#FASuccess Ep 423: Expanding Across The Household By Helping (Affluent) Sandwich Generation Kids With Their Parents’ Financial Needs, With Cristina Livadary

Resources Featured In This Episode:

• Cristina Livadary: Website | LinkedIn
• Mana Fee Calculator– Download
• Mana Moments Blog
• #FASuccess Ep 015: Why Life Planning Is Simply Financial Planning Done Right With George Kinder
• The Seven Stages of Money Maturity: Understanding the Spirit and Value of Money in Your Life by George Kinder
• XY Planning Network
• Elizabeth Jetton
• Zapier
• Airtable
• Fathom AI
• Toggl

Looking for sample client service calendars, marketing plans, and more? Check out our FAS resource page!

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Full Transcript:

Michael: Welcome, Cristina Livadary, to the "Financial Advisor Success" podcast.

Cristina: Thank you for having me, Michael.

Michael: I'm looking forward to today's discussion and what to me is an interesting dynamic of, as I understand, how your firm has evolved in clients that it works with intergenerationally. There's a thing in our industry these days of, I don't even know what the number is, a bajillion trillion dollars of wealth is going to transfer from an older generation of folks to the next generation, to their children, to their heirs. Therefore, if you're working with retirees, you should work really hard to build relationships with their kids so that someday when the money passes down the family tree, you can continue to work with the folks that inherit the dollars. It's just kind of out there as a strategy, as I would even dare say, a recommended practice for a lot of firms, particularly if you work with older clients.

To me, there's always been a dynamic of it that's felt really strange and off to me that, okay, I get it conceptually, we're hoping to build relationships with the next generation, but if you're really good at working with older retirees and relating to them and the issues that they're dealing with, you really might not be the most relatable to what their kids or grandchildren are going through, depending on how old the parents are and how far down the family tree you're going.

We deal with different stuff at different stages of life. There's some generational dynamics as well of how it shows up that makes the experience of your 20s or 30s today is not what it was 20 or 30 years ago. But if you work with folks that are at that middle stage right now, there's a whole other version of intergenerational dynamics, which is, "Yeah, the problem isn't parents pass away and we're following the money down to the kids." It's "No, I work with the kids and their parents have problems."

For any of us that are in our 30s, 40s, early 50s, often you get to live some version of that proverbial sandwich generation experience firsthand. I know you have dealt with some of this both personally, directly, and in the practice. I think I'm just really interested and fascinated to talk about what it looks like when you're trying to help more members of the family, not because you're working with the parents and you're trying to follow the money down the family tree, but because you work with the kids and their parents have problems.

Cristina: Yeah. So again, great way to put that, Michael. Before I worked as a financial planner, financial advisor, I was an investment wholesaler. I heard a derivation of that initial line that you stated, $20, $30 trillion will be passed down. I mean, 2 or 3 times a week, right? And I also, at that time, was in my late 20s and kind of had the same thought of, how does that work? And so through the evolution of our practice at Mana, this really came more naturally than it came as a marketing tactic or a marketing strategy. It was really...when we started Mana, we wanted to have and cultivate a life planning-centric business.

And I'm proud to say that six and a half years in, that we have and we lead with life planning in our practice, which means that we are not afraid to have difficult conversations with our clients. And as a result, I would say that because we've opened up the doors in our hearts to have these emotional conversations about life and meaning and purpose, our clients, as they've grown older, have started opening up about their fears, about their concerns with their aging parents. And that's from the client side. That's really where this focus on the sandwich generation really comes from, is the ability and the willingness for us to have these conversations with our clients.

Cristina's Personal Experience Becoming 'Sandwiched' [08:24]

Michael: I'm struck that you said this, this evolution to focusing more into sandwich generation clients, what they're dealing with, it wasn't the founding mission when the firm started years ago. It came about organically. So can you share a little bit more of organically how this came about? How did you end up going further in a direction to say I think this is a thing we're going to really start doing more of and focusing in on more?

Cristina: I think, Michael, back to what you were talking about earlier, where when we started our firm, we realized we weren't going to go attract a bunch of retirees with tens of millions of dollars. We didn't know anyone in that demographic. And so we started working with people that were, frankly, a lot like us. So we were in our 30s and we were starting families, we were getting married. A lot of our clients and our spouses were working in technology. They had stock compensation.

And so we really geared our main marketing messages around that demographic. How to plan for maternity leave, how to budget for your wedding. And so a lot of our initial foray into getting clients was really attracting people just like us. And similarly, as we grew and evolved, so 6 and a half years after launching, our lives changed. And so earlier this year, I personally became sandwiched, where my...

Michael: It doesn't sound good when you use it like a verb.

Cristina: Right? I know. But I faced... It started in 2023, where my father got very ill and my mom stopped picking up the phone as much. They were up in Northern California and I'm down in Southern California. And so we started getting a little bit worried. And ultimately, my father got very, very sick and passed away in January of this year.

Michael: Sorry.

Cristina: And then within a week of that, my mother was diagnosed with dementia.

Michael: So in retrospect, that's why she wasn't answering the phone. Like she wasn't... Dad was handling things and she was having challenges already?

Cristina: Exactly. Yeah. There was a lot of signals that I missed because I personally was not ready to handle it. I was 2 months postpartum at the time. So I had a lot going on personally, emotionally.

Michael: So you had a baby a year ago.

Cristina: I had a baby a year ago. And so it was...yeah, it was, it was a time... I remember vividly last fall where things were too much. And so I knew there was something off with the communication with my parents. We used to talk at least once a week. And so some of those calls started dropping off, and I was like, "Hmm," but I did have my hands full with our practice, in addition to raising a three-year-old and a baby at that time.

Michael: So what happens next?

Cristina: So that January of this year was the month where everything hit the fan. So I lost my father, mother had a dementia diagnosis. My son, who was four months old at the time, was hospitalized with COVID. And so was on ventilators, couldn't breathe for...even talking about it right now just brings me back to a uncomfortable position.

Michael: This is the newborn. So he's 4, 5 months old?

Cristina: He was 4 months old. Yeah. And it was a lot, it was a lot to handle. And I was expected, because I was the financial planner among my siblings and half-siblings, I had to take the lead on all of it. And so that's really where... I say this now, again, with many months having passed, but I realized I had no idea what I was doing, Michael. I was responsible for being the co-trustee of my parents' trust. My parents, it turned out, had become hoarders in the time that I hadn't checked in on them. And there was, and continues to be a lot to clean out in the house, a restaurant needed to be sold. And my mother was incapable of taking care of herself. So I had to figure out a plan for care. And I had to do that all within a span of several weeks. And so this is where I realized, "I don't know what I'm doing." And I'm a financial planner.

