RPF0155-Sophia_Bera

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00:00:10.720 | game for free. Don't miss out. Visit lakings.com/holiday today. So if I tell you that today

00:00:16.960 | we're going to be chatting with a financial planner, what image comes to your mind?

00:00:21.040 | Do you think of maybe a middle-aged white guy with a suit and a tie, maybe a bow tie,

00:00:27.440 | sitting in a mahogany-paneled conference room with a burgundy carpet and a bunch of plaques

00:00:32.960 | on the wall? Or do you think of a globetrotting young lady who has a double major in theater

00:00:41.520 | studies and women's studies? No, seriously, which one comes to mind? Yeah, of course, you saw the,

00:00:48.400 | you know, the title of this episode, so of course you think of number two, but do most people? Well,

00:00:54.080 | maybe they should.

00:01:05.440 | Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast. My name is Joshua Sheets and today is Thursday,

00:01:15.920 | February 19, 2015. I am thrilled to bring you today's show, which is an interview with Sophia

00:01:23.200 | Barra, founder of Gen Y Planning. She's a financial planner specializing in working with Gen Y,

00:01:30.720 | and in just about every way that you can think of, she is most definitely not your father's planner.

00:01:36.240 | And yes, that is her tagline, which I think is a very, a great one. She's not your father's

00:01:49.760 | planner. I like that. This is an interview, I recorded this this last week when I was out at

00:01:54.320 | T3 in Dallas, Texas, one of the many interviews that I recorded out there, and it's really a good

00:01:59.520 | one. I think you're really going to enjoy it. I had a chance to sit down with Sophia the first

00:02:03.280 | night I was there and just really spend quite a bit of time hearing her story. And we met here

00:02:08.240 | and there, but I hadn't spent a ton of time together and it was a really fun interview.

00:02:12.000 | I want to say thank you to a couple of the patrons of the show who were the ones who decided that

00:02:18.720 | this is the interview that you would hear today. I put this out on the Patreon page last night,

00:02:24.560 | and I listed off the five interviews that I've got recorded, and any which of the five that I

00:02:29.120 | could run today. And thanks to, let's see, Emilien, Sarah, and Quinn, all three of them voted for

00:02:37.520 | Sophia's interview. So thanks to the rest of you who voted. But thanks to the patrons of the show,

00:02:43.440 | you get to hear this interview with Sophia first. I think it may have had something to do with the

00:02:47.520 | fact that she's a lady. And the other four interviews, three of the other four, well,

00:02:52.720 | the other four interviews are with men. And one of them, four of the other ones are men, and three of

00:03:01.040 | them fit that stuffy old white guy persona pretty well. But Sophia doesn't. So naturally, we'll

00:03:08.960 | bring you the good one right off the bat. Here's Sophia. Enjoy the interview. It's a great one.

00:03:15.440 | We talk a lot about financial planning, about her story. There's a bunch of tidbits and wisdom

00:03:19.440 | strewn in. And let's get to it. So Sophia, welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast. I

00:03:27.440 | appreciate you being with me. Thank you so much for having me. This is super fun.

00:03:31.600 | You are quite, somehow you've grown the skill of getting lots of people to mention your name.

00:03:39.680 | Your name, I was, right before recording this interview, I was talking with Alan Moore,

00:03:44.720 | and your name came up twice in two different things. It came up with Michael Kitsis. So

00:03:49.280 | you're doing a great job of getting your name and your message out there in front of people.

00:03:55.120 | I congratulate you on that. Thank you so much. I feel super fortunate to have a great network of

00:04:00.480 | other financial planners that are doing really interesting, creative things. And I've been

00:04:05.360 | really fortunate to get quite a bit of press the past year or two and just kind of build those

00:04:12.080 | connections and relationships. And it's just turned into more newsletter subscribers and more

00:04:18.880 | people coming to my website, signing up for prospect calls and turning into clients.

00:04:23.360 | It's exciting. How did you wind up in the financial advisor business?

00:04:26.560 | That's a great question. I was a theater major in my undergrad. So, smooth transition into

00:04:34.640 | financial planning. So the backstory is that I actually wanted to buy a house when I graduated

00:04:42.880 | from college. I had read David Bach's Smart Women Finish Rich book. And so he had talked about one

00:04:50.480 | way to wealth was through real estate and buying a home. So I would sit in the personal finance

00:04:57.520 | section of Barnes & Noble in between studying lines for Steel Magnolias and read every business

00:05:03.520 | and personal finance book I could get my hands on. And so I was just learning all these really

00:05:08.720 | interesting things like about Roth IRAs and budgeting. And I decided that if I was never

00:05:14.560 | going to make that much money as a theater major, I better know what to do with it. I was going to

00:05:19.040 | be an actor. So I graduated from college when I was 21 and I bought a house three months later.

00:05:24.880 | And all my friends started coming to me with their money questions.

00:05:32.240 | How do I get out of credit card debt? What do I do about my student loans? I just got a job,

00:05:36.880 | but I have no idea how to read my benefits package. And so I really wanted to be able

00:05:42.240 | to answer their questions. And I found out about the CFP, just becoming a certified financial

00:05:50.080 | planner. And I realized, "Oh my gosh, there are people that actually help people with their money

00:05:56.000 | and get paid for it. This is so cool." So I started taking the CFP classes and met a guy in my class.

00:06:04.880 | We studied for our CFP exam together and his firm was hiring and they ended up hiring me.

00:06:10.320 | And that got my foot in the door. I was doing a lot of stuff in their back office and

00:06:15.520 | reconciling accounts and learning how to rebalance portfolios.

00:06:22.560 | But what I realized was that the financial planning profession was really geared towards

00:06:28.720 | high net worth individuals and people who already had money, half a million dollar minimums or

00:06:34.800 | million dollar minimums at a lot of these firms. And the whole reason I got into it was because I

00:06:39.840 | wanted to help people my age be able to accumulate wealth and work through these big financial

00:06:46.800 | decisions that they had to make. So basically my career, I started out at this father-son

00:06:54.880 | planning firm. Then I transitioned to an independent fee-only firm where my mentor was

00:06:59.840 | working. And then after that, I ended up taking a job at a startup that was based in New York.

00:07:06.000 | And I was working remotely from Minnesota. And I really loved working with people virtually.

00:07:12.240 | And I thought, you know, I could work with people my age virtually. If I didn't have to pay for an

00:07:18.960 | office, if I didn't have much overhead, if I didn't have to hire a huge staff, then I think I

00:07:26.240 | could do this in a profitable way and basically be able to empower my generation with their finances

00:07:34.560 | and make it affordable and accessible. How long did you spend working with other firms before

00:07:42.720 | you started your own? So I got into the profession and I took my first CFP class in 2006. And then I

00:07:49.760 | got hired in 2007. And I took... While you were still taking classes? Yeah, so I was still taking

00:07:55.600 | classes until I took my exam in... My CFP exam in 2009. And then in 2010, I had enough financial

00:08:04.720 | planning experience to be able to use my CFP credentials, use my letters after my name.

00:08:10.400 | And then... So I was at one firm for two and a half years, another firm for two years,

00:08:16.480 | and then a startup for a year. And then I launched Gen Y Planning in May of 2013.

00:08:22.080 | Well, I have to give you props. Your site was a real eye-opener for me when I originally found

00:08:31.360 | it. Because I don't remember when I found it. I should have brought that knowing that you were

00:08:35.680 | here to show you the papers. But I had come up with the idea of doing things on a monthly basis.

00:08:42.560 | And I was at that time trying to figure out how to transition to podcasting. And I knew I needed a

00:08:47.920 | way to make money while I was building the base. And so I'd come up with the idea. And then through

00:08:53.520 | a bizarre series of circumstances, I came across Gen Y Financial, among other sources. And I sat

00:08:58.960 | here and I said, "Whoa, someone's doing this." And wow, if someone else is doing it, it's not just me.

00:09:06.560 | And that means that... I don't know. I didn't know at the time if you're any good at it or

00:09:11.520 | actually paying your bills, but at least you're promoting the idea. So it was a real encouragement

00:09:16.080 | to me. Yeah, I'm sure trying to pay them. No. I'm just kidding. I launched Gen Y Planning.

00:09:23.840 | And it was really funny because I had had this idea for a few years too. And other advisors I

00:09:31.440 | would talk to would tell me, "Why do you want to work with young people? Young people don't have

00:09:35.520 | any money." But what I realized is that it was an us problem, not a them problem. So it was an us

00:09:41.920 | problem with the way we were charging. We were only charging on assets under management. And what

00:09:46.480 | I figured out is that people were willing to pay for advice based on being able to be heard,

00:09:55.920 | be able to get their questions answered. People were willing to pay a fee. So I charge an initial

00:10:01.280 | planning fee followed by a monthly subscription. And I meet with my clients twice a year and they

00:10:05.920 | have unlimited email support with me. And that has seemed to be a really good fit. And then I

00:10:13.920 | also just launched an ebook last week actually called What You Should Have Learned About Money

00:10:18.960 | But Never Did, a Gen Y Guide to Empowered Personal Finance. And you can find it in the Kindle store.

