Redefining Success In Your Financial Planning Firm

Maddy Roche: Hello and welcome to XYPN Radio, I am Maddy Roche an executive business coach and consultant here at XYPN, as well as the host of this podcast. Today I have Brenna Baucum, founder of Collective Wealth Planning, a fee only firm out of Salem, Oregon, on the podcast with me. Brenna launched her firm 21 months ago, and as of this recording, has 21 ongoing clients and 21 million of assets under management. Today we have one of the more authentic and transparent conversations that we've had on this show.

Brenna talks a lot about what it's like to remain authentic to herself, and to her goals and values as she built her firm. She discusses what decisions she's made from her niche, to her marketing that have allowed her to build a firm that she's proud of and that serves her clientele, Oregon Public Employees, effectively.

We discuss the moving target of what success means for advisors, and what belief in enough means to her. She shares her advice to you, our listeners, about building a community around you for support, and how to avoid over committing early on.

You'll certainly find this episode meaningful and enlightening. Here's my interview with Brenna. Welcome to XYPN radio, Brenna. So nice to have you here.

Brenna Baucum: It's really nice to be here. I've been looking forward to this all week. So thanks for having me.

Maddy Roche: Awesome. I think our listeners are going to learn a lot from you, but before we dive in Brenna, I would love for you to introduce yourself and the firm you've built.

Brenna Baucum: Sure. Yeah. My name is Brenna Baucum and I am here in beautiful Salem, Oregon. I love this community and I'm sure that will be a theme throughout our conversation, is the importance of community. My practice is Collective Wealth Planning and it is 21 months old a week ago, so celebrating an important milestone as I approached my two year mark, which has been full of accomplishments and celebrations and tears and all of the things that happen in your first few years of working. So I love it. Wouldn't have it any other way.

Maddy Roche: Brenna, I loved how you explained all those emotions that advisors feel in the first few years of their practices, and I'm sure we'll get into some of them as our conversation progresses. But you actually said something really nice at the start of our call as we got on this morning, which is that hearing the numbers and under the hood information about a firm was always helpful to you as you listen to XYPN Radio. So, if you're comfortable would you be willing to talk about your revenue, how big your firm is in terms of client size, things like that?

Brenna Baucum: Sure. Yeah, absolutely. So, one of the things that's important for context here is who I serve. So my niche is Oregon Public Employees and retirees. So I would say about 70 percent of my client families fall into the public employee space. The other 30, 40 percent are retirees. And I also offer services in two different ways to meet people both when they're working and when they're retired.

So on the retired side, my client families ongoing who I serve, about 21 households. And this is my 21, 21st month, as I said, and I have about 21 million under management. And so it was just funny. I don't know what it is about 21 right now, but it's a very auspicious number for me. So that is, and there's some context to those numbers I would love to give at some point, and then on the other side project based planning for a flat fee. So since I opened in January of 2023, I've had about 15 of those project based plans, and that has brought in about 100,000 in revenue. So those are the big revenue streams for my practice. And then, I was also very fortunate to do some consulting for Money Quotient during my first year.

So the power of having an alternative income stream in those early months, I'm a big advocate for that.

Maddy Roche: Wow.

Congratulations, Brenna. What a great start.

Brenna Baucum: Thank you. Yeah. It has been very affirming and very humbling. And maybe I'll share a little bit of the context I just referenced too, if you're okay with that.

Maddy Roche: I would love that.

Brenna Baucum: So I worked for an independent RIA for eight years here in Salem before I launched my own practice and it was really important to me not to solicit from that firm when I started.

I did not want to build my business based on taking business from someone else. And so I didn't. And Salem is a small town. And so people, when other clients that I had early on who wanted to work together again, came and found me organically and though that was the affirming part, right? In those first three months or so to have familiar names come, I think my fourth day of business, I had my first client meeting with one of my clients I had for 11 years before, was so special. Anyway, so those first few months were a number of clients. I think five in total have joined me in my new practice that I used to work with and those five represent about half of the AUM I manage right now. And so what I didn't want to do was come on the podcast and say, Oh, 21 million under management in 21 months and have people who are starting feel like, what?

How do you do that? So while I technically didn't have a book to come with me that I bought, or that was a guaranteed thing, this leap of faith in starting my own practice and having the groundwork laid of strong client relationships, strong engagement in the community, all of those things led to just the affirming and really humbling fact that

former clients came and found me and that was just the scaffolding for the business and the success that built on top of that.

