Podcast → Episode No. 105

The Importance of Self Care for Surviving Entrepreneurship

With Meg Bartelt, CFP®, RICP®

January 28, 2026

Featuring

Meg Bartelt, CFP®, RICP®

Flow Financial Planning℠, LLC

What do we not talk about enough when starting your own RIA?

We spend a lot of time on the vision, the flexibility, the impact, but today, I wanted to dig into the less glamorous (and incredibly important) parts of building a firm.

In this episode of Behind The Advisor (previously known as XYPN Radio), I’m joined by XYPN member Meg Bartelt, who launched her RIA in May 2016 after a 12-year career in tech. Meg shares what it really looked like to step away from a successful tech career, earn a master’s in financial planning, and start over, this time with a clear mission to serve women in tech.

We talk about how she found her clients, what surprised her most in that first year, and the challenges that don’t always make it into launch stories, running a fully virtual firm, protecting your own well-being when the business depends on you, and why hiring a business coach became a game-changer instead of a “nice-to-have.”

If you’re considering launching your own firm, or you’re already in the thick of it and wondering if this is harder than expected, you’re not alone. Meg’s story is honest, grounding, and a powerful reminder that growth doesn’t come from glossing over the hard parts.

XYPN Radio Blog signature (1)

Listen to the Full Interview:

Watch the Full Interview:

What You'll Learn from This Episode:

Why Meg decided to leave her 12-year career in the tech industry to become a financial planner
How she got a sense of the industry by conducting "information interviews" with a wide variety of financial planners
What Meg learned from the first RIA she worked at was about succession, having an asset story, and the type of clients she wants to serve
Why did she start her own firm despite not being a particularly entrepreneurial person
The lessons Meg learned about self-care when her firm was struggling in its first year, and how she takes care of herself now on a daily basis
How she found and hired a business coach who helped her take the next step in her firm, to the point where she now has a waitlist of clients

Featured on the Show:

Meg Bartelt, CFP®, RICP® | Site | LinkedIn | FAA
RightCapital
Flow Financial Planning
Norm Boone - Mosaic Financial Partners
Rick Kahler
Slack
Hire Tech Ladies
The Who, What, and Why of Hiring a Business Coach by Meg on the XYPN Blog
Ep #14: The Career of Daniel Wrenne - From Northwestern Mutual Insurance Agent to Fee-Only Financial Planner
Ep #70: The Power of Niche Marketing, Developing Processes, and Growing Your Firm - An Update on the Career of Daniel Wrenne
Linden Cornett
Anna Sergunina

This Episode Is Sponsored By:

Read the Transcript Below:

00:00:01

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 I'm very excited to have Meg bartelt founder

00:00:29

of Flo cial planning on the show today Meg just wrapped up her first year in business and has been extremely influential in the xypn community throughout this last year Meg transitioned into financial planning after spending the first part of her career as a technical writer for technology companies along with several other Tech rated jobs she got her Masters in financial planning and moved from California back home to Virginia to work with an older adviser that was willing to sell her firm to Meg after

00:00:56

the first year however it became apparent that the differences in investing Styles was going to be an issue so the firm ended up being sold to a local planning firm where Meg continued to work for another year she ended up making the move to Washington State to open her own raia focused on women in Tech she had a slower start than she hoped for and about 6 months into running her business fell into what she calls the pit of despair but through her work with a therapist a business coach and also a very supportive husband

00:01:23

she kept putting one foot in front of the other and has started ramping up very quickly so quickly in fact that she isn't taking on new client till September one big focus of this interview is her realization that taking care of herself both physically and mentally is so important that it needs to come first and the business come second I couldn't agree more Meg was willing to open up about the difficulties of her first year and I can't thank her enough for being so open and vulnerable You're not going to want

00:01:49

to miss a bit of this episode this month's episodes are brought to you by right Capital right Capital provides Innovative financial planning software that digitizes and redefines the financial planning experience right Capital was ranked as the highest user rated financial planning software in the 2017 annual software survey conducted by T3 Tech Hub and inside information and was recently added as part of XY pn's technology package making it free for xypn members sign up for a demo today at

00:02:18

re capital.com and mention the xypn Radio podcast to be eligible for 10% off retail pricing you can find any of the additional resources that we mentioned during the episode at XY planning network.com one05 also be sure to go to XY planning network.com 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 XY planning

00:02:46

network.com viip without further Ado here's my interview with Meg hey Meg welcome to the show thanks so much for being on thanks Alan it is lovely to be here yes so one of my most embarrassing professional experiences was on stage at xypn 16 you received an award and I totally butchered your last name thinking I had been practicing it in my head so I will let you tell the audience how to pronounce your last name so I don't sound like the idiot sure my last name is bartelt it's exactly how

00:03:17

it's spelled I know and yet I I think I I think I said Bartel I think that's the bartelt and so it's funny because back in episode one I think the number one takeaway from my interview with Michael kitus was how to pronounce his last name I think we have increased the the percentage of people that pronounce kitus correctly by at least 50% and we will get bartelt pronounced correctly by another 50% so when I'm as famous as Michael I feel as if this will come in very handy that's right and we you can go back and

00:03:46

share if you win in doubt listen to the first minute of xypn radio so thank you again for for taking the time to be honor I'm really excited because you are just over a year in your business and have just I think absolutely killed it and have just done a lot lot of really cool things that we don't see from a lot of advisers in their first year so I'm I'm really excited to dive into that so take me back through sort of your path into financial planning sort of what was your career or I guess career plans

00:04:14

throughout college and and uh you know getting into your professional career sure I had no career plans in college when it came time to interview in in senior year I went to Welsley college and one of the things they do really well is attract potential employers to campus and so I interviewed at a bunch of companies including Goldman Sachs which did not want me which at this point I'm very thankful about but I was also graduating in 1998 which is smack in the middle of the first DOC com boom

00:04:44

and so there was basically this tendency to like can you fog a mirror well then you can work in the tech industry I don't care what your background is and you know my background I got a degree in in economics from a liberal arts college so you know I can think pretty well so I got hired by an consulting firm out in the Bay Area to do God knows what and so I moved out there in '98 and then I was in the tech industry for the next 12 years or so working you know business analyst and eventually a technical

