The Financial Advice Industry Has a Talent Crisis with Hannah Moore

The financial advice profession has a talent problem.

Experienced advisers are approaching retirement, firms are struggling to attract younger talent, and artificial intelligence is beginning to reshape many of the entry-level roles the profession has traditionally relied upon.

In this episode of Don't Shoot the Messenger, Chris Ball sits down with Hannah Moore, founder of Guiding Wealth and Amplified Planning, creator of the Externship programme, and one of Investopedia's Top 100 Financial Advisors.

They discuss:

• Why financial planning struggles to attract new talent
• The biggest mistakes firms make when training advisers
• How AI will change entry-level roles
• Why relationship skills matter more than ever
• The future of adviser education and development
• Why career changers are entering financial planning
• What firms need to do to build the next generation

Hannah has helped thousands of aspiring planners gain real-world experience through her Externship programme and is helping reshape how financial advisers are trained.

If you work in financial advice, wealth management, or are considering a career in the profession, this conversation is essential listening.

#FinancialPlanning #WealthManagement #FinancialAdvice #FinancialPlanner #AI #Careers #WealthManagementCareers #FinancialServices

If you want to see what life in Hoxton Wealth is like, please visit:  / @hoxtonlife 

For more information on Hoxton Wealth careers, please https://www.careers-page.com/hoxtonwealth.com

For my videos by Chris, please visit his Youtube:  ⁨@ChrisBallHoxton⁩  

Transcript

Meet Hannah And The Career Leap

SPEAKER_00 0:00

My guest started a career at 22 and bought her first financial planning practice while most people were still figuring out what they actually wanted to do in life. Ellis is such a fun story. 2800 registered to go this year is absolutely fantastic.

SPEAKER_01 0:15

And so there were like this rumors of a pandemic coming, and I was in the camp where I'm like, yo, that's crazy. There's no way our world shuts down. Well, I was clearly wrong.

SPEAKER_00 0:25

I'm intrigued that you said that.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

I've never met her in person. Wow. And she basically ruins my entire practice.

SPEAKER_00 0:30

Obviously, there's a huge gap that's appearing in terms of age of advisors. So, welcome to another episode of Don't Shoot the Messenger. And today, my guest started a career at 22 and bought her first financial planning practice while most people were still figuring out what they actually wanted to do in life. And she's since built two organisations. She's the founder of Guiding Wealth, her own financial planning firm, and amplified planning, a programme that's reshaping the talent pipeline for the next generation of financial planners in the US. She created the Exterman Chip, which gives people a real look inside what a planning career involves before they actually commit to it. And she's been named in Investipedia's Top 100 Financial Advisors every single year since 2019. And she's a CFP professional and certified financial transitions expert, and she has a lot to say about what the profession gets wrong about bringing new people in. So I'm really, really excited to speak to you today, Hannah. Welcome.

SPEAKER_01 1:44

Yes, well, thank you, Chris. I am so excited to be talking with you as well.

SPEAKER_00 1:48

Awesome.

From South Dakota To Financial Planning

SPEAKER_00 1:49

So if we can start with taking us back right to the beginning, I'm super, I'm super interested to hear how you got into financial planning yourself.

SPEAKER_01 2:01

Uh yeah, it's so it's so interesting. Um to give you context kind of on me, I grew up in South Dakota, so a small kind of world. Uh I my dad worked at Walmart. My mom stayed at home with me and my four brothers. So we didn't have a lot of wealth, there wasn't a lot of you know, professional jobs. I realized a couple years ago that I didn't know, we didn't have any family friends that needed a degree to do their job, um, except for teachers. And so I didn't have a framework for what was normal, and which I think is kind of a double-sided coin, like good and bad. So I went to college, I was just really good with numbers, just wanted to help people, wanted to be a nonprofit. So I wanted to go into nonprofit management. That was kind of the degree, the place that I went after. I started working in a nonprofit, kind of went up the ranks there, and very just realized this wasn't what I wanted to do. And I always knew that I was probably gonna do some like budget mentoring, you know, in like the basement of a church or something like that, because I just love this stuff. And I had taken an intro to personal finance class. And so all the stars aligned uh in a way that my professor from my intro to personal finance class was like, you really need to consider changing your major. And so I said, okay, I added a semester and graduated December 08. Not exactly the best time to be graduating with this degree. Um, but fast forward a couple months, um, I had a professor make an introduction with me uh to a woman who she's the one who I bought the practice from. And so I started the week, the market hit its low in March 09. So I always make the joke that like my clients think I have the mightest touch because everything's gone up since I've since I've come in, come into the into the field. Um, but that that was kind of how I got I got in. It really felt it wasn't strategic, it wasn't thoughtful. It it was just really kind of taking the opportunities that were presented right in front of me. Um and then and then landing in a spot and realizing, oh my gosh, I really love this.