Michael: So at least you have the financial literacy and the context and the rest of it, and it's still horrifically overwhelming.

Cristina: Absolutely.

Turning Her Experience Navigating Issues Surrounding Aging Parents Into Content For Clients And Prospects [14:26]

Michael: So what...so I guess I'm wondering now, how did this play out for you? And when does this start to show up in the business?

Cristina: So I did not stop working because it turns out I process things slowly. I immediately went into therapy, but I also wanted to continue working because I had this feeling that there, there was something here. And again, like you just referenced, financial planning is so critical to a successful outcome in this situation, right? Financial life planning in particular. And so one of the ways that I processed, not only my grief, but my desire to learn how to actually do things correctly or do things in a way, right? There's no right way to go about this, but to go about this in the way that I needed to go about this, I had to do a tremendous amount of research, but I also wanted to begin creating space for these conversations within our practice. And the way that I do that is through writing.

And so we at Mana have a bi-weekly blog that we publish along with a bi-weekly newsletter. And for the first half of this year, I spent that time writing on a number of different subjects in regards to the sandwich generation. So everything from what does assisted living look like in all its multiple iterations. I was recording social media videos on the same topics, all the way to how to talk to your aging parents about money, about aging, about estate planning. And really through this writing, our clients started reading it and saying, "Hey, I saw that you posted about this the other day. First, I'm sorry that you're going through this, but second, my mom started exhibiting some of these signs. What do you recommend I do to really address this right now?" And so as I started putting out these blog posts and our team at Mana started also internalizing this and opening up the space for conversations with our clients, we started realizing that a lot of our clients were in similar positions as I was.

Michael: So I guess I'm just wondering the nature of this content you started creating, what was the style? What was the approach? Is this education style? Are you outright telling people you're going through this with your family now, right now as well?

Cristina: Well, I would say at Mana, our approach is always leading with the heart. Every one of our blogs starts with a story, right? And we always start with why this matters. And in the context of the sandwich generation, why it mattered to me at that time. So I do... I've gone to a lot of therapy, I've worked on myself. And for me, part of my processing is sharing. And so I felt very comfortable being able to, and again, just here's why we're writing about this. And really, a passion of mine and why I continue doing the work that I do is because I also don't want any of the mistakes that I made needlessly repeated.

Michael: Right. So then can you share a little bit more of the kinds of articles you were creating? What were you finding, learning, discovering, putting out there? You said some different types of assisted living facilities and talking aging parents.

Cristina: The first one was the different kind of assisted living facilities. And that was certainly one where, because I was trying to figure out what's the difference between memory care and facilities that say they do memory care but don't have lockdown, right? And so it was a very nuanced, here are the different categories of care facilities. The other, we've written about who are the types of aging specialists you can employ to help you when you don't have the time or you don't have the capacity to dedicate all of this, all of your time, attention, and resources to this.

And so we talked about the network that we've built through this year of working with those in the sandwich generation. A lot of the work that we do is about the conversations. And so writing it from different perspectives. So conversations to have with aging parents, conversations to have with your adult children. Because one thing that I don't think we've mentioned yet, Michael, is that as a result of the work that we've been doing with our sandwich generation clients, we have found that it's not only parents "in trouble," but it's parents who need planning themselves, and maybe have worked with a traditional financial advisor, aka, only does investments for them, and have no financial plan. And so we've been introduced to this generation through their children. And so we've also done life planning work with them and unearthed some of their reservations, some of their fears. And we want to continue to address those fears through our writing as well.

Michael: And so I guess in the sort of the truest sense from this, intergenerational framing, you effectively are ending up moving up the family tree and getting brought in to do planning work with the parents.

Cristina: Mm-hmm. Very much so.

Cristina's Experience Starting Mana Financial Life Design From Scratch [21:27]

Michael: So help us now with a little more context of, I guess, Mana, the advisory firm, in the first place, I don't know as existed 12 months ago, before you started down this journey, because then I want to understand how it's starting to change as you're doing more of this. But can you give us the overall context on the advisory firm?

Cristina: Sure. So Mana, shorthand is Mana, full name is Mana Financial Life Design. And I run it with my best friend and business partner, Stephanie Bucko. And we launched in 2018 with zero assets under management, zero clients. So we both had come from disparate areas of financial services. And as I'd mentioned, I worked as an investment wholesaler, ahead of launching this. And we've talked about this before to the advisory community, but ahead of launching Mana, and neither one of us had actually done a financial plan before. I had done the CFP coursework and I did that sample plan that you have to do as part of...

Michael: Yeah, I feel like for the capstone class.

Cristina: Exactly. And that's as far as I went, Michael. So I had never actually done financial planning with clients until we launched our firm. And...

Michael: And it sounds like Stephanie hadn't either?

Cristina: Stephanie had not either. So Stephanie had worked right out of college at PWC during the great financial crisis, auditing hedge funds. She is definitely the math brain behind Mana. I'm giving her full credit for that. And then after PWC, she went to work for the world's largest hedge fund of funds. And so she was a risk officer, and really understanding the underlying risk within the hedge fund of fund portfolios that they managed at Mangrove.

Michael: So how do you end up saying, "Hey, let's get the wholesaler and the hedge fund risk manager together and launch a financial planning?"

Cristina: Good question. So Stephanie had finished her CFA and CPA, and had really kind of reached a point in her career where she wanted a shift. And so a year before that in 2017, she actually went to work for a bank and was an investment manager. So was running a portfolio of a model of securities for private wealth clients of a bank. And so that's where she kind of started realizing, "Hey, this is not too dissimilar to how we thought about building portfolios on the institutional side. This is interesting." And she found a great deal of satisfaction working with individual clients.

And from my perspective, I had reached a point as a wholesaler, where I felt like there was a big difference. And you've talked about this before, and who can call themselves a financial advisor? And I worked with folks, frankly…I'd worked with 10,000 financial advisors covering Southern California and Hawaii. And I'd recommend maybe a handful of them to my parents. So it was at the point where I was like, "Okay, Cristina, it's time to stop complaining and start doing." And so in 2016, I went to Hana [Hawaii] and worked with George Kinder on the Registered Life Planner designation after I read his book, "The Seven Stages of Money Maturity," it changed my life. And there, through the life-planning process, with that group, I realized that I had to go take the CFP coursework. And I worked while also continuing to be a wholesaler.

In 2018 was the culmination where I got a sabbatical for working a decade at my previous firm. And I took those two months to really pause and first surf in San Sebastian, Spain. But while in San Sebastian, Stephanie came, and we put together a business plan. And we raised friends and family money to launch our firm and keep us housed, I'd say, for the first year of our business. We had savings, but learning lesson, double whatever you think that you need to launch a business. So we did that. And we launched with an email to everyone in our network, saying, "We've launched a firm." And that's how we got started, Michael. And it was it was up from there. But it was slower going than I had thought it was going to be in the acquisition of clients.

