Featuring
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Angela Moore, MSPFP, CFP®, MPAS®, CRPC®, CFEI
Modern Money
What happens when you can’t find the financial advice you need, so you decide to become the advisor you were looking for?
Angela Moore’s journey into financial advising began with personal frustration over the lack of accessible, trustworthy financial guidance—even for well-educated professionals. That experience didn’t just change her finances—it changed her career path. In this episode, Angela shares how she transitioned into financial planning, built her own firm from the ground up, and strategically merged with another firm to scale her impact.
You'll hear how Angela carved out her niche, what surprised her most about entrepreneurship, and how she uses technology to streamline her business. She also opens up about the challenges of launching a firm, her approach to structuring partnerships, and the unexpected ways clients continue to find her.
Tune in to hear Angela’s powerful story and get inspired to take control of your own professional path.
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Read the Transcript Below:
00:00:01 welcome to xypn radio where your host Alan Moore brings you into a community of be 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 your host Alan Moore and I'm excited to have xypn member Angela Moore founder of modern money advisor based in
00:00:30 Miami Florida on the show today Angela started her career in the financing side of a car dealership she was making killer money but found herself in a lot of personal debt and hired her own financial planner to help her sort out her personal finances the process was so helpful that she decided to become a financial planner herself after spending about 10 years at Merill Lynch and Charles Schwab she decided to launch her own firm in early 2018 nine months in she has 21 financial planning clients
00:00:56 and has recently merged with another XY pin member to lay the foundation to scale her firm she talked about her desire to scale and eventually sell her business which I asked a lot of questions about and it was fun to learn more Angela has Big Dreams for what she wants to build and alongside her new partner Ariel they are getting ready to really take off how much money do you need to launch your own firm that's a question we've got at xite Planning Network hundreds if not thousands of times to answer it once and for all we
00:01:22 developed a free budget template that accounts for the many variables of your first year in business along with the template successful xypn members open their books for us and Shar how they did it what they spent and what they do differently our first year budget download is an incredibly valuable resource for anyone considering launching a firm of their own download it for free at www.x planning network.com budget you can find any of the additional resources that we mentioned during the episode at xylan network.com
00:01:49 1887 also be sure to go to xylan network.com viip to join our private group just for xyp and radio listeners it's the community of advisers we've all been looking for that's there to provide support when we need it the most best of all it's free I encourage you to check it out again that's xylen network.com viip without further Ado here's my interview with Angela hey Angela welcome to the show thanks so much for being on thank you for having me I'm excited to be here so for the benefit of listeners give me a
00:02:19 quick overview of your practice where you're located when you got started how many clients you have and if you have a niche market and then we'll dig into the details sure so the name of my firm is modern money advisor I launched May 17th of 2018 in Miami Florida and my niche market is Young professionals who are struggling with debt repayment one of the segments that is most drawn to me are professional African-American women so that's kind of I didn't start off with that being my Niche but that's what my Niche has kind
00:02:57 of become yeah you know it's interesting because there are so few advisors that that are nonwhite basically I mean the cfp statistics are pretty staggering for the the very low percentage of non-white like I feel like advisers that are of color like they you sort of get like pigeon hold into this like oh of course you're going to work with you know African-American women because you're an African-American woman like do you see that is do you think we will eventually break that stereotype of like you're a
00:03:28 person of color so you have to work with people of color you know I think that all types of people work with me but more of black women work with me because of exactly what you just said it's like I think it's it's the client the prospects and the clients are looking for someone that looks like them to work with so yeah you're right you're absolutely right we in a way we get pigeon hold not complaining I mean I enjoy I enjoy it I kind of I think like most people I started kind of trying to serve everyone
00:04:03 and I didn't really have a niche and everyone kept asking me what's your Niche and I I you know unfortunately couldn't answer that I didn't know what my Niche was it's just been naturally created which has been extremely helpful now I understand why everyone says you should have a niche because when it comes to marketing and kind of targeting who targets you it's so much easier you know if I know that most of my clients are black women it's easier for me to Market to them that's fair yeah I I said
00:04:32 pigeon hole that that probably sounded more negative than it should have I cannot imagine as a white male I cannot imagine trying to find an adviser that looks like me and and being unsuccessful right I've got a lot of options if I'm looking for a white dude right so it's it's probably a huge relief to to some folks to finally be able to find an adviser that that looks like them understands their background and what they're going through and that sort of thing so just interesting that yeah I think it's almost an assumption and and
00:04:57 it shouldn't be but it's the reality of trying to remember cf's numbers or something like five or six% of cfps are are uh people of color which is just absurd so they're working on it but it it is really low so how did you get into financial planning what is your background that that sort of LED down this path did you think you always wanted to be an adviser no it it's all just happened naturally I actually initially wanted to be a psychiatrist and when I you know started looking into the requirements for that I
00:05:29 realized that I'd have to do 10 plus years of of education for that and decided at the last minute to change my major to accounting literally three days before school started and then I you know studied accounting I had an internship my freshman year at KPMG hated it it was the most boring thing I'd ever done in my life looking at like spreadsheets all day and no it there wasn't a lot of human interaction in accounting this my sophomore year in college I interned at deoe and T doing audit and same thing
00:06:03 and I you know I had this realization that there's no way I can be an accountant what am I going to do with my life you know and so I just kind of went through the rest of school not knowing what I was going to do and after I graduated I ended up Landing a job in the car business as a finance director at a dealership and that's when my journey to becoming a financial planner kind of started because first of all I was seeing a lot of people come through my my finance office that really had no clue how their credit works you know
00:06:39 they they wouldn't have money for a down payment and you know these would be people of all income levels all ages and it's like you don't have a thousand dollar to put down on this car and it just I just started realizing man there's a huge problem in terms of financial literacy and at the same time I was going through my own financial literacy problems because I was making a ton of money at a very young age and I just had no clue like how much should I be saving how do I invest I mean I just didn't