00:05:15

writer for for most of my career in the tech industry and this was just something I followed I wasn't particularly passionate about any of this stuff and then I just got really sick of it I I love the people I worked with in the tech industry but the tech technology itself the job itself did not motivate me at all ultimately and then I don't even remember how I figured out that financial planning was a profession but San Francisco was certainly probably the best place to figure it out because

00:05:44

they've got a really robust professional Community including a lot of very successful F only planners and so that is you know I quit the tech industry and decided to get a masters in financial planner planning locally at Golden Gate University and that was sort of that was the start that was in 2008 or nine so you really like to get into career pths like a year before things go belly up yeah you know what was funny is I was I was so oblivious about it that when I got my first job as you know in the financial planning

00:06:19

profession as sort of an intern it was at the beginning of 2010 and it was only then that I realized they like oh there' been this big Kur fuffle in the markets and like economy had tanked and you coming from the economics major that is impressive but I'm assuming you were head down buried in in Master's work because goget university has a great program yeah and I also got you know in the two-year time frame I got married and we had our first kid and we moved from San Francisco to Virginia so you know I was wrapped up in

00:06:51

my own stuff yeah really nothing going on during that time frame so I guess so don't really remember how you found out about financial planning but why why a master's degree guess did you explore you know just getting a certificate cfp or or I guess what what made you decide to go the really the long route and and get a masters the long expensive route exactly I I come from an academic family both of my parents have graduate degrees my father was you know a a university math professor for 300 years academics

00:07:23

is just it's it's the default way to do anything is you get a degree degree in and also Golden Gate University being right there in San Francisco where I lived it was very front and center and you know I I didn't really know much else about the career path I didn't know what other things I could do and this seemed like a very obvious First Step as I commented to the head of the program at that point whose name I forget from a financial perspective was the dumbest thing I could have ever

00:07:54

done you know I quit my job which was paying good money I Dro $25,000 for a master's degree just from sort of you know opportunity cost perspective like I would have been much better off probably still would have been much better off if I had just worked for another 10 years as a technical writer and then died of a heart attack because I hated it so much yeah it it's a tough call I mean that it's it's really that opportunity cost like you said two years especially whenever you're in a career I mean if

00:08:25

you go like I got my masters you know right after undergrad and and so my opportunity costs is much lower cuz I'm giving up a $440,000 salary or something that as a new grad but you gave up probably a 6 Figure job or whatnot for two years and took a step backwards from a career perspective and sort of made yourself an entry level person in into a career so you you had to have believed this was your calling I mean I would assume to to make that big of a leap career-wise and personally God you know

00:08:55

I wish I could say I remembered what the hell I was thinking at the time I really don't I mean becoming getting married and becoming a a mother just completely obliterated my like higher processing powers for a while I don't really remember but it was something that really interested me I mean I it was not a completely new concept to me I grew up with a dad who watched you know Lewis riser's Wall Street week every Friday night and who had you know my father literally kept every trade confirmation from when he

00:09:25

started buying mutual funds in the 1970s oh am can actually get his basis unlike 98% of clients exactly and uh so this was you know numeracy and comfort with money things was always sort of part of my upbringing so it wasn't a radical shift in mindset or anything like that and getting a master's degree just seemed like a sort of a natural thing for me I'm good at school I like school and you know what having a master's degree in something makes you more attractive in that industry no no I

00:10:00

totally agree so were you working in the financial planning industry at all while getting your Masters or did you just focus on school and then start looking for a job once you finished up the latter I was not working because I actually finished my well that's not true when I was in San Francisco I was only in my master's program I did not work at all in the planning profession in San Francisco I did a lot of informational interviewing which was super helpful because you know I had I was clueless about the profession and

00:10:29

General and just kind of happen to drop into the fee only world and so I like the other parts of the financial planning industry are still sort of this black box to me me too so I understand okay good I feel weird like after eight years of trying to figure it out it's still sort of opaque I know I'm still trying to get kitus to explain exactly how a broker dealer Works in a way that I understand I'm just like I don't get it I don't feel so alone then yeah I just felt like this mental block but

00:10:58

they did end up you know I started by informational interviewing a couple of of Welsley alumni my my college is a very strong Alumni network and one of them worked for a AA prize and you know I quite liked her I know that amera prize is you know a sort of fee based thing but she seemed to be like I could identify with her and then the other one worked for Morgan Stanley and was actually pretty new there just the first few years and all I remember or the biggest thing I remember was her saying okay so you've just gotten married if

00:11:27

you go this route you need to make need to make sure your husband understands he won't see you for the next five years as you get all of your series designations and as you're like out schmoozing and handshaking and trying to get clients I was like that sounds so unappealing I would just like to leave right now and so thankfully I just kept on informational interviewing you know I think I information interviewed Norm Boon at mosaic which is you know a really successful fee only you know High

00:11:55

net worth wealth management shop in San Francisco and you know gradually just got further and further into the Professional Network there going to you know joining Napa and FPA and it's just a great professional community in the Bay area but I never worked there and then when I was partway through my master's program my mother's fee only like old school fee only solo Raa shop in Virginia where I'd grown up she was this planner was 70 at the time or 69 or something and she had no succession plan

00:12:28

so very much like The Stereotype of that first wave of fee only advisers you know she had worked in The Brokerage world she had worked in an insurance company finally open up her raia and so she knew very minimal stuff about me but enough to know that I was you know at least competent and not a schmuck and so she reached out to me and said hey well how would you like to you know join my firm work as an intern with me for a year and then decide whether or not you want to buy the firm wow that's

00:12:56

that's an amazing offer to someone who's never worked a single single day in the profession and is you know partway through a master's program and so that combined with having our first child and wanting to move back to my your where my parents were I was like great I'll do it I'll work with you for a year and then make the decision about whether or not to buy the firm and so that was just sort of a lucky break that I got my first job in a fee only shop doing you know paraplanning stuff I'd say the Master's

00:13:25

Degree made me very technically competent not a lot of the sort of softer more discernment oriented skills so I'm curious you use the term informational interview which I'm not sure I've ever heard that term before so I so I'm assuming that is different that you weren't interviewing for jobs so were you just cold emailing Norm Boon and saying hey you know do you mind I'm new in the profession you mind sitting down with me and talking to me like was it just information gathering yes yes to