SPEAKER_00 3:54

It's kind of what life's about, isn't it? It's about taking the opportunities to kind of come up and grabbing them with

Buying A Practice At 22

SPEAKER_00 3:59

both hands. So warn me a little bit about buying your own, you know, financial practice. I mean, that's a really you know, that was uh that must have been a really cool thing to do. How did you structure it? What made you do that as opposed to you know just stick with an employee brew? Have you always been entrepreneurial?

SPEAKER_01 4:14

Um, I don't think I knew that this was an option. So in the interview, I'm 22, I'm sitting at a Starbucks. Um, this woman's interviewing me, and she's like, Yeah, are you interested in being a succession plan? And I was like, Well, yes. And then I walked up to my car and I wrote down what is a succession plan. Like, I had no idea. I just kept saying yes to the opportunities that were in front of me. Um, so this was so I started in 09. So this this happened in 2013 as I bought the practice. It was a little bit of a different landscape than it is now. So, like, there is so much MA activity. There's so like that even that landscape has changed. Um, and so it really was, you know, from day one, she introduced me to clients and was like, hey, this is Hannah, she's amazing, and she's gonna be taking on, like taking over for me. I wouldn't recommend that if I was gonna have a succession planner. I don't know that I would do that. Um, but you know, it's it's the situation that it was. So I really got in there and you know, it was I have a lot of friends who didn't make it in this field. Um, and I think there's a lot of reasons why. And I don't think I think there's a lot of luck to my story. Um, there's a lot of sink or swim. I mean, why we've created so many training programs is because it was so hard and it shouldn't be that hard. And so I dove in with both feet to understand the business at every single level. Um, and so then when she wanted to retire, she was 72 at the time. Um, I it was still extraordinarily stressful, but I was able to kind of step in in that leading role uh with with those clients because I've been doing the work and kind of fast-tracking my own career in that way.

SPEAKER_00 5:46

So you you said that you obviously created a lot of kind of training um programs, obviously, at the moment, and you know, as we said in the kind of introduction, you've also you know helped people really understand, you know, or given them the opportunity through internships, which as we probably both know uh are disappearing. Um, you know, and you've built something around that uh, you know, in response to that. So what walked me through that a little bit? That that's that's super interesting.