Maddy Roche: Thank you for that transparency. I do think it's a really important lesson of the kind of benefit advisors can get by working at a different firm before they start their own. Not that every advisor will come with five to ten or even more clients from that previous firm but just the exposure to what it's like to develop the cadence and candor with clients, be able to establish those relationships, serve them, through a fiduciary fee only way.

So could you tell us about what your professional experience in this industry was before you started.

Brenna Baucum: Yeah, sure. So I had started in 2013, in this industry. And before that for six years before that I was in the community and we were talking about this before we started and video production was my role, and that put me in the room with a lot of movers and shakers in our community. We put together videos for C-SPAN, we put together videos for nonprofit organizations in town, executive directors, president of the chamber, all of these pieces of people that are doing really good work to make our community a wonderful place to live.

And so that foundation, I feel like I would be remiss not to recognize that foundation as part of what made me a successful advisor when I started in this service industry. So I started in financial services in 2013, got my 65 and my CFP® and had a really wonderful experience with a couple of mentors at that practice in the early years, showing me how to be an advisor, sitting in on client meetings on day one was a wonderful gift that I am forever grateful for.

And so I was with that practice for eight years. And there were just some signs that it was time to move on. And I went and worked for Money Quotient for a little while before starting my own practice, as I said at the beginning of January 2023.

Maddy Roche: And what made you decide as you were pivoting away from your former firm that going out on your own was the right move?

Brenna Baucum: Yeah, I think I have always been entrepreneurial in spirit. So every job I've ever had I've moved my way into the levels of management as high as I could before moving on. And I had made it very clear to both before I left and got into financial services and when I left that former firm that my hope was ownership and leadership in that way.

And that was the agreed upon arrangement. and when it turned out that idea shifted for the other previous owner that he decided he didn't want to do that it was just clear to me I had to go find my own path. So if that wasn't going to work out the way that we had agreed upon, then I needed to go and find a way to do that.

And on my own seemed like, it seemed honestly like I can always go work for someone else. This is the season of my life to take this leap of faith on myself and try this. And again, it's just been a very affirming journey.

Maddy Roche: Absolutely. I love that there were external pressures bringing you to this as well as you listening to that intuitive internal clock and language of your own. Could you describe it a bit more of what it means to have felt entrepreneurial in spirit over the years?

Brenna Baucum: Sure. I think there's a level of ownership you take over your work or pride of ownership that you take over your work. So when I would work with client families, I took very personally the success of their plan, the follow through with the importance of getting that DPOA, whatever what was on their to do list, being an advocate for them as much as possible, because not only it was the right thing to do, but also it was a representation of the firm and our successes and being a part of, this organization is looking for sponsorship,

we should do that. And, this team is struggling. That was very much part of what we saw in the last few years. What I saw in the last few years at that practice was a team that felt leaderless and trying to step into that role and take care of a team that really needed it. I love that. I love working with a team.

It's definitely one of the pieces that is harder when you are a solo, of course, organizations like XY and others where you feel. Like you're not alone. I think that's even your, isn't that your motto? 

Maddy Roche: It's one of them. Yes, absolutely.

Brenna Baucum: Well chosen because it's very accurate. But working with a team, I think and having some level of commitment to and desire to see their successes as well as the success of the firm, I think is part of, if you have any of those, you might have that entrepreneurial spirit underlying this.

Maddy Roche: Beautifully said. I'm wondering as you entered into your first year of running your firm, what didn't you expect about what it meant to be an entrepreneur in this space?

Brenna Baucum: I have an answer for you right away because one of the things that was beautiful about my time at Money Quotient is I got to meet a ton of advisors doing it their way, right? People who were, a lot of them were XY members, a lot of them were solo or just two people at the firm, and so I got to hear about The some of the struggles and some of the things that were exciting and everyone told me it's so much work It is so much work to start your own firm and I believed them very much And what I felt like nobody quite properly prepared me for was how hard it is to stop thinking about it. 

Maddy Roche: I'm so glad you say this. Keep going.

Brenna Baucum: Yeah, it is such a, especially when you start to have successes, I'm sure it's the same when you have, struggles as well.

But when you start to see some green lights popping up and, Ooh, this is going well, Oh, I could in the shower. Oh, you know what I should write a blog about, Oh, you know what I should, I need to get on this. I need to do this. I need to contact this person. There were so many, and I still struggle with the balance of it.