00:13:51

both of those and you know people are I mean kind of like a reflection of this podcast people love to talk about themselves so you know i' I'd contact these people and I'd introduce myself and you know say that I was entering the field and would really like to learn more about you know how they operate and and their perspective on on the career and the profession and people I I interviewed probably 10 people and they were all very gracious about it and and encouraging and all that that's awesome

00:14:23

I wonder if we could do like 10 episodes with 10 10 people like Norm but just from a wide range of the industry to sort of do like 10 hours of informational interviews so that you know folks could folks could hear that because I do think you probably got a wonderful breath of the industry and to understand I mean really the industry side the profession side the sales side the advice side all of that you know the folks that were really passionate about what they did the people that were really just looking to make a buck I'm

00:14:51

not sure I've heard anyone that has done that but I can imagine that was awesome I mean just an awesome learning experience it was and you know it was very helpful from the very beginning you know with that Morgan Stanley woman I was like well I know an entire section of the industry I want nothing to do with oh it's so true sometimes the the best internships or or informational interviews are the ones that show you what you do not want to do so you got this amazing offer the the golden ticket

00:15:17

as I have as it would be called to go out and and so did you so you and your husband and maybe baby by this point have moved out to Virginia for this job opportunity yeah and considering the fact that I launched my own firm a year ago it might be a clue that I ended up not buying this practice I mean it was it was an excellent opportunity and I I look back and I'm ashamed of myself in a way because I was I did not appreciate all that this woman had done to create a really quite profitable solo practice I

00:15:50

come in I've got this master's degree and like oh all these ways that she can improve her practice and you know over the last year and a half when I've been you know working on starting my own firm I'm just like oh my God I cannot believe I did not remotely appreciate the stress and the effort that went into running your own business I was really just sort of this ungrateful wretch in some ways you know it's funny that you say that because I feel the same way about my first job I took the opportunity for

00:16:18

granted that that I had with Rick Kaylor and just like didn't understand why wouldn't you give me Equity like that you should just give you know give me Equity I don't understand and it has taken until I have started you know this business and have had new employees or or prospective employees ask for equity and I'm like screw you you can't have Equity this is my baby and I'm like oh man I need to I need to apologize to Rick because it's hard it's hard to know because all you sort of see what's built

00:16:45

and you may not love it and and you want to make updates but it is helpful and for listeners that are in that position take an extra minute and maybe find out why like where it comes from cuz you may find that that a heck of a lot of sweat and tears went into building something even if you don't appreciate it uh it's good to know where it comes from yeah and you know she Pro she provided real value for her clients you know her clients were the kind who after a meeting would hug her and you know thank

00:17:10

her for making them feel so much better so she was really providing real value but in a way that didn't interest me ultimately she was an active investment manager and a very investment oriented person serving primarily retirement age clients which was you know her peers and also that's sort of where the F only profession you know F only part of the profession started was managing money for more affluent older people so she was very much just a reflection of her time but it just it it wasn't it wasn't

00:17:46

very interesting to me from like the get-go so and especially the active management thing I remember this one time because we're still thinking like oh maybe I'll buy this practice and so she needs to sort of Teach Me How She invests so that I could continue on doing that once I am the owner of the firm and she would choose you know individual stocks and the taxable account and mutual funds in the rest of the accounts and so she sat down with me one day and said okay well here's this

00:18:13

client coming in for her annual review how would you adjust her portfolio and so I'd sort of been paying attention to this how this woman does things so I make my best guess and she comes in basically just redlines everything and says no no no I would do this this this and and this other way and I said okay well how did you make those decisions like what what's the logic you use and she just said well basically it's seed of my pants and I knew at that moment like the thought literally went through my head

00:18:40

well I can't do that then because it's some idiosyncratic process that you that that isn't replicatable I appreciate that she said that instead of like trying to make up a methodology just to say like ah this is sort of what feels right well you she always backed into it like she made the decision and then she would say well I use this metric that metric and the this other metric but in another situation she'd use an entirely different set of metrics so you know it was just sort of a feel built from you

00:19:05

know years in the industry but I was you know I was already sold on passive investing and and any was this was my first this led to my first interaction with Michael kitus actually I I don't know how I learned about him or how I actually persuaded him to get on a phone with me but I was really struggling with should I buy this practice or not like I'm pretty stressed out about going basically half a million dollars in debt to buy this practice and ah there are these things that don't fit and so I got

00:19:33

on the phone with Michael kitus he was driving down the Jersey Turnpike at the time and he spent a really long time talking to me which now I understand a lot better there's such thing as a short conversation with kitus the one thing I really took away from that was you you need you need to have a story for your investment approach and she sold her clients on an active story and it kind of doesn't matter what your story is but you need to have one and switching stories is really challenging and it makes it a lot

00:20:06

harder for that sort of succession plan to work it's a great point it's really the rise I I think why DFA has had so such amazing success especially among the FI only advisers is it's a great passive story to tell sometimes the active story is easier because it's like oh like we're you know we're using all these metrics and all these make all these decisions and imp passive it's like we're not going to do anything so pay us 1% to not to not do anything but but it is a good and and

00:20:37

DFA has taken that to the next level where it's like we're not going to do anything but we have these guys that do this really cool stuff so it's sort of passive but has this extra layer of coolness to it but it sells better than you know not so anyway I I agree that having that story to tell is critical yeah and that's that's influenc that that that notion of story has stuck with me Beyond on just my investment philosophy but you know my financial planning philosophy and why you start a

00:21:03

business there are stories behind all of these choices and it's the stories that people are able to connect to I'm big on the notion of story so you made the decision to not go that route so I guess so what was next for you that didn't go over so well with the woman who was trying to sell it to me um but I did stick around and she ended up being bought by a local fee only firm who was a whopping six people big which in the ra world me they're like a midsize firm I stuck with them for a year and I

00:21:32

probably would have stuck longer except they didn't want me because they were another investment oriented you know fee only but you know older retirement age focused very investment focused firm and again they they brought really good value to their clients but what I wanted to do simply wasn't a fit so they kept me for a year to help with the transition and then the you know the founder of the firm is I you know really appreciate his honesty about like we just we we don't have a place for your