Pandemic Shock Sparks The Externship

SPEAKER_01 6:13

Oh, this is such a fun story. So when I left, so I left kind of the structure of where it was at. So a lot of the clients that we worked with were kind of the investment, like the lady I worked with, she was kind of on the forefront of bringing financial planning, but it was still back of the envelope financial planning, if that makes sense. Yeah, and we still spent 80% of the meeting talking about investments. So I really like dove into like what is financial planning? Like, what did I go to school for? Like, what was like I I bought into the vision of what could be with financial planning, and I so I really like dove into that. And so I ended up started taking clients one by one through this process, and it was just a night-and-day difference between my clients, and so I ended up leaving where I was at um and really took my financial planning clients with me. Um, and in that time, uh, we started a podcast called You're a Financial Planner Now What. Um started working with the national FPA, so just really interested, had the time and space, and just had this real interest in how do I make this easier for people uh coming into the into the space. So, all that to say, I was working, um, I was a consultant for the national FPA helping them build out their new planner initiatives in 2020 hit. And so there were like this rumors of a pandemic coming, and I was in the camp where I'm like, yo, that's crazy. There's no way our world shuts down. Well, I was clearly wrong. And uh, but they started these kind of groups to say, how can we help the community of financial planners right now? And we started hearing about students who are losing their internships, and then we started hearing from professors of those students who were losing their internships, and we were like, wait a minute, like, what if this is something that we could help solve? And so the first solution was like, hey, can we go to other FPA firms? But let's be real, nobody knew what to do, even the best firms, nobody knew what to do. And so we went and ran several focus groups of students, and basically said, What are you looking for in an internship? And just, I mean, as old school as it is, literally just on a sheet of paper wrote down every single thing that they said. We ran a couple of those groups, and then we just kind of lined it up and we're like, the in-person, okay, that isn't happening anywhere. Like, nobody, like, we're all locked in our room, like in our homes, like, you know, it was it was a wild time. And so we're like, okay, that's off the table. I wonder how we could still do an experience that that could meet the needs of folks who were looking for this internship experience. And so we, my husband was working with me, um, and he has a background. So his background is film and digital media, but he was also an educator. So he was he actually taught and helped write curriculum. And so we sat down and said, okay, how can we how can we do this? And we thought we were really targeting juniors and seniors in college who, you know, had that tradition, you know, we're going to financial planning school going to financial planning school, going to school for financial planning, and um, and we're just looking for an opportunity. And so we were like, okay, let's go, let's do this thing.

Going Viral And Building Scale

SPEAKER_01 9:02

And it was, Chris, it was the wildest ride of my life. Uh, we basically said go. We had three weeks of prepping for this, and it went viral. Reddit was one of our biggest referral sources. Um, it was one of the coolest experiences of my life because like the community of financial planners, I have never seen that large of a community rally behind something in such a fast, like aggressive way. Um, we got students from over 200 different universities into the program. Um, we we in the first week the registration was open, uh, we saw a high school student sign up for the program. And we were like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay, so we went back to the drawing board and how we even designed the course to basically be like, we have to have we have it has to be able for people who have experience, but it has to be okay for people who have no experience. Okay, well, how do we restructure this? So we basically built this program that gives an inside look of how financial planning works and operates. We bring in over 60 different experts every year. Um, so we're really it's not just like how Hannah does it, right? Like, I mean, I I clearly have a bias. I like what the way I do it. Like, I like I do it for a reason, right? But like that's not the point of this. This point is not to make everyone like Hannah, it's really to showcase, like, here's what financial planning as a career has to offer. So it went viral. We got just a huge outpouring, and then people loved it, like absolutely loved it. And so now we are in our seventh year running the program. Um, and it's evolved a little bit over time, but it is kind of the same kind of bones and structures of it. Um, this year we had over we have over 2,800 people in the program. Wow. Um, really looking at what what does a career look like? And well, Chris, I'll I'll pause there and let you kind of go point me in the direction you want me to go because we've learned so much about who is even the talent coming in, the opportunities that this program has created. I can talk about what is actually in the program, um, the potential. There's there's just so much here. Um, because oh, there's so much here because this field absolutely needs the new talent coming in. Um, and we're we're you know part of the solution and we we see the talent coming in.

SPEAKER_00 11:10

So a few questions. I mean, 2800 registered to go this year is absolutely fantastic. So, kind of a few questions if if and I'll kind of wrap

Cost Scholarships Outcomes And Who Joins

SPEAKER_00 11:19

them off. Maybe talk a bit about the price point and and how that works, um, maybe the opportunities that that come up afterwards. And I'm also super keen to hear who who is applying and how they fit it in around, you know, obviously some people are at school, some people maybe already working. Like how how does it work?

SPEAKER_01 11:36

Absolutely. So the price point this year is $447.

SPEAKER_00 11:40

Really accessible.

