One of
the reasons why we started the podcast.... One of the reasons why I care so much
about The Externship is... so many of the people that I graduated
with... nobody I know when I graduated with is still in financial services
or in financial planning at all. I look back at what happened in my career
story, and again, I have some perspective now. No one should have it that hard. Like, and I know this is no
“woe is me” anything. But it's one of the things
that motivates me. It was one of the reasons
why we started the podcast. It was like we wanted to make this easier
for people coming into the space. Absolutely. And I think that's a great pivot
to the externship. So you've got your business, you're
doing the podcast and then 2020 hits. Take us right there. You know, thanks for joining the podcast
today. Really appreciate it. And from one podcaster to another. How many episodes did it take for you
to finally feel like I've got this? I'm a podcaster. Oh, man. You know. Okay, so here's the camera
to tell you something I don't know. I'm telling you. And, you know, all of our closest friends
here. It's so funny. We almost did 300 podcasts. We were short. I forget how many. We were short, but we were getting close
to that 300 mark. And so one of the things that I never did
is I never went back and listen to him, which I know is something that you should do,
but it just felt like torture to do it. And so it's, it's one of my I think I would have gotten better
a lot faster if I had done that. So I don't know, I don't I never yeah. So it's it's a hard
it's a hard thing having to. One of my friends told me she's like, it's a special form of torture,
having to listen to yourself. So to do that in and out
is, is is for sure a challenge. So I appreciate the work that you're putting into this
because I know, I know, it's a lot. Absolutely. I listen to every single episode
of season one. And it was I had to do two times speed. I couldn't do it
full time or normal speed, but, one question I did have is,
was there any one episode that really stuck out to you was that was
like, that was the all star episode. Man. You know, when I think about the podcast I got,
I got so many friends out of it. And just so many cool connections,
which you probably know was like that. I think some of the favorite ones that
we ever did were like the history of ones. And so we put a lot of time
and attention into those. So we did like history of addiction. We interviewed probably eight people, about their story of next gen
how to get started. And it was so cool.
We did a history of FPA. We got the merger. So they're doing the 25 year anniversary. So we have like the merger story. We brought in, I think those other eight
people miked everyone up and basically said, okay, what happened? And it was just
a fascinating conversation. We did some with Dick Wagner. We did one with Dick Wagner,
like a month before he died. So a lot of people, so that was
that was pretty special. So a lot of those history ones,
I think will always hold a special place because we just put
so much more energy into it. And I just feel like it was it's just hard to get that history
in that context sometimes. About financial planning. Yeah, that that's an also that awesome
episode. Excuse me. Yeah. I like
we were talking about earlier. It's kind of a full circle moment
where I was listening to your podcast when I was in college. Riley, our producer, was on your podcast
at one point. Now you're on our podcast. A really cool moment. I love it so much. It is so cool. Yeah,
I think it's, again, a full circle moment, but we definitely want to make sure
that we're giving you your ear out your flowers today, Hannah. So, welcome, everyone to another episode of The Blueprint:
An FPA NexGen® podcast. I'm your host, Deshawn Peterson,
with my co-host, Mike Zarrelli. And if you don't know who this person is,
I don't know if you've been living under a rock,
but we have, the renowned Hannah Moore, who is the founder,
Amplified Planning and The Externship. So if you know, you know what that is. And she's also the principal owner
of Guiding Wealth, and she's
also a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER®. So for all of our listeners
on the internets, audio visual or in the comments, please
give us a round and welcome for Hannah. Thank you. Appreciate it. No problem. So I guess I want to jump into it. Hannah. What keeps you excited still to this day
about financial planning as a business? You're. I think you have a you're you're one of
the most as a famous people in our space. Just by your work, you know, and you know, and that's nothing to brush over. But sometimes we can hit a peak
or you know, we want to, switch things up, but you're still pushing,
you know, applying pressure. You know why? Why? You know,
how are you still waking up with that? That that fire in your belly? You know that I have so many stories. I literally walked from a client meeting
into this into into this recording. So I'm still active with clients,
on, on a daily, weekly basis, even with all the stuff
we're doing and planning. And this client I just met with,
we spent an hour and a half, talking about his dad's recent death. The probate process. What he needed to do,
how he was taking care of his mom. And it was just what struck me so much
is so many of my client meetings do. The work we do has such an impact
in people's lives. He was so worried about the taxes
that, his parents had been filing, and he was like,
what am I what what am I, what am I doing? I've had I've taken basically two years of his life
and just dedicated it to his parents care. And now he's like, oh my gosh, this tax bill and oh my gosh,