00:22:00

skill set you know he he he he always marveled that I wasn't a cfp he like you know more about about financial planning the most cfps I know can't you just like tell the cfp board that I was like yeah unfortunately no that's not the way it works so this whole time I'm working part-time because I'm most you know I'm part-time there part-time stay-at-home mom so in terms of the cfp progression like I I passed the exam and I got in the classes taking of but I'm inching just molasses slow towards the actual

00:22:32

three-year experience requirement so that was sort of an ongoing frustration and part of the reason why I never really thought about launching my own firm like ah I can't launch a firm if I don't have my cfp like no one will take me seriously so anyways so I left that firm after a year and then I started doing some contract financial planning actually for that firm itself because they'd have financial planning needs which were a distraction or disruption from their normal process so they'd

00:23:01

actually just Farm out these financial planning projects to me and all of this time when I'm talking about like quitting my own job and spending $25,000 on a master's plan and only working part-time and then basically being laid off from that job I'm I'm married to a guy who's being paid a very nice salary from the tech industry it's like my entire success in the financial planning industry is because of sort of the largess of the tech industry and being married to a guy who's in it because

00:23:28

otherwise I would not have made most of the decisions I made because they didn't put food on the table Yeah and then eventually I'm just like dude I hate living in Virginia I didn't like growing up in Virginia turns out I don't like living in it as an adult so we moved we took a three-month road trip in a minivan we bought with two children looking for a new place to live basically and ended up in Bellingham yeah it was I think I think at the time mostly horrible because our children

00:23:54

were one and four and we rarely got any sleep now that was an interesting call one in four road trip yeah yeah but we didn't know where we wanted to end up all I knew is I didn't want to be in Virginia anymore yeah and how do you make that decision without just trying a few places out so so I'm glad I did it you know I saw Niagara Falls and and Mount Rushmore and I took my children to Yellowstone which I would never ever recommend because I was terrified the entire time standing by all like the

00:24:23

bubbling pots oh I even put Ridge on a leash if when I take him to to yell on very anti those like leash backpacks but yeah when it comes to Boiling Vats of Goo yeah you're okay with it that they like to jump into because they look pretty so you saw a lot of really cool stuff so what was it about Bellingham then so which is just outside of Seattle and so what I guess not just outside but I guess what why there instead of the plethora of other places what Drew you in that area well I knew I wanted to end

00:24:50

up on the west coast again just you know lifestyle culture politics food it all agrees with me much more than any anywhere else I wasn't familiar with Bellingham my my husband was it's got a great Sailing Community and as soon as my husband gets out from under raising these damn children a little more I'm hopeful he'll get back into sailing and it's close to his family who lived just across the border in Canada and it's a small enough town that like we don't drive our car really much at all like I

00:25:22

can bike most places walk to the kids school so it's just a nice place to raise kids and it's close enough or you know it has enough of the amenities the one downside of Bellingham is professionally it's not that robust so I there really no employment opportunities here for a fee only financial planner who wants to do financial planning there are couple or a few financial planning shops but they're pretty small and they don't need help and they also practice the way that I don't you know serving the retirement

00:25:53

set which is just not my bag so for a while I I hadn't really thought of launching my own firm um in part because I didn't have my cfp and also because I am so not an entrepreneur like my father was a tenure professor and my mother was a government employee entrepreneurship does not run in my blood but I did run into enough people just locally who said oh you're a financial planner could you help me and I'd have to say well not for money and I thought well you know maybe I'll just

00:26:22

set up this Raa just on the side you know bare minimum sort of framework so that occasionally I can help someone and be paid for it and that was in the fall of 2015 and during my efforts to figure out how the hell to register with the state I that's when I stumbled upon xypn and that sort of changed my whole outlook on things because for several years my husband had been just complaining endlessly about his job and it's so stressful and pointless and blah blah blah so I was like hey this sounds good

00:26:57

you can quit your job job we can earn no money and I can launch my own firm and so that's that's eventually how I got to launching my own firm you make a really good point about being an entrepreneur in that financial planning is is sort of a unique profession I think because you can you can start a business without being an entrepreneur you are not going to start a tech company unless you just have that entrepreneurial drive right you don't accidentally end up in in Tech uh you don't accidentally start

00:27:26

businesses generally but in financial planning you really can if you can start a business for other motivations than just being this like intrinsic entrepreneur and I always found it interesting that when we first started xypn the first sort of founding wave of members or our first wave of founding members were all entrepreneurs because they all did this on their own and sort of joined us as a as an afterthought what I find now is that the majority of our members are not like what you would classify as your typical entrepreneur

00:27:56

they're really folks that just they have a passion for doing planning they want to do planning for a certain segment they don't want to be told when to when to show up to an office or that they have to wear panty hose or a tie you know whatever or there's just no opportunities locally they want to be able to work virtually I mean there's a plethora of reasons but usually like I just want to own a business and build something is not the not the number one motivator which I think is really cool

00:28:18

actually yeah and I and I never would have started a real business had I not discovered xypn I'm one of those people who I basically need someone to hold my hand and and walk me through these things because I I'm just not going to figure it out on my own or there's some some block there I'm too nervous or something so xypn was enough of a handhold for me that I had like oh I can just go to this one resource to get help on like all aspects of launching and running a financial planning firm sweet

00:28:51

I think I can think I can manage that right it it really just takes your time and energy it's sort of that's always been our goal is that you know we can answer the questions I I can't force you to do it I can't force you to actually implement but we can we can at least answer the questions which can honestly you can spend dozens or hundreds of hours spining your wheels looking for resources out there but so we had said uh before the call you told me you were one year and one month in so you

00:29:17

actually launched back in so that would be May of May of 2016 I keep forgetting what year it is this is becoming a problem I'm becoming my mother so I hope my mom is listening to this episode so how did it go I mean how I guess what what was the the launch process like for you both from a just a business standpoint but also from an emotional standpoint yeah so I think one of the things that makes my business perhaps different than at least what I observe to be most XY pan members is that I am

00:29:49

entirely virtual I I chose a niche they do not live where I live and so everything about running my business has been constrained perhaps or influenced by the fact that I I don't everything's virtual everything's got to all the marketing all the service everything has to be virtual so my launch was I I actually did have a party it was also my for you know 40th birthday so I sort of combined the two but that I mean I haven't gotten a single client out of that group of people because they all live here and