00:10:25.200 | It's on Amazon. It's $4.99. And now I feel like I finally have something at a low price point where

00:10:32.400 | people who are just graduating from college thinking about, "What are those basic skills I

00:10:37.200 | should be doing with my money in terms of building financial security?" Now I have a

00:10:41.680 | resource in which to direct them towards. So here I was creating all these blog posts,

00:10:46.400 | but it was hard for people to find things on specific categories. And so now I have this

00:10:51.120 | ebook that's organized in a way that I think flows really well and is really able to give people

00:10:57.680 | a foundation and basis for how I work with my clients, how I think about personal finance,

00:11:02.960 | and some things that they could do to get on track.

00:11:05.120 | - In addition to that, didn't you start a group coaching course or something? Or like a virtual

00:11:11.680 | checkup? I saw you did something, but tell us what else you did.

00:11:15.760 | - Yeah, so I haven't done any group coaching yet. It is something that I'm interested in doing.

00:11:23.120 | Eventually I would really like to do a Money's a Millennial course. So basically I have two

00:11:30.240 | different financial planning services that I offer my clients. So what was happening was I was

00:11:35.200 | talking to all these great potential clients, but they were saying, "Sophia, I really want to work

00:11:41.120 | with you, but right now I'm really stressed out about my student loans. And I just need somebody

00:11:44.880 | to talk to to figure out what do I do about my student loans?" So I launched, in addition to my

00:11:50.800 | financial accountability program, which is the one where I work with people on an ongoing basis,

00:11:55.520 | I launched my Quick Start sessions. So that's...

00:11:58.240 | - That's what it was.

00:11:59.200 | - Yeah. So for $499, it's a one-time fee, and it's an hour and a half long Skype call,

00:12:06.560 | and it's one-on-one. And we dive deep in whatever two financial planning topics you want to talk

00:12:11.760 | about. I gather a little bit of information in advance, and then we have our call, and I shoot

00:12:17.600 | you an email with recommendations in those two topics after we call, or after our conversation.

00:12:23.520 | And what's great about that is it's really a narrowed scope engagement. So it's a way for

00:12:27.600 | people to get a sense of how I work, what I do, and really address their credit card debt,

00:12:33.200 | their student loans, how to start a Roth IRA. All those things are things I've talked about

00:12:38.160 | on Quick Start sessions, but it's a nice way for people to still get that one-on-one advice.

00:12:42.880 | - So all those things sound really simple to me. It sounds to me like,

00:12:47.840 | why does somebody need help learning how to set up a Roth IRA? After all, if they're approaching you,

00:12:55.840 | there's a gazillion articles written about Roth IRAs. If they need help, I mean, Dave Ramsey's

00:13:01.920 | got an empire built on paying off credit card debt. How is it that people wind up connecting

00:13:08.000 | with you personally on that type of question?

00:13:11.760 | - So I think that there's a plethora of choice right now, right? So we're bombarded with

00:13:18.320 | financial information. And so a lot of times when people come to me, they've already done

00:13:23.520 | the research, they've read a bunch of articles, and now they're coming to me and they're saying,

00:13:27.840 | "Sophia, I don't know if I should start a Roth IRA at Betterment. I don't know if I should start

00:13:34.240 | one at Vanguard. I don't know what types of investments I should choose. I'm scared."

00:13:40.560 | Like, "How do I move forward? I'm paralyzed by all of my options." So it's really nice for us to

00:13:46.880 | be able to chat. I can get an idea of their situation better. I can figure out which discount

00:13:51.840 | custodian might be a good fit for them and really help guide them in terms of, here's an appropriate

00:13:58.560 | asset allocation for your age, risk tolerance, time horizon, that type of thing. Because I've

00:14:05.920 | worked with, when I was at a startup in the past and we didn't talk about investments, for example,

00:14:12.080 | I would make recommendations like, "Take your tax return and put it into a Roth IRA." So they would

00:14:18.960 | do that. And then we would talk a few months later and I would find out that the Roth IRA was sitting

00:14:24.400 | in the Fidelity Money Market Fund because they didn't understand that there was that second step.

00:14:29.280 | So once the money's in there, it's not just good enough to contribute to the Roth IRA, it's then

00:14:35.280 | making sure that money in the Roth is invested. So I think there's a disconnect there between the

00:14:40.640 | articles that are being written and the consumer. Yeah. And there's so many choices and it's so hard

00:14:46.480 | in today's world to really to work through them. You have, I guess, you mentioned as a good example,

00:14:54.240 | Vanguard and Betterment, you have this massive focus, which is right, on saying, "I need to

00:15:01.040 | reduce my fees with my investment portfolio." Okay. I need to reduce my fees. So therefore,

00:15:06.080 | I should always go with the lowest fee provider. But then you have all of these companies,

00:15:10.400 | whether it's Betterment building on that basis, but charging, what do they charge? 20 basis points,

00:15:16.720 | 25 basis points, something like that. Something around there.

00:15:18.800 | Or whether you go up to a firm or a mutual fund company like DFA, Dimensional Fund Advisors,

00:15:26.080 | where here we're taking all of the science of indexing and passive investing, but we're adding

00:15:34.240 | this whole twist on it. We're adding on a whole bunch of fees, but we still think we're competitive

00:15:38.400 | and here's why. And so what can happen is, this happened to me when I started studying personal

00:15:44.640 | finance, I was so sure of my answers. I was so sure I knew what to do because I'd read a few

00:15:49.840 | books that all agreed. And then I started doing it and then I started reading other books and

00:15:54.640 | getting other advice. And all of a sudden now I'm not so sure. And I think this is one of the most

00:16:00.240 | valuable things that we as financial advisors should be doing, is helping to apply for one

00:16:05.760 | individual person and say, "In your situation, based upon these goals and these objectives,

00:16:12.240 | here's this fit that's right for you." So with the Roth IRA example, one of the first questions I ask

00:16:18.320 | is, "How much are you interested in putting into the Roth IRA this year?" Because the big problem

00:16:25.280 | with starting any account at a brokerage firm is a lot of them have asset minimums. And so,

00:16:32.400 | for example, if you have $3,000, you can open a Roth IRA at Vanguard and choose a fund to put that

00:16:40.720 | in. But at Betterment, you can open a Roth IRA with $100 a month. So those are two totally

00:16:47.920 | different types of people that these mutual fund companies are appealing to.

00:16:52.800 | - Do you see any companies working with advisors as intermediaries? And do you see that growing?

00:17:00.320 | - I do. Yeah, I think that there's a lot of advisors that are intimidated by the

00:17:05.360 | so-called robo-advisors. So when you're talking about people like Betterment, Motif,

00:17:10.960 | you know, these types of firms that are popping up, and I think you're going to see more of a

00:17:16.480 | commoditization of the investments and working in conjunction with a financial planner. So I think

00:17:27.200 | that there's going to be a lot more financial planners that are using a robo-advisor to handle

00:17:33.440 | a lot of the investments, and they can then focus on the financial planning. Because what I tell

00:17:39.840 | people is 80% of what I do has nothing to do with investments. It's about making sure you have the

00:17:45.920 | right insurance products, making sure that you're maximizing your company benefits, that you have a

00:17:52.320 | credit card that's right for your situation, or that I can help you get out of credit card debt,

00:17:56.800 | or we figure out a plan for your federal student loans to make sure that you're set up for the

00:18:03.280 | right repayment program, that we talk through the pros and cons of buying a home. So there are all

00:18:11.040 | of these other things, including tax planning, insurance, estate planning, those kind of

00:18:16.480 | traditional things that we're then blending with some of these other topics that millennials are

00:18:20.960 | really coming to me and saying, "Hey, Sophia, this is really important. Can I ask you about this?"

00:18:26.320 | How important to you and your business has specialization of a specific type of client-based

00:18:33.920 | been in building your business? I love working with young clients.

00:18:38.240 | So I've done a little bit of research on... There's been different studies that have come out,

00:18:44.560 | and I give some presentations at financial planning conferences on working with younger clients.