Part of the reason I did this was to be able to spend a lot of time with my family, go to my kids class, be the chaperone on the trip to the zoo, all of those things. And so it's such a balancing act of trying to be, to acknowledge and celebrate the reasons which you started this practice, and also, have that excitement because this is like another It's not like another kid.

It's very different than having a kid, but it is like something you love a lot. I love my practice. I love it. And I'm so committed to success that it is sometimes, hard to put it aside and be fully present in the other reasons why I did this.

Maddy Roche: I'm so glad you're talking about this and how all encompassing this identity can become. I coach a lot of advisors who are just entering into this space and are trying to, define what time allocation looks like in terms of how they spend time with their business and one of my most important lessons all the time is that you're spending all your time thinking about your business.

if you're anything like Brenna and what she's just shared. So we have to be really intentional with what the head down work looks like and how long we let that take because a lot of the real work is happening on the sidelines of those soccer games as you're thinking about the blogs or you're in the shower.

So I'd be interested in your advice around how do you turn it down and do you need to turn it down in the first few years?

Brenna Baucum: Yeah, I think one of the other great pieces of advice I got from other advisors. And again, that's a huge piece. So I feel like of my success is being able to learn from the generosity and sharing of so many other advisors. but one of the pieces was just around really basic time blocking for your week.

So I see. Clients three days a week and one week a month. I don't see clients at all. So my calendar is very intentionally blocked and timed in that way, which sometimes feels like too limiting, right? I'll look at my calendar availability and think, Oh no, what if somebody wants to meet with me and I'm not available?

And that's the key, right? Is having faith in enough. Faith that when, if that client is a right fit, the time that you are available and that you have set is going to be the right time for them and not manipulating yourself and turning yourself into this. I can answer the phone anytime, weekends, nights, sure, being really careful about that kind, that from the very beginning was very clear to me around healthy boundaries.

And then I think in terms of shifting focus and making sure that you can turn it at least down, I don't think you can turn it off, but I think you can turn it down, is the importance of really practical, phone goes on DND at five o'clock or, those kinds of things where my email doesn't come through my work email does not come through my phone on weekends. That kind of stuff that you have to, because it's what's hard about it, it's this dopamine hit.

Every time a new client books or, you're like, Ooh and then you start to feel a little bit of let down if you don't get that. And that's, that's a bad place to be. And I can speak from experience where you're like, I need to stop looking to my phone and my business for some of that little hit.

And I need to instead just be present here and have the natural excitement and dopamine rush of being with my kid. And being present outside and being in the pool and swimming where you can't be on your phone. So those kinds of things that I think are important and ever changing, ever growing lessons as a business owner, I'm sure I'm going to continue to be a student of that.

Maddy Roche: Have you been able to make that transition to being able to find that dopamine from the rest of your life outside of this business? I've worked in the space of entrepreneurs for so long. And I just see so many of them really finding an identity and placing their value on their business, their personal value on the business.

And I'm wondering, you feel so evolved in so many different ways, Brenna, that can you advise our listeners around is it possible to continue to find those dopamine hits outside of work?

Brenna Baucum: Yeah. I think it takes an accountability partner, at least for me, it takes an accountability partner to be able, and that person can't be your partner, like your life partner. But I've had really great success and I just love her. Jennifer Gray is a therapist and a counselor here in the Portland area.

She works with people remotely and she focuses specifically on people in financial services and women in particular. So if you are feeling in particular overwhelmed by, or stressed out by, she's my accountability partner to be able to go to and say, Did you go out into the garden this week?

Did you stop working at three o'clock? Like you said you were going to and if not let's talk about that. What does that mean? And what were we looking for? Was it really that project that needed to be done or are we falling back into some habits? So, yeah, I really valued having. Her as a thought partner in these early years, as I'm transitioning to understanding what does this look like sustainably for me, for my family long term?

Maddy Roche: I give you a lot of credit for seeking outside support here. A lot of people will pull the lever of relying on their romantic partner for this and that is not always an identity that they want to have, or is it an accountability that they should have. And of course many members lean on each other, which I know you're involved in our network, quite well, but to have an outside therapist or coach to be able to help hold you accountable, is a level of self awareness that I think more advisors should look into.

I often ask advisors and maybe you are one of the outliers. If they have a financial planner themselves, do you work with a financial planner, Brenna?

Brenna Baucum: Yeah, actually that was, I often note that as one of two really good decisions I made before I launched was meeting with someone else because we all know in this industry, you can make a financial plan look a certain way with a few tweaks if you really wanted to. And I was so biased about wanting this to work and wanting to launch my practice.