00:07:09 know anything and I had an accounting degree so I thought that I didn't even know how to do my own taxes that's how bad it was Which accounting obviously there's two sides of accounting but you would think you would they would have at least taught you that much but it I know this has been beaten to death on this podcast but like it's just amazing to me the lack of financial literacy education that you get even in at the college level like you would think at some point you would get the education and you just
00:07:35 don't it's really at no level and so from there I ended up kind of having a financial crisis I had taken a large sum of my savings and I had spent it on remodeling my kitchen and at this point I was 26 years old I was like swimming in debt I had a mortgage I had a card loan I had credit cards and I was saving but like I said I didn't know how much I should be saving I took a large amount of that savings and and redid my kitchen and then right after that I had a horrible month and I hardly earned any
00:08:12 money and it scared the mess out of me I was like if this continues happening I'm not going to have enough money to pay my mortgage I'm not going to have enough money to sustain my lifestyle and I just started to freak out and I started looking for a financial advisor and no one wanted to work with me cuz I didn't have I had maybe $25,000 in a 401k and that was a you know maybe another 5,000 in cash I don't know it w it was like nothing and so no adviser wanted to work with me and it was frustrating people
00:08:44 wouldn't even call me back and I ended up finding this advisor who who felt like it was his public duty to help me and he told me you know it's going to be $1600 and I remember laughing and thinking I'm not paying you $1,600 and then I went home and I I saw this pair of $700 Gucci shoes in my closet and I was like you are so dumb now I am thoroughly confused you are 26 years old you've got $700 pairs of Gucci shoes you own a house you're doing a kitchen remodel and you have $30,000 in the bank which is
00:09:19 significantly more than the average American much less the 26y old so clearly like you were paying attention to your budget I was making $180 Grand a year and I had a budget from the time I was 18 so I you know I had a 820 beacon score at that age I was I thought I knew everything you couldn't tell me anything but clearly I didn't because I was literally living paycheck to paycheck on $180,000 income at age 26 yeah it's a great reminder that you can never have enough money to feel wealthy right that
00:09:56 you know people struggle to budget at when they make 50 Grand a year 180 Grand a year or a million dollars a year whether we think they should or not is irrelevant it's a struggle and so you know to your point here you are making $18,000 and can't find an advisor that's really interested in working with you and that's that's where XY plan network was born was out of this frustration of like you should have been an ideal client for for an advisor and they immediately just look at net worth and investable assets and and see well she's
00:10:26 broke and like you weren't broke you had income you just didn't have the asset yet so yeah okay so you find an adviser do you go through the planning process with this adviser then yeah so then I decided to work with him in the first meeting he was like bring all your stuff in he was like no more shopping you have enough crap in your closet no more eating out learn how to cook and he just like in that first meeting he cut $800 out of my monthly budget that started going towards debt repayment on and on
00:10:52 next thing you know a few months in I was debt free like it it was just a whirlwind and a lifechanging experience it changed my life so much that within a few months I decided I wanted to become a financial advisor it just changed my whole life I was like I want to do what he does and you know I want to change people's lives and you know that's what I decided and then I started figuring out how do how do I how do I transition how do I do this and I ended up um finding the training program at mirl
00:11:23 Lynch which is a three-year training program and I um fought to get in the door there and to be honest with you Merl Lynch was going through like some diversity issues at the time they had hired like a regional diversity manager and they were looking to try and bring some diversity in the door and I honestly truly believe that's the only reason I got in the door because I was a young black woman and as soon as I started there I got the feeling that no one thought I was going to make it yeah you were just
00:11:57 there for the color of your skin I was just there to fill a seat to fill a number on their little quota for you know minorities or whatever so to to take one step back I will say um I hear a lot of folks that like did their own financial plan and discovered financial planning that way like on their own I'm not sure I've heard a story of it of an adviser that became an adviser after being a client like had such an awesome experience which is just so telling of the power of financial planning and why
00:12:26 it's so hard to explain but when you experience it you're like wow like I really can help a lot of people which is awesome but now I have a like I have a vague sense of what you get paid at Marl Lynch and it is not $180,000 while you're going through their training program so that's a pretty I mean this isn't just like a small career shift like this is huge yeah that's a big that's a big life choice yeah I luckily because I had been working with this other adviser I kind of set myself up to where I could earn less I ended up
00:13:00 selling my house I got rid of my car and got a less expensive car I made sure all of my living expenses everything was under 2,000 a month and then I took the job at Merill Lynch and Merill paid me a starting salary of $40,000 my take-home pay every month was about $2,000 maybe 2,200 something like that so you went from making and spending 15,000 a month to making and spending 3 to four gross that's pretty that's a pretty impressive shift I guess I should say the part of the part of the problem
00:13:35 was that when I was in the car business I was working 80 to 90 hours a week like we were open Saturday Sunday holidays all of that and didn't want to get trapped in that industry like so many others had I just couldn't see myself working that much for the rest of my life and as a woman I started thinking like how would I ever have children how would I get married I work all the time I have no life I I have no social life I haven't seen my mom you know in years I knew I needed to make a change and
00:14:04 financial planning to me was the answer because I knew I was like if I just get enough experience someday I could be working from home I could work with people at my dining room table and that's just what I had in my mind that I was gonna like get in at the floor level and grind my way to the top and then have my own business and that was always my plan from the beginning I just knew I just needed to get the experience first now did your adviser work from his dining room table oh no he he was part
00:14:34 of a maror prize and he actually had several advisers working for him so he had a large practice actually and he was the person in charge so he kind of like did this as a favor like trying to help a young person I don't think he normally would have worked with a client like me the the reason I'm curious he like how did you even know working from home most people don't know this industry exists much less the fact that you can actually build a business that lets you work from home and from your dining room table