00:18:50.640 | And a couple of studies that I think are really interesting are that most people want to work with

00:18:56.000 | an advisor that's within 10 years of their age. And the average advisor age is 56. And I'm 31,

00:19:06.640 | and all of my clients are within 10 years of my age. And so my clients range in age from about 24

00:19:14.320 | to 38, 39. And we can relate to each other. I get their world. And so I work with a variety of

00:19:24.080 | clients across the country, but I work with a lot of busy young professionals, people who are making

00:19:28.960 | good money, but have a lot of competing financial goals. So it's how do I balance paying off my

00:19:36.800 | student loans while saving for a down payment on a house, while managing my own career that's

00:19:46.800 | growing, and figuring out what I should do in terms of should I contribute to a Roth IRA or a

00:19:54.560 | 401k or the Roth 401k? And there's a lot of decisions that they have to make. And I love

00:20:00.400 | talking people through that. And still how to drive a car that's fancy enough to get a date,

00:20:04.960 | right? It's so funny because the more I work with millennials, the more I work with young

00:20:13.920 | Gen Xers, the more I just love working with this client base because it's not all about

00:20:19.520 | retirement planning. And that's what the profession has been geared towards for so long.

00:20:23.440 | And to me, it's like, I was so bored running retirement projections over and over and over

00:20:29.280 | again. And it's so much fun to work with clients that they come to me when they're engaged. And

00:20:33.440 | then six months later, they're married. And six months after that, one's going to grad school.

00:20:38.800 | And six months after that, one's switching jobs. And six months after that, they're pregnant. And

00:20:43.760 | all of these life changes are happening. And to be able to be on that ride with them and help

00:20:48.320 | them navigate through some of those financial decisions that go along with those big life

00:20:53.520 | changes is really exciting. In your experience, do millennials view retirement differently than other

00:20:59.360 | generations? Yeah, I think so. I think we do. And I think we have to. And I don't think that's a bad

00:21:06.320 | thing. So my grandpa's retirement looks very different than my parents' retirement is going

00:21:12.000 | to. It looks very different from my retirement. And I think that a lot of people are saying that

00:21:18.880 | millennials aren't even thinking about retirement because they have so much debt.

00:21:23.520 | But what I'm really seeing is people are interested in saving for the future. But I try to put the

00:21:29.040 | focus more on financial independence and creating financial independence because that can come at

00:21:34.000 | any age. It's not about you will retire at age 60. Well, if you retire at age 60 as a millennial,

00:21:40.880 | you might live till you're 100. So what are you going to do for 40 years? So I think there's much

00:21:45.440 | more emphasis on what kind of career are you in? Do you like what you're doing? How do we get you

00:21:52.560 | in a job that's more enjoyable so that you can use your money to match your values to live your great

00:21:59.440 | life? And I'm seeing people actually, they're saying that millennials, new studies are coming

00:22:06.080 | out saying millennials are actually saving earlier than previous generations for things like

00:22:10.400 | retirement. And I think one of the reasons is because I'm having a lot of clients come to me

00:22:17.840 | saying, I watched my family go through a lot of hardship during these financial downturns and

00:22:25.520 | I don't want to be in the same situation. Or my parents are in a great position now financially

00:22:31.920 | and I want to be able to provide for my kids what my parents did. Can you help me do that?

00:22:39.840 | I think that millennials are very education minded. We're life learners. We really want

00:22:44.880 | that knowledge. We want to learn how do we do this? How do we figure this out? So a lot of people that

00:22:49.520 | are coming to me have already read personal finance blogs, listened to podcasts, done a

00:22:54.160 | lot of research on their own. And now they're like, okay, I'm ready to figure out how does

00:22:58.640 | this apply to me? What can I do better? Yeah. What's your financial independence plan?

00:23:04.720 | Ooh, that's so good. Why you got to ask the hard questions?

00:23:08.240 | God, I love that question. So I really love growing my business. I really believe that

00:23:20.000 | entrepreneurship's the new job security for my generation.

00:23:22.960 | That's a good quote. I'll put a click to tweet entrepreneurship.

00:23:27.680 | I have a blog post by that title.

00:23:30.400 | Okay. There we go.

00:23:31.760 | Yeah. I really believe that you are your own brand and millennials are switching jobs a lot

00:23:42.400 | more, but they're taking these great skills that they've learned at each job to the next job. And

00:23:48.560 | they're becoming highly specialized in certain areas and able to take this skill set and really

00:23:57.280 | become a valuable asset to their employer. But I'm also seeing people do that within their

00:24:05.120 | employer and really make themselves valuable. And I'm also seeing millennials say, "Hey,

00:24:10.320 | I've been doing this for a while and now I'm ready to break off and do this on my own and

00:24:14.960 | really create a product, create a business, create a brand, create a company that can allow

00:24:24.240 | them more flexibility, can allow them to be in control of their time, to be in control of their

00:24:29.360 | income potential and live their great life." So for me, I really value being in control of my time

00:24:36.720 | and mobility. So I intentionally created Gen Y Planning as a location independent business,

00:24:43.200 | because I wanted to be able to work from anywhere. And what that allows is it allows my clients to

00:24:48.400 | be able to schedule client meetings at 7pm on a Tuesday night or 10am on a Saturday. But I also

00:24:54.800 | get to go to yoga at 1.30 on a Tuesday. And so before when you're working a 9 to 5 job or 8 to

00:25:02.400 | 5, if you have a client meeting at 7, it means you work 8 to 8. And when you're working for yourself

00:25:08.480 | and you run your own company, it's a great way to be able to really design a lifestyle that works

00:25:14.560 | for you. So I can, you know, get up in the morning, check some email, head to yoga, go to a coffee

00:25:21.040 | shop in the afternoon, pump out a blog post, you know, check my Twitter, retweet some stuff, and

00:25:28.720 | then head home and have a client meeting from home and over Skype. And I really like setting up my

00:25:35.200 | life like that. Yeah. It's interesting because in many ways, we're very similar as far as our goals.

00:25:43.120 | When I hear you say entrepreneurship is what I like, to me, I hear lifestyle business. And I

00:25:49.920 | can't come up with any other way around it. I don't think there is anything that is true

00:25:56.400 | financial independence and true passive income, except being able to live purely based off of

00:26:04.320 | the dividends of completely other people's labor with no other work. And I can't think of any way

00:26:09.840 | to do that, except with the dividends of probably publicly traded securities that have a whole team

00:26:15.120 | and a board of directors and are well regulated. But that doesn't mean that you necessarily have

00:26:20.480 | to wait until you have 25 times your annual income saved up in the bank. That's a good,

00:26:25.440 | you know, goal and I'm working towards it. But in so many ways in today's world, the faster path to

00:26:32.880 | autonomy is entrepreneurship. Absolutely. And so six and a half years ago, when I sat down and was

00:26:44.880 | looking at, I made a list of the five things I wanted in a job or business. It was after I got

00:26:50.160 | laid off, which is how I wound up in financial planning. One of those was I didn't want to be

00:26:54.480 | in the same place every day. And I wanted to be able to do this from where we do something from

00:26:59.040 | wherever I was. What was interesting in that different firm structure, I wasn't necessarily

00:27:04.080 | intentional about it in the beginning, in the sense that I was, you know, I put something like

00:27:09.280 | 30 or 40,000 business miles on my car my first year, I was pounding the pavement, kind of the

00:27:13.760 | traditional door to not door to door, but the, you know, person to person, a lot of in person

00:27:18.560 | appointments. But over the six years from 2008 to 2014, the technology got so much better.

00:27:25.360 | To it and I was I was working very hard on training my clients to actually prefer

00:27:30.480 | virtual meetings. And I think virtual meetings are actually better both for the advisor and for the

00:27:38.320 | client. Yes, thank you. That's what you preach, I guess, I gather. You know, that's what I found.

00:27:44.720 | That's been my experience. But until you do that and have experience doing that, there's so much

00:27:50.320 | skepticism. Right. I think they're better for the client. Because, yeah, we it's all good to talk

00:27:56.160 | about what's good for the advisor. And that is important as a business owner. If my business

00:27:59.920 | doesn't work for me, I'm not going to keep doing it. So it's got to be good for the advisor. But

00:28:03.280 | the reason why I think it's better for the client, it takes first it does take time to go see the

00:28:08.080 | financial planner. And I've sat at enough tables at seven o'clock on Thursday night, I don't want to

00:28:12.880 | like that's not the phase of life I'm in. I want to be home with my wife. I want to be home with

00:28:16.960 | my kids hanging out. Like to me, evening times are important. So I would I always, you know,

00:28:21.920 | I would choose to meet at 6am instead of 7pm if I could do that. So we've all got to find something

00:28:26.960 | that works for us. But it's better for the client. They don't have to drive. And it's better to

00:28:31.120 | integrate, especially if you're working with spouses, where instead of husband coming from

00:28:35.040 | one place, wife coming from another, then each spouse can be on their computer at their job on a

00:28:40.640 | conference call. And another thing that I like about it is it's better for clients because instead

00:28:45.520 | of there being a focus on the relationship between me, the advisor and you, the client and exerting

00:28:51.360 | any kind of influence over here, make this decision, we're engaging with a written document.

