:41:31 - 00:42:35
it I have an assistant who comes in 4 days a week part-time and she works in the bedroom across the hall and again it's set up like an office so gotcha yeah so I mean it's not like there's a bed in the corner none of that you know so it helps my mindset too like it's really important for me to have a space to work and so it it's helped with that working from home for me so yeah I do that I meet with clients you know in in person once twice a year answer all their emails phone calls yeah cuz I saw
00:42:03 - 00:42:57
that you posted in the IP group for XY Planning Network that in response to someone else that you have actually stopped taking new clients so you've got you know you're in the low 20s you've got you know 14 million assets and you've stopped well I wouldn't go that far okay haven't stop new clients you've just slowed the flow kind of what what is the transition you're going through right now sure well okay so let me just back up a little bit so on our love the broker deal I mean I busted it like I
00:42:29 - 00:43:25
was working so hard and I was so just like exhausted from like the time I was 12 until now like I've just worked it's always been just working hard like two extremes and so I reached a point last year where I was just like you know what Hannah like you're done like not you're done like you're going to manage what you have and you're going to do an excellent job at that but all of this push to like get new clients and to do all these new things like I took all of that pressure off of
00:42:58 - 00:43:51
myself and it was really neat it was like the first time where I feel like I've just allowed myself just to rest and just to stop kind of that pushing forward and it was really really really good for me I started there's a book that I'm such a fan of and it's really helped me it's called the artist Way by Julia Cameron but it's talking so my husband's always told me that I was really creative and I've always been like you're crazy I'm a numbers person numbers people aren't
00:43:24 - 00:44:18
creative and so I've really I don't know so throughout that resting time I've always had I've seen what so many other people have done kind of reaching that direct to the public space and I've been interested in it but nothing's ever felt right like I don't know how to describe that like I tried to have people write blogs for me but like it never felt right and so kind of in that resting time if you would there was just like I was like I need to make a workbook I need to make a workbook for couples
00:43:52 - 00:44:52
who've never been able to talk about money together and like I just had this like vision for it and I don't know how to describe it other than like I had to create it yeah so I put together this workbook for couples $45 price point you know hard copy type of deal so what's funny though is I wrote it and I was like so excited I was like oh it's done we're going to go to like send it to the designer next week and I have an assistant who helps me and she's like incredible and after a week she comes
00:44:22 - 00:45:25
back and it was like completely tore up and I'm like oh my God and she was like oh I used to be a book editor at another job I'm like of course you were like what weren't you but yeah so we put it together and yeah now it's live so have you gotten good traction so far in terms of sales and having people go through it oh no I haven't sold a single thing yet so I have this vision for it and you know here's the thing is that like it could completely fail and I am totally okay with that I had to create it like
00:44:54 - 00:45:44
it was like this thing that I had to make I think it would be very very helpful for people so I've networked with a bunch of bloggers it's the first round is what I've been doing is I've been sending it out to people just to get their feedback so I have a number of couples who are actually working through it right now basically because I have this idea but I haven't actually tested it and so it's still kind of in that beta testing if you would yeah so I've been listening to a lot of bloggers kind
00:45:18 - 00:46:10
of listening to that world getting engaged in that world to because how you Market in the blogging world is so different than how you Market in a financial planning world oh it's so true so just to kind of recap and clarify to be sure I'm on the right page so you kind of have this and I think we all experience this feeling for some reason it's just like the push that we must grow our firms right we have to grow and just grow and grow and you finally had the realization which I think is
00:45:44 - 00:46:34
extremely powerful and very rare and that was like a hey it's actually okay if I want to chill out for a little while like I'm making good money I love my clients I don't have to grow if I don't want to right now and it sounds like you use some of that time because honestly new clients are the exhaust from a Time perspective the kind of the exhausting side of working with clients like you know while we do a lot of work for our clients they're not nearly as time intensive once they're on
00:46:10 - 00:46:59
board and you have the relationship and you kind of know where things are at so and that was kind of weird this idea of hey I want to do a workbook I want to try something different put it out there and go through that process so what what do you think is your goal on the back end is it that this will allow you to start doing more work with young couples or couples in general and be able to help is it that you know ultimately it's a fun experiment and you'll go back to your planning firm like do you have a
00:46:35 - 00:47:41
vision for what this thing's going to look like so I'm very much like strength finder like I am the Visionary like that like the Myers BG like that's my personality so I think that there's a lot of places where it could go and this is so against everything that I am right but I'm just I feel like I'm playing and so like I have goals I see so many options that could happen but I'm trying to like reel myself in from that and just say like if this helps 10 couples like then it was worth it or if it helps
00:47:07 - 00:48:00
100 so it's really I mean we'll kind of find out kind of thing yeah like we'll kind of find out we'll kind of find out see you know the feedback I mean we're getting really good feedback of it I think that there's a ton of potential with it but I don't know one of the my husband and I were talking a while back and I was like I want to have a small firm like that's important to me like as weird as that is and so counter to what everybody thinks you should have I was like but I want to have really big
00:47:34 - 00:48:30
ideas and I feel like this is a really big idea or a way to put big ideas out there so yeah I want it to make money I want it to be independently profitable I don't want it to be one of those deals where you attct other people it's like well you do this so that you get clients in your firm that's not my mindset it's more of like I really believe in this product I really believe that it'll help people I hope it does so it's not quite a good answer I know no and there may not be a
00:48:02 - 00:48:50
right answer I mean it's kind of part of being a futurist and being an entrepreneur is again you get to experiment you get to play a little bit and no one can tell you no which for me was a little dangerous and it's why I have very much appreciated having kitus in my life and that is because you know mom tells me that I can't do things sometimes which is okay I still do them sometimes you do get to play and kind of see what works and it's awesome because you have a business that does support