00:15:02 like and there are advisers that have spent their entire careers in the business that don't know some of us get to do that so it's just cool that you already knew no I didn't know and that it was me being ignorant going into this industry that's what I thought in my head and then once I was in the industry for a while just like what you're explaining I started thinking that wasn't possible I felt stuck once I was in the industry I felt stuck like okay now I have to work for one of these firms in
00:15:29 fact I didn't even know that financial planning firms existed all I knew was The Brokerage world and quite honestly there again there are people that work in The Brokerage world for the last 10 15 years that still don't know our side of the world even exists you know I think kitus has single-handedly put a dent in that bubble that they live in but it's it's interesting how segmented our industry is between the broker Towes and and the wirehouses the insurance companies and the raas it's just sort of
00:15:58 interesting so talk to me about the training program at at Merill Lynch obviously not a good situation to walk into when when you and the people around you feel like you're there because of the statistic just the color of your skin and your gender not necessarily clear skill set that you should have there's no question you should have been there so I guess how how was that training program the training program they focus a lot on client meetings so it's like simulation and this was 10 years ago now so I don't know how
00:16:29 different it is today but when I joined it was the PMD program which was like the newer program and they do a lot of simulations so there was about 47 people in the training program so it was a large I was in a large office in the Atlanta office there was 100 maybe about 180 advisers in that office and there were probably about 40 of us in the training program there and so we would have like mock client meetings where we would go over and investment proposal or what have you and sit in front of
00:17:02 someone and try to close them on moving their money to Merl Lynch or whatever and there would be coaches there and so it it was a you know it was a program and but the the problem I had with the the pro the program was great but the problem I had was that you know they were teaching us how to kind of close a deal but my problem was once I closed the deal I didn't really know what to do with these people's money and I always knew in my heart that I'm asking someone to hand over their life savings to me
00:17:32 and I have no clue what I'm doing with it and you know they would always oh just just you know just get it in and once you get it in somebody will help you and it was just kind of like I never felt very comfortable with that so I always took it into my own hands to learn more and to to do my own research and to try and like you know just go above and beyond what the expectations were in terms of just bringing in accounts because that's what it's really focused on bring in accounts bring in money you know and it wasn't necessarily
00:18:06 like your expertise and I you know the more I learned and it's still like this to this day the more I learned the more I realize I don't know I didn't know anything about you know paying attention to someone's cost basis or you know what the repercussions are of selling someone's entire Investment Portfolio and reallocating it I mean no one had taught me that so that's that's just an example of you know the lack of knowledge that I had at that time but I'm being asked I'm I'm asking people to move you know a million dollars or2
00:18:42 million dollars into my care so what what resources I guess did Merill provide that you were able to go learn or or was it really like out on your own trying to figure this all out I mean a lot of it is you trying to partner with existing advisers there and kind of getting mentoring and things like that I mean the training program was very much so focused on sales if you wanted to actually learn what to do after that you it really required you to kind of partner with other advisers and so that's what I
00:19:16 started trying to do you know I I started trying to find someone who would be a good a good team or or someone for me to partner with and eventually I did find a team that um I kind of sold myself to which was a that was a unique experience too because I was seeing other people that would get hired and they would be asked to be on a team and it was opposite with me I had to go sell myself I you know I was emailing my resume and and emailing you know different part different people at the firm and you know hey I'm looking
00:19:52 for a team to join and you know just really going out there proactively and selling myself and trying to find and the ideal team for me so it's a little different cuz I I recall specifically there was a young guy that had just graduated from Alabama Alabama State and he played football and he was on a team week one so you know it was a different experience for me I didn't have that same the same thing fair enough yeah it and again it I think it's important for the stories to be told so that people
00:20:26 recognize that it's happening whether they see it or not or whether they they I should say whether they notice it because it's happening in front of them whether they whether they choose to see it or not that there is still a lot of that happening in the industry I mean in the world in general but especially in our industry so so you got on a team what does that exactly mean so like you did you have to move at that point because you said you were in Atlanta no so the team was actually based in the
00:20:52 Atlanta office the team that I joined was actually one of the top teams at Marl Lynch I think it's actually the largest if not the second largest team at mirl Lynch and that team has grown to the point where they're servicing Fortune 500 companies and managing their stock option plans and their 401ks and all of that and once I joined that team I was partnered with different advisers on that team and I started learning so much at that point I think in the first six months I learned more than I had
00:21:26 learned in the first two years being on my own and so I'm a huge you know obviously I tell everyone that getting experience and working with senior advisers is an invaluable experience because there was I learned about concentrated stock positions I learned about stock options and black shs analysis I learned about you know cost bases I learned about estate planning I just learned about so many different complex strategies that I was not exposed to to in my own practice prior to joining that team makes sense
00:22:03 and I'm a huge fan of it as well right like the the best way to learn how to do financial planning is go watch someone do Financial Planning and then do financial planning while someone's watching if you could take that meril Lynch training program that was just focused on sales and extend it through the entire planning process I mean that's the ideal right many of us were not able to find that opportunity I was one that was fortunate to be able to find that but it if you can find it take it it is worth two to five to 10 years
00:22:29 of your career to go learn before you decide to start your own firm if that's your path which it it certainly was yours uh you know in sort of the plan all along so at what point during this process did you get your cfp because I know some of the companies like maril Lynch have gone back and forth on whether or not they support or even allow people getting the cfp designation yeah so as soon as you start the well I don't know if it's still like this but it was like this back then as soon as I started the training program I
00:22:55 immediately had to start taking the first initial course which was Investments for the cfp so I finished Investments and then I took another course I can't remember I think it might have been insurance or something so they they kind of wanted us to get the cfp but then what happened was that the hurdles the financial hurdles that we had to meet and the goals were so hard that I just felt like I don't have the time to study I have to focus 100% of my time on hitting these goals or else I might not even have a job at the end of