00:28:56.480 | And it's more likely that we're going to spend more time engaging with the facts instead of

00:29:00.000 | engaging with emotion. A lot of people have a big fear about the emotion of the advisor,

00:29:04.800 | maybe especially if there's a sales capacity to the advisor's appointment, then I think a lot of

00:29:12.480 | that can be downplayed by working virtually. So I just see it as a total win. And the technology

00:29:17.440 | has gotten so much easier now that it provides for the kind of lifestyle you've outlined.

00:29:23.280 | Yeah, so I do all my meetings over Skype or Google Hangout, which has worked out great.

00:29:27.520 | And, you know, one of the things that I think is so much fun is I've met so many people's babies

00:29:34.960 | and pets over video chat, which has just been great. And super fun. Like you're meeting people

00:29:43.200 | in their homes in a relaxed environment, like nobody's dressed up, nobody expects you to,

00:29:49.280 | you know, be a certain way. Nobody expects you to be in a suit. It'd be weird if I was wearing a

00:29:54.320 | suit and I was on a video call. So I think that it just it's like you're meeting people where they're

00:29:59.840 | at. And you're meeting them at a time that's convenient for them. I used to joke that,

00:30:04.800 | you know, meeting with a financial planner required you to take a half day off of work,

00:30:09.760 | required you to drive two hours, you know, drive a half hour to your financial planner's office

00:30:16.480 | to meet for two hours and then drive another half hour home. And I would say like you bring

00:30:22.880 | your shoebox full of documents that a para planner has to scan in. And that used to be my job.

00:30:28.800 | And it's like instead my my clients are already getting online statements. So it's easy for them

00:30:37.280 | to just put that in an electronic folder that's a shared folder that we have set up. It's like

00:30:43.600 | why make them print that off, bring it to my office, have them, you know, have them have to

00:30:49.680 | take out all this extra time from work. And then I have to then scan it into my system and, you

00:30:56.800 | know, organize it. And so a lot of what I'm doing is just what you're saying of like using technology

00:31:04.800 | in an efficient way to be able to, you know, really meet people where they're at. And, you know,

00:31:13.520 | technology has improved so much. I couldn't have done what I'm doing five years ago. I just couldn't.

00:31:21.600 | Right. Totally agree. It was not possible five years ago.

00:31:25.280 | And it was expensive because the technology that was out there was like, here's our CRM and it's

00:31:31.840 | two thousand dollars a year instead of my CRM, which is ten dollars a month.

00:31:36.160 | Right. And here is our fancy. The big one for me was just being able to walk away from fancy class

00:31:42.000 | A office space and say, hey, listen, you know, I can work from a home office. Yeah, it's an extra

00:31:47.760 | bedroom, but that's that's fine. And Skype is free. I mean, we live in an amazing world. We really do.

00:31:54.160 | Absolutely.

00:31:54.960 | I want to ask you about your publicity, I guess, efforts and successes. Did you have a unique

00:32:03.760 | knowledge? So how have you been so effective at generating publicity?

00:32:10.160 | So when I was working at the startup, I there was an editorial team and I became the liaison

00:32:19.280 | between the financial planning team and the editorial team. And so I would help edit a bunch

00:32:24.480 | of articles for like financial accuracy. So they would have a CFP take a look at the articles.

00:32:31.600 | And I just got to know a lot of those people. And as I was leaving that company, a lot of

00:32:38.000 | them were as well. Some stuck around for a while and are now at other companies, but

00:32:43.120 | they remembered me. And so, you know, one is a writer for as a contributor for Forbes. Another

00:32:49.440 | one works at Business Insider. A handful are all freelance writers. And so part of it was just,

00:32:56.000 | you know, being nice to people, helping people out early on. And then another thing I did

00:33:00.160 | was I answered Harrow ads. So I would, you know, just comb through a ton of the business and

00:33:06.400 | personal finance Harrow ads.

00:33:09.120 | That is clip clarify. Harrow is help a reporter out, which is a service that you can sign up for.

00:33:13.440 | And they send you a few emails a day just for those who don't know.

00:33:15.920 | Yep. And it's free. And I was I would answer any at any basically what happens is a reporter's

00:33:24.960 | doing a story or a freelance writer's doing a writing an article and they say, hey, I'm looking

00:33:30.000 | for an expert to talk about, you know, talking to millennials about money or how to save for,

00:33:38.960 | you know, vacations or, you know, whatever it is, talking to your kids about money.

00:33:43.760 | And so I started responding to those things. And so slowly, you know, I didn't care if it was,

00:33:49.520 | you know, bankrate.com, Forbes.com or a small, you know, personal finance blog. I just really

00:33:58.000 | wanted to be able to start to get my name out there and be able to offer some expertise.

00:34:04.560 | And pretty soon what happened was I got a couple of articles. It was quoted in a couple places that

00:34:11.040 | people that kept coming up in SEO search. So one article that I was that Laura Shin from Forbes

00:34:17.760 | interviewed me for was called 10 questions to ask when choosing a financial advisor.

00:34:21.520 | Oh, nice.

00:34:22.400 | And so that article was like, it's so funny. She just interviewed me for another article the other

00:34:28.720 | day. And I said, I've gotten clients from that article, Laura. And she said, it's so funny

00:34:35.360 | because when it was first published, it only got a couple thousand views. And now it has like over

00:34:39.760 | like 218,000 views.

00:34:41.840 | That's amazing.

00:34:42.480 | Because it keeps coming up in search. And so another article was I was named one of the top

00:34:48.480 | financial advisors for millennials by the blog moneyunder30.com. And that is another one that

00:34:54.880 | just keeps coming up in search. And I've had so many prospect calls and I've landed clients

00:35:00.240 | because of that article. So I think a big thing is you never really know what's going to be it.

00:35:06.480 | But I would recommend signing up for HARO, which is helper reporter out. I would recommend getting

00:35:13.200 | to know personal finance bloggers and offering your expertise there. So I was writing a lot of

00:35:18.320 | guest posts for free for financial bloggers that had a similar target demographic that I wanted to

00:35:23.920 | reach. And that was a great way for me to be able to gain some new newsletter subscribers,

00:35:30.240 | more Twitter followers and slowly build my brand.

00:35:32.880 | So in the first couple of years of your business, it's nice that you have that marketing now. It's

00:35:38.880 | nice that there's a Forbes article that sits out there and just sends leads to you. But in the

00:35:44.320 | first couple of years, were you actually prospecting, meaning asking, you know, prospecting

00:35:49.440 | in some kind of proactive way, asking clients for introductions, going out doing something that was

00:35:54.880 | more of a short term way to acquire clients? No. So and I'm still in the first couple of

00:36:01.280 | years of my business. So I only launched in May of 2013. But my big way to get prospects was

00:36:09.280 | I wanted to, when you thought of financial planning and Gen Y, I wanted you to think of Gen

00:36:16.080 | Y planning. Which is a brilliant name, by the way. Thank you. I'm hoping to repeat that with

00:36:22.400 | my choice of radical personal finance as the name. Exactly. And it's just I wanted to be able to

00:36:28.480 | provide really useful content, really helpful information that would cause people to think,

00:36:34.080 | you know, if she's providing that for free, I wonder what it's like to work with Sophia one

00:36:38.720 | on one. I think it's just fascinating how and the reason I brought that up is because I have heard

00:36:46.240 | many intelligent leaders in the financial advice industry talk about how marketing is just simply

00:36:54.080 | doesn't work. And the challenge is that it seems as though at least my experience was a lot of

00:37:01.440 | times I would rather talk to a client. It was hard to find clients who would, let me try to make sure

00:37:10.480 | I'm being clear. It's hard to find clients who are in a specific place where they're able to help you

00:37:18.560 | because it seems as though many people in society are not proactive about planning. And so the time

00:37:24.880 | they call and want to buy life insurance is when they've just been diagnosed with cancer. And the

00:37:29.840 | time they want to call and do retirement planning is when they're 62 years old. And it's sorry,

00:37:35.520 | you know, there's not much we can do. Maybe we can do a little bit of social security optimization

00:37:39.440 | planning, but that's about it. So the beat, the drumbeat that's beat in the financial business is

00:37:46.800 | that prospecting is what works and prospecting is a proactive scenario used to be. If you were a

00:37:51.840 | stockbroker, you made 400 or 600 cold calls a day. The way that I did it was the old fashioned

00:37:57.840 | system of friend to friend, a friend to friend, constantly asking for what we called qualified

00:38:02.560 | introductions to somebody that you know, that you think highly of. And then that gets you on

00:38:07.120 | the radar screen of somebody that gets you on somebody's radar screen to where you're there

00:38:12.240 | and you're thought of when they're going through a transition phase. But I think that I think that's

00:38:17.600 | still valid, but I see a change happening and I see a change culturally where because now I as an

00:38:24.480 | individual can connect with any other individual in the world that makes it more possible to do

00:38:31.040 | marketing. Yeah. I mean, when you were talking about prospecting and what that's meant to you

00:38:36.640 | or what that's meant to financial advisors previously, that's my newsletter list, right?