SPEAKER_01 11:41

Um yeah, we wanted this, you know, from the the entire ethos of what we want to do is we want to be inviting people in. Um, so we have scholarship opportunities. We want we do not want money to be an issue for folks. Um, we have also partnered with universities to lower the price point. So if people come in like through their universities, we're also giving them discounts. Um, so we I like to your point, Chris, we want this to be accessible. Like we care deeply that people can come into come into this field, and we want this to be accessible. We've had multiple people tell us that we should be raising our prices significantly uh for the value that they're getting on this, but it's it's really kind of the heart and the ethos of the program. Um, for opportunities afterwards, uh, this is this is fascinating. Uh, we actually uh are working with some researchers right now um to actually quantify this because it's hard because we have it's it's a hard kind of beast to wrangle around of like what are the actual outcomes because you don't want like the people who don't aren't successful aren't gonna reply to your requests, right? Like you're gonna get some clear like bias on there. Um so we're trying to get we're hopefully gonna have some like very clear outcomes that we can we can tie that are like actually meaningful. But what we hear a lot is that I can't even tell you the number of times I've heard I couldn't get a job, I couldn't get callbacks, I put the extra chip on my resume, and now I have a job. Um, we hear this over and over and over. And I think it's for a couple things. One is it's something tangible to see on your resume. You employers can see it and they're like, oh, we're doing a lot of the heavy lifting on some of the training. On the financial planning software, we're showing you real clients, you're inputting all of their data. Like we are giving a better e-money or you know, financial planning software training than most firms are doing. So people are able to come in and hit their ground running almost right away. Um, we've had we've had people come to us. We hear this every year. People are coming to us because firms are telling them they won't hire somebody unless they've done the externship because they know that they have the the they have the skills, they've been trained in a way that folks wouldn't have otherwise. I also think like you get to speak the lingo, if that makes sense. Like, God bless us, but like we are kind of quirky. We're we have some weird, like, there's lots of lingo that goes into financial planning. And when you're interviewing, you sound like by the end of the externship, you're gonna know how to speak the language of financial planners. So you're gonna go into interviews and they're gonna be like, oh, they know what they're talking about because they sound like us. So I think as as silly as that might sound, I do think it's gonna is helpful. I also think it's helpful because you know where you're gonna want to land. We very much showcase lots and lots of different career paths within this field. One of the things that I think I've seen a lot of my peers fall into is they land in a certain job, and like that's it. Their whole world is that. I mean, that's how it was when I was started out. Like where I landed, the company I landed in, like it did everything. It had the lunch and learns, it had the conferences, and if that wasn't a good place, it's like, oh, this field isn't for me. And what we really want to show is like, no, there's so many opportunities if the first job isn't for you. Like, know there's other places, and hopefully helping people just start in the right lane that they want to be in. Um, so we're seeing lots and lots of opportunities, lots of um folks, folks coming into this space. Um, about 45 to 50 percent of our people year over year are saying path to entrepreneurship is one of the reasons why they want to come into this field. Okay. So I think that's an interesting avenue as well, where people are trying to get, they're kind of coming to us for the experience to be like, okay, like there's lots of resources on how to start a firm, but then like, how do you serve your clients is a really big question that there's a big old gap on uh for a lot of people coming coming into this space. Um, as for who, uh, this is what's been so interesting, so fascinating. Um, because we have seen the number one demographic within the externship is career changers. So we didn't see this when we first started, but you think about it. If you're a career changer, you like you like you care about personal finance, right? So one of the things we see is they have a personal interest. So number one reason people come into financial planning is to helping, helping people. And what we found is our number two reason is that they have a personal interest in personal finance. And what we've seen is this is often connected to some story in their life, whether they figured out how, like they figured it out, and so they're like, hey, I'm set up financially successful, like I'm financially successful because I have these skills, or they're like, I don't have these skills and I want to get better and I want to help other people not make the mistakes I did. Um, but we're finding that people have kind of that that connection of helping people, but then they have the story that they have. But if you think about it from before, okay, so you want to come into financial services, the stats don't look great. Like, what is it, 70% fallout within five years? Where do you land? You don't really want to be in a sales position. What is the pathway to come into financial planning? Like, it is doesn't look good for career changers. And so what we realize like, you can't quit your job for three months to go do an internship to see if this is what you want. Like, you don't have the flexibility that a 22-year-old coming out of college has. You need more, like, you need more structure, you need more training, you need more certainty, you need more information. And the CFP programs are amazing, but they're not giving you that like direct career. What does this actually look like? Is this something that's actually achievable for me? Um, and that's what I think we're doing in the externship. So, number one demographic is career changers. About 40% of our folks are career changers. 30% are traditional college students, kind of what you would expect when we're looking at this. And then we have this other kind of 30% that are gonna be kind of a hodgepodge of a lot of different things. Um, folks who are doing it for their own personal interests. So every year we get, you know, 5%-ish of folks doing it for that. Um, we get folks who are tangential to wealth management, so they're like, they're kind of peering in from their role, whatever they're in. They're like, hey, I kind of want to do that. Um and they're seeing if that's if this is something that they that they want to do. Um, so that's kind of the makeup of it. The other thing that's really cool is 35 to 40 percent of our folks year over year are people of color. Um, so our stats match much more of what our country is versus what this field is. Um, so that's been super interesting to see. We consistently have 45 to 50 percent are women as well. Again, not a stat that we see reflected into this field. So the talent coming in is wildly diverse from in like every aspect you can think of diversity, from their stories to their backgrounds to you know, kind of the traditional ones like the racial gender, wildly diverse, um, all with the same passion to help people with their finances. So it's it's really it's really exciting.