00:30:24

none of them are women in Tech and so the launch was I also sent out a bunch of cards to you know acquaintances in the tech industry and you know I I had set up certain social media accounts you know business page on Facebook and and Linkedin so I announced it there but I would say the launch was pretty undramatic shall we say my big thing was because I knew I was going to have to be doing this virtually the my website was my like I did not launch until I had a website ready to go I got registered

00:30:58

the second half of April my website wasn't finished for two more weeks and so I I didn't really do anything until my website was up and complete and that was sort of I guess the equivalent of having a giant party where all my potential clients could come and see you know I finally had my presence on the web so tell me a little bit about your Niche like how did how did women in Tech come about for you well actually at first it was working mothers in Tech and it's not a gigantic leap to figure out

00:31:27

how I got there because I I used to be in Tech I was a working mother I could identify with these people I knew a lot about sort of the the financial implications of working in Tech um and also the challenges that working mothers have and so my initial website and you know tagline and all of that was about you know was focused on working mothers and then a few months in it became sort of obvious that I was not getting any traction with working mothers in Tech and I had a couple working mothers in

00:31:58

Tech who I'm friends with say we'd love to work with you we ain't got no time like our our lives are completely consumed with the whole working mother thing um so I actually did transition to to Simply women and Tech which is a clearly a larger Niche but that's really resonated as gigantic as that Niche is I mean I don't know hundreds of thousands of women are in tech there doesn't seem to be anyone else out there talk to them from the financial planning profession like in a targeted way I mean maybe I

00:32:32

just haven't found them yet so what is unique about I mean I guess so you can say I focus on women in Tech the same way I I could say the same thing but you obviously know this this field or know their issues much better than me so what is it that you know or or what are the pain points that you can help them solve that differentiates you from generalist adviser down the street that can work with anybody sure well there actually a few categories of things that that I think about one is simply the financial

00:33:00

challenges that you run into when you work in Tech or financial opportunities really and that's gender independent like stock options restricted stock units my company's going IPO I've got a really high salary but I live in a really high cost of living area like those are the same whether you're a man or a woman so that's sort of the the tech aspect of things women part of my Niche is women you know have historically been disserved is that even a word by by the financial planning

00:33:31

profession like talked down to condescended to if you're in a couple the planner would tend to talk to the husband instead of the wife and so women tend to feel more comfortable talking with other women about touchy subjects like money and so that's more of a sort of a communication style and a a personality I put out there I'm pretty casual about most everything and I think that helps women sort of get over that hurdle of it's money this makes me so nervous and then the women in Tech thing

00:34:02

and I think this really is the Crux of sort of I don't know where I differentiate myself from other people's I understand women's position in the tech industry now which is more and more women are entering it but there's a wage Gap there's a culture problem women are not getting the salaries or the equity or the promotions or the funding that men do and while I'm not a negotiation expert and I'm not a career coach and I'm not an angel investor I am aware of those challenges that women have and I

00:34:35

do talk with all of my clients about what's your negotiation history what do you tend to do you know during your annual review or you know that sort of thing just and you know what's your networking plan do you are you going to networking are increasing your job skills are you taking your boss out to lunch Etc so really focusing on the career aspect because there's so much money in the tech industry and women simply aren't getting their fair share and if they're not getting their fair

00:35:01

share there's no amount of magic I can do to make up for that yeah I I lizards have heard me joke about this before that you know I love getting the question at conferences like what do you do for young people like what is this financial planning thing you do and it always makes me laugh because you helping you know female Tech executive or engineer uh get a $20,000 salary increase to to get her to you know average salaries of of the men in her department or whatever that is if it's $1 $20,000 raising that base salary is a

00:35:34

is a forever compounding effect because anytime you get put your previous salary history down uh you're put you know you you sort of tend to build on that that is dramatically better than hey we saved you $300 on your tax return like we tend to focus on the expense side and not the income side and yet the income side is one it's a lot more fun to talk about like hey you know you need to spend $500 a month less uh is a crappy conversation uh Hey I'm going to help you make $500 more so you don't have to cut spending

00:36:05

$500 is a much more fun conversation and it has very longlasting long-term compounding effects exactly yeah the women I work with tend to be really enthusiastic about the tech industry just despite the crap they might have to endure in it because they're a women so I I really like riding the coattails of these women who are who are making strides and and are really passionate about their career because when I was in tech I simply wasn't passionate now that I'm a financial planner I can identify

00:36:38

with that like oh this is a job I actually really enjoy so it's it's fun to be a part of that ride for a lot of these women so how are these clients finding you you know is is it really just through online marketing is it through other financial advisers hearing that like you're the you're the female Tech advisor so send you know we'll send our prospects to you I guess how's that where are they finding you yeah I've had buus basically in in terms of success from other financial planners referring

00:37:07

to me I mean maybe maybe it'll happen in the future but I am glad you asked the question about how clients are finding me because despite XY pn's talk about like oh we're virtual you know we're all virtual planners in my experience everyone I talk to they get their first ump teen clients locally right the whole thousand cups of coffee thing go to networking events etc etc like that simply is not available to me so it was entirely online marketing I mean I I had a Blog from day one and so I found where

00:37:42

is my Target demographic live online like I can't meet them at the coffee shop but I can meet them in this Facebook forum for example for women in Tech and so I join these you know not a huge number of them but a few thinking entirely Facebook forums targeted at women in the tech industry and just start participating in the discussions and when I wrote a blog post that I thought was particularly Salient I would post it there as a resource one of those forms was from my for my College Alumni network and that

00:38:15

was the first like I didn't get any friends and family clients initially which was really stressful because a lot of people in my study group my launcher group like their first five clients were all friends and family and like I don't have anyone but the Welsley network was my equivalent of that because much like with friends and family being a Welsley alumina just sort of got over that trust hurdle which is the biggest hurdle when working with a financial professional is just trusting them and so my my very

00:38:46

first client which was I think two weeks after I launched was a young couple you know 26 years old woman and husband in Tech woman was a Wellsley alumni and I kind of forget who came after that but Welsley was a good source of like three of my first six clients were Welsley alumni and then just repeatedly showing up in these online forums and participating in conversations providing blog posts but you know I think by the end you know I launched in May by the end of the year I had maybe five clients which I was like