all these financial questions around it. So I spent the last hour
and a half of my life doing. And it's just really cool to be like,
I have the expertise that can help somebody
in a really difficult situation. And like that is just so,
like mind blowing to me. That I get to go to work every day
and have real answers to people's real questions
that they have in such a hard situation. Like that's that's like giving back. That's like today's story. I mean, if we go to last week,
there's other stories of helping, families figure out, you know, how much
they need to be saved for retirement, working with them
to get their budget under control so that they can do
the things that they want to do, helping
somebody figure out how the heck they can buy a house
and the rising interest rates. But they don't feel
like they have an options, but they do. And like that is a work
that like like the thought of like I got I got into this field
because I wanted to help people. I get to do that every day in my job. Like, that's just wild to me, that I can
just have what's now simple conversations can have such a huge impact. And so when I think about that, like,
that's what gets me up in the morning. And then I think about the work
we're doing at Amplify Planning and y'all like,
I mean, y'all, you guys have been there. You guys were some of the external there
had, you know, connections in this space like the generation coming up. Like they are going to transform
this field. Like they are literally like any work
that I've been doing with my client, the folks in the externship are going
to have exponential impact in the world. And like, that's what just is like
the wildest, craziest thing to me. And so for me, it's really
I know the impact that I know the satisfaction
I get with helping my clients. And then it's like I get to help other
people do that same thing. And that is just that. I think it's the one of the biggest
privileges in the world. Yeah, it's really cool. And I like I wrote down that just simple
conversations can have so much value. And it's crazy
because we come out of school, we're thinking, oh, I've got all this, I know how to do this equation,
and we'll get this software. And when it comes down to it
just being there for your client, walking them through the process
and holding hands, essentially that brings more value than all the the knowledge
and the softwares and things like that. So it seems like you still have the drive, but how do you handle managing
multiple businesses all at the same time? Well, here's my superpower. This is what I think when my superpower is
when people ask me. I am very good at recognizing what I'm
not good at and getting help very quickly. So that to me,
I think is is my superpower. Is that, you know, people see me, people see Hannah Moore,
but I have a whole team behind me now. From a pair planner who. Well, actually, we just promoted her to,
I think we're calling. That's not office manager. It's team manager, to, you know,
we now have. I just hired, a CFO
to help me with all the operations because, frankly, like,
I can do, I'm passable at it. She's excellent at it. And so I'm very quick to say, like,
hey, what am I not good at? I invest in my businesses a lot sooner
than most people would recommend. Because at the end of the day, I have now how a two,
four and six year old, at home. And I'm not willing to sacrifice
my evenings and my life for them, but I'm also not willing to sacrifice
the impact that we can have in this. And so the way to do it for me
has been just to immediately recognize when I'm struggling and how fast can I get
help, and I get help as fast as I can, so that I can really do what I'm best at
and that they can do what they're their best at. So that's, that's really how how we do
all all of the things. I'm Charlie is my husband. He, he's wonderful. He has, you know,
he is the one who kind of flexes in his schedule,
but he also works with me, full time. But he's kind of taking it down
a couple notches as our kids have gotten a little bit bigger. But it's it's really all these pieces
working together and knowing that
I don't have to do everything. I think it's been
the biggest, I think, secret. Just to piggyback on that. Well, what would you say was that epiphany
or that moment where you realized that the the gap
between you and others doing it for you? I think that I fall in this rut
as as well as the way to solve my problem is to do more work,
as opposed to ask for more help. Was there a breaking point,
or a burnout moment, or a positive moment where you're just like,
okay, we need more hands and you know, no matter how many hands or how hard
I work is still not more hands. So it's such a good question. And I'm laughing
because I'm like, well, shoot, I just don't seem to learn my lesson,
do I? Because I keep having like, all of these,
like, pictures pop up in my head. So it's really interesting. Several people I follow, they talk about,
you know, people who have a lot of success. There's a point where you have to kind of grind it out
and more of the things, right? Early in my career, I grinded it out and I learned the things like,
nobody could do paperwork better than me. I knew compliance inside and out,
like I built those building blocks. And so I think what's really interesting, I think this is one of the biggest
professional skills is recognizing, when you like, when is this adding to me versus
when is this not adding to me? And there's points
where I still have to grind it out. But there's, that's, that's
been one of the things I've noticed. I think that's just recognizing