I had to have somebody else from the outside and it was especially beneficial for me and my husband to be able to be enjoying it as clients, as opposed to me trying to facilitate the thing that wouldn't work. So it was threefold that those benefits, it was having the affirmation that yes, this is going to work, you can do this. And then learning more about Ben and how his approach to money, how he felt about this potential of me going out on my own, and then just that, yeah that confidence building of someone else thinks I can do this too. It's not just, it's not just Ben and I, our advisor thinks so too. So yeah, I'm a big proponent of getting that outside feedback.

Maddy Roche: Oh, I'm so thankful you said yes to that question. I will be on a call with 20 brand new members as they're starting their firms and I'll ask who's worked with a financial planner before, or who currently is engaged in a financial planning process and no one will raise their hands. And I think Brenna has just perfectly outlined three great reasons why having one, as you start this firm can be deeply validating and helpful to you and your partner.

So, with your permission, Brenna, I would love to shift focus a bit and move more into the space of who you work with, your decision around your niche, how you've marketed and talk about some of the growth you've experienced from those decisions. So oregon public employees. Tell me about that.

Brenna Baucum: Yeah. So Oregon has one pension system. Most states will have a pension system for nurses, one for teachers, one for firefighters or police. We just have one big messy one and like tax code, right? Where it's cobbled together because they're trying to meet the needs of a bunch of different people

and so it can be really complicated. There's different tiers. There's different elements to that retirement plan, including a pension, including a defined contribution, including an optional 457B. there's all of these different moving parts to it. And I worked, the reason I picked that niche was In part, it was practical. I'm in Salem, the capital of Oregon. We have a lot of public employees here. It was also experience. So I've had worked with several public employees when I was with the independent RIA. And then there's also a little bit of a authenticity fit. So oftentimes people in public service are drawn to that.

Because they have a heart for service and they want to be a part of something bigger. And that very much aligns with the collective part of my business name, that we are all in this together the way we choose to spend our resources affects each other. And so there, so those three things just led me to feeling like public employees was the right fit.

And, and it's been great. There's been, aside from getting very specific on blogs around what is, here are your different pension options. Let's dive into that. What does that look like? Here are all the different ones here are some pros and cons you might think about. This might be a good fit, if. It might not be a good fit, if. So really trying to get as detailed as possible, but also as easy to find you just fire hose people with all the information about their retirement plan. Nothing's going to stick, but if you can pick in on, okay, here's one piece that you might be searching for right now in this season of your life.

So creating content around that's not only blogs that are, highly optimized for SEO, as much as my limited knowledge of SEO is as well as YouTube videos to go with. So I've found that combination of having those two things together. To make it so that when someone searches what is Oregon PERS IAP, that's our individual account program here, my video pops up right away. And because there's no one else making videos about this, for some reason, no one else is making videos about Oregon PERS and so that in and of itself, it's just as it was finding the right niche, not only that hit those three things, but also that I knew I wasn't going to have luck writing, out ranking Nerd Wallet on how to contribute to a Roth or whatever, like there's enough great content out there about that.

So what I really wanted to do is find a niche. And I feel I have. Find a niche that I can create really unique content that doesn't exist yet, even if it means, and I've had a couple of advisors say this to me, well that means you're only serving people in Oregon. And I said, yeah, potentially 400,000 people in Oregon.

Because that's about how many public employees there are. And I know niching can feel limiting and scary at first. And it was for me too. I think at first I was broader. I think I said something about public employees and this and that and this. And as time went on it just became so apparent to me how much easier it is. And I know Kitces and XY are such proponents of niching, but it's so much, it makes my job so much easier to have a niche. I can really drill down on that expertise. And then again, creating content, I've got a direction to go.

Maddy Roche: It's good for your brain and it's good for your business to be able to help put boundaries to what you write about and help you define deeper those topics that are relevant to those ideal markets is as you say it makes your life much easier. And just to that note as we work with advisors, just entering into this space. Content

marketing is one of the strategies and the levers they want to pull, which is great. It should absolutely be one leg to the marketing strategy that you're employing, but creating more noise in this industry, as you say there's a lot of great articles written about some of this stuff. There's also way more than enough articles, mediocre articles written about those

Brenna Baucum: Sure.

Maddy Roche: And we just don't need any more of that. Yet you bring to the table this specificity to this target market that makes it accessible finally in a space that is not written about. And so if we can challenge you listeners to do anything, it's to really think about how can you be relevant and out compete the noise that is really getting too loud in this industry, quite frankly.