00:38:41.840 | Like that's how I, that's how I feel my like view my newsletter list. I think, you know, I want my

00:38:49.120 | prospects to come to me. I want them to be seeking out, you know, if you Google financial planner for

00:38:54.960 | millennials or financial planner for Gen Y, I'm the top Google search, you know, and people will

00:39:00.000 | tell me that they were Googling like financial planners for young couples and you know, eventually,

00:39:05.280 | you know, like I'll pop up, they'll find me through a couple, what'll happen is they'll

00:39:09.200 | Google something and then maybe they don't come to my website right away, but maybe they come to an

00:39:13.840 | article that I wrote. So I'm, you know, in the top page of, of search for, I wrote an article

00:39:20.800 | called, should I contribute to a 401k or a Roth IRA? And that's a question that a lot of people

00:39:25.920 | have. People would stumble across that article. Then they would start checking out my website

00:39:31.120 | or people would stumble across a Forbes article or an investment news article and, you know,

00:39:35.680 | start following me on Twitter and then they find my website, then they might sign up for my

00:39:39.440 | newsletter. And, you know, I had clients recently become clients that had been on my newsletter list

00:39:45.920 | for six months, then did a prospect call with me, then three months later, you know, signed their

00:39:50.800 | contract and we're ready to move forward. So sometimes people have been kind of, you know,

00:39:55.280 | watching you or courting you or, you know, for a long time and you might not realize it,

00:40:02.000 | but I want them to jump on board when they're ready. I don't want people to ever feel like,

00:40:07.600 | um, uh, I never wanted to be like a pushy salesperson. I always wanted to be able to

00:40:13.360 | feel like they wanted the value that I could provide and they were ready for that and they're

00:40:18.640 | ready to invest in that. And I know that financial planning is a big investment and that a lot of

00:40:23.680 | people, um, it's a big decision. And so I just, I wasn't comfortable with, um, you know, I, I just

00:40:34.800 | hate things like breakfast meetings. I think that's just not my idea. Like I just don't like

00:40:42.560 | sleazy sales things. I like connection. I like relationships. I mean, I have friends, close

00:40:49.280 | friends that I met through their blogs online, you know, and that's something that like a lot

00:40:55.840 | of baby boomers don't understand. Right. You know, I met my friend Paula Pant from the afford

00:41:01.120 | anything blog because I started her blog. I started following her blog online and then a

00:41:05.840 | couple of months, you know, I'd sent her a, uh, email like, Hey, I love your blog. Here's a little

00:41:10.400 | bit about me. You seem really cool. We're the same age. We have a bunch in common, blah, blah, blah.

00:41:15.040 | A couple of months later, she sends me an email cause she saw me quoted in money magazine.

00:41:19.280 | Now we had to be two of the few women in our mid twenties that were reading money magazine.

00:41:27.840 | I hope there's much more now. But, um, but it was just so funny. So we just, we had all of these

00:41:33.680 | connections. We both love personal finance. We were both only children. We both had rental

00:41:37.600 | properties. We, you know, and so when I went to speak at a conference in Atlanta, I said, Hey,

00:41:43.920 | I'm going to be in town. I'm thinking about hanging out in Atlanta for a few days. You know,

00:41:47.920 | where should I stay? Should I rent a car? And she, she was like, Oh, you'll just stay with me

00:41:52.640 | and I'll just take you around and we'll either way through Atlanta. And so it's like, those are

00:41:58.800 | the type of relationships that my clients have. Like they have close connections with people

00:42:04.720 | from all across the world. You know, a lot of my clients, um, are used to Skyping with their

00:42:11.600 | families and other countries or in other States. So it's not weird to Skype with your financial

00:42:16.400 | planner because they feel like you can build that close connection and relationship, whether we're

00:42:21.680 | in the same room or not. Right. Yeah. It's a, it's, it's a changing world and it's really amazing how

00:42:28.080 | the virtual relationships can turn into in-person relationships, which can then switch around. Same

00:42:36.960 | thing with, I read Paula's blog. I invited her on the show. She was actually my second interview

00:42:42.160 | that I ever did for radical personal finance. And I felt so bad because I had published her

00:42:47.360 | episode and then I had to pull the show down. But then I met, finally met her at FinCon. And

00:42:52.400 | so then the virtual relationships go to personal relationships. And what's so powerful and the

00:42:58.240 | re thing I see about marketing is if you can build a connection with people that really get who you

00:43:04.880 | are and they can be allowed to, especially as clients self-select over time, that's powerful

00:43:12.960 | because you don't have to, you can just be yourself. You don't have to portray a persona.

00:43:17.600 | I came to the point where I just despise wearing suits. Right. I just want to be Sophia. Sophia

00:43:24.800 | on Twitter is going to be the same as Sophia in person is going to be the same as Sophia,

00:43:29.040 | my financial planner. I don't want to have to be like, this is professional business, Sophia. And

00:43:34.480 | she uses this other voice. This is fun, Sophia. I remember getting into financial planning and

00:43:43.520 | having to buy suits and dressing up to go to the office. And I felt like I was faking it until I

00:43:48.240 | made it. And I'm just so over that. Right. Yeah. I'm with you. I live in Florida and suits were

00:43:54.240 | invented to keep people warm and up north. Why on earth do I wear a suit in Florida?

00:44:00.320 | But it's kind of expected. Same reason I don't want to wear heels in the snow in Minnesota.

00:44:05.600 | Exactly. But with the ability to market yourself, you can have people simply choose. And

00:44:11.760 | there's very little chance that I'm going to be a good fit for a high powered

00:44:17.840 | litigator in Miami because I just don't really like the Miami lifestyle. But I love sitting

00:44:25.600 | around the back of a pickup truck talking with a multimillion dollar farmer. That's who I

00:44:30.080 | enjoy being with. And so you can you can self select. Yeah. And I think another thing, too,

00:44:36.080 | is that like. So when you look at kind of where the financial planning profession grew out of,

00:44:43.920 | it grew out of either like these old CPA firms or these old insurance firms. Right. And so these

00:44:50.720 | were all geared to serve rich old white guys. None of my clients are rich old white guys,

00:44:57.920 | so I can't keep doing the same things to serve my demographic. Like people are asking for virtual

00:45:04.720 | meetings. They're wanting to be able to, you know, have flexible meeting times. They want to be able

00:45:10.720 | to have email support with me. They you know. And so there's just a different way of us interacting

00:45:16.160 | because it works for them. It works for my generation. It works for their lifestyle.

00:45:19.840 | I think they're, you know, culturally you have such you know, my clients are such an amalgamation

00:45:25.600 | of cultures that I have a lot of clients who speak a second language in the home. I have a

00:45:31.200 | lot of clients who, you know, are multicultural. And so it's it's also, you know, being aware of

00:45:37.920 | that. You know, I'm talking to clients, too, about there are certain expectations depending on

00:45:43.440 | ethnicity, culture and whatnot of I'm going to like they'll say to me, like, I'm probably going

00:45:49.920 | to have to take care of my mom or I'm planning on, you know, at some day we'll be you know,

00:45:54.400 | we'll financially need to help my parents out. So planning for that, which is something that,

00:45:59.200 | you know, so many people are talking about baby boomers still, you know, paying for the millennial

00:46:06.880 | generation. And I'm seeing like the flip side of that, too, of, you know, these immigrant parents

00:46:14.160 | worked really hard, sent their kids to college and their retirement plan is like they'll move back in

00:46:19.120 | with their kids. They'll take care of their grandbabies and, you know, their their kids will

00:46:23.360 | help support them in retirement. Yeah, I agree. It which in many ways is a more secure retirement

00:46:30.720 | plan than being concerned about market volatility. I hate asking about demographic questions because

00:46:41.520 | I'm pretty much blind to most of that stuff. But I get flack. I've gotten flack from the audience

00:46:48.320 | because I don't bring enough women on the show. And I honestly never even think about like,

00:46:52.400 | is this person a man or are they a woman or are they black? Are they white? I don't even consider

00:46:56.960 | something in between. I don't even consider I just think they have an interesting story.

00:47:00.320 | But out of deference, I will ask the question is what's it this industry is full of old white guys.

00:47:09.200 | Is it been have you has there been any barrier to you as a young woman? What's your been your

00:47:16.880 | experience? Yeah. So my background is in theater and women's studies. So it's definitely something

00:47:22.880 | that I noticed. OK, so I think that it's it's funny to me because a lot of my my friends that

00:47:29.680 | are, you know, young white dudes in this profession are like, I just don't even think about this stuff.