00:23:29 the day so I just kind of stopped worrying about the cfp and felt like keeping my job was more important and I just didn't have the time to study so I kind of let that go for many many years and maybe about four or five years later I decided to start working on it again how long were you at Merill Lynch total then I was at Merill for 5 years and after leaving Merill I moved to Miami and I joined Charles Schwab and it was while I was at Schwab that I started studying again got got a little extra time back
00:24:05 exactly yeah so what were you doing at Schwab then like what was the position so what what was cool about Schwab was that because when I left Merill or when I was leaving Atlanta I should say I had to leave the team and that was very complex in of in of itself because the team wanted to keep all of my clients and so that was it was almost like okay I'm going to have to start all over again after putting in five years of work to build this practice and that was a very stressful thing you know I I you
00:24:41 mentioned the word pigeon hold earlier I felt pigeon hold in that situation because it's was like okay either I stay here where I'm not really happy or I start from scratch which I had just done that and I knew how hard it was so I kind of looked for other opportunities and I found Schwab and what was cool about Schwab is that when you join Schwab they give you a book of business so prospecting is not as essential and that was the part of the job that I really didn't enjoy anyways so when I joined Schwab they gave me a book of
00:25:16 $300 million and about 300 clients and then it's your job to build relationships with those clients through financial planning because a lot of Schwab clients are self-directed they go online they open an account they move millions of dollars in but they don't necessarily have an advisory relationship so it was my job to try and connect with them and build a relationship and engage them in financial planning and just to get them more involved in The Firm you know to get them more bought in to Mar I mean to
00:25:54 Charles Schwab so then so you were not able to bring into your CL clients over fortunately you were able to get a book of business at Schwab but how long were you there at Schwab then so I was at Schwab for five years and Schwab you know Schwab was awesome I loved working at Schwab but the thing about Schwab is it was very very high volume and it was as a result very stressful and the clientele there my clientele anyways being in Florida it was a much older population you know my average client was probably anywhere
00:26:29 from age 65 to age 88 so it was a lot of older people who I obviously didn't have much in common with it just got to the point where it was a very stressful work environment because it's so high volume and the other thing was that I started to noticed that so many people were coming to me so many people my own age were coming to me for financial advice friends friends of friends people I've met at events you know they would they would contact me and say Angela I need help you know this is my situation but they wouldn't have
00:27:11 any assets and I would tell people all the time you know hey call me let come by my office at 5:00 P PM or let's meet up on Saturday and I started helping all these people for free and one day I'll never forget I had a very large account it was about a $40 million account the the clients it was a corporate account they moved 30 million out and I remember my manager at the time freaked out over it and like kind of lost it and she came in the office and was kind of screaming at me about it it it had nothing to do with me it had
00:27:50 to do with the board of the company you know making decisions or whatever but in that moment I was already completely stressed out and and then her yelling at me I just felt like I need to get out of here I'm so stressed out and at the same time that same day I realized that I had seven referrals all of them were young people and uh who didn't have enough assets to meet the minimum requirement and I remember thinking like I'm not advertising to these people I'm not marketing I'm not doing anything and I'm
00:28:21 getting seven referrals in one week and it just occurred to me right in that moment that I need to quit and start my own business and I went home that night I called up one of my girlfriends in La who has a a branding company and I said I need to start a company I need a logo I need a website I need it immediately and we like I literally stayed up till 3:00 a.m. every night for the next two weeks writing my bio and creating the website and all the content and the processes and systems all of that and at that time I didn't even have
00:28:57 my cfp so this was in 2016 I think right as I was about to quit my manager quit and then I thought you know maybe I should rethink this maybe I need to like get my cfp first and you know save up money and it then it was like you know the more rational Common Sense person took over and so what I did at that point was I aggressively went after the cfp I I think I finished the cfp in eight months after that it was just like go hard or go home I just got it done you had a reason to get it done I just got
00:29:36 it done yeah and I saved I you know put myself on a super tight budget saved money it took me a good two years before I actually quit because I was just terrified I was scared I kept thinking well you know I can make this work at at Schwab and oh I have these benefits and oh I have this salary and it just was scary it was I did I was scared but I I at this point I had invested so much time and money in my own business that it was kind of like I can't just let this go I have to do it now like it's there's no turning back
00:30:14 yeah I've said it many times on the show before but I liken it to you know it's hard to get out of a warm bed even if you know the coffees on the other side of the room it's still hard to get out of that bed get out of the warm covers because that's really what it is where you're getting out of this place where like it's not ideal but life's comfortable you're making good money you've got good benefits if you just stay there for your career you'll retire just fine and be a wealthy person like all of those things are there but it's
00:30:41 like but if it's not scratching that itch especially once you've gone as far as you had gone not just thinking about it but like actually doing the things it's tough to shut that off and ultimately it's just making it's more of a a decision of when not if so you made the decision and I'm assuming that was I guess early in 2018 then since you ended up launching in 2018 well it was in 2017 i' I passed I passed the cfp I think that March I think it was I passed in March and then I started working on my
00:31:15 Master's Degree and a few months later I decided to quit and um I quit on December 6th of 2017 so what did you do between then and sort of launching The Firm what what was your downtime spent doing which I assume it wasn't really downtime well unbeknownst to me the registration process in Florida took forever you know I we filed all of my registration paperwork on the first week of January and my registration wasn't approved until the end of April I want to say so it took a several months and that was very difficult because I I
00:32:01 thought maybe it would take two months I never thought that it would take you know four or five months to get approved and so that whole time I had no income I couldn't Market myself I couldn't really do anything except work on my processes and like my website and stuff and so that's what I did I spent all of that time kind of putting together processes marketing and like just planning everything out for the launch and then I I ended up launching two weeks after my approval yeah for for folks that don't