Brenna Baucum: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that earlier I was describing the avenues of service for my clients. So I would say the majority of folks who are finding me through my YouTube channel or through my blogs are people who are in that project based flat fee, were working, they're still five years from retirement.

All their money is right where it should be in their retirement plans through work. And then the other side of the people that I serve are retirees. And so that is where we see more of the assets under management type of people who want a one stop. I want one person to call that type of an arrangement.

So the other side of what I create content wise is for. People and the different challenges you have as you age in that last quarter of life. I have a real soft spot for working with folks in their seventies, eighties, and I have a couple of clients in their nineties. And so it's, I think there's some comfort that client families have too, in working together and knowing there's a continuum of potential work that we can do together.

My expertise isn't just in the alphabet soup of acronyms that come with Oregon PERS, but also in RMDs, QCDs and all the things that come when you get into retirement and that we want to tackle. So and then I think the other benefit of that is having started this firm in my early 40s means that no one's afraid I'm going to retire before they need me.

So there's all of these pieces again that kind of come together to make this niche, who I serve, my passion and heart for this all of it works together. 

Maddy Roche: I think you're giving our listeners some permission here that again, niching is part of your marketing strategy. It helps make decisions. Good for your business, good for your brain, but it doesn't mean that you can only work with those people. And I answer that question a lot to advisors around going hard into a niche is going to limit everyone else from coming to me.

Can you talk a bit about how you've been able to explain that, that discrepancy in terms of who you're marketing towards versus who ends up being a client of yours. 

Brenna Baucum: A great deal of the people that I've been fortunate to receive referrals from have come from my community or from my client base. And my clients have friends outside of Oregon PERS. They don't necessarily look to me, they look to me as somebody who's competent to be able to answer their questions but also they're like, this is my advisor.

This is my Oregon PERS advisor. And so there's connections there that happen having been in this industry and in this community for a long time, CPAs and attorneys are referring to me often for clients that are not Oregon public employees sometimes. But mostly, Hey this person I just know your personality is going to be a great fit.

She needs XYZ. I think I'd really like to make an introduction, those kinds of things that I think you're just, if you can be out there and around the people that you know, like, and trust they're going to send people that are a closer fit. And again it's not necessarily about your niche, sometimes it is.

Makes it easy for you to come top of mind, right? Rather than like, I serve nice people. I've heard some advisors say like, who's your niche? I work with nice people. Okay. Well, that's not going to come to the top of the CPA's mind when they have someone sitting across from them asking. So I think that's the benefit of what a niche does is, Oh you're, Brenna works with public employees.

Right. So I won't, I would not go back, away from the niche. I found that's been very useful.

Maddy Roche: That's awesome. And, you can absolutely filter who you take on as clients through the lens of are they nice or not? But Brenna makes a slam dunk point here that it is the referability is the name of the game when it comes to your niche. Will people remember you, because of who you work with and likely, yes.

Brenna, so I've heard that you're getting some internal referrals happening, which is totally what we expect as you approach kind of the 15 to 20 client number, those internal referrals actually become one of your main lead sources. But early on, like, can you paint the picture of, what your marketing strategy looked like?

Brenna Baucum: I have, as I've mentioned, I've always been involved in my community. So I'm a Rotarian. I serve on a couple of boards, volunteer at the food share. These are all things I would do whether or not I was an advisor. They're things I do because I genuinely enjoy doing them. I genuinely enjoy the communities that come from them.

And that happens to be really beneficial for business too. Where when people are thinking of an advisor, they say, Oh there's an advisor in my Rotary Club that's really involved, Right? So it's being present, it's being around, but in an authentic way. Because if you show up to something like that with the intention of getting business, it'll be transparent and a total turn off.

So my advice to folks isn't to join Rotary to get business. It is to find what you genuinely align with and what you care about and plug into that. So that was a big piece early on, that I did. I was also very intentional about handwritten thank you letters, which take time but nobody does it.

So it means a lot. So every time a COI referred to me, I would handwrite a thank you note and put a couple of business cards inside and send it to them. And I still do that today. because I don't, even if the referral wasn't a fit. Well, that's a good reason for me to schedule a lunch with this person and say, Hey I want to make sure the people I'm sending to you are a fit.