00:39:21

Ah that's not bad but nor am I knocking it out of the park and I will just gloss over the next few months and then say in February or March I seem to have hit some sort of tipping point where I had been participating in these forums enough enough people knew my name knew what I was about that I started getting Prospect you know requests for these you know free consultations from people I'd never heard of before and the people who had referred them to me i' also never heard of before which is a really cool

00:39:53

feeling yeah I know that was pretty exciting when the I think the first woman said yeah some woman just mentioned you in our you know our all women slack Channel at work I was like that is sweet something's working and so that that built on it on itself so but period of time that I glossed over from December January February I was not growing I was not getting a ton of like in December and January I don't know if I get any prospects and that was my like abyss of dis that was my pit of despair time and

00:40:29

I will say that it it took me 10 months basically since launch to get to a point where I was getting traction from my marketing efforts and it was really hard because there's there's just not any instant gratification there there's not even like soon gratification yeah that's a longplay marketing strategy for sure right and a lot of people like oh yeah vlogging it's long play you know you should back burner that and work on you know other more direct marketing methods except I didn't have any because all of

00:40:57

my clients live away from me yeah I I and and I appreciate you sharing that about sort of that December to February time frame because that pit of despair I don't know of any entrepreneur that hasn't gone through it sometimes it's it's shorter sometimes it's longer sometimes we never get out of it sometimes you know and the ways we get out of it are very different but it's something to be aware of you know it really is that Iceberg metaphor that you know you only see the top 10% of what

00:41:24

we'll call quote unquote success uh you don't see the 90% under the under the water that went to that success and part of that 90% is going through these the emotional roller coaster that is entrepreneurship uh this is not an easy ride and and shame on me and and anyone at X Planet network if we ever uh give the illusion that it is you know it's certainly something that that we try to address on this podcast and maybe can continue to do a better job is that it's never easy I don't care if you're coming

00:41:53

over with $20 million in assets and $200,000 in re Rue you asked those folks that have done that and it wasn't an easy Road it was a tough road and and it just always is there's no easy path here so I guess why I mean what was your your motivator for sticking with it you know if if December January you're not getting clients you're feeling like you know this isn't working I guess why put one foot in front of the other instead of you know going and taking a 6070 $80,000 job at a at a firm you know in

00:42:22

your neighborhood well for one there there is no 60 or 80 ,000 job in my firm well that helps there's no temptation yeah there's not a lot of alternative really and I would say for a a solid week in January I stopped putting one foot in front of the other it was not quite fetal position in the corner but it was one step removed I cancelled all the meetings I had for an entire week and I spent a lot of time kind of crying and lying on my bed and just thinking like this can't possibly work and so I would

00:42:58

like to make a few endorsements I would like to endorse getting a therapist and I would like to endorse having a business coach and I would like to endorse having a spouse who is incredibly patient and has more faith in you than you do yourself because those are the three people in my life who got me through that and coming out of that it's really for for me exercise has been a a big help I mean I've always been an exerciser but I realize that I literally need to exercise every morning morning

00:43:27

not not five mornings a week like the doctors recommend but every morning so i' start the day with some sense of accomplishment and strength that's a really great recommendation yeah I mean it might be something different for other people but exercise is what did it for me and that's that I'm very aware of how how much it helps me on a daily basis I'm tuned into whether I'm feeling confident or not and and how exercise fits into that but yeah it was you know I just didn't know whether I could make

00:43:57

this work and having no alternative professionally just made it all the worse and here we are living on savings and I also want you I've got two little girls and I really was putting a lot of pressure on myself you know I still do wanting to model for them that hey Mommy can own her own business and manage money and be the boss and blah blah blah and I remember my therapist saying you know you should focus a little bit more on modeling self-care because what you're modeling is going to endend up

00:44:28

modeling a heart attack and that's not something you want to model for your daughters so that really stuck with me the need to to do self-care and I have to say like there are a lot of things it was not just that I wasn't getting prospects it was Winters suck in the Pacific Northwest days are short gloomy and dark the presidential election just kind of cast a PA on my world like all the people in my community we just like our our coping mechanisms just sort of took a a permanent hit it seemed so there's just a lot of things

00:45:03

happening at the same time and I realized that I really need to replenish myself every day and for me the exercising was that replenishment I've seen some articles recently I'm not sure if a study just got done and and they were all referencing it just I tend to skim articles but pulling out a couple of the highlights one but around entrepreneurship is that we tend to when we start a business we tend to let ourselves physically and mentally go we don't have very good sleep habits we

00:45:28

don't have very good exercise habits we tend to gain weight there's a lot of things that go into that and and I I can speak to that as well that when I started my business is actually when I started doing CrossFit and and just to try to get healthy and stay healthy and you know especially when you work virtually and you maybe don't see humans all day it's a great way to at least go get some level of human interaction but you really do need to take care of yourself you cannot take care of your

00:45:53

clients if you don't take care of yourself first and and that's both physically mentally spiritually you know investing in your relationship so I don't my recommendation for advisers that are looking to start a businesses put all of that stuff on your calendar before you start booking client meetings put the exercise on there put date nights put going to church or or whatever your you know whatever your your choice is there put therapy or or meditation you know however you're going

00:46:18

to take care of your mental health hiking I mean whatever it is for you put it on the calendar so it gets done and the results can just be absolutely amazing for what taking care of yourself really can contribute to your business yeah and considering that I wasn't taking enough care of myself and I was complete useless mess for an entire week I was like well pretty much anything's going to be an improvement on this so any idea was there something that happened like get a big quote in the

00:46:44

Wall Street Journal or or something that sparked it in March or it just took that was just the Tipping Point in terms of time that you had been doing the marketing for long enough that it started to gain traction yeah I think it was long enough it was just being at it long enough and also one of the Facebook forums I got into was form called Tech ladies associated with the company higher Tech Ladies as in give them a job I joined that Forum pretty soon after it started and it just blew up I mean I

00:47:13

think I was someone in the hundreds when I joined and now it's 11,000 people a year later so I and I get to be like the voice of finances in that Community because you were first in yeah yeah so you know I've given a webinar through that Community about stock options and I'm giving another one September about you know 401ks uh so that was you know some combination of luck and me trying to find these these places online where my where the community lives so one of the things that you mentioned was was giving