00:32:33 know uh some states are extra difficult Florida I shouldn't say difficult some just take longer than others some are more difficult than others every State's a little different so talk to your compliance person we're trying to do a better job of of tracking that information just because it sort of es and flows based on how many Regulators they have hired at the time but yeah Florida's a little notorious but it it it's why we recommend having cash on hand because you just don't know you know you're going to go to get ready
00:32:57 shirt and suddenly you've got a couple months where you know no income and that hurts yeah I did luckily I had saved and I had reduced my expenses and and I had I'm married so my husband had to step up quite a bit and you know so I was able to make it through and what's crazy is that it wasn't just those months it's like even after you launch I started bringing in money but then I was spending that money to grow the business so I I really haven't taken a real paycheck for myself yet I've been in I
00:33:34 launched May 18th I just recently started paying myself a small thousand a month paycheck now how did that feel though like that first time you took $1,000 do out of the company it it just you know I thought to myself I'm just going to do it cuz I have to earn something you know but it you know one of the things about my business is that I think when I first started I thought oh this is going to be a nice little relaxing business and you know kind of that lifestyle business type of feel but shortly after I got accepted
00:34:13 into a women's accelerator program for female entrepreneurs and there was a speaker that came and she manages a$ hundred million company and one of the things took away from the program I'm still in the program now it ends in in March but one of the things I took away is that it takes the same amount of effort to have a small business as it does to have an Enterprise and my my mindset shifted to Enterprise and I started thinking this is I can build something big here I can build something massive and that's what
00:34:51 I started doing and so a lot of the revenue that was coming in because I I was surprised I started making money almost immediately but I was using that money to then build platforms and build systems and and build other kind of other things for the business yeah that Enterprise mindset is something that's been coming up more often on the the podcast lately and it really is you know we we had uh Michael Gerber speak at the conference this year about this specific topic for anybody who was there that the presentation left
00:35:25 much to be desired but his whole thing is that you know it really is it is no more complicated to run a big company as a as a small company it's just different and deciding what you want your day-to-day to be and what you want I guess I get the type of work you want to be doing and the problems you want to be solving because the problems you that you're solving at a 100 million in revenue or aund million dollar company very different than than at you know H 100,000 or a million or 10 million and
00:35:51 so it just changes and it's hard to know did you feel like working in through that accelerator program you were able to get exposed to like what life is actually like at that level because I feel like that's a big you know like yeah I want to be that big but no one really knows what it's like until their company is that big and then it's too late to go back yeah I started listening to this other podcast how I built this and that really because those are all you know young entrepreneurs who started something you know the guy who
00:36:24 started Wei work is on there the girl who started learn V Bliss Spas I mean there's a lot of companies that are talked about on there and they they talk about like how they went from small to big and and what that entailed and all of that and you know I think that it's I literally do think it's the same amount of effort and I think it's actually when you have an Enterprise mindset even if you do stay a small business it makes operating your small business that much easier because because one of the things that I had to
00:36:58 look at is how do I scale and the way to scale for me is systematizing and automating and creating systems and processes that are repeatable over and over again and that you know you can bring someone in and the training is there because everything has a process no one's winging anything and so with that you can stay SM stay a small business if you want or you can expand but either way you have these systems and processes in place that make your job so much easier and so much more efficient and optimal yeah I love that
00:37:32 advice because that that's when you plan to stay small I think you make potentially some poor choices because you know you're going to have time just because you have time doesn't mean spending it on certain activities or inefficiencies is a good idea so I love that advice what what other things do you feel like you've been doing from an investment standpoint and just where you're committing your time based on this sort of Enterprise mindset and the decision to to go ahead and and to be building and laying the foundation to to
00:38:00 Really promote growth in the company yeah one of the things that I have been working on is building a platform for my financial planning clients it's kind of like a like a course when clients come on that you know how there's a lot of things that we say over and over to clients that's kind of educational in nature you know maybe you're talking about Estate Planning and you're expl exping what a will is and what a trust is and what the difference is and you're you know you're saying these things over
00:38:32 and over again to clients what I've done is I've created a platform where I've kind of recorded videos and classes and content and so when a client signs on with me for financial planning they're going through this whole automated system and when they meet with me they're strictly meeting with me for a reduced period of time to specifically go through their financial planning topics and so I don't have to spend a ton of time explaining you know the basics of investing or the basics of estate planning they've already kind of gone
00:39:12 through video tutorials and and content and stuff that prepares them for our discussion so that's one of the things you require that for all of your new clients so do I require them to go through that yeah yeah everything's automated so they go on my website they don't even have to talk to me before they sign up they can sign up for financial planning right on my website they pick the plan they want to do they sign up immediately then they get this welcome video and they're they're on that platform and they're going through
00:39:44 and then you know they get the client agreement to sign electronically they then get the link to start inputting their details they get the document to that tells them what documents to upload and all of that is done before they even speak to me for the first time so you really are investing a ton of time in Automation and efficiency so what are some of the tools that you're using like what what's the platform that you're using to host the videos and have them go through that process so I'm using a
00:40:13 standard education platform like kajabi or teachable or what have you the one that I'm using specifically is kajabi and then you know I'm using all different types of like I'm using hello right now we use jot form I'm using Acuity scheduling so I'm using a lot of different tools that are all kind of like linked together and and combined that all talk to each other and you know I mentioned to you earlier that I am bring I'm merging with another xypn member currently and we could talk about that too but she is the automation Queen
00:40:52 and so we a lot of the systems and processes are Auto automated like when a client signs on for a meeting their information is immediately put into wealth box you know a profile is created for them then as soon as they sign the client agreement it goes into wealth box I mean all of that is automated on the front end so it really frees up a lot of time for me to actually focus on bringing on more clients than I normally would be able to so let let's talk about the decision to bring on a partner because you've