00:47:34.080 | And I'm like, I know you don't because and that's awesome that you don't. But it's it's interesting.

00:47:41.680 | So I think there's a couple of interesting things that are happening. One, I feel like

00:47:45.600 | I feel I felt like there's certain I think just being so there's a couple of different things to

00:47:54.960 | break down. I think one is like being young in the profession. Sometimes it's like, oh,

00:48:01.440 | you're so cute. Look at you doing your cute little financial thing and not like a real

00:48:06.480 | financial planning. You know, it's like that's how I felt. I felt like if I for a while I thought I

00:48:13.040 | could start working with young clients within a firm, within an already established firm.

00:48:20.000 | But I quickly realized that they would never view me as like a real financial planner. I would I

00:48:25.440 | would it would be. They I was their kids age, they thought of me too much as like this,

00:48:32.720 | you know, oh, that's so that's so cute what Sophia is doing with her three clients, you know.

00:48:41.120 | And and now I think that it's I think that age and gender can really be an asset in this

00:48:48.640 | profession and can really set you apart. But I do think that there's a long way to go to make

00:48:57.200 | this profession more attractive to women and young people and minorities. And so as much as it's an

00:49:03.360 | asset to be like a young woman in this profession, because I do think I have some unique things to

00:49:08.000 | bring to the table, I think I could, you know, I'm the conversations that I have with my clients

00:49:15.040 | are, you know, more, you know, they're a little different. They're a little bit more focused on

00:49:21.840 | removing the person from the problem, not focusing on the hard numbers as much as the,

00:49:26.400 | you know, how do you want to live your great life, that kind of thing.

00:49:29.360 | So I think that there are some unique things that I bring to the profession. But I think that

00:49:34.800 | we still haven't educated young people enough about how the impact they could have on working

00:49:43.200 | with their peers or working with other minorities or other women or other young people by just

00:49:51.040 | coming into this profession and getting their CFP and launching their own firm or working at other

00:49:56.480 | firms and being able to really educate other people as well about here's how to be culturally

00:50:03.440 | sensitive towards your clients. And here's some things, you know, to think about. And

00:50:08.560 | here's some things to not say to women, like when I go to financial planning conferences, and,

00:50:13.280 | you know, people are like, Oh, are you married? You know, and like, what is your, you know,

00:50:18.240 | what does your husband do? And, oh, do you have kids? And like, that's like, what, you know, what

00:50:24.160 | people like the things that come out of people's mouths are like, why don't, you know, like, it's,

00:50:28.720 | it's so strange. It's so funny to me. And then a lot of times I'll get like the, Oh, who do you

00:50:34.800 | work for? Oh, I actually run my own company. Oh, that's interesting. You know, people are really

00:50:41.200 | surprised that this this young woman is like, running her own financial planning firm.

00:50:45.680 | Do you think that's actually a gender difference? Because people ask me those same questions.

00:50:50.480 | Yeah. Um, well, I think that's, I think yes, and no, I think sometimes it's just,

00:50:56.880 | sometimes it's just like, just the age we are, right. And I think that other times it's,

00:51:03.920 | so I think a lot of women feel like they have to do it all and they have to be perfect. And they

00:51:12.880 | have to put on this persona of like, I have to be like the perfect, you know, wife or mom,

00:51:20.640 | and I have to be a great businesswoman and I have to be this or that. And so I think there's a lot

00:51:26.000 | of pressure there. And I don't know if that's, I hear that a lot from my female friends. And I

00:51:32.880 | don't know if that's different for men. But I know that it's, it seems to me that there's not as much

00:51:41.680 | um, I don't know, like, it's really interesting. It's just like really interesting culturally of

00:51:51.600 | like what are like at this age you do this or like this is when, you know, right. So I think all of

00:51:58.640 | these are things that conversations that we should continue to have, because I think that a lot of

00:52:03.280 | people are afraid to explore these topics. And I think that the more that we talk about these topics

00:52:08.000 | and talk about gender and, and ethnicity and, you know, coming from different cultures coming from,

00:52:17.440 | you know, my dad's first generation, my, my grandparents were Polish immigrants, you know,

00:52:22.800 | and what is, what are those types of things, you know, what are the money scripts from that culture

00:52:28.720 | that were passed down to you from that generation. I think that all of those things play a factor in

00:52:33.520 | who we are. And when you can start to break down those barriers, and, you know, really talk to

00:52:39.120 | people and ask them, hey, tell me about this, tell me about how, you know, having immigrant parents

00:52:44.240 | affected, you know, your relationship with money. I think those are really interesting questions.

00:52:49.840 | And I think we should continue to explore them. So I'm asking another question about gender roles.

00:52:55.680 | Yeah, because I'm interested in if you have a background in women's studies, you're a great

00:53:00.400 | person to talk to. Or at least theoretically, you should be a great person to talk to if we can

00:53:05.680 | trust the certification. I'm a feminist with a sense of humor.

00:53:08.160 | Okay, good. Do you think it's, do you think it's unfair to it? Well, that's,

00:53:14.560 | that's a poor way to wear the question. Here's a question. Do you think that

00:53:18.080 | women feel more pressure, like they have to, in order to be successful and accepted,

00:53:25.200 | they have to compete in the workforce? I, that's, that's a tough one. I feel like

00:53:36.960 | we have to have all of our ducks in a row. And in order to compete with our male counterparts,

00:53:45.200 | sometimes, like, I feel like we have to be like, just as smart and just as good,

00:53:52.800 | but then like a little bit better. Like, I feel like we have to bring like a little something

00:53:56.400 | special to the table to be able to like stand out. We can't just like, I feel like the bar

00:54:03.200 | is a little bit higher to set ourselves apart and to prove our worth. So I don't know if,

00:54:10.400 | I don't know why. Do you think,

00:54:13.040 | so the word compete is interesting. Do you think women or men of our generation ever think of

00:54:22.720 | simply cooperating with their male counterparts? Well, I think you're seeing more of that. And to

00:54:27.200 | me, that's really exciting because you're actually seeing the gender or the wage gap close in

00:54:33.360 | millennials for, for like the, the gender wage gap. So basically a lot of times in previous

00:54:41.600 | generations, like women had earned 70 cents on the dollar. When you look at, you know, wages,

00:54:47.040 | women and men doing the same job, but you're actually seeing that become like women are

00:54:52.480 | earning, I don't know, it's somewhere in like the 90, like 90 cents on the dollar.

00:54:57.120 | So you're seeing that close a lot. And I think that women are graduating from college

00:55:03.520 | at higher rates than men are. They're getting higher. They're graduating at the top of their

00:55:09.520 | class. They're getting, you know, graduating with honors. But I also think that I do think we're

00:55:16.480 | starting to work together more. And I've noticed that like, just in launching my firm and my

00:55:22.400 | business, the, both the women and the men that I work with, like other advisors that I know,

00:55:31.120 | we send each other clients, we refer each other clients, we help each other get press,

00:55:36.400 | we collaborate because I really believe that I just, I think I believe in the abundance mentality

00:55:44.240 | and not the scarcity mentality. And I think for so long, financial planning was this really

00:55:48.880 | competitive, like cutthroat business where people, like you said, had to compete for clients where

00:55:55.840 | there were only so many clients to go around because you had these high minimums, there was a

00:55:59.680 | high, you know, barrier to entry. And now I feel like there's so many, so many possible clients

00:56:07.840 | out there. People are helping each other. They're saying like, "Hey, I want you to be successful."

00:56:12.320 | Like I say, you know, there's 70 million millennials and if a million of them want a

00:56:17.200 | financial planner, that's great, but I don't want a million clients. So I need other people to do

00:56:22.320 | this too. You know, like I'm really encouraging of other advisors, you know, launching their own firm

00:56:27.920 | and being able to, you know, build their brand and set themselves apart because, you know,

00:56:36.320 | I joke that like Gen Y is not a target. It's not going to be a target market in a few years,

00:56:43.120 | just like how, you know, women, you know, they make up half of the population. That's not really

00:56:47.920 | like a niche market. You know, Gen Y makes up what, a third of the population or, you know,

00:56:53.680 | more like, that's not really a niche. I'm going to have to be like, you know, the Gen Y person

00:56:58.800 | that specializes in entrepreneurs, bloggers and, you know, and whatnot. And just like have it be

00:57:04.160 | really specific because all of these other great financial planners will have entered the space

00:57:08.720 | and said, I'm the financial planner for young lawyers. I'm the financial planner for young,

00:57:13.680 | you know, nurse anesthetists, you know, it's going to be like that specific.