SPEAKER_00 18:23

That's so cool. And how and how do they get like how are they sitting the how are they doing the internship? Like, how does it actually work?

SPEAKER_01 18:30

Yeah, what actually do you do, Hannah?

Inside The Eight Week Training

SPEAKER_01 18:34

It's such a good question. We get this all the time, and people are like, wait, what? Um we had somebody, oh I don't want to call anybody out. We had somebody who signed up for the program and like, wait, I thought it was one webinar, and we're like, oh no, no, no, it's a lot more than that. So, what we do, it's an eight-week program, and we tell people it's 20 hours a week for each week. And so within the program, what we have each week we're following doing um a CP topic area. So, right now, this week, we're doing investment planning. Last week we did retirement planning, um, and the week before was cash flow planning, and the first week was um client onboarding. And so we're diving into this area of financial planning. Um, one of the other things is we have some amazing partners. Um, so we actually have six technology partners. So in the first week, we we onboarded 2,800 people into six technology partners. Like, yeah, we have a very good team to do that. So everyone gets a full basically a tech stack very, very similar to what I use in my practice, um, where we're giving them full access to this. And so the weeks kind of flow through a similar kind of format. Um, so let me show you what's gonna happen this week in investment planning. We have three different planners who view investment planning differently. Um, they talk about it differently, but they have observing different types of clients. And so we really we bring them in and say, what is what does investment planning look like for you? Um and they kind of do you know, just um probably like a 20-minute, 30-minute kind of interview with me around this. They share their client deliverables. So one of the things we realize is folks really want to see what it looks like. Like they want to like touch it, they want to see it. Um so they're sharing their client deliverables. Those three folks are gonna be back for live office hours on Wednesday. So we'll do a live Q ⁇ A with those those folks. Uh what we also see, so then we're also getting assignments every week. Well, before the assignments, we're sharing real client meetings with folks. So they're getting to see like what does it actually look like to do financial planning. And then I'm teaching from those meetings. So what that looks like is I like probably every three to five minutes, I'm pausing the video and saying, okay, did you see what the client said here? This is where it's gonna come back in this in this area. Or what the client just communicated to us is here. This is what we need to know as financial planners, and this is how this client's gonna look different than I would work with other clients. We're getting that level of like training on the client engagement. And so then what happens next is that you basically we give you all the client information, you're building out the full plan for the clients, you're actually doing the analysis. So, like in the assignment that this the folks are getting this week, they're actually running investment analysis on the clients' real statements that we have. Like they're seeing like the real thing. Um, and so we have kind of those layers uh to the program. So they're so they get to see this client meeting, so doing the assignments, which is basically building out the financial plan that they would do. Again, they're doing the work as if they were in my office or in any other financial planner's office. Uh, and then we bring in level up sessions where these are just gonna be like things that we think is gonna make are gonna make a difference for them. So this week we're bringing in our friends from DFA to give a market update because most people who haven't been in financial services don't know what that sounds like. And so we're like, hey, this is what it sounds like. We want to give you that exposure. Like, is this something that you like? Like, here's here's how to think, think about that. Um, and then we'll throw in, you know, we brought in uh Behavioral finance experts. We bring in people who are niching down in like really interesting areas. Um, we bring in like Schwab their compensation study. We brought in an expert you last week on how to find a job and how to like kind of search and like how to like present yourself in front of uh companies to like what they've seen get the most results. So we really what we always say is we really want folks to be successful. So we throw like anything like that's our filter. Will this help people be successful? And that's what we're we're throwing at them.