Michael: So I want to come back in a moment to the acquisition of clients, more about who you're going after. But I'm intrigued with raised friends and family money. So what did you do? How did that work? Are there friends and family who own some percentage of Mana because they were capital investors in the startup phase?

Cristina: So what we did was we issued a convertible note. And that convertible note was going to convert into equity within 3 years. But thankfully, we did well enough to pay them off. And our friends and family didn't truly want to own any share of our business. They wanted to see us successful. So ultimately, we did the convertible note. We had...it was really, really good experience for us and how to, A, fundraise.

Michael: What were the terms of the note?

Cristina: We paid them an interest rate that was what private equity equivalent was paying at the time, which was great. I mean, much better than interest rates today. But yeah...

Michael: So they're making double-digit interest rates for a high-risk startup loan.

Cristina: Exactly. Yeah. And so we did that for 2-1/2 years. And then we paid them off fully. And then Stephanie and I became the owners of our business.

Michael: Was this tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands? How much did you raise to get going?

Cristina: It was about $150,000.

Michael: Okay.

Cristina: Yeah.

Michael: And that was mostly to cover salaries for you and Stephanie?

Cristina: That's right. Yeah.

Michael: Sounds like, just we're not the most capital-intensive business. It's not like you need to buy real estate and factory equipment and such. And it was just you and Stephanie to start. So you weren't hiring staff out of the gate.

Cristina: That's right. Yeah.

Michael: Okay. And so raised $150 [thousand] of capital in a convertible note with a market rate of interest and personal savings.

Cristina: That's right.

Michael: And an email to everyone you knew and said we launched an advisory firm. So what was the original advisory firm? When you sent the announcement email, what did you tell everyone you were doing and launching and trying to serve and accomplish?

Cristina: I mean, it was simple, and I'm sure full of bravado, Michael, but it was essentially, "You know either Stephanie and I from friendship or our professional careers. We are extremely passionate about what we're building. We are focusing on financial life planning." And I'm sure I talked a little bit about the difference between financial advice and financial life planning. And I think we just opened it up and said, "If you've ever thought, 'hey, do I need a financial advisor?' Reach out to us." And so I had always been, in my work as a wholesaler, I spent a lot of time, again, thousands of meetings, asking advisors how they brought clients on.

And some of the best advisors that I met had a fit meeting. And so that's really the way that we position anytime if you're interested in working with us, schedule a 20-minute fit meeting. And the fit meeting's purpose is to really evaluate if we at Mana are a good fit for what you're looking for. And so really kind of releases the pressure of needing to close anything or us pitching anything, but it's really, we're really trying to evaluate if we're a good fit.

Michael: So what was the, I guess, just missing business model fee structure out of the gate? Did you have minimums? Were you just working with anybody who's willing to pay you as a good client when you're getting started?

Cristina: Anyone who could fog a mirror? No. It's...

Michael: So say most of us as we launch.

Cristina: So we did launch with XY [Planning Network]. And so XY, we use a lot of the thought leadership that you and Alan had cultivated through that group to design our first of many fee structures, as you know, that evolved quite a bit...

Michael: Oh, yes.

Cristina: ... In the first few years. We did so much, Michael, for so little.

Michael: What was it originally? Because I always find this fun to look back and reflect, "Wow. Look at all..."

Cristina: I think the first one was like $2,400, so yeah, $200 a month. That was the first one. Yeah. And then we...

Michael: For comprehensive financial planning and life planning, you need eight meetings or something.

Cristina: That's right. Exactly. So we had always decided to charge two fees. So one was comprehensive financial planning, and that's the process we call financial life design. And then the second piece is investment management. And so we started at 50 basis points. And then very quickly, I think in the first year, we went up to 75 basis points for the first million and then a graduated reduced fee from there.

Refining Best-Fit Services For Clients [33:29]

Michael: And then did the planning fee evolve as well? I'm assuming you're not $200 a month.

Cristina: Oh, yes. Yes. It evolved. It evolved through, not only our realization, but that, wow, we're charging this much. We're working this hard. How many clients do we need to bring on to live the life that we want to live? But it was also, we did a lot of evaluation on who we wanted to bring on. So I completely understand anyone who will fog a mirror was like that's...we always joke, but that is what you kind of have to do in the very beginning. But I'd even say in that first year, we started realizing, "Oh, okay, we need to start being a lot more nuanced in how we're charging based on the need of the client."

Michael: So was the issue, if the fees on clients are this low, we're just going to need so many, it's too many, or was it more of...

Cristina: Absolutely.

Michael: ... We're just doing a lot of work and I'm realizing that I probably should have charged a higher fee given all the stuff that I just did?

Cristina: I think it was both of those. It was both of those. In the first, I'd say the first 3 years, we created abundant processes, that looking back, were absolutely unnecessary.

Michael: How so? What processes that were unnecessary?

Cristina: So we use eMoney. We have all of our clients connect their accounts to the eMoney so that they can have a portal to view everything, just like the old Mint.com or Personal Capital. And what we would do is we would export every... First, we'd go and categorize every single expense for a specific amount of time. And I think at that time, we were doing this, Michael, weekly for clients. We were becoming bookkeepers without understanding. And so we'd categorize for the clients. We'd export them into an Excel spreadsheet. We made the Excel spreadsheets very pretty. We created a dashboard that synthesized the data from that spreadsheet and tell them what areas they could work on, what areas had they improved upon. And we sent this report and we had...there was no Zapier at the time. We had created these custom reports for every single one of our clients and manually sent them out to each one of them. I think it was once a week and then it became twice a week. And then within the first... We took a team retreat after the first year and realized that we had spent about 70% of our time on this form of cashflow.

Michael: Did the clients like it? At least?

Cristina: No.

Michael: Hopefully?

Cristina: Did the clients like it? Yes. Did it improve behavior? No. Did it... Yeah, did it have the desired effect, the desired outcome? Absolutely not. And what we realized is that we were doing a lot of the work that you have to do as an individual to be mindful of your own spending. Right? So if you have someone doing all the things...

Michael: Because you made it so easy for them...

Cristina: That's right. So where it is today is we do spend…I've recorded videos. Stephanie and I both have this and we have a client website that shows people how to utilize the eMoney portal and how to actually reflect on their spending, best practices on how often to review it, how to have a money date with your spouse to discuss this, if this is an area of focus for you. And so, again, as we've evolved through the years, we've realized that if this is important to someone, they will do it. And so we will show you how to do it if it is important to you. Every one of our clients today still receives a mindful spending plan. So it's not a budget, but it's, here's roughly how much we've projected you will be spending now into the age of 90 or 95 growing by 2.6% a year. And so, if the numbers are vastly different every year, then it's really impossible to create any sort of financial plan. And so that's kind of the way that we frame it now. And we are we are...life satisfaction as a financial planning professional, way higher now than it was back in those days.