And naturally they ask the same question, right? So that has been an intentional piece of this too. Once a month at least I have lunch with an attorney, a CPA, another advisor. Actually, I'm going golfing with a couple of female advisors this afternoon that are here in Salem. And again, I think it's that belief in enough. When you're fitting in and you're meeting the right people. There's not a competition. It is a belief in enough a support of each other, particularly as women in this industry. Lifting each other up, commiserating when needed and finding, hey you know what, I'm not a fit for you but I know exactly who is, let me make a warm introduction.

That is, that's been such a, that's what makes this industry really a wonderful place to have a career, I think.

Maddy Roche: As a coach, I'm often presented the question of how do I get these clients? And it is so hard to have to answer that question because it's not a question you can just answer and there is so much of this like human side of it that you need to embody because that's just who you are and how you can convey that to a very over eager new member who wants to hit the ground running and get those clients and go all in on the niche to explain that there's like part of this is just showing up as who you've been for the past 30, 40 years, remaining very authentic in your natural market and explaining who you are and what you're doing and letting that actually help fuel some of the natural growth that comes with that kind of initiative. And there isn't, I don't know what marketing term that means as part of your strategy, what that is of like just being yourself and being involved in your community, but it appears to have been a really important lever for you as other advisors have shared on this podcast.

Brenna Baucum: Yeah. And I think it's such a shift too, from I think oftentimes, and it was a running joke at the other practice I worked with, that you had to be a blank slate, right? You can't really have a political opinion, a religious opinion. You can't, you just need to be there for your client and be a chameleon and there's definitely a benefit to being a chameleon and there's also a big drawback and the more authentic you can be, one of the beautiful gifts of running your own shop is you can be as authentic as you're comfortable being to people.

The more authentic you can be, the much more likely you are going to attract clients that you enjoy spending time with. And that becomes so much more than clients. So that I think is a huge piece of authenticity, and the freedom you get of just leaning into being yourself.

Maddy Roche: Yeah, and we've talked a bit about trust, and some of this does require trust, that your continued involvement in the community initiatives that you've been part of even prior to you starting your own firm, trusting that may and will result in some client referrals eventually, and it's just a hard thing to, accept as you are a brand new advisor, and where did that trust come from for you?

Brenna Baucum: Well, I don't know that it was ever intentional. Like I said, I would do this even if my job were computer programming, right? I would still, that's an authentic piece of what I want to do to be involved in my community and make it livable and lovable and a place I want to be. Is serving the underserved, spending time with movers and shakers, going to fun, fancy events and emceeing them.

I just got to do that for the Foodshare. So those kinds of things where you're just part of it, part of something bigger. And, for me, the nice byproduct of already feeling great about being involved is that business came from it. And again, I think that I have been on boards and I've been in rooms with people who are doing that for business purposes and it is so transparent.

So please don't do that. It's a real turnoff. People don't like that, but when you find things you're genuinely excited about. And that happened to have the right people in the room. I think it's okay to look for those, that cross section. 

Maddy Roche: What a beautiful way to like remain, not just your business too, to like have a life outside of it also that fuels you and is your support system.

Brenna Baucum: For sure.

Maddy Roche: You've said two things that stood out to me, you said faith in enough and then belief in enough, through different answers. And I'm wondering this must be a mantra of yours or a motto that you think through a lot.

Where did it come from? Can you define it? It resonates with me semantically. I'm interested in what your experience with it is.

Brenna Baucum: Yeah. I think that a big part of my confidence, not in launching my own practice, wasn't only on the community I had built here in Salem, but also the community of advisors I had built across the country. And in working with lots of those advisors over time, I saw examples of people believing in enough and saying, Ooh this prospect came my way.

Yes, they're a $4 million potential management client, or the numbers on it might look really good, but you know what, I don't have that expertise. So I really, while I could help you with X, Y, Z, I really feel like who would be a better fit is this person. And I think just seeing that saying, Whoa, that is so different than 11 years ago when I joined this industry and sitting at an FPA meeting and meeting people who were not wanting to share, not wanting to talk to you, feeling a little bit standoffish. I had an impression that's what this industry was about at the very beginning. And then I realized, oh, it's because I wasn't finding my people.

I wasn't finding the right people. And honestly, a huge piece of what opened the door, for me not that there's anything wrong with FPA, I should say. FPA is a great organization. I just had a kind of a bummer experience at the beginning. But what I found was when I started to really get into life planning and the life planning community within financial planning, not only did it light up the way I wanted to work with my client families, but it also exposed me to a ton of advisors who also had this same belief where they said, yes, I can. And I think in my first six months. Six referrals came from other advisors from around the country that I knew through the Nazrudin Project, through Money Quotient, through any of those other organizations that are life planning focus. So I really feel you got to find your people in this industry.