that in yourself. You're always kind of pushing yourselves to new level,
but it's like, okay, do I have to do this or could somebody else do it? And sometimes it's taking coaches,
it's taking other outside people to kind of, put a spotlight on that. You talk about burnout. So I have three kids. My first maternity leave was like, I don't say textbook,
but pretty close to textbook. Like, beautiful, wonderful. My second was an absolute mess. As in, like, I was back to work a week
after she was born. It was so hard. It was, she was born at the end of February. We had an externship was our second year,
the externship. We made a work. We got all the pieces together. But later that year, it was I. You talked about. The body keeps a score. It's true. And I was like,
I couldn't work more than 30 hours a week. It was the craziest thing, like, I like,
I heard you say that, and I'm like, there's no way. But, like,
I literally could not physically do it. And I think that really kind of forced me
to reexamine a lot of things in my life. I think that helped force me to kind of
do some of the delegating pieces. And just to really recognize that,
like the it's one thing to be ambitious
and I'm certainly ambitious, but it's like,
how do you take care of yourself? And then now, for me, it's
how we take care of my team because I want my team
experiencing that burnout. Like I'm not doing my job as their boss. If my team's experiencing that burnout. So it's given me a different filter
to which to look at company goals. Company
aspirations, like all of those things. Impact. It's it's this it's
how do we care for the people on our team? And the irony of all of that is
you say that in the logic, we mean that that slows you down. I don't think that actually slows
you down. I think that actually can speed you up,
because you're really caring for yourself and the people around you and recognizing
what, what good, healthy boundaries are. Absolutely. And just going back to, just because you're good at something
doesn't mean you're the right person to be doing the job. And I know as a young adviser
you're trying to impress, you're trying to take on
all these responsibilities you can. And that's great. Until your skills as an adviser evolve
and your time is better spent with clients or finding clients
or helping your boss find clients. And then you have to realize those lower
and or maybe the operational stuff. Maybe, like you said, it's better suited
for somebody else on the team. That situational awareness is so hard,
and I think it's one of the biggest like skill sets, is being able to identify
what those what those things are that you're doing,
and then like, where does that fit
within the context of your company? It's a fascinating conversation. Yeah. So before we dive in a little deeper,
why don't you walk us through your journey into the financial planning world
and how you ended up owning your own firm? Yeah. So, I graduated. This feels like a lifetime ago now. December 2008. So not exactly the best time
to be graduating, into this field. I, a professor connected me with a woman. And in an interview when I was interviewing with her,
she said, I'm looking. So I was 22. She was 68. And she said, okay, I'm
looking for a succession plan. Are you interested
in being a succession plan? So we're literally at a Starbucks, like,
I could drive there today. And I was like, well, of course
I literally had no idea what that meant. Like,
I didn't know what those words meant. And so I walked out to my car and I, like,
wrote it on a sheet of paper. And, I went home and I googled what is a succession plan
because I truly had no idea. And so, I got hired for that job,
and it really was thrown in the deep end, where it was,
she didn't really have support. And so I was kind of doing everything,
trying to fill in the gaps. It very much was a throw. You in the deep end. Hope
you swim, type of situation. And I did. And so I ended up figuring out, you know, in all the client meetings,
working with all of them. One of the things to my advantage
was she let every client meeting with, hey, here's Hannah, she's amazing. And she's,
she's going to be my succession plan. Like from day one. Which is kind of wild, especially now
that I'm on, like, this side of things. I'm like, oh my gosh, I can't imagine. But this is what happened. And so lots of things
happened in those four years. It was like drinking from a firehose. Because you're learning all of the back
office of what? What goes into
what goes into a financial plan. A lot of what we were doing
was the investment management piece. How do you relate to clients? How do you connect with clients? All of those aspects of it. And then four years later,
she ended up retiring. And so I bought her practice from her
at that point. But another small practice soon after,
somebody came to me and was just like, hey, by the way,
I'm getting out of this business. Here's, here's my practice. You want to buy it?
I'll give you really favorable terms, because I want you
to be the one to buy it. And I was like, okay. Yes, yes. And, so it was kind of wild, on that front. And so I stayed, at the broker dealer
for quite a while, for a couple of years, afterwards. And in this process,
I, when I bought the practice, I was so paranoid,
about screwing my clients financial lives up, like,
you know, no big deal. And, that I was going to miss something
because I was like, I knew I didn't have the experience.
I knew all these different things. And so, Deborah Fox, used to be Fox
financial planning adviser touchpoint. So she, had a set of processes
that you could that you could buy. So let's just set this up for you.