00:48:26 - 00:49:20
from a financial perspective your ability to play a little bit and try a few new things and just kind of see what happens because worst case scenario you created an awesome workbook for couples that whenever you work with couples you can put them through that's cool you know and best case scenario it blows up and you suddenly have a TV show I don't know like who knows what what that ends up being right like who knows yeah but it's me like when I finished it I mean it's like like a part of me you know
00:48:53 - 00:49:56
it's like I send out to people as corny and cheesy as that is so you also launched a podcast so tell me a little bit about kind of what's the purpose of the podcast and who is that for yes so when I was going through all of the succession planning and just I was desperate I was looking for any resources that were out there there was Patrick Dy and Trudy Turner here in Dallas were doing a seminar series called You're a financial planner now what and I swear to you it was the best content that I've heard in the
00:49:25 - 00:50:23
profession I'm not not sure if it was just because where I was at probably but it was so good and it was so helpful they talked about the detailed business stuff what it means to be a financial planner like just everything and I just soaked it up so much so they retired from that at the end of last year and so I took it over with another person and so what I did was I was like this content needs to be out there and so we record all of the inperson meetups that happen and I've done some various
00:49:53 - 00:50:55
interviews and so we have yeah podcast for financial advisers who are just starting out into the profession like what do you need to know what do I wish I would have known and really the driver is because I desperately needed this you know when I was 22 24 26 and so that's kind of my motive behind it if you would kind of my giving back sure so for any of our college students or you know folks like career changing in or just kind of new to the profession if you're in that first job like check out
00:50:24 - 00:51:16
Hannah's podcast how can they find the podcast so it's at financial planner podcast.com or you can find it on iTunes or I mean it's also for people who don't know what a broker dealer is like you know I'm actually Amazed by the number of people that don't know that and have been around a while so like if you feel like there's just areas where you're just like I need to fill in gaps like I don't understand who this other person like how they fit in it's a great
00:50:50 - 00:51:48
podcast for that and later this week Hannah's gonna have an extremely famous amazing guest on her show and his name is Alan Moore so I will be I'm thrilled to actually switch it around I don't get to be interviewed all that often so I'm excited to be on the show yeah that'll be great but yeah so for anyone out there you know I know we get bugged all the time for creating more episodes and weekly is about all I can manage and sometimes we miss that so if you're looking for more content check
00:51:18 - 00:52:15
out you said financial planner podcast yep financial planner podcast.com so you know you said that the podcast was your way of kind of going back and and teaching things that you wish you had known so I guess as we close out ask you the the famous last question now and if there is one thing that you could go back and tell younger Hannah Moore you know one thing you wish you had known then that that you know now what do you think that one piece of advice would be that's hard because it's there's so
00:51:47 - 00:52:46
many right right well and it's so hard because people are just like oh you've had it so easy because you've had a succession plan and like I very much disagree with that I think my advice would have been which is what I did was just to stay really curious and like keep learning and keep making like networking and drawing connections that you never think you'll have to use because I have had to use those but yeah the stay curious it is amazing whenever you know networking cannot be overstated
00:52:17 - 00:53:00
and you remember our career counselors in college always like always be networking like get out there and meet people it'll you know change your career and we like ah yeah whatever like meeting some random guy at a conference is not going to help me but you know I met a random girl at a conference named Hannah Moore you know I mean that's how I met you that's how I meet most of the people that I know in the profession and it's amazing that when you need to know something when you have a question when
00:52:39 - 00:53:32
you need to have you know if I'm looking for people for guests that have cool stories like I know enough of your story to know it was a cool story otherwise you know I wouldn't have had you on the show so it's like get out there and meet people because it's amazing the power that your network will have for you one day when I left the dealer and started my own ra it was very it was like I got a lot done in a very short amount of time and the reason I was able to do that I ended up writing a list of every
00:53:05 - 00:53:59
single person that I talked to in like 45 day time period and it was 40 people and I did not previously know those people but my network knew them so I would send out an email to just very shortlisted people be like here's exactly what I need like I'm making this transition here's my one question because when you get in those spots you don't you need specific answers you don't need somebody who's you know oh I've started my own ra and it was like like the time when I was like oh my God
00:53:32 - 00:54:33
like I am so grateful like I put all that work into this I love it well Hannah thank you so so much for taking the time to come on and share your story again this is just awesome and for anyone out there who tells you had it easy you did not so the people that have it easy are the ones that advisor positions for their entire career and never have any desire to do anything different so that is the easy rout some days I'm jealous of them I know I totally understand like a Sal what is that so but again thank you
00:54:03 - 00:55:03
so much taking the time to be on today absolutely well thanks Alan I am so glad that I was able to get Hannah on the show because she is just such a wonderful story of success and perseverance and just goes to show that while many people think of this profession as a man's world it is ripe with opportunity for female advisers don't let the Old Guard of financial planners get you down you really can create the life of your dreams and build a business to support that life be sure to join our VIP community at XY planning
00:54:32 - 00:55:32
network.com svip to hang out with other xyp and radio listeners ask questions for future mailbag episodes with myself and kitus and to finally find a community of like-minded financial advisers thanks so much for joining me today we'll see you next time you're not alone and you're not crazy it's scary starting building and growing your own financial planning firm and that's why we put together a free private Community Just For You The Cutting Edge financial planner go to XY planning network.com
00:55:02 - 00:55:38
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Featuring
Hannah Moore, CFP®
Guiding Wealth Management
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