Michael: Because now the approach is, if you're not willing to periodically go in, if you're not willing to maintain the connections, if you're not willing to glance at even the reports that eMoney makes by default, you're probably not bought in enough that it's worth spending more time anyways.

Cristina: Exactly.

Michael: I like how you framed it. If it's important to them, they will spend time to do it and then we can guide them and help them. But it starts with, because it was important enough for them that they were spending time in the first place. Otherwise, we're not going to try, we're not going to bother because they're not engaging anyways.

Cristina: Yes.

Raising Fees To Reflect The Value Mana Provides Its Clients [39:36]

Michael: So what else changed? What else saw launched in year one that looks a bit different now?

Cristina: What looks the most different is the people that we work with.

Michael: So how did that change?

Cristina: So we worked with a lot of our friends as a result of the email, right? Is that that's who...and to me, that's one of the most beautiful things that resulted. A lot of people see that Stephanie and I, who have been best friends since college, we get up every day and we love working with each other. It is a blast. And I think people see that and our friends are like, "We love that and we want that in our lives. We want that team to be our team." And so that's where it began, really was friends started reaching out as a result of the email and we started bringing them on.

Michael: So did that come relatively quickly for you? I know some advisors like, "I told my friends and then they basically waited 3 years to see if I was really going to stick with it. And then they started showing up."

Cristina: No, it came very quickly for us in that respect. The rate, the pace of onboarding, I'd say it...we launched in July, we took our first client in September and we were bringing on 2 to 3 a month throughout 2019. And then...yeah, I mean, we were looking back at some of the numbers as a reflection, end of the year reflection earlier this week, and 2020 and 2021, we were taking on a serious amount of clients, 3 to 4 a month. I was like, "No wonder I was so tired those days."

Michael: And are you still mostly at $2,000 to $3,000 annual fees for clients at this point?

Cristina: I would say... Yeah, I'd say 2019, absolutely. I think we started raising fees in about 2020 when we started working with our business coach who was absolutely baffled at the prices we were charging.

Michael: Okay. So sometimes helps to have a business coach. So I guess I'm wondering, where did you find the business coach? What did you pay them? A lot of folks struggle with business coach in the first year or two. It's like, I know I need it, but if I had the money to afford the business coach, I wouldn't need the business coach.

Cristina: That's right. Yeah. I mean, we did wait...we waited until mid-2020 to hire. And I always tell her...it's Elizabeth Jetton. She is a wonderful steward of the life planning community. And that's how we found her, was we wanted to decide...we were deciding, what kind of business coach do we want? Do we want someone that's going to hold our feet to the fire in terms of the nitty gritty, the metrics. But I would say that we want...or do we want someone who kind of is able to zoom out and focus on what matters? And I...sometimes you also don't know what kind of business coach you need until you get into the meetings and you're like, "Wow. I never thought about it like that." And we have found as a partnership that having a guide that also kind of challenges the way that we think is so incredibly helpful.

Michael: That's the version that you…

Cristina: That's the version we went to.

Michael: Okay. Yeah. Okay. So 2020, 2021, you start raising fees on existing or just on new [clients]?

Cristina: I think 2021 was just on new. And every year thereafter, we started gradually raising existing clients' fees.

Michael: How did you go about doing that? So then that's a challenge for so many of us. Those early clients, they took a risk on us, kind of feel like we owe it to them sometimes.

Cristina: Absolutely.

Michael: Feel really about raising their fees. And that's when we get strangers as our first clients, not when they're friends.

Cristina: Not when they're friends. And I'll tell you, the guilt and the pit in the stomach was there for us. The way that we did it was ahead of their annual updates. So we do annual updates every year. We don't call them financial plans because we believe that commoditizes the deliverable.

And so ahead of the annual update, ahead of the tremendous value we present, we talk about fees. And the way that we say it is that we've been working together now for three years. And these three years we've been doing, we've done X, Y, Z for you. It has been a sincere pleasure to be guiding you through this journey. Three years ago, you joined in at this rate. And since then, we've increased fees to this rate, and costs go up, right? And so we do want to propose a fee increase. We're not going to go as high as the going rates, because we want to honor and respect our relationship with you. And so we propose that we'll raise this over time so you can get to the prevailing market rate in 3 years. And so we track that. And people appreciate it though. People have appreciated that.

Michael: So did you... So I guess wondering, in magnitude, how much were they actually moving at the end of the day? Were they going from $2,400 to $2,700 to 3 grand or was this 2 grand, 3 grand, 4 grand, 5 grand?

Cristina: Yeah. So we start at $2,400. I believe it went $2,400 to $4,500 and then to $6,000.

Michael: Okay. So that's a big...

Cristina: It's a big move.

Michael: This isn't, you went back to $2,400s and took them up 500 bucks.

Cristina: No, no, no, no.

Michael: The gradual version was almost doubling.

Cristina: That's right.

Michael: $2,400 to $4,500. So how many noped out the door?

Cristina: The first time we raised fees, I'd say we lost...maybe we lost 10% of our clients. And again, made up for it with the fee increases and more.

Michael: We raised fees by 80% and lost 10%. That's just fine. Very sad for the 10% that we lose, but that maths just fine. So were there blowback issues because these are friends and people you have other existing relationships…

Cristina: We never lost friends as a result of our fees. So the ones that we...

Michael: Meaning none of the friend clients terminated you or just...

Cristina: Correct.

Michael: ... You stayed friends, even though you raised their...

Cristina: The former.

Michael: They didn't leave? Okay.

Cristina: Yeah, they didn't leave. We've had friend clients leave, but not because of our fees. It's because they lost a job, their situation changed, but it wasn't directly as a result of our fees being too high.

Michael: And you did this with in-person conversation? Did you send a letter in advance? How did you actually communicate it out when it was time?

Cristina: So we've always been a virtual firm, 100% since the very beginning. And we did this during their annual update. So...

Michael: In the meeting.

Cristina: In the meeting. We felt it a bit too impersonal to send an email. I know some people have a lot of success doing that, but we just felt, given our really deep relationships with our clients, that we weren't comfortable having an email sent ahead or after any meeting. We really wanted to have that personal Zoom conversation.

Michael: So I guess I'm wondering just in evolution of the firm, so how long did it take before the dollars actually got to where you needed to cover family obligations, the ability to meet your household needs?

Cristina: Yeah. And then I had kids, Michael, but...

Michael: Well, and then you complexified. Yes.

Cristina: Yes. I would say it was about 3 to 4 years in where we felt really comfortable with what we were able to be compensated. It took us about 3 to 4 years.