This is how crazy it was. I got married at the end of October. Ten weeks later, I bought the business. My husband moved cities, for my job. And so he didn't have a job yet,
and we had, like, maybe $500 to our name. Not recommended. Don't don't do this. So it's very high stress. But I put it on a credit card. I've never done that before.
After my life. But I put on the credit card because I was so worried
about screwing up my clients lives. And so what it gave me
was really a process to work through financial planning and checklists
for every step of the process. And so before every client meeting,
I'd be pulling out these checklists and going through I spent so much time
check out the grinding earlier. Like this is the grinding
like I was every single meeting I was making sure I had all those
my eyes dotted, T's crossed, and and
so but what was cool about all that is, I had gone to school
for financial planning, and I was like, so interested in this. And this really, helped me open my eyes to how we could expand the service
offering with our clients. And so I remember the first guy I sat down
to, and I had my, like, scripts that I worked on beforehand, from these processes and basically pitched
the idea of financial planning. And what he told me was he was super
standoffish, cause that whole meeting at the end, he was like,
this is what we've been looking for. But we didn't know what to call it.
And it just blew my mind. And so it was a coolest experience. And so I started taking these clients one by one
through a financial planning process. And it was just a nightly difference
from picking up the phone from my financial planning clients
versus just an investment only client. So a couple years after,
I bought the practice, I ended up leaving the broker dealer where I was at
and really just took my my financial planning clients, essentially,
and started started my own practice. As an RA, I was always guiding wealth, but and moved it from the broker dealer
to, to the RA space. And so in that time
had a lot of time on my hands, because I went from 250 to 300
families to 18, which is kind of wild and,
throwing out the year that I left my take on was the same,
which is even wilder. And so I, had a lot of time on my hands. And so there was a, my local chapter. There was a year of financial planning. Now what, seminar series
that I would go to. And just like it's one of the places
I learned financial planning. And so I come home and talk to my husband,
and I was like, this is the best content out there. And like, nobody's there's like
three people here, like what's going on. And so he's like,
we should put that on the internet. I'm like, yeah,
I can barely log into Google. And he and but his degree was film
and digital media and so he, he kind of helped. So he ended up
producing the whole podcast. And then that grew and grew. And then we ended up partnering with FPA National to help them
with all of their new planner initiatives. We did kept going as a podcast. We did the Activate Facebook community
for a while, all the internal consulting
and a lot of stuff with next gen and then 2020 hit,
which is where the externship, kind of kicked off. Okay. A lot there. So there's a lot there. So I, I just went through
my whole lot to unpack. But no, it was good
because you borrow some other point. So we're going to get to the externship.
We're going to get to it. But what I think is interesting
is that you said you didn't just buy one practice, you bought two. This is a this is something
that I don't think we have with Mike that we have brought up yet. But what is that process of buying a firm. And you can keep it high level. But if we're speaking to next gen. Right. So some of those individuals will have
the succession planning opportunity as sooner or later. And maybe this is a discussion
they never even thought about. Like what should they be expecting. So I guess because you just give us,
you know, a 10,000ft view. Like what does it take to purchase a farm
or what are those discussions like? Yeah. So conversations can be challenging. I always say, if you're not ready to have
those difficult conversations, you're not ready to own anything yet. There was
some of the scariest conversations I had in my life
up to that point. Certainly. So I was at the broker dealer. And so I think there are some different it doesn't operate differently that like
mechanisms are a little bit different. So like in a lot of areas now I see like,
hey, there's ownership structure and you're going to get a percentage
of ownership in the broker dealer space. It was really, based on rep numbers. And so from kind of that conversation,
so the lady I worked with and I, we both knew, like we both were like,
hey, we're paired up. This is what it looks like, right? We knew our kind of our terms. We had agreement on all those pieces. One of the coolest things
was when we were negotiating, there was a point where I was like,
we were actually in an attorney's office, and we were both advocating
for the other person. And I was like, that's when, you know,
you have a good deal set up, right? So we had like our independent agreement. And so when she decided to retire,
all we did was just switch members. So we were all under the same umbrella. So it was a lot easier to to do that. So that was like administratively
like what needed to happen, in the RA space
and maybe, maybe more, than that. And so then it became okay. Now I was in charge
of servicing all the clients and she was still around for a while to,
to help with some of that process. But that meant that all of obviously
my paychecks stopped. And, and then all of the revenue started
flowing to me and again, it's different in my area today because I get paid
like basically once a quarter, I got paid every week. And it would be dribbling in because there was lots of,
you know, trails and all the things, that were there. And so we paid I paid her a percentage
of all the revenue that that came in. And we kind of outline those pieces,
for the other one. So what's interesting about where I was at
from a broker dealer standpoint, there were 40 or 50 advisers
kind of under this umbrella. Right? So, Aria space doesn't quite they don't
have, like a comparable analogy. Maybe, maybe it's like an everyone's
at Schwab or something like that. But you would get together
for various things. And so I had made friends with this guy, and I know he was kind of struggling,
so it wasn't a big practice. But yeah, he called me up a couple months
after this and was like, hey, I'm,
I'm going to get a full time job. They aren't letting me keep my clients. A lot of these are family and friends,
like, I've met all these other advisers. You're the one I think should work with my
with my clients. And, so he gave me
kind of a sweetheart of the deal. He's like, I want to get paid something,
but I don't need to get paid a lot. And I need this done by next week, was what he said. So it
was a little bit of a different experience where the other one was like
years in the making. This was like, hey,
I got a deal for you, how's next week? So, and it was a smaller
kind of client base and so a lot. So it was kind of that same process. We had a contract that we agreed to,
and then I paid him. It didn't end up being a person.