00:47:48

a shout out to your business coach so you had gratefully or I should say we are grateful that you graciously is the word I'm looking for you graciously wrote an article for or the XY Planning Network blog which we can link to in the show notes but about your journey to finding a business coach so I guess what was it that made you decide that you felt like you needed it and and just you know a little bit about sort of the journey to finding someone that that would be a good accountability partner

00:48:14

for you yeah it was actually an an XY planning podcast with Daniel Ren I think that was the cause and in it he said something like his goal was to be the Premier Regional firm wherever the hell he lives for doctors and I thought my that sounds like a nice goal to have I would like to be the premier firm financial planning firm for women in Tech and my I have no idea how to get there I've never grown run started a business before in my life so you know that goal might as well be on Mars as far as I'm concerned and then I thought

00:48:50

hey you know I think there are like people out there who who do this who help me get there so that was why I realized I wanted a business coach I was pretty sure at least even though I wasn't specifically sure about what business coaches did and so that started my journey and then I asked you know the the VIP Forum on Facebook for recommendations for business coaches got a lot of recommendations chose five interviewed all five in part just to sort of triangulate on what the hell is a business coach and what can I expect

00:49:23

by working with one and also you know investigating the different personalities so is very much I mean a large part of the value I've gotten out of this whole process is oh this is exactly what our clients go through trying to find a financial planner they don't know what a financial planner does what the different options are what the personalities are what the process will be so my how I communicate with clients and Prospects has been heavily shaped by my search for coach and also my my work

00:49:51

with my coach so I it's a good point that around person personality because I same with our clients and us as financial advisers and this you know for us searching for a business coach personality is Paramount because it I look at business coaching tell me if you sort of have a different view on this but I look at business coaching very much as an accountability partner they there there are things they can teach you but I mean you can go find all that information just like our clients can go

00:50:18

find all the information on the internet but that's not what's helpful what's helpful is having someone that can really synthesize all that information that's out there bring to us what's applicable and just be there to say like hey you said you're going to do three Prospect or you're going to do three networking events last week or you were going to you know participate in these forums or or whatnot like did you do it I don't know is that sort of been your experience as more on the accountability

00:50:40

side yes a large part of his accountability I would say almost a lar a larger part there was Clarity and you kind of were getting at that with yeah I could go read a hundred business books and and Google till the cows come home and get lots of data about how to run a financial planning business but how to figure out what is the one thing that I should be focusing on now because I I got overwhelmed you know I had a thousand ideas in my head at any one moment and making very little progress on any of

00:51:12

them and I remember during my Prospect call with Elizabeth whom I ended up working you know choosing and working with just in the prospect call I'm going over all these awesome ideas I have like oh I'd love to write an ebook and I'd love to start a podcast and this this and the other and she said those are great ideas and I think those should be maybe stage two and stage one should be just getting some clients I was like yes excellent point you know and I me just something at that level because I just

00:51:39

gotten so distracted by all the shiny objects out there and that's what she provides to me on a regular basis and also because she herself had run a successful ra for so many years I actually do get sort of financial planning professional practice stuff from her like what do you do in an annual review meeting when it's not all about Investments because frankly had never had that experience before and she and I could talk through that so your coach is uh you mentioned Elizabeth Jaton and so folks can find her she's

00:52:12

she's based out of Atlanta I believe very successful as a raia owner and now does business coaching but her her business coaching is obviously a little different because she has been a financial planner there there's certainly a ton of value and actually having been on on that side of the table so was it really personality and sort of that experience that attracted you to Elizabeth versus you know I'm assuming you you interviewed five highly qualified business coaches that that could do great things with you uh was it

00:52:39

just sort of that attitude I guess what was the was there sort of a thing that that made you realize okay yeah she's the right coach for me there were a few things she communicates in a way that makes me feel very understood she is an excellent example of someone who just shuts up most of the time she's you know from what I understand of active listening she's an excellent active listener you know she will just let me blather on and then she'll repeat back to me sort of the Crux of what I have

00:53:11

just said and then give her you know her thoughts on that thing but most of the time I'm talking and I get you at the start of every meeting she'll say basically hey Meg you know I've got some things that I want to talk with you today but what are the few things that you want to be sure to talk about today and we will cover those first so I am basically always in the driver's seat so I make sure that nothing's still hanging over my head at the end of any meeting okay so there was that even in our

00:53:37

Prospect call I felt that level of being listened to being heard being understood and then she followed up with written notes that were an extension of that sort of writing down here are the things you brought up that you're thinking about or struggling with here here's where you are in your business and here are my thoughts about where you might go from here so just the prospect interaction I like oh I am already getting value from this woman I'm not even paying her we've had a

00:54:05

40-minute conversation wow this bodess really well for what I'm going to get out of the relationship when we actually work together and I also say that before our Prospect call she sent me a couple of documents one of which outlined very clearly her services and fees and the other one was a list of challenges or things that she'd helped other clients and firms with and that really helped me put some specificity on around what a business coach does because I was pretty vague about it and

00:54:41

that's something I've actually tried to do in my business like I have a document now I can send a prospects of here's what Meg does like here is literally the kind of service and value you would get out of working with me because I just found that so so useful because coaching just like financial planning is just sort of this IL defined ill-regulated a morice service that you you think you need but it's a lot of money and I would like some sort of reassurance that it's going

00:55:14

to be worth it to pay for it you know just thinking back to a a lot of our advisers that have had a lot of success in terms of just really high uh close rates or you know sign up rates among perspective clients one of the the common themes that I hear is value is giving value in that perspective client meeting and that it's not just about like tell me what you need and I'll tell you what I do it's hey let me show you one let me demonstrate the value I can provide to you let me show you how I've

00:55:40

given value to other clients and just sort of allow that demonstration of value and don't be afraid to to give it away for free it's okay because they're going to see that value and and want to pay you for this thing we call financial planning because to your point most people don't don't know what we do and it's a great analogy with with the business coach because we don't know what business coaches do until you see it and experience it and now you're sold and and a huge advocate