00:41:25 been rocking it for8 n months now we we haven't talked numbers yet which we will hear in a bit about your growth and and you're seeing some awesome growth in The Firm youve decided to go interprise and that's going to be the focus so what why did it make sense to start thinking and and going ahead and partnering with another advisor now yeah there's a lot of reasons so Ariel that's my partner we were in the same launch group together and through our launch group it ended up staying together after the initial first
00:41:56 few weeks and Ariel and I think very similar and so we we would often times get on calls and share our our automation ideas and share our processes and you know what are you doing and what are you doing and and we would kind of work together and Implement a lot of the same stuff together and so over time it got to the point where we realized that we each had a very unique skill set and that together if we combined those we could just really achieve great big things you know and so it was a tough
00:42:30 it's a scary thing to combine with someone and I think it was tough for her because she had to make de one of us had to make the decision to give up our firm and merge into the other and I think you know it's kind of like your baby and you're emotionally attached to it and you've built it from the ground up and it's it's hard to let go even if it's only been a few months so you spent how much time naming your firm you know exactly you're just like but I don't want to give it up but I mean either one
00:43:01 or both of you have to give it up you're not there's no sense in merging and keeping I guess you could keep both Brands but that that seems inefficient so yeah so it was you know the the decision came though and to me it's common sense and I feel like I feel like everyone should have Partners at this point because you know what if life happens what if you get sick what if you know what if you want to go on vacation what if something happens you know yeah you could send an email out to clients and be like hey I'm not going to be
00:43:32 reachable for the next week either that or you're working on your vacation you know one of the one of the other so I felt like in order to really scale and grow I'm going to need not just one partner but I'm going to need multiple I'm going to need employees I'm going to need Partners I'm going to need all kinds of you know know I'm going to need a huge team and so this is just a start in my opinion if you have someone else that you know does great work and I think she's a genius and we work well together we know each
00:44:09 other at this point she's credentialed I just felt like it was a no-brainer and it was just a matter of okay well how do we do this now because we're both extremely busy so then you know there's this whole compliance thing of registering and H that's overwhelming but what's great is that we're in xypn so we just basically reached out to compliance and did you know this the special planning I mean uh the special compliance the premium compliance service and so they're taking care of all of that for us so it's just to me it
00:44:45 the hardest part was the emotional part of you know her deciding to let go of her firm and then we hired an attorney a business attorney who walked through all of these different potential issues that could arise in a partnership and we we created an operating agreement that you know addresses all these different things that could possibly happen if there's a dispute if someone wants to leave you know if someone gets sick all of these different things that you kind of have to think through when you're creating a
00:45:15 partnership so how did y'all structure it from a entity standpoint and then also just like overall ownership as well as decision-making because those two things can be different yeah so our situation is super unique because there's more businesses involved so Ariel now has a automation business it's a consulting company where she's helping advisers automate their practices so that's her own business then we have the financial planning business that we're doing together and then I have a separate business where
00:45:49 I'm doing financial literacy education and speaking and and books and stuff and so the time that we're dedicating to the business is different and so our partnership is I think it's 60 65 35 or something like that where I retain 60% ownership she retains 35 but then we have a different payout structure for paying out any Revenue that we pay out Revenue shares it's very complex the business attorney you know she's a she's an expert in that she really helped to guide us through through that and there's it was a it was
00:46:30 kind of a complicated process that I don't think Ariel or I really knew as knew much of anything in terms of this business agreement but the attorney was essential in guiding us through that yeah I I appreciate that you highlight that because Michael and I have been through this as well we when we first partnered we just drafted something on Rocket lawyer.com I think and as long as we get along that's great and so we went through that same process we we were making some changes and it's just amazing the the things that you
00:47:03 need to think about because you know on one hand it is s sort of the obvious death disability disillusion or you know dissolving the company that sort of thing but like it is also like what happens if you disagree what happens if one of you wants out what happens when one of you wants to sell the company and the other doesn't like you start going through all the scenarios and of course attorneys have seen all of the horrible cases of it going wrong and so they're trying to cover down and be sure you
00:47:25 make some of these decisions but it's sort of like you know getting an estate plan in place right like that you know you gotta you got to make a plan and it sucks to think about but yeah and and you can make them infinitely complex or simple it just depends on on how you want to structure it so it sounds like you so the the ownership structure is is a little different it's it's not 5050 it's 6535 and then how did y'all think about decision making like did you you know assign you know CEO coo and sort of
00:47:53 Duties along with that are you joint decision maker what's the plan there so Ariel her passion is kind of the Automation and Technology piece so she's our chief technology officer and I'm the CEO and decision making pretty much is all on me because that was something that I didn't necessarily want to give up and her thing is she really likes the Automation and all of that and she's she's kind of still going to be running her other business so she's not going to be working full-time in the financial
00:48:31 planning firm whereas I will for the most part so we we really had to think through all of that and a lot of it was me just saying like well how involved do you want to be like what do you want to do what don't you want to do and then we created a list of all the responsibilities that are involved in running the firm and we highlighted certain things that we could Outsource and then we highlighted certain things I would be responsible for and certain things she would be responsible for so we created a whole plan before we even
00:49:02 went to the attorney we also talked about you know how much of our time we would want to dedicate to this business so one of the things was she she didn't want to dedicate as much time to the financial planning business as I would and so this is kind of going to be a side or second job for her I would say whereas for me it's my primary so of that had to be taken into consideration as we were forming the the partnership well thank you for for detailing that I know it's early on I may have to have you back on to to talk