Maddy Roche: So well said. I've been really chewing on for a while just the ego that can be present in this industry. It was here 10 years ago when I got into this industry and it was here before I entered the industry. But there does seem to be this new group of advisors who are beginning to adopt a very similar sentiment to what you're sharing, Brenna, which is we've got to be able to define what success is for ourselves.

We've got to define what is enough, to ourselves. And I keep equating it to this like metaphor of like, what game are you playing in? Like, are you playing in someone else's game or are you playing in the game that you want to actually play in? And I imagine that must be one of the hardest things as an advisor and as an entrepreneur to define, which is what is success.

And so I'm Interested in what is success for you?

Brenna Baucum: Yeah, I think that one of the, I'll just speak briefly because I can't not speak briefly on that measuring stick that we create for ourselves. And, needing to be really intentional about creating that measurement for ourselves. And it's the same exact thing that we do with our clients. So a big part of my time at Money Quotient and my conversations now using those tools with clients is around creating your own measurement of success.

How do you define this? How do you define satisfaction? Tell me that as your advisor, and I can give you better recommendations. I can better understand your values and where you're coming from. And, the same thing applies to me in doing this work. And so for me success, it continues to be a moving target a little bit in these early years, to be frank because there's on the one hand, I'm very interested in having a solo practice for the foreseeable future. And on the other hand, I really miss working with a team. On one hand I really like reconciling my books and doing the nitty gritty things within my business. On the other hand, that's not something I can do the whole time myself. So at every growth, turning point within the business I'm having to reevaluate some of those things that I thought meant success.

And now, well actually that is a smaller piece of this. So I have to keep coming back to, which we talked about earlier, why did I do this in the first place? I did this so I can go be the chaperone, so I can go to my daughter's class, so I can stop working a couple of days a week when she gets out of school at 2:20, right? Those have to remain really solid for me. And the other pieces that flow around it are, of course having a reasonable income, making sure we have enough as a family, and making sure that I still love what I do and get to do the parts of it I love and not necessarily get drowned in the business management side of things.

So it's Morpheus I guess Keep getting used to morph over time.

Maddy Roche: As you think about the coming years, what do you think you will take off your plate, and have you outsourced anything yet?

Brenna Baucum: Yeah. So I have a TAMP, and have from the beginning had a TAMP. I use GeoWealth, formerly First Ascent, I use them. Because I was acutely aware I can't do everything and that seemed like a big piece potentially of time and energy. So that's one. I'm meeting in the next two weeks with a bookkeeper to potentially take over my books, which is bittersweet.

I'm working with Sphinx Automation to go through and really fine tune my workflows and my processes. And we start that work in November. And so on the horizon, I have all of these. potential buying of time, which again, another thing I talk to my clients about, like how can we outsource the things to buy us more time, the thing we can't really manufacture.

So those are some of the things on the horizon, I expect in the next 6 to 12 months, I'll be looking for an assistant and then probably in the next 12 months after that, a para-planner. So those are the things when, whether those are 1099 or W2 is yet to be determined. Again, based on all of the other variables, but those are the pieces I think are, probably coming pretty soon.

Maddy Roche: And as you toy with this debate in your own mind around being a solo or having a team. Where are you leaning and how will you answer that question long term?

Brenna Baucum: Oh, if only I knew, I have a hard time imagining having this same level of consistent work without a team. So it's already, especially if I want to maintain the ability to do all the things I talked about earlier. So, either I have to put a cap on how fast I grow, which will again be very challenging when in those first few years, you're really feeling like, yes I've gotta, I've gotta and I want to, genuinely want to. So that doesn't feel good to think about but also I think there is a cap in the same vein of there being enough. 50 to 60 clients would be very comfortable for some of the goals I have for my life. So could I, would I do I want to do that with another person? I don't know yet. Yeah. I think I'll continue to evaluate over time as I have more answers about what you can outsource or what you can automate that will make it crystal clear for me, what are the roles that I need help with a person's smart brains on as opposed to Zapier.

Right. But what are the things that really are the most beneficial for them, for a person to take over? So I hope to have more clarity and that we'll have to talk again in six months. And I'll let you know where I'm at.

Maddy Roche: I'm very interested. And I encourage you that, when I talk to my clients about whether they want to build their team or not just some of the first words they used to describe the answer to what would it give you or, what would it allow you to do? When I hear people talk about, it would allow me to have an impact.