00:57:17.520 | But to me, I think it's just a really exciting time to be in the profession because I think we're

00:57:23.760 | on the cusp of a major change for a few reasons. And part of that is because of technology,

00:57:29.040 | like you mentioned earlier. Another part of that is that we're changing our fee structure. A lot

00:57:35.520 | more of us are having a, you know, a fee structure that's on a monthly retainer that's more accessible

00:57:41.520 | for people or more affordable for people. And then, you know, you're seeing these big,

00:57:48.240 | these practices transition to younger generations too, you know, as financial planners are getting

00:57:52.960 | older, they're going to have to figure out what they want to do with their practice.

00:57:59.600 | So we'll see. But I think it's an exciting time. And I'm excited for more. I mean, we need more

00:58:07.600 | young, cool, awesome, fun, interesting financial planners that have unique backgrounds that can

00:58:12.320 | communicate across cultures, across generations, and are willing to work with a variety of different

00:58:19.600 | clients and make their unique stamp in the world. So funny to me that you earlier, much earlier in

00:58:28.080 | the interview you let out was saying, I love working with young people. That's funny. I'm

00:58:31.600 | the exact opposite. Give me retirees any day. I've, they have always called me an old soul.

00:58:37.200 | And I was the, I was the kid in high school that I'd spend more time hanging out with my friends,

00:58:42.080 | parents than I did with my friends at the pool party. And so what I found is I loved working.

00:58:47.840 | I love, I still do like my favorite type of financial planning to do it's retirement planning,

00:58:53.840 | working with somebody in their fifties and their sixties and their seventies.

00:58:57.600 | Like, so I think the key is for us as advisors to know who we would enjoy working with and then,

00:59:05.440 | and then target them. Yeah. Well, I was, and so one thing that's been really interesting

00:59:10.320 | that I didn't expect was how many referrals I would get from other financial planners,

00:59:13.920 | because once they found out that I was working with young clients and specializing in it,

00:59:18.720 | all of a sudden these, I was speaking at these conferences and these older advisors were sending

00:59:23.200 | me their clients' kids because they're like, Hey, you do this all the time. You know, I really think

00:59:30.000 | that you'd be a great fit for them. Right. And I'll make one point and get asked. My final

00:59:34.960 | question is going to be just cause we did talk so much about kind of gender roles. My final question

00:59:39.360 | is going to be in a, what could the financial planning industry do differently or what could

00:59:44.880 | financial, many financial advisor and frankly, anybody who's listening that would like to

00:59:50.160 | be more accommodating to, to other people do. So that's, that's what I'll ask in a moment, but

00:59:55.760 | I guess the point I was going to make is I get a little bit bitter about some of the

01:00:00.320 | bitter, bitter in a gentle way. Bitter is probably too strong of a word. I get a little bit frustrated

01:00:06.000 | at the expectations that are put on people of any type. And one of the things that I personally

01:00:13.760 | resent a little bit is how our society puts, seems to put so much pressure on women to have to do it

01:00:23.520 | all. And the, I'm my, my personal philosophy is allow someone to stand on their own two feet and

01:00:33.680 | you live according to what, how you want to live and let me live how, according to how I want to

01:00:38.000 | live. But I've watched, for example, like just the, the pressure on my wife, like my wife, she's my

01:00:45.360 | wife and that's what she loves to do. And that's what she loves to be. She doesn't need a job to

01:00:50.880 | define her. And I resent it when people put that on her. I don't want her to have to go out and

01:00:56.800 | have to get a job. And I feel like I've worked with so many clients actually. And I've worked

01:01:04.080 | with, see, each person is a unique individual. And I've worked with clients that are every stage,

01:01:08.960 | I've worked with some clients, men and women who love their work. They love what they do. And for

01:01:14.720 | them, it's a very important part of their identity. And I've worked with other people who don't want

01:01:19.280 | to be involved with their work and it's not a part of their identity. And so that good example of

01:01:25.440 | that was my wife. And so all of society puts this pressure on her that says, you've got to do it

01:01:32.640 | all. You've got to be able to compete in the workforce and you've got to be Miss Professional

01:01:36.800 | and you've got to be Super Mom and you've got to be super this and super that. And I say, I'm sorry,

01:01:41.680 | but I don't accept that. And what's funny is, and perhaps the counter, the rebuttal to this

01:01:46.880 | argument, people say, well, it's about time that, cause you know, women have been squashed for so

01:01:51.200 | long and fine. I'll grant the point and let someone else argue. It's not, it's not something that's

01:01:56.160 | that, that I particularly care to get involved in. But now on the flip side, there's the reverse

01:02:01.200 | side where she constantly has to feel like when somebody comes against her and says, Oh, you're

01:02:07.600 | a stay at home mom. Like, yeah, I'm a stay at home mom. And for me, I can't imagine any more

01:02:14.080 | important job for her. And that was one of the things that before marriage, like when, when,

01:02:19.840 | when we were talking about marriage, for one of the things that was important for me is I don't

01:02:24.560 | want to compete with my wife. I'm not in a competition with my wife. I'm in a marriage

01:02:29.520 | with my wife. And so that means we, uh, we have different roles and I don't care how anyone else

01:02:34.960 | wants to do it, but I resent society coming and saying, well, you've got to be super mom. I don't

01:02:39.520 | under, like, I am amazed at some of the ladies that I have worked with of how capable they are

01:02:46.400 | to juggle things. I'm amazed. I think frankly, women are naturally more capable things than men.

01:02:51.040 | That's the only way that, that you can, can do all the things that, that, that you do. And so I am

01:02:57.440 | awed by the Cape, the raw capability, uh, that I think women have. And I just want people to be

01:03:04.880 | free. You make your own decision for your life and let me and my family live our life according

01:03:11.600 | to the way that we want to live them. And I'll let you live your life the way that you want to live

01:03:15.440 | them. Uh, but we seem, it's certainly an interesting, uh, an interesting time in which we

01:03:20.400 | live in where this, all this tension in our society and all these competing, uh, competing

01:03:24.880 | viewpoints. I'm, I'm a little fascinated by it. I'll give you the last word on that subject. So,

01:03:28.560 | uh, to make sure that you have an opportunity just to, to make any comment from your perspective.

01:03:32.320 | Yeah. So I went to this great conference and it's called the world domination summit and it's in

01:03:37.840 | Portland every year. And the whole theme of the conferences, how do we live a remarkable life

01:03:42.800 | in a conventional world? And I think about that a lot because I'm building a location,

01:03:48.400 | independent business and people think that's weird. Right. And, um, I want to live, uh, you

01:03:56.000 | know, a few months in a few different places this year. Right. And that's weird. And so pushing back

01:04:01.680 | against some of those cultural norms of, um, is, is really challenging sometimes. And I think that

01:04:08.480 | that's one of the things that you're experiencing of feeling like, okay, so now the, the, you know,

01:04:16.880 | it's like the feminist movement happened. And so you can have a job and you can work in the world

01:04:21.600 | and you can be a mom. And then it's like, but she's choosing to like, live this great life

01:04:26.560 | with her kids, enjoy your time with her kids and be a great stay at home parent. And that's awesome.

01:04:33.200 | But for some reason, there's still all these societal pressures or be like, but you could

01:04:37.520 | have a job and you could be working outside the home. And she's like, I know I could be,

01:04:41.840 | but like, this is what's really important for me and my family. And this is what we chose.

01:04:45.680 | And so I think that there's a lot of, um, I just think that it's like, it's, it's never right.

01:04:52.400 | Right. Like, it's like, you can't, you can't please everyone. I mean, tons of my friends

01:04:57.040 | have had kids in the last year and it's like, are you breastfeeding? Are you not? How long are you

01:05:01.760 | breastfeeding for? Are you, I'm like, people are crazy. Like people that don't know you touch your

01:05:08.960 | belly. Like that's weird. You know, like, I don't know who said that was okay. Um, so I think there's

01:05:16.000 | a lot of weird societal things that we as, as a culture are kind of up against. Um, but I think

01:05:23.360 | in terms of kind of women in the financial planning profession, um, just continuing to promote women

01:05:29.280 | in this profession is great. So, um, I still go to a lot of conferences where 90% of the presenters

01:05:35.920 | are men and you know, 80% of them are over age 50. Um, so I just, one of the things that I like

01:05:43.600 | to emphasize is, um, promoting diversity within financial planning. And that can be a, in my eyes,

01:05:51.920 | means a bunch of different things. So not only minorities, but also women, also young people,

01:05:56.960 | just mixing it up so that there's different people presenting different topics and it's not

01:06:02.320 | social security withdrawal strategies and long-term care for the 20th time, you know,

01:06:07.680 | and I think that, um, you're also going to see, um, like these conferences have to start shaking

01:06:16.160 | it up a little bit more and adding different elements, right. Adding, maybe they add some

01:06:20.720 | music, maybe they add, you know, maybe they don't do everything in PowerPoints. Maybe they have

01:06:25.760 | shorter sessions that are 20 minute Ted X style presentations instead of hour long CE credit

01:06:31.920 | presentations only. Um, but also I think that, you know, one of the things that, that I love

01:06:38.080 | about this profession is the flexibility, is being in control of your time that you can ramp up hours

01:06:43.440 | and you can also scale back. And I, I hope that that will become attractive to women who want to

01:06:50.160 | have families as well, because they'll be like, look, I can be a financial planner, but that

01:06:55.120 | doesn't mean that I have to work 60 hour weeks. That might mean that I run a smaller lifestyle

01:07:00.320 | practice where I work 20 hours a week or I work 30 hours a week. Um, you know, like right now I

01:07:07.520 | work about 30 hours a week and I love that. That's a really good fit for me. I do yoga five

01:07:13.520 | times a week. I travel a lot. Um, I call them work-cations cause it's usually some combination

01:07:19.120 | of visiting friends and speaking at a conference or going to a conference or, uh, meeting clients

01:07:25.280 | in other places. And so I just think that the more options we can give people, like you said,

01:07:31.680 | and not putting these labels or these restrictions on people of what they're supposed to do. I mean,

01:07:36.640 | I hate the word should, like you should do this. Like why, you know, why are you at this conference?