It was like a straight dollar amount. But again,
it was favorable in mind for me. And then in, in all of this,
a lot of when I think about the practice management side of it
was client communication and the one that for the practice that I was
that the bigger practice that I bought, they had been told us for years
like that was part of it. Like it was like
they're like, oh, okay. It's happened. Okay, cool. Like I was already leading
some of these meetings. There was already some of that, that,
transition heading off of this other one. He just called him up was like,
pain is great. She's gonna take care of you.
And then like. And then I called him,
and we started the relationship. So it was a lot of,
like, client communication. How do you make a good client experience? For, for your clients. Talk about being thrown in at the deep end again. One of the reasons
why we started the podcast, one of the reasons
why I care so much about the externship is so many of the people
that I graduate know when I graduated with us. So in financial services
or in financial planning at all, I look back at what happened in my career
story and again, I have some perspective now. No one should have it that hard. Like and
and this is no woe is me anything but it's one of the things that motivates me. It was one of the reasons
why we started the podcast. It was like we wanted to make this easier
for people coming into this space. Absolutely. And I think that's a great pivot
to the externship. So you've got your business,
you're doing the podcast, and then 2020 hits
take us right there. Yes. So we were partnered with FCA National
at this time. And so far National is running what
they called the critical response teams. And then kind of rolled my eyes. At the beginning I was like, y'all,
this is just a scare tactic. There's no way
a pandemic is coming. I was wrong, but it was really interesting. So we're there and I'm like, okay,
how can we help? So, how can we help
the financial planning community? And so we started hearing from students
who were losing their internships and then professors who were worried about
their students losing their internships. And, we said,
I wonder if we could help them. And so we had some other people, you know,
give ideas and inputs and things. And and then we went to students
and we said, we just did some focus groups and we said,
what are you looking for in an internship? And we just wrote everything down and we forgot the normal internship
constraints. We said, we'll never replace that one on one experience,
but everything we heard, we're like, we think we can do this better
and at scale. I wonder if this would work. And so we gave it a go and it was one of the coolest experiences
of my life. Because it was such
the community of financial planners like, I can't even tell you
we were getting calls from we got in over 200 universities
that first year, like we had more non-registered CFP®
universities pushing our stuff. And see if you register programs. It was crazy. We had planners from all over the country
who were saying, hey, come do this. We were one of the only solutions
out there. So from the day
we made the decision to go, this wasn't even the day we announced it. From the day we decided to go,
it was three months in a week between the end of the program
for the end of July. That's how tight this thing was. And, we we just went for it. And so there was so much support
within the community. It was it was just it was amazing. So we were open for three weeks. We had so many people sign up. The numbers just kept ticking
up, opened up. My husband, I mentioned earlier,
he works with me. He has a digital media background
so he can edit all the videos. He also has a teaching background, so we thought we were targeting juniors
and seniors in college who had never who had some minor
financial planning experience. And what we learned, I'll never forget, in the first week or two, we had a high school student sign up
and we were like, what is happening here? And so we actually went back
to the drawing board from an I like a curriculum design
standpoint and said, okay, we need to assume that somebody
can come in here with no knowledge. But then we also need to assume
that we can have it with that junior senior in college. And then what we soon realized
is that we are getting people who already have experience
who are taking this, that externship. And so we really scaffold
that learning, and, and and kind of managed it from that,
from that standpoint. So I think one of the reasons people love it is because of the design of it,
which was super intentional. But yeah, so that's
that's how the externship got started. It really went viral. Reddit was one of our biggest
referral sources. Like it was it was
it was just really cool. It was really cool to see,
to see kind of how this took off. And this will be our sixth year,
doing it here in 2025. We estimate that we've had over 4000
people take the externship, and we are gearing up for what we think
could be our biggest year ever. In 2025, doing the externship. All right. So not to just, hear it again, but for the for the listeners who are interns. Yeah. Graduates. Career changers. Why should the externship