It would allow me to share my expertise. I'm listening for those kind of words versus, it would help me save time. It would help me not do these things. Because employing people can be one of the best ways we can share and expose our values in a real sense and build culture and give back.

But people that are not driven necessarily by those values, the answer isn't always to hire and we have enough examples on this podcast about that.

Brenna Baucum: Yeah. And I think there are ways, I think maybe that's where the debate is that there are ways to give back to the advisor community that I'm already doing that feel quite fulfilling. And so in terms of AMAs and, actually through NAFTA, we're doing a financial planning competition for students, which is really cool for our region. So there's all sorts of different ways to be able to connect with that community and grow it. And I think your point is such a good one, Maddy of how much of that do I want to bring internal. To building out an internship, building out a growth pipeline, those kinds of things. All of that seems really wonderful, and like also how do I make time for that? How do we do that? How does, what does that next level of growth look like? So many opportunities and people out there to learn from around those next thoughts, for sure.

Maddy Roche: Who do you think this firm has allowed you to be that you wouldn't have been?

Brenna Baucum: That's a great question. I think it is this firm has allowed me in ways I never thought possible to show up as my authentic self and not only be accepted for that, but also celebrated for it. And I think our industry is, it's such an exercise in vulnerability here. You're showing up and you're saying, Hey, I don't have a widget, this is very important. Financial planning is very important. I'm good at it. And I hope you see the value in that. And then you wait, you're also doing a bunch of other stuff at the same time, but also you are waiting for people to answer that call and say, yeah you know what? I think you are. And I think it is. And I do I believe you and do want to work with you and I can see building trust with you. And so I think it, to be able to put yourself out there on your own and say, here I am, here's my flag in the ground. And then see people come as just, that's an affirmation I don't think you can get doing anything else.

Other than starting your own thing

Maddy Roche: Brenna, I'm interested if you could help one or a few or all of our listeners avoid a painful mistake or issue that you ran into in your first 21 months, what would it be and how would you advise them?

Brenna Baucum: I think one of the things that I did early that I would go back and do differently is I said, yes too many times, too fast. So I said yes to too many clients at once. I said yes to too many volunteer opportunities at once. I said yes to too much with my kids school. Ran out of time. I ran out of energy. I ran out.

So by, it was about August of my first year. So eight months into my practice, I was like, what is happening? Ah, and I hired, a 1099 paraplaner to help me work through the planning cases that had come across my desk that I was drowning in. one of the hardest things I had to do was say no to something I had said yes to initially, right.

A couple of those volunteer opportunities. And I am a big proponent of and I think it's so important to stay true to your word, and when you say yes, and you show up to do that thing. And also very important to continue to check in with yourself over time, and to be able to be honest and say, I just don't have the capacity for this now that I fully understand the scope of the engagement or the commitment. So, continuing to check in with yourself, especially in those first 12 months, I think is a really important piece, having people to bounce ideas off of, it was probably about then I hired Jennifer, actually, that was probably about the time that I thought, I don't think I'm checking in with myself enough.

I need someone else to help me do that. So too much, too fast.

Maddy Roche: Listeners, I hope you have enjoyed this conversation as much as I have. Brenna, you are just a wealth of knowledge and thank you so much for sharing your experience and being vulnerable and congratulations on building a firm that serves you so authentically well. anyone not watching the video, Brenna is sitting here with a nice, beautiful fireplace to her left and this conversation and the cadence and the truth that we pulled out from it. I think it's just a really beautiful, episode. So thank you, Brenna, for being part of our community, sharing yourself with our community and your clients and your community.

Any final words for our listeners?

Brenna Baucum: I would just say thank you, Maddy for having me. This has been a lovely conversation and I would say that if you are in a space where you're not feeling supported, as a new advisor or as someone who's a new firm owner, know that there's lots of supports out there. So I've got links to a lot of those supports on my website.

So if anybody wants to go under the FAQ at the very bottom, there's a little link for advisors specifically. So you can go there and check out all sorts of links to other people doing great things, offering AMAs. some of my stuff is on there but maybe more importantly, the things that other people are doing to support you in your early parts of your journey.

We're all cheering for you. So yeah, just continue the good fight and reach out to those when you need support.

Maddy Roche: Thank you, Brenna.

Brenna Baucum: Yeah. Thank you, Maddy

Maddy Roche: Look forward to seeing you soon.