01:07:42.880 | You just had a baby two months ago. You should be at home. Are you, you know, those types of things,

01:07:48.240 | um, versus like you should be doing that. Uh, you know, it's like who, who made those rules?

01:07:55.040 | I don't know. I was raised by hippie parents. So maybe I just kind of like naturally I'm like

01:07:59.600 | rules. What? Like, why would you have a rule about that? Um, and so I just think that this

01:08:06.320 | is a really important time that like you were mentioning earlier about, you know, collaborating

01:08:12.000 | instead of competing. It's like, how can we support each other to really build the practices

01:08:18.320 | that we want? Um, create the lives that we want, build the brand that we want on our own terms,

01:08:24.400 | in our own way. And, um, I think there's more and more of an opportunity to do that. And what's

01:08:30.240 | really fun is that in the past couple of years, I'm finding those people that get me, that get

01:08:35.680 | my world, that support the work that I do, that get the lifestyle that I want. And I don't have

01:08:41.040 | time for anybody else. Like I just, I'm like, all right, like have fun doing your thing. But like

01:08:47.600 | me and my friends over here, you know, shaking up the financial planning profession and it's awesome.

01:08:53.760 | Yeah. Lead by example. It's always, it's the way to do it. I think those of us who are in a

01:08:59.520 | position of strength do have a responsibility to help those who can't help themselves. And that's,

01:09:06.480 | for me, it's a moral responsibility. But if you can help yourself a little bit, the best way to

01:09:12.720 | do things, make changes, just ignore everyone and go make the change. I'm going to ask one more

01:09:20.240 | thing. And just cause it was, I wanted to point it out, but much earlier you were talking about

01:09:24.240 | the connection and what you're, how you're doing kind of the coaching. I just think it's,

01:09:30.960 | there's a world of possibility in our future. And one thing that's exciting is to blend

01:09:35.280 | traditional financial planning with internet marketing, internet techniques. You're selling

01:09:43.280 | an info product, you're creating another info product, right? So you're like blending marketing

01:09:50.640 | coaching. That's a lot of what good financial planning is, is life coaching and career

01:09:55.120 | coaching. And all of these things are coming together through the lens of finance. And that's

01:10:00.000 | one thing I think we need more of is not keeping financial planning relegated to the stupid asset

01:10:06.160 | allocation conversation. Great. It does need to be done, but a much more important conversation

01:10:11.520 | is the life allocation question. Exactly. I mean, I'm actually, one of the things I'm thinking about

01:10:16.240 | is going through some life coach training because so much of what I do is career planning and life

01:10:22.240 | planning and helping people figure out how to take the next steps in their career, in their life, in

01:10:28.880 | what they want to do, where they want to be. And so those things just intersect so much.

01:10:33.840 | GenYPlanning.com, anywhere else you want people to find you or anything else you want to tell

01:10:39.360 | about? Yeah. So my new ebook came out called What You Should Have Learned About Money,

01:10:44.480 | But Never Did, a Gen Y Guide to Empowered Personal Finance. And you can look it up in the Amazon

01:10:50.160 | Kindle store. And then if you're a financial advisor and you're listening to this podcast,

01:10:54.160 | and you're interested in learning more about how I built my brand, digital marketing and social

01:10:59.120 | media, I'm launching a new training course with another financial planner named Jude Boudreaux.

01:11:05.600 | And that's called SocialFinancialPlanner.com. And it's going to be a six module online course.

01:11:13.360 | And the first round is actually starting on March 2nd. So check that out too. Thanks so much.

01:11:21.360 | Thanks for coming on.

01:11:22.400 | This was awesome. Thank you for having me.

01:11:24.000 | I'm excited to watch what happens over the coming years as Sophia continues to build her practice.

01:11:31.040 | She is in many ways blazing a trail and there are several advisors who are kind of following

01:11:36.800 | in her footsteps. But I'm definitely excited to see what happens over the coming years

01:11:42.960 | to see if things work. I think they will. But there's always a need for trailblazers to set

01:11:49.840 | out with these new practice models. Hopefully that's been an inspiration to you. Hopefully

01:11:54.480 | you enjoyed some of that content. If you have any interest in financial planning, then one of my

01:12:01.680 | goals with bringing you a couple of these interviews, especially this one here, was to

01:12:05.040 | show you how you really can find a niche. And you can be true to yourself and true to your goals and

01:12:12.240 | true to who you are and what you want to do. You don't necessarily have to go and work with people

01:12:17.040 | that you don't want to work with. In many ways, Sophia and I are exactly the opposite ends of the

01:12:21.840 | spectrum as far as what we enjoy. I like working with retirees. I like that kind of in-depth

01:12:27.760 | financial planning, but she doesn't. And the great thing is that each of us has the opportunity to

01:12:32.560 | work with people that we want to work with. So for you, is there somebody like that that you would

01:12:39.360 | like to... Do you have an idea of the type of person that you would like to be able to serve

01:12:42.800 | and to help? If so, the financial planning industry is wide open to you. And even as you've heard,

01:12:49.440 | I mean, I'll tell you, I've not been to a conference for years where there hasn't been

01:12:54.320 | all these extra panels and whatnot on diversity. And the industry is working very hard to bring in

01:13:01.040 | a lot of a more diverse look to the planners. If you are a lady and you're interested in financial

01:13:08.000 | planning, man, the doors are wide open to you at every firm I've ever talked to and every person

01:13:12.560 | I've ever talked to. So feel free to check it out. It's certainly a business that I think can serve

01:13:19.360 | very well as a lifestyle business and can be integrated very well with many aspects of life.

01:13:25.360 | I know of several financial advisors that I know of here in West Palm Beach who are moms,

01:13:30.480 | who have kids, and they were established in their business before having kids because that's one of

01:13:36.000 | the challenges of getting going. But once you're going, it really is a great industry and a great

01:13:41.920 | business because you can incorporate it into your lifestyle. So hopefully this was inspirational to

01:13:46.960 | you. Thank you all so much for listening for today. Tomorrow I'll be back with your Q&A.

01:13:50.960 | That's the plan for tomorrow. If you'd like to ask a question, just email me,

01:13:54.560 | joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com, or leave a voicemail. If this has been helpful to you,

01:13:58.560 | I'd appreciate your supporting the Patreon campaign. We are currently up to 40 patrons

01:14:03.520 | and $389 a month on our way to $6,000 a month by June 1 so we can keep the show commercial free.

01:14:09.680 | I'd love to do that for you. That's it. I'm out. Enjoy. Have a great day.

01:14:13.680 | Thank you for listening to today's show.

01:14:15.760 | I guess I should tell you. Radicalpersonalfinance.com/patron. Now I'm out.

01:14:20.320 | Thank you for listening to today's show. If you'd like to contact me personally,

01:14:24.640 | my email address is joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com. You can also connect with the show on Twitter

01:14:31.680 | @radicalpf and at facebook.com/radicalpersonalfinance. This show is intended to provide entertainment,

01:14:40.320 | education, and financial enlightenment, but your situation is unique and I cannot deliver any

01:14:48.080 | actionable advice without knowing anything about you. Please, develop a team of professional

01:14:54.880 | advisors who you find to be caring, competent, and trustworthy, and consult them because they

01:15:03.120 | are the ones who can understand your specific needs, your specific goals, and provide specific

01:15:10.480 | answers to your questions. I've done my absolute best to be clear and accurate in today's show,

01:15:16.880 | but I'm one person and I make mistakes. If you spot a mistake in something I've said,

01:15:21.840 | please help me by coming to the show page and commenting so we can all learn together.

01:15:26.640 | Until tomorrow, thanks for being here. The LA Kings Holiday Pack is back,

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RPF0155-Sophia_Bera_Interview