be one of their options? One that one
when wanting to break into the space. Yeah. So a couple things. One is the number one thing we care about
is your success. Like we are literally doing everything we do
because we want you to be successful. So what we bring, we bring over 60 experts
every year in the externship. These are going to be different. If you took the externship last year, it's going to be a different experience
this year because it's a whole new cast of characters, whole new cast of players,
that, that we're bringing to the table. And you're going to get to see
how financial planning is done at different firms,
how it's done for different clients. You can get to see real client
deliverables. You're going to be able
to ask these planners the real questions. And the thing is, is that I talk
to these players sometimes beforehand and they're like, okay, like,
do I need to like make this sound good? I'm like, no, like,
we're fully honest here. Like, you are going to get the real deal
on this. Answers. With this, you get a full tech suite,
you get to see real client meetings. I teach from that. So you're going to get to like, I will stop these videos and be like, oh,
I wish I would have said that. Or did you notice this? This is why I asked this. This is going to come back
into play over here. So you're really getting that on the job
training. That that is it's really hard to get in
a firm just because of time constraints. You get you get the full text, what, you're going
to build out the full financial plan. I'm going to do it with you. We're going to walk
through every step of the financial plan. We're going to basically,
like I said, throw everything we have at you,
whether that be compensation studies. If you want to start your own firm,
we're going to give you kind of the here's
the next steps we're going to give you. Like we survey our folks beforehand. Like we make sure
that you're going to get what you want. They're it is so it's a 20 hours
a week program. But the thing that we want most, I said it before, you know, we want
we want folks to be successful. We often say we want to be the welcome mat
to to financial planning for people. So if you're considering this career
or you're in a job where you're like, I'm not sure this is right for me, like,
or your career changer, who is like, I don't know if I can get into this
stay at home parent like that. You're what we you're who we think about
when we when we build this program. Because this field needs you. Like this field,
this profession needs people who care about their clients
who are good at this stuff. And that's what that's what we want to do
is we really want to help people onboard into into this career
because it's so meaningful and impactful. Yeah. Like one point that you made,
which was you get to see how multiple different
firms do this because financial planning is not one size fits all or the process even isn't one size fits all. I took
I did the first year of the externship in 22, 2020, and I've only been at one firm
my whole career. So seeing how all these different firms, did their process
or asked this different question, it was neat to see
and bring it back to my own financial planning for him and be like,
we should implement this. All right. I really appreciated how this
financial planner asked that question. We should implement that now. Okay. Now I'm going to say that's
such a good point of, you know, we we have firms
will use it in the externship for like their baseline
for their internship. And I'm like, it's so valuable because of
what the interns or the new like, if you're new at your job, will bring back
like you're going to get to see so much, so much more context. We've been interviewing people
already for the externship this year. We have people, one guy who's a well-known
name was like, I asked him what he does for deliver. He literally laughed. And he's like, actually,
I don't really do deliverables. We had another guy
who's like, yeah, I do one page. It's done.
It's done in less than 20 minutes. And we have other people who are like, yeah, I know
it's 30 hours of work for each plant. So it's like, you're gonna get to see
a specter, like you're going to get to see how so many people do it, which will help
challenge the assumptions you have. But also it just helps, like
it gives you so many more data points, to, to be the best at what you're doing. So cool to, to piggyback on,
I guess, all the knowledge that you have because you're experiencing like, here's me and a lot of people
and we know the stats that first five years,
87% people who join the space leave. What what is that gap, Hannah? That you see? Why do people leave? You know, is it front end and they had
different expectations getting into it. Is it the the grind part. You know if there is a grind
what are you seeing. And you know what you know. What does that feel like. Yeah.
That's a stat that keeps me up at night. So when I think about what what why
why is this not working? Why is this not working for some people? So why? I think sometimes it's a bad fit. So when I started the broker dealer,
all I saw was a broker dealer. That was it.