Michael: And how much of a emergency savings runway did you give yourself? Were you 6 months of expenses, 12 months of expenses, 2 years of expenses?

Cristina: Personally, or through our business?

Michael: Well, I guess either both. How did you do it?

Cristina: So for us, we were always looking from our business to have...ideally at 6 months, but 3 months is kind of bare minimum. And that gets larger and larger over time. And then when we launched, I had a year and a half of expenses saved.

Michael: And so did that actually hold? I know there's usually kind of a burn effect. Well, you got no revenue coming in the first few months, so it's all outflow, but then you get some revenue and now you're only burning at 75% of the rate, and then 50% of the rate, and 30% of the rate. So did it hold? Or did you know what you needed more than you thought?

Cristina: It dipped more than I thought, not as a result of our business, but more because my husband transitioned into contracting work as well. Financial planning lessons learned all around. Don't do that simultaneously.

Mana's Process For Serving Sandwich Generation Clients [50:49]

Michael: So now help us understand how the business and offering is evolving and changing now that you're getting so much deeper into these sandwich generation dynamics.

Cristina: The artifice of the offering hasn't changed that much. Right? I mean, I think the deliverables that we present to our clients, the work that we do has stayed kind of constant, but there is much more nuance to everything that we do. Right? It's like when we have a fit meeting, we're also kind of mentally, and also through our various forms of trackers, is this person a member of the sandwich generation? Is this person a business owner? Is this person going to belong to a company that will IPO in the next few years? And we have many clients that all of those boxes are checked. So complexity has certainly increased in the clients that we work with. And I think that's really what's evolved over time.

To me also, the conversations have become so much richer, just really understanding what's at top of mind for our clients and what are some of the issues that they're struggling with today. And those have just...those evolved as life has gotten more complex for them. And then business-wise, we've continued to increase fees, as again, these clients have become more complex. We know what we should be charging now for those. So we've developed a fee calculator. Stephanie and I do all of the fit meetings still. And so it's become quite easy when we meet with someone for 20 minutes, an individual or a couple, we kind of know, okay, this is what we're hearing. We know kind of what categories they're going to be fitting in. And this is the amount of work it's going to take. Thus, we're very confident in the fee that we deliver. So there's no ranges. It's like, this is how much we're going to charge you. And that's helped us really kind of hone in on the prospecting side. So we don't have...our prospecting meetings have become fewer since we've published our minimum on our website, but they're much higher quality, and thus, higher likelihood of conversion.

Michael: So where do those fees stack add up to now? I mean, what's typical clientele engagement for you at this point?

Cristina: I would say that the vast majority of our clients are paying us for both. So we have...

Michael: You mean planning and investment management.

Cristina: Planning and investment management. Yeah. I'm looking at some numbers right now. So we have 119 clients that either engage us for one or the other. And that's really a result of, again, taking young kids, UTMAs, etc., that obviously we're not going to be doing financial life design for those folks. So we have 119 individual clients, the average fee there is $8,400 versus about 80 clients who engage us for both, and that average fee is about $11,500.

Michael: Okay. So out of some combination of AUM fees and planning fees, are there...

Cristina: That's right. Yeah.

Michael: Is there an asset minimum or is there a firm fee minimum now?

Cristina: It's a firm fee minimum of $10,000.

Michael: Okay. And do you do a...is there any kind of, we'll waive one fee if the other one is big enough for a certain threshold? Do waive part of planning fees if assets are high enough for…

Cristina: We do at...at $4 million, really, is kind of that. At $4 million of assets. Yeah.

Michael: Then you'll start waiving some of the planning fee?

Cristina: Some of the planning...typically what we do is we'll charge a one-time planning fee for that case. And then we will include the planning in the AUM fee every year thereafter.

Michael: Okay. And so is everybody a flat $10,000 or fees are still quoted specific to the client?

Cristina: Yeah. Fees are quoted specific to the client.

Michael: So how do you determine and set those planning fees?

Cristina: Sure. We started at a base fee. So for an individual, the base fee is $6,000.

Michael: Okay.

Cristina: And then for a couple, that's where we start at $7,500. And then the complexity is added on from there. So we have complexity riders that we've used. And so some examples of that is if you have 2-plus rental properties, if you have cash flow issues. And so these clients are very few and far between, but we have clients who spend more than they make and have some of the...and really want kind of that that guidance. And they know that if they work with us, they'll be cognizant of it.

So we have a complexity rider for that because we know that we'll have to meet with them more often. If you're a business owner, if your company is fundraising, or if there's an IPO in the next 1 to 2 years, if you have stock compensation and then ISOs [Incentive Stock Options], NSOs [Non-qualified Stock Options]. And another complexity rider that we added this year was if you're going through a divorce, it's a one-time complexity fee for the year. Because we've noticed that when our clients are going through a divorce, there's just a tremendous amount of work needed.

Michael: So are all these riders, as you frame them, flat fee add-ons and you just add up all the ones there are, you've got 2-plus rentals, that's an extra X dollars and you also have stock comp, that's X dollars more. And then it maths up to whatever it maths up to.

Cristina: Exactly.

Michael: So how much do you add for these riders? Are they all different?

Cristina: They're all custom. Yeah. They're ranged between $500 and $5,000.

Michael: Are you still pricing it to each client? You have stock comp, we're going to need a rider, but I actually have to get into how much stock comp you have to figure out whether you need the $500 version, the stock comp rider, or the $5,000 version stock comp rider.

Cristina: Yes.

Michael: So you're really...every client gets a very custom complexity fee of if you have riders in these areas, we add it for each rider and then we price each rider.

Cristina: Yes.

Michael: And is there a rubric around those or just even...

Cristina: Yes. We have a calculator that really helps us do that quicker than most. Yeah.

Michael: So how does.... I'm intrigued then. So how does the calculator work?

Cristina: Yeah. So the client has a calculator respective to their financial situation. And so if they have a rental property, I will check the box and it will populate the total of the fee as I start checking off the box. And so, for example, if it's a couple and only one of them receives restricted stock units, that's the $500 complexity. Right? So they go from $7,500 to $8,000.

Michael: Okay. Yeah. Are you willing to share a copy or even just a PDF visual of what it looks like? Just, I think as more firms try to figure out and make sure the planning fees are actually properly aligned to the client, I'm seeing more interest in this and the advisor community.

Cristina: Yeah. I mean, we'll have Stephanie do it because she's the Excel wizard.