00:49:37 about it in a year or two to to just talk about what you've learned because I know there are a lot of planners out there that are thinking about partnering they recognize like you did they they recognize they don't want to be by themselves and they they want some backup they want another set of eyes and ears to bounce ideas off of and and you can get a lot of that by being in a study group which is awesome it is different when you have have a business partner I think the only reason know we've been well there are a lot of
00:50:00 reasons we've been successful but one of the one of the big things that I credited to is that you know Michael and I are very different and that's a good thing to to have that and then you know we brought in a COO which is different from the two of us and so then I'll send you up three opinions in the room and we don't always agree but it really helps to to find the best answer for us which uh so anyway so I again I know it's early but awesome awesome work on getting through that because I know
00:50:25 there there's a lot to think about when you're when you're thinking about partnering and it is kind of like giving up your baby it's it's sort of how it feels eventually you you know you you'll appreciate it but it is kind of tough early on and I think what helps too is we kind of talked about what our end goals and you know our end goal for the financial planning firm is to sell it in in in a few years so I think that makes it easier it's not like oh this is for life this is forever you know our goal
00:50:52 is really to build up a firm that another firm could then acquire to help them service Millennials because I think there's a huge opportunity there I think there's a lot of firms out there who are trying to figure out how do we bridge the gap to the Next Generation and if we can build something and show that it's successful you know and it's systematized and automated that that becomes something that can easily be sold and that's our goal so this has been awesome I don't think I've ever had someone say their goal was to sell their
00:51:29 firm at all on this show much less you know early on in the business so why why is that I guess the goal as opposed to building something that you own and maybe even bringing someone else into run it or whatever why sell instead of just building your own Enterprise because Ariel and I we both have many passions I I would say my passion is speaking and educating and you know all that and that's what it's that's fun fun to me and I feel like it's more scalable and Ariel now she's loving this whole techn technology thing
00:52:07 and you know in the future she'd like to actually you know build software technology and things like that so I think there's other things we want to do but in my opinion the financial planning firm requires a lot from a compliance stand point it requires long hours of work it's not as scalable so to me I would like to build it and then you know maybe offload it to a larger firm that can take over the compliance and can take over all that I would still love to work there and be part of it but as an
00:52:46 employee you know and then I'd have a lumpsum of cash in my pocket that I could then use to build another business and you know my educational business or whatever it is I want to build and when I you know when I listen to some of these stories of other you know firms like for example learnvest the young lady that created that she had cfps working for her doing subscription based financial planning she sold to a trust company I forget which one it was but she sold for $125 million so when I think about that I think hey if I could
00:53:22 get 25 million that would change my whole life you know and then I wouldn't have to worry about compliance and I wouldn't have to you know work 16 hour days or whatever and that in my mind it would be helping other firms bridge the gap and you know there's nothing wrong with that I think yeah so I don't have a problem selling it and and then I would still have other stuff I'm doing you know it's just like you and Michael you guys are doing many different things and you have all these different businesses
00:53:53 and at some point one of them might have more more risk than others or or whatever and you know I don't know you maybe decide at some point do we want to continue doing this maybe we offload this for someone else to do or you know whatever and that's how I look at the financial planning and I I kind of had to pitch that to Ariel to say hey like imagine in five years if we sold this thing and you know walk away with a lump sum of cash and then do other things sure no and I I I can hear the business accelerator in
00:54:28 what you're saying and and that's a good thing like I I think it's awesome to be thinking about the business as a business and and what is the end goal for some folks it's to create an income stream for others and and quite honestly I think over the next three to five years we're going to start seeing some of the firms that got started in the 2010 to 2012 era you know maybe 10 years in I think we're going to start seeing some of them get sold because they were started by you know the the true hardcore on entrepreneur loves getting
00:54:56 something off the ground isn't passionate about running a business when it's at scale and and quite honestly like wants to just do something else they have other passions they've built a business they've been successful they sell it they take that money they go build another business or or do some other activity so I think I don't hear people say very often that that's what they're thinking but I think a lot more folks are thinking it and even more folks Will Do It ultimately whenever some of those opportunities come up
00:55:23 because you know big firms are still treating us like a you know like a little stuffed animal and trying to figure out you know what cute things we're doing over here and in another few years suddenly the firms are going to be like oh wait a minute are you for sale like can I buy your firm and and it's going to be awesome opportunities so one thing I do want to touch on is that you have had just like really strong growth and you've worked with a lot of clients in your first eight months so I'm not sure if you
00:55:49 mentioned earlier my notes had that you've worked with 21 clients in your first six months so how how are you finding success obviously you had some contacts initially and and knew some folks and you said like really they started showing up from day one but where are you seeing success from a client acquisition standpoint I have I get probably 90% of my clients from Instagram and people are always shocked when they hear that but that was my plan from the beginning because I I look on Instagram for everything if
00:56:23 I want to find a hair stylist I go on Instagram if I want to find someone to do my nails I go on Instagram I go on Instagram for everything so when I was launching my firm I thought you know Instagram is where it's at and and it's so it's free you can build an audience there and then you can mark it to that audience for free and you know Instagram and Facebook was my whole strategy from the beginning so that's where I've been literally getting all of my business from just posting consistently running little inexpensive
00:57:00 you know $50 ads here and there and I just you know I think it was either you or Michael Kit's talked about the ocean of opportunity and how like TR traditional firms are swimming in shark infested bloody Waters and how for us there's just so much opportunity that's the truth and when I post something you know I have like five I don't even have that many followers on Instagram I only have about 5,000 but I get a few clients each month from my Instagram account and then the other clients are coming from
00:57:37 Google just random people who've searched for me I get a few clients from the xypn search and then I get referrals from FPA I'm actually on the board of my local FPA chapter and I make sure that all of the advisers there know that I cater to all the clients that they basically don't want to work with so yeah so I between those things I've been getting consistent business and it grows every month and sometimes I'm o I'm overwhelmed and that's why you know going back to the partnership thing it's like I know I can't do all this on