This was the only model that I saw. I didn't realize a world
that was out there. It's why I think is so important for meeting and see so many people
from different models. So I think sometimes people are landing
in the wrong spot and thinking, this is the only place
that there is in this field. I think that's that's a big issue. I hope you're helping solve
some of that with the externship for people who go through and be like, hey, no, there's other places
where you can connect. I think there are training issues. I don't think advisers know how to train
very well. I think we see this in all of the industry
data that's out there, where folks are coming into the space
and expecting training and advisers are like, well, you just, I don't know, like, call Schwab,
figure it out. And again,
I'm saying that very flippantly. But a lot of these advisers,
when you think about the business owner side of it, building out strong training
programs, we're just not seeing firms do that until you get into much larger
sizes of firms. And so new hires are frustrated
because they're like, I don't know what I'm supposed to do. And from owners are like,
why can't you figure this out? I did it, and I think there's a bridge
that can be that can be had there, on that. And part of it is, you know, it's it's just so we've,
we've do a number of training programs. And one of the things that's fascinating
to me is we were talking to somebody. She's been at our firm for over a year. And she one of the questions she asked
just last week was, I'm so confused. I don't understand where like
but essentially her question was I don't understand the process of bringing
in client onboarding versus not. And like, I'm meeting
with all these clients and I don't know where they are
in the process. To me, that's a fundamental
training issue of just even framing out the client journey and what somebody
needs to understand in that. And that adviser probably has said things,
but again, that translation gap. So I think the training issue is
where a lot of our attention is focused. Because we're hearing from
we're hearing from a lot of firms that people who do the externship
are hitting the ground running. And so again,
we're focusing a lot on that. How can we help firms
kind of bridge that gap? Because it is on the firms,
I think, to to help bridge that gap. So I think there is an expectations gap. I think there's a training
gap for a lot of firms. And expectations
gap, I mean, like getting in the right, right role for the right person. Right. And then I think some of the business
model structure is, is, you know, we still have so many places
where it's, well, you got to bring in, you know, 200,000 where I was at, it was like, if you didn't
bring I forget what the numbers were. They didn't have it firm,
like in the specific area that I was. But in other parts it was like,
if you didn't have 300 or $350,000 of revenue within the first three years,
like you were kicked out. And I know that's an extreme example,
and it's not extreme in some places, but I think we still see a lot of that
in this space where it's like, if you're not successful
at bringing in clients, then like, where's your future? Like you're going to go hungry. And so I think there's something in that
business model that's obviously broken. Because again, yeah, it's it's so I think there's a business model
kind of structure issue as well. On that. I think that's cool that firms that maybe don't have the skill set
to build out a training program can just offload it onto your lap
because you've done it, you've built the infrastructure for them. That's like a nice deal. Yeah. We're we're really we are dipping our toe into our first
like official firm training. But we started seeing a lot of firms
use our amplify planning core offerings. And then yeah,
we have like a custom, program for firms that we're, we're working through right now
with a number of people going through the training program. And it's it's,
you know, having some experience. Now, I look back and I, as we're training
people, was like, oh yeah, I forget, like,
you have to have that whole beginner's mind when you're training and
and it's hard. Training is hard. But it's so worth it. And it is absolutely something. This is something I will just I get on my soapbox when I'm talking to to firm owners
of, like, it's so worth it. You get the right people in there, you train them well,
it will change your life. Absolutely. Now, how has the
the program changed over time? Like what new aspects
have you introduced throughout the years? So in the externship there's the big ones have been
we've introduced real client meetings. So we this year in the externship, Keith
and Beth are going to be our clients and that we're going to follow from
beginning to end of their financial plans. So they have some really interesting
kind of nuances to, to their plan. So we're going to be following them. One of the big kind of things this year
is that Keith and Keith has already agreed to come back for a live Q&A
the last week of the externship. So all the extras
look at to see this whole client meeting and then actually get to ask the client
real questions, which we're, we're really,
really excited about that. So when we think about the evolution
of the program, a lot of it has been, has been the real client meetings. That's been that's
been a big addition from the 2020 year, we keep deepening our relationships
with the technology partners. So just keep going in deeper. Last year in the externship,
you know, we were doing M&A stuff. It certainly wasn't beginner. And I would say it was on the line
from intermediate to advanced. And so like we're going all in like
we're not being like, oh, our education level is this,
we are like going all in, to to what
the situation calls for with the clients. And so we are really leaning
into that technology piece. The other piece I think has been so cool
is the community aspect of it. I have never seen more engagement
on forums or in the community. As I see in the externship. And so I think that's one of the other