Michael: So for folks who are listening, this is episode 423. So if you go to Kitces.com/423, we'll have a, a link in the show notes for a copy of the calculator. So you can see what this looks like as it comes together. So Cristina, I guess I'm also just trying to visualize...it feels like fees in total, and I don't mean this in a negative way, but fees in total can add up to a pretty good number for you. If you're 75 basis points on the first million and a planning fee that has a $10,000 minimum, or I guess a total fee, a minimum, you're going to end out with million-dollar clients whose all-in fee is a good bit higher than 1% by the time you put the two fees together for the two components.

Cristina: That's right.

Michael: And so then I guess I just got to ask, do you get fee pressure? Do you get fee pushback? Do you get folks who are like, "Why am I paying you two fees? The advisor up the street will just charge 1% for all of it. And it's not as much as your stuff adds up to."

Cristina: I think that's a good question, Michael. We don't get pushback. But I think it's because, A, I think we've...through our website, through the onboarding process, we've vetted folks enough that they know what they're coming to us for. I would say the other part of that is that we are so confident in the value that we provide. A glance at our website makes it pretty clear that you're not working with the advisor next door, right? Our website is coral-colored and we talk about feelings very early on in the website experience.

And so I think really what we talk about is the idea of being the CFO for the family to dealing with the most complex and difficult conversations that you can be having in life. And we're here to hold space for that. And so the simple answer to your question is no, we don't get fee pressure. And our goal is not to be the largest RIA in the United States. We want to be a prominent life planning boutique firm.

Creating A Service Offering For Clients' Parents [1:02:46]

Michael: And how do you handle it when you then start getting these situations where parents need help? Are they full freight fee'd? Do they have their own complexity calculator? Is there some kind of grouping to the household thing?

Cristina: Yeah, that's a great question. The answer is it depends on the parents' financial situation. So if the parents are...if our client who's in the sandwich generation expects to support the parents in their life, then the way that we treat the relationship is we will charge a one-time project-based fee for the parents. Because again, it will provide clarity to the parents as well as to our client of what kind of support is needed and really kind of sets the boundaries and the guidelines around that financial support, which our clients are more than happy to pay for.

Michael: So effectively, it sounds like in many or most of these situations, the kids, as clients, are paying their parents planning fee for you to do planning work for mom and dad.

Cristina: I wouldn't say most of the situations, but I would say in the situation where the parents really expect to be supported by their children, where their financial resources are quite limited.

Michael: Then support may as well start at the planning fee.

Cristina: Exactly.

Michael: We'll just practice this right now.

Cristina: And again, I mean, it's not only just the...it sets expectations, it sets boundaries, but it also provides grounds for having this conversation. What we found is that a lot of the parents that expect support expect unlimited support. And that's frankly not possible. And so a lot of those conversations that we had early on with the folks in the sandwich generation were like, "I don't know how to tell my parents that this is not the infinite honeypot. I don't have all the money in the world. So how do I do this the right way?" And so we propose this solution. And it's worked out well for those folks. And then the alternative to that would be where we have clients who say, "I don't really...we're not on the same page as the advisor that my parents work with. They've really just managed their investments and they've never really given them any insight into their financial future…How to retire, can they retire, etc." And so when that's the case, that's when we'll go again back to the, the fee calculator and really create a separate engagement and work with the parent or parents.

Cristina's Evolution To An Upmarket Planning Offering [1:05:46]

Michael: How did this up market, for lack of a better term, this up market evolution come for you? I mean, I'm struck that just, at the end of the day, you started at $2,400 for friends, family, and mirror foggers. And 5 or 6 years later, we're $10,000 minimum fee and working with clients that are moving further up than that. What moved the needle that far up market that quickly? How did you get to high dollar clients like that in the span of 5 years?

Cristina: Part of it is like, we always knew that's where we were going to be. Right? I think part of it is just Stephanie and I knew what we wanted this firm to look like from the very beginning. And we worked our butts off to get here. We've made a ton of mistakes. We've done a lot of things wrong. But the hard work, the perseverance, the attention to the nuances of this business, and most importantly, the care and the connection that we have with clients, this is such an amazingly gratifying career. And working with our clients is the reason why we show up every day.

Michael: So what was the vision 6 years ago?

Cristina: The vision 6 years ago was we didn't have any numbers to that vision. I would say that we wanted to grow. We were like, "We want to be $1 to $2 million in revenue." And for that, we were like, "We want to manage 100 million in assets." Right? We kind of just was...we're doing the kind of old school back of the napkin, this is where we want to be. And then we realized it was way harder to do that. And we realized that there, again, through financial life planning, that there are a subset of clients who want to have deep conversations, strong relationships with their advisors, who they call their guides rather than just their investment guy. And so our clients, their belief and partnership in us has led to these higher fees, because they believe in the value that we provide. And then these clients go out and tell, not only their parents, but they tell their friends. And I'd still say...I'd say now, 60% of our new incoming prospects come from referrals.

Michael: So I get that a lot of this flows from referrals now, but you have to get good clients to get good referrals from good clients. So how did... I'm still just trying to understand how that flywheel got going for you that you were able to go up to $2,400 clients, $4,500 clients, $6,000 clients, $10,000 minimum clients over the span of 4 or 5 years.

Cristina: Sure. So starting January of 2019, we started our blog and our newsletter and we were adamant. And so I'm effectively the head of marketing at Mana. And I was adamant that we do that. I knew working with advisors for 12 years, that was one of the areas that I saw no one was doing anything. I was like, "Why isn't anyone on social media?" And obviously you and everyone at XYPN was really starting that in the early 2010s. And I just remember just seeing...again, it was such a blue ocean.

So we started blogging. We got into SEO. We were on Instagram from the very beginning. We've tried so many different things on Instagram, just because we're Instagram natives. And it's just fun for us to do. We now...yeah, our latest version is we do weight training while talking personal finance. We call it "sweat equity Saturdays."

But that's what we did. I mean, we spent a lot of time in the early days. We got on a lot of on-brand podcasts. And what I mean by that is that we did not get on financial advisor-centric podcasts, but we got on podcasts that our future clients were listening to. And that really came through our network. "Hey, my friend's cousin runs this podcast about pop culture. Money's kind of important. Do you want to be part of it?" "Sure. We're in." Right? And so the flywheel started that way, where we kind of got on the blogs and podcasts of some brands and influencers that we really liked. And then, all of a sudden, we started hearing from a lot more people.

Michael: And by this time, you're already really clear about, we do financial life planning, financial life design.

Cristina: That's right.

Michael: We know what these people are like, we know where they're showing up. So you know how to talk to them or connect with them when you're talking on a podcast that they might be listening to.

Cristina: Yeah.

What Mana Life Design Looks Like Today [1:12:09]

Michael: Okay. So what so what does all this add up to for, I guess, just state of the business today? I think you mentioned earlier, 119 clients, I guess about 80 kind of core planning and investments and, and if you on the edges, what is it for, is it assets or revenue? I don't know how you measure.