00:56:05

of it absolutely yeah so my my Prospect process changed as a result of my work with Elizabeth it's actually pretty pretty time consuming you know the the call is I don't know 30 minutes 45 minutes however long it takes but then I do write up these you know very attractive looking you know formatted notes afterwards that usually run about three pages since part of it just recapping what they've told me you know their sort of objective information about their life and their finances some

00:56:32

of it's reflecting back you know questions I ask about what is your ideal vision for a financial planner or what are your concerns about working with a financial planner and then there's a big section on like my thoughts on your situation and what I would probably focus on first if I were you have you seen success with that sort of New Perspective followup process I feel as if I have I am horrible at at tracking metrics but I've certainly gotten a lot of people saying wow thank you that is

00:57:04

awesome I mean people have interviewed other financial planners especially you know if they go to Merl Lynch or something like that for a prospect meeting like I've never had anyone else do this for me that's all it's a great way to differentiate yourself it's just to I mean basically you're just telling them they were heard absolutely yeah and it's an amazing feeling like we all know that person that makes us feel heard and and if that's going to be your financial adviser what a great way considering

00:57:30

usually in financial planning we're just made to feel like idiots as a client in the process and and if you and it's just a tough concept a tough topic which is money so to be able to to have that sort of better connection with your financial adviser is huge I think I I have certainly experienced that yeah the the relationships are really gratifying to have so you're 13 months in what is is the next year bringing for you sort of what what have you outlined as sort of your goals over the next 12 months that

00:58:01

you want to be able to accomplish from a professional perspective or even a personal perspective as well yeah you asked that question as if I've actually have a plan we'll have Elizabeth on to tell us what you told her your plan was yeah well she's she's mentioned now like all right next meeting we're gonna set some goals for the rest of the year and then the next meeting comes around and I've got some like fire drill that I need her to help me with I think actually hiring some help is is sort of

00:58:25

tops on my list right now because I am getting significantly more interest than I can service at this point wow that's a that's a big change in four months that's huge it is it's been very very quick and you know to be fair the reason I can't service that many people is because The Upfront process is pretty intensive you know I do a comprehensive sort of planning process upfront so I really can only take on two maybe three new clients a month but you know I'm having a pro couple of prospect calls

00:58:58

every week I would say I don't know what my conversion rate is but again I feel as if it's pretty good well one just increasing the number of perspective calls you know like I said getting more at bats increases the opportunity to get hits so having that along with a structured process and just some practice you know that's the other thing I don't think we talk enough about is that you know you you have to practice selling yourself you know and and just more perspective CLI meetings is an opportunity to just get

00:59:28

better at communicating with you know prospective clients about what you do yeah I mean I've definitely gotten better at that and I've raised my prices uh in part because I can and in part because I'm like wow this takes a lot of work so yeah I'm I'm telling prospects now that I'm not starting with new clients until September um and I've told enough prospects that and enough of them have been like great see in September I'm like hm I'm gonna September's gonna

00:59:57

be scary I know Lynden cornette for example has a wait list with no particular time frame on it so I'm like well maybe that's a great idea but the reaction I get you know the first time I told someone who wanted to work with me great I'd love to work with you in three months and it was so like nail biting but for the most part people have reacted exactly the way that I wanted them to there's the wow that is such a great demonstration of work life balance and I should really enjoy the summer

01:00:28

with my children too I'd love to start with you in September or wow that really demonstrates that you are thinking about how to best serve your clients and that makes me feel really good about the kind of service I'm going to get as a client so yeah see you in September I'm like w this worked out a lot better than I thought it was going to so this would be so is your plan then to try to hire some help going into September or do you think that once the kids are back in school sort of Summer's over you'll have

01:00:55

enough time to to really be able to bring on these clients and work with them oh no I still want to hire some help which is a complete Black Box to me it's just a mystery and it's incredibly stressful to even think about it because I have no idea of any aspect of it I think Anna saguna is going to give a bit on it a session on it at the um at xypn 17 and I'm totally going to that session and I of course will be talking with Elizabeth about doing it because clearly she's done that in her past but yeah so

01:01:23

I'm GNA hire some help and that's pretty much as far as the plan is makes sense yeah hirings uh we could do some more episodes just around that hiring process I know we've been evaluating building some hiring resources for xypn members because many of you are growing to the point that you're hitting that pain point of okay it's it's time and not necessarily just part-time help you know handling bookkeeping or or five hours week compair planning like it looking like we actually need some real help for

01:01:49

for the long term yeah I mean to be to be honest I'm looking at that five hour a week player plan ER higher at this point I'm not thinking at this point of a full-time staff member yeah my prediction and and you can let me know if I was right or or wrong here in about six months but or I guess eight months but whenever you have them on board for just a couple of months you're GNA be like yeah I could use you fulltime you know what totally buy you some tasty beverage if that is the case because

01:02:15

that's GNA be good news for me yep exactly always a good thing well me thank you so much for for coming on the show to sort of share your journey with this first year and and you know being open and honest about the the fact that it hasn't been all rainbows and unicorns as sometimes we're guilty and me most of all can be guilty of of showcasing just the good and not necessarily the hardships as we're sort of wrapping up ask you the question and that is you know if there's one thing that you wish

01:02:44

you could go back and tell your former self or your younger self maybe the Meg that was looking at starting an RA if there's one piece of advice you would go back and give yourself what do you think that piece of advice would be uh I would to the Meg who actually had the idea of launching a full-fledged firm and was starting down that road I would give the advice to take care of yourself every day and and just make create a support network and structure in your life both people and processes that are going to

01:03:17

support you on a daily basis because this is going to grind you into the Earth otherwise yeah that's really cheery I know but I learned that the hard way yep if you could have bypassed learning that and sort of already knew it I can imagine that would have made the the first six to eight months a little bit easier on you well me thanks again for for taking the time to be on the show I really do appreciate you coming on and sharing your journey with us you're welcome thank you a big shout out to our

01:03:44

this month's sponsor right Capital sign up for a demo of right capital's Innovative financial planning software at R capital.com and mention the xypn Radio podcast to be eligible for for 10% off retail pricing be sure to join our VIP community at XY planning network.com viip to hang out with other xypn 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

01:04:12

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 plan 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 geny [Music] clients

Unlock behind-the-scenes content—subscribe now!

Featuring

Meg Bartelt, CFP®, RICP®

Flow Financial Planning℠, LLC

Share

See all