kind of pieces that we, we really focus a lot on is how do we continue to develop
this community of, financial planners. All right. Okay. So I have one one last question,
and this is a European do you have do you get more satisfaction
for helping your clients or those coming through the externship,
starting their careers and transitioning to the next step? You know, it's funny. My answer has changed over the years. I think at this point I love like I care so deeply and I love my clients
like I just do, and I will. I think I will always have clients
like that's that's one of the things. And I think we've, reached kind of the tipping point
where amplify planning is, it's taking over more and more of my time. We're also building support
within the practice, and I'm very quick to get help. And so we're, we're doing that side of it. So when I think about,
you know, the big driver for me is impact. And you can have such deep impact
with every client. And so for me
when I think about impact, it's, you know, like seeing planners
be successful, like, it's so it's because every planner I see, I don't see
just that person. I see the hundreds of lives
they're going to impact. And so I think it's been this really
interesting tipping point for me of where, I just I'm really loving helping planners
right now. Yeah. Great question Deshawn. And you're absolutely right. Because if each planner impacts 100 lives
and you've impacted, you said 40,000 planners at this point
have gone through the program. That's a lot of impact there. Yeah. And it's and it's just like, I mean, I just
when I talk about the externship, I what I wish is I could just take people
and to show them our forms and just show them like we always
every year have an introduction for them. And I just want to be like,
this is the future. Like, do you see this? Like, our future is so bright. There are so many talented
and passionate people who have such like, gosh, like, they just have such a vision
on how they want to help, you know, their community. Right. And community is going to be so different. We did a welcome call last year. And it was there was this really poignant
moment for me where I was talking to this woman and she is working
with like eight and nine figure wealth, and she was just talking about
how she joined, like she was working with these people. She joined the externship because she
she saw a better way to serve them. She's like, we're missing the mark
and how we're serving these people, these ultra high net worth folks. And I'm like, yes, yes, you are right. Like, yes, do that. And then the next person who started
talking was talking about how she was going to the senior center
and her local community, and they were charging $600
for a tax return. And she was so appalled. And they were being so taken advantage of. And she knew that there was a better way. And if only they could insert
financial planning into this tax help, they would be serving their people
so much better. And I don't know how anybody can charge
$2,500. I'm going to charge 300. And I was like, yes, you're right. Like, yes, go do that thing. And like that's
the thing that I think we talk about, like changing the world, right? This is the very, you know, big concept. But what it is, is each of us
giving like what we're given and how can we go
and have the impact in that space. And this is and so like,
that's what's so inspiring to me is because when I listened to their exchange,
when I read the comments they give us in the chorus, y'all,
my mind is truly blown by the impact
these folks are going to be having. They see it, they get it,
and they're in the right place, and we are going to do everything we can
to help them be successful because we know what's on the line, right?
We know what's at stake. If those people in that senior center
get help, like that's the stress that can we leave off
other families is just monumental. The same with somebody with 8
to 9 figures of wealth like this is like, I'm such a believer that, like,
this is how we get financial planning out is through through everyone
who's listening to this podcast. And that's that's
what's so exciting to me. Awesome. Well, if I am someone that's interested
in the externship, where should I go to find out more? Yes. Okay. Amplify planning.com backslash externship. That's if we're. I don't know when you're dropping this. April 1st is our open registration date. May 23rd. It's a Friday
if I get that date. If it's 22nd, 23rd is our cutoff date. So you definitely want to be there
by then. My biggest heartbreak
are people who sign up afterwards. You guys, like, literally.
It's like a heartbreak for me. But we have to get. There's tons of logistics
that we have to do in the back end to make sure everyone gets their text,
read the whole nine yards. So that's that's location. It's $399. If money is an issue, we have we already
have a whole list of scholarships. So please, please,
please apply for scholarships. I do not want money to be a barrier
for anybody doing this program. But it is $399. Be sure to hit that window. And then we meet for eight weeks,
June and July. We're going to take July 4th week off
and catch up on, everybody to catch up and take a breath. And then, we will be back and then
you have the full month of August as well. The other piece I didn't mention
is if you complete all this, you get 500 experience hours
towards your CFP® designation. So if this if you guys are on the CFP®
path, this is a great way
to accelerate that journey for you. Awesome. Hannah, thank you so much for being on the podcast today, Sean
and I really enjoyed it. It's been awesome talking with you. Yeah. So thank you both to you guys as well
for the invitation, but also just for the work
you guys are doing. I know, I know the time commitment, I know
the challenges of running a podcast, and it's just really cool
thinking about the impact that you guys
are having on this profession as well. So thank you guys as well
for for your work. Thanks! This has been The Blueprint:
An FPA NexGen® podcast, and Deshawn
and I will catch you in the next episode.