Cristina: We crossed a million in assets about a month and a half ago. Sorry, a million in revenue.

Michael: Okay. And then what staff structure?

Cristina: And staff, we're a team of five.

Michael: Okay.

Cristina: And we're all full time, we do have one part time, we call her our director of UX. She happens to have a full-time job at Google. But she also just...she helps us design everything we put out and looks at everything from a user experience point of view. She has a PhD in data visualization. So she's our part-time employee. But we have 2 full time financial planners, an operations associate, and then Stephanie and I are lead advisors.

Michael: Okay. And is it kind of teams that way? You have a planner support person, Stephanie is a planner support person, 2 teams of 2, and then a shared operations associate?

Cristina: Actually, no. So we actually...the way that we structured it is that every client that comes in is a client of Mana's. The planners each get a subset of clients. But any of those clients can come to either Stephanie or I. So Stephanie...

Michael: Interesting.

Cristina: I tried to come up with a different idea of a diamond team, haven't come up with the right language yet. But really, Stephanie and I we have different specialties. So she's really very tax and investment-heavy. I'm more planning-focused with life planning, obviously, as something that I enjoy doing so much.

Michael: Okay. Interesting. So the planners, are they literally the primary relationship manager to each client? And you and Stephanie are expert on call when they need to bring you in? Or are you more immersed than that?

Cristina: I would say that we speak to the clients primarily. But the planner's job really is getting in the weeds with the numbers. So as part of our service, we deliver annual updates to every one of our clients, meaning comprehensive financial life plans. And so they're in eMoney, and they're absorbing all the data that we receive from the client ahead of the annual update. And then the planner joins one of us to deliver the annual update to the client. And then Stephanie and I are responsible for bringing in clients, and also bringing them through the onboarding process.

Michael: Okay. And do you feel you have capacity at kind of this size and team structure with the client base that you've got?

Cristina: We do. We do. So we just actually implemented the…I'd say 4 months ago, we split up that client base. So we had just hired our fifth teammate in September. And so ahead of that, our senior financial planner was doing all of the work of the planning with our help, of course, because there was a capacity issue then. But now that we have our second planner, that we've now split up the client base. And we definitely have capacity now.

What Surprised Cristina The Most Building Her Advisory Business [1:16:31]

Michael: Okay. So then as you reflect on this and how it's evolved, what surprised you the most about this path of building the advisory business?

Cristina: When I think about surprising, it's really the idea of the shift in how I thought it was going to be. And when I thought I was going to launch this business, I was an employee of a company. I was an investment wholesaler, but I also got to see what employee financial advisors, how they worked. And the biggest surprise was the amount of time, the amount of attention required to being an excellent firm owner, and how much code switching that really takes.

Michael: Were there particular parts of it that were challenging or surprising?

Cristina: Yes. For me, my job prior to this was to sell, right? So I was only responsible for bringing in clients and keeping them happy and continuing to service them. But really, for me, I'd never really had experience on the actual operating of a business. And so reviewing our P&L [Profit and Loss statement] monthly, right? That was super surprising to me. Oh, my gosh, all of the stuff, all this technology costs money. All of the decisions we're making really weighs on the bottom line. And so dedicating time to business strategy was something that I never was cognizant of. And I can thank Stephanie for really bringing me up to speed there when we launched this business.

Lessons Cristina Learned From Hiring [1:18:31]

Michael: So what was the low point for you on the journey?

Cristina: To me, the low point had, if I look back on the last 6 years, the low point really was knowing when to hire and who to hire. We admittedly have made mistakes. We hired too early. And we hired without really thinking about what role would this new employee take in our firm. A lot of it was, okay, we're just going to...everyone's going to do everything. And it's just going to...we're going to run at a thousand miles an hour. And turns out that doesn't work very well. And so really coming up with true roles and responsibilities and getting that...as we grow, the beauty of it is that we get to become experts in what we do and less responsible for everything else. And so I'd say the low was really our hiring journey.

Michael: So can you share more about that? What was the hiring too early mistake?

Cristina: I'll tell you in a succinct way, the low was in 2021, we had hired 2 people kind of at the same time without really a plan for how each one was really going to fit into the business. And we burnt them out, Michael. We burnt them out because Stephanie and I were still trying to figure out how does this all work, and how do we do everything? And we were still doing too much. And so as a result, both of those employees quit within 5 days of each other at the end of that year. And that was a huge blow.

Michael: That was all your people at the time.

Cristina: That was literally our entire team.

Michael: So in the first part of 2021, you went from 2 to 4, and within 5 days of New Years, you were back at 2?

Cristina: That's right. Yeah.

Michael: After having grown and now having more clients to serve.

Cristina: And that year, we brought 4 to 5 clients on a month.

Michael: All right. So now helping us in further. So what had you done that didn't work or that so blew up on you?

Cristina: A number of things. I think the first one was doing too much for clients in that same vein of cashflow, for example. We were still categorizing everyone's expenses. We were doing it...the last 6 months, we were trying to provide insights. We weren't doing as detailed as reports, but it was still too much for very little upside on the client side. And so again, one of those employees was really responsible for doing that. And that is a really lonely and also very tiring job. And so that would be one. And then I'd also say one of the best pieces of advice that I've received in the past couple of years is when you hire employees, you want to define a role so that their job is always replaceable or replicable Versus hiring people and having them do a little bit of everything, because should something happen to that person, you are screwed.

Michael: Because it's really hard to train a new person to do a little bit of everything.

Cristina: All those things. And I think we did that for both of those employees.

Michael: So I've got to ask this, well, so what do you do when you took on 4 to 5 clients a month and have been doing all this detailed cash flow planning work for clients, and then both of the people who literally do that work quit?

Cristina: A lot of soul searching.

Michael: So if you think service delivery to client, what happened when you had to do meetings the next few weeks?

Cristina: Yeah, it was...the way that Stephanie and I had to start thinking was how do we do less better?

Michael: Because you didn't anyone to do it anyway.

Cristina: Because we had no one doing any of the busy work.

Michael: But we have to start figuring...was that basically what show ups, okay, we don't have these people, what can we start cutting?

Cristina: Exactly. We had to do it. We had to do it. And honestly, it was...now, again, looking back with hindsight, it was probably the greatest gift that we were shocked into that existence because we had to figure it out very quickly. And we just started, if it's not a heck yes, if it's not 90% or more conviction of a heck yes, it's a heck no. We're not doing it. And we just cut so many things that next year and really focused on what was most important.

Michael: Out of curiosity, what else got cut?

Cristina: Besides all the cashflow stuff?

Michael: Yeah.

Cristina: There were. I'd say the promises to clients that we'd meet every quarter, we really solidified our annual update process that year. And we really...