00:58:14 my own I I'm gonna pretty soon I'll be hiring I already have people have identified that I'm looking to bring on as financial planners because there's a lot of business coming in and it's it's just like a whole bunch of people who have debt and are trying to figure out how to live like how you know our generation is has so many different competing priorities you know your rent is high you're you're traveling you're spending money on Starbucks and all kinds of other stuff and then you have student
00:58:48 loans and credit cards and I mean people are like desperate to just get a handle on their financial situation and you know one thing about my practice that is kind of maybe not so good thing is that hardly any of my clients really have assets to invest they're all just like me like how I was and you know that's okay like people come in they pay the fee and they're looking for Solutions and looking for help and you know I've been getting a lot of that so yeah I've always felt like you're going to work with a client
00:59:25 early on when they have uh debt and income and then you know later on when they have assets other PE other advisers are going to wish they could you know get that business and they're not gonna be able to because that client built a relationship with you and this is still a relationship business no one's leaving you and going to another adviser because they're like hey thanks for letting you know getting me to a million guess I'll go with that million dollar minimum advisor now that's just not how it works
00:59:48 so you know people are going to wish they had listened to us when when we were pounding the table for you know have a have a service model that lets you work with people and provide great financial planning profitably you don't have to do it pro bono you don't have to do it for free charge a fee for financial planning and and and work with those clients early on and been a tough sell but obviously more and more people are buying into it and building successful businesses doing it yeah and one thing I've learned too what we do
01:00:16 require does require a little bit of a different skill set you can't just go from servicing High netw worth clients to servicing you know young professionals it's totally different what their needs are and one of the things that stands out in terms of that is the whole student loan thing you know I've gone through several student loan trainings and I still feel like it goes over my head it's just so complex yeah it's tough but you make a great point that I actually think that's one of the big rubs that we see inside of larger
01:00:46 firms that are like oh yeah we'll start working with young people and they sit down with a kid of a client and they don't know what to talk about they don't know what they're doing you know like it is a totally different skill set and different knowledge base if you will it's still financial planning but the topics that you cover are so different yes very very different so obviously you you have a lot going on especially with with the new merger and and building out you know starting to to lay the
01:01:11 foundation for the firm I mean what are your sort of targeted one and twoyear goals that you'd like to accomplish either from a growth perspective or bringing on team members or or whatnot bringing on Ariel as a partner and then probably within the next 3 to 5 months I'm looking to hire another financial planner she would probably start part-time at first and then grow to full-time and then at some point I'd like to actually hire a salesperson I know that sounds crazy but I would like to hire a salesperson that will come in
01:01:47 and find corporate opportunities for us to do workshops and speaking engagements and like Financial educ ation and stuff so that's a few of the things personally I guess it's it's an extension of this business but now I'm kind of separate because this past year all of it was one business for me but what I realized recently once I decided that my end goal is to sell I decided to separate the business into two businesses so I've separated the financial education and speaking engagements and all that into a separate
01:02:21 business but that's one of my goals is to build kind of financial literacy platform that for individuals but then also be able to Market that to corporations and educational organizations and things like that where they're getting Financial education from an actual professional not from a blogger and nothing against bloggers but like from a certified financial planner who has had you know 10 plus years of experience working with people to actually come in and give real world Financial education awesome I big goals
01:02:58 big vision and you know proof is in the pudding that you've been able to accomplish the Big Goal so far and I have no doubt that you'll be able to continue doing that so that's awesome as we're coming to a close I'll I'll ask you the the famous last question famous to five people and that is just looking back over your career and your you know the early on in your career working at the broker dealers eventually launching your firm if there's one piece of advice that you wish you could go back and give
01:03:24 your younger self what do you think that piece of advice would be oh man I would advise people not to stress over things and just take things one step at a time because everything kind of ends up working out for the good I feel like early on in my career I was so stressed that I would not make it at Merl Lynch and that you know what if I get fired it's going to be the end of the world and now my my mindset is so different I just feel so free I feel like you know why was I worried about that I had a
01:03:59 series 7 I could have went and worked anywhere and then once I got the cfp I could literally go work anywhere and I think to myself why why did I why have I why did I stress so much about the little things because I think the focus should be less on you know am I going to have a job am I going to make money and more on how can I get better that's awesome that that's awesome advice well thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show and and share what you've been up to over the last eight nine months I'm really
01:04:29 excited to see how the new partnership merger and big growth plans go so it'll be exciting to watch your firm continue down this path for the for the next several years until that eventual sale one day so thank you again thank you so much for having me on and it it's been a pleasure and thank you how much money do you need to launch your own firm that's a question we've got at xite Planning Network hundreds if not thousands of times to answer it once and for all we develop a free budget template that
01:04:56 accounts for the many variables of your first year in business along with the template successful xypn members opened their books for us and shared how they did it what they spent and what they do differently our first year budget download is an incredibly valuable resource for anyone considering launching a firm of their own download it for free at www.x planning network.com budget be sure to join our VIP community at XY planning network.com viip to hang out with other xyp and radio listeners ask questions for future mailbag up
01:05:24 episodes with myself and kitus and to finally find a community of like-minded financial advisers thanks for 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 cuttingedge financial planner go to XY planning network.com slvp or text xypn radio to 33344 and join a network of thousands ready to change the lives of Gen X and
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Angela Moore, MSPFP, CFP®, MPAS®, CRPC®, CFEI
Modern Money
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