Michael: Our annual, not 4 times a year, but once annual meeting process.

Cristina: Once annual. We're here for you throughout the year. But this is where our clients have received the most value, is by meeting with us comprehensively once a year where we review everything that's most important. And that will enable us to guide you to make good decisions throughout the rest of the year.

Michael: So cashflow, sort of tracking and doing it so manually for clients stopped, meeting cadence cut way back.

Leveraging AI And Database Software To Boost Efficiency [1:25:39]

Cristina: And then we started relying or not relying, but we became more adept at utilizing technology and became very open. I think in 2018, when we were more cash strapped, it was kind of, if it costs any money, it's too expensive. So we really needed to think about, is this a good investment? If so, how do we utilize it to the nth degree? And so we really... Zapier is an amazing piece of technology that we use daily for a lot of things. We love Airtable, which is our client database. And then we use Redtail. And now we've integrated Fathom, the AI notetaker, and that's created even greater efficiency.

Michael: So I think a lot of folks are familiar with Redtail. I'm curious to hear more, how exactly are you using Airtable?

Cristina: So Airtable is really a database. And so we utilize it in a whole slew of ways. It's a way that we keep track of clients in different ways. So their net worth growth, their specific characteristics about our clients. We use it as compliance checklists for various things. We will look at client anniversaries. It's literally every kind of data point about a client, you can slice and dice so many different ways.

Michael: So what goes in Airtable versus Redtail then? A lot of firms will track things like anniversaries and characteristics of clients in their CRM.

Cristina: This is the perennial question among our team. But I would say that although Redtail will have some of those things, you can't find it as easily. So we have a table called Client Anniversaries, where you can just control, find client and you know where the anniversary is. Or if you want to find the engagement letter of the client, just to double check something, we have all of those engagement letters in Airtable. If you want to find the IPS [Investment Policy Statement] of a client, we also have that in Airtable. So it's a receptacle for documents, but also qualitative and quantitative descriptors of our clients.

Michael: Okay. And then how are you using Fathom in practice?

Cristina: Fathom is amazing. And shout out to Rebecca Connor for teaching us how to use that earlier this year. But we use it to record client conversations. And we tell them ahead of time that we are using an AI notetaker to capture notes so that we can be more present in the client meetings.

Michael: I like that framing. Does anyone push back on it?

Cristina: We have one client who has pushed back because she's a very private person. And that's okay. And we also say that's okay. But the rest of our clients, we have not had...

Michael: One out of 119.

Cristina: Yeah. And then what we also found, because we integrated Toggl time tracking earlier this year, just to see... We have gut feelings about a lot of things, but really putting the numbers behind how much time do we spend doing X, Y, and Z. And so one of our promises to our clients is you will get an in-depth email that summarizes our meetings and your respective action steps as a result of the meeting the day after our meeting. And that's a promise. And every one of our clients receives that after a meeting. And we found that we were spending a lot of time summarizing the meeting in email.

Despite one of us... There's always two people in a meeting. And we have a notetaker. And so that notetaker was never present, but was just taking notes. And so now we have two people and the notetaker. And so it allows both members of the team that are in the meeting to be very present. And Fathom takes better notes than any of us. And we'll summarize that. We've given Fathom a template of how we want it summarized. And Fathom spits out the summary. And so all we have to do is really just review it for completeness and accuracy.

Michael: Interesting. So you're not just using Fathom to capture the recording and an internal summary. You're essentially using Fathom's summary output as what goes into the email, the post email to clients with an edit review.

Cristina: With our template, correct.

Michael: With your template and with an editing review for completeness and accuracy. Because sometimes it gets a little off.

Cristina: And so that cut down meeting summaries from 30 to 45 minutes apiece down to 10 to 15 minutes.

Cristina's Advice For Her Younger Self And For Newer Advisors [1:31:13]

Michael: So what else do you know now you wish you could go back and tell you 6 or 7 years ago when you were starting down this journey?

Cristina: For me when we launched...we talked a little bit about this, but we spent a lot of time creating processes. "What happens if we do this? How do we do this?" And part of me, yes, that was beneficial in some ways, but again, looking back 6 years, none of those processes are still around. So I think for my advice to earlier me is put a limit on getting ready to get ready and just sell. Go bring on clients. Which is ironic because that's all I did, was...so I think when we were creating this business, my sales, my passion for sales, my vision for sales kind of took a back seat because I wanted to learn how to do the other things. But in reality, I think a lot of those early pains could have been solved by more revenue.

Michael: When I do find there's a sort of this awkward reality early on in any business, it's especially challenging when we're sort of systems- and process-oriented people, that until you have a certain volume of clients and revenue, it doesn't really matter if you're efficient. You already have spare time because there aren't enough clients to fill your time yet. So you can be wildly inefficient with 10 clients, it just doesn't matter. Finish your inefficient process and then go get your 11th, 12th client.

Cristina: That's right.

Michael: It does way more to move the needle than being more efficient about the 10 clients so you can free up more time when you already had enough time. Then you get more clients.

Cristina: Well said.

Michael: Then you get more clients and changes and then something matters, but early on, if there's enough time to serve the clients and go do business development, more efficiency doesn't really matter at that point. So is there other advice just that you would give younger, newer advisors getting launched, getting started with their careers today?

Cristina: First off, I think if you're even considering being an advisor, the answer is yes. Do it. What an incredible career this can be for people, and I especially...our friend and colleague, Meg Bartelt, talks about this quite a bit, but as a female, there is such a need for more female financial planners, financial advisors that are doing the real work. And so if that's you, then do it because you will be successful. And there is truly an incredibly vast blue ocean of folks that need real financial advice.

What Success Means To Cristina [1:34:43]

Michael: So as we wrap up, this is a podcast about success and just one of the themes that comes up is the word success means different things to different people, sometimes different things to us as we go through the stages of our lives. So you have this business that's in a wonderfully successful place, you're cresting a million dollars just 6 years in. So the business seems to be doing very well and successfully. How do you define success for yourself at this point?

Cristina: I would say the word that first pops into my mind is spaciousness. And spaciousness in my day's spaciousness in my weeks, and spaciousness in my year. So I think about that spaciousness in my days being, do I have time to just check in with myself, do a quick meditation before I go into a meeting and not feel rushed every moment of every single minute of the day? And then weeks, do I have time to pick my kids up and make dinner for my kids every night, which is, for me, that is successful me right there. Other things, having the ability to plan and strategize. That, to me, is...it's a result of success is the ability to plan. And another thing that success means to me is having the trust of my clients to shepherd them through this wild ride of life.

Michael: I love it. I love it, Cristina. Thank you so much for joining us on the "Financial Advisor Success" podcast.

Cristina: It was a pleasure. Thank you, Michael.

Michael: Thank you.