SPEAKER_00 22:30

That's super cool. And it sounds very, very in-depth. It's not just uh, you know, a couple of sessions on oh, here's what we do. You actually you know, they act the actual real client exposure as much as you can, which is fantastic. Obviously, you can do that through video is amazing. You know, like you'd have to be sat there in a meeting, which is ultimately what you would be doing for the first you know few uh few months at least, anyway, shadowing and you know, trying to get to up to speed with everything. So it's a really, really cool way to learn. Like you you you touched on something before which was interesting as well, which was a lot of firms or you know, a number of firms now are requiring people to actually have sat your your you know your your internship uh or your externship as as as you put it before they um you know before they'll employ them. But you know, clearly training is is is a big part of you know, is a big part of what companies offer and what they need to offer. But what do you what do you think they're getting wrong when it comes to bringing on and developing you know early career planners?

What Firms Get Wrong On Training

SPEAKER_00 23:29

What what where do you think the kind of road, you know, the the speed bumps off?

SPEAKER_01 23:34

Yeah, so I think so. I think what's fascinating to me about this is okay, I'm I'm a financial planner who runs a firm. So like I'm I'm putting myself in the same the same boat here. You know, you think a lot about you know, we get people coming into financial planning who are very good financial planners, and they have to be good business owners on top of that. And part of being a good business owner is how do we actually train people. And if you look at what's out there from a training standpoint, the vast majority of it is how to be good at sales. It's either the CFP knowledge or it's how to be good at sales. And we're requiring something entirely different when we look at the skills of how to actually be a great financial planner. Uh, one of the projects that I worked on the last several years, I led a task force for the national FPA building on a competency model. What are the because what's so here's what's fascinating is um I've done all this work with new financial planners, and I I have the screenshots, I have I have the receipts on this. Um folks would ask, how do I be a great financial planner? And we would see like 50 comments deep, get this designation, get this designation, get this designation. It's all knowledge, it's all do you have the information? But when you talk to any experienced financial planner, you talk to how do you be great, they're like, well, the CFP is the starting place. That's just like table stakes, and then it's how do you build theirs? So what we did is we went and defined those skills of what does it mean to be a great financial planner? So we it's available to the public if you just look up the FPA competency model. So when I think about firms, of what have they done wrong? Not I don't say wrong. What maybe maybe it is wrong, maybe softer, nicer way of saying it is where are the rooms for improvement? Um I think it's it's what are we training to? So folks are coming in more educated than ever, right? Like that's that's again, I'm seeing the folks coming in. They're coming in with their CFP, they're coming in with the technical knowledge. Um, like they are trying to differentiate themselves. Like, if you want to find like people are doing the work, right? These career changers, these college students, like they're doing the work to get the knowledge on it. But what's differentiating? But they come in, they have all this knowledge, but they haven't used the software. There's other skills that need to be developed. And I think it's just a huge blind spot in in these firms, is they're not understanding, they're just like, oh, go to some sessions on e-money. That'll that's how you'll learn. But that's not how we actually train people. That's not actually what learning looks like. And so I think there's a huge training gap. Um, and I think it's because firms don't know. Um, and we've been talking to more and more firms because firms are very interested in this. Like firms see it as a gap. Um, we're having conversations with a lot of firms right now, and they're like they're seeing the gap, but they don't know how to fill it. And so we're um if you're listening to this in a firm, reach out to us because we have some really cool things coming um to help kind of fill this gap.

SPEAKER_00 26:24

That was gonna be my next question. Are you working with any firms? Because that surely this feels like obviously it's it's you know kind of the B2C model that you run at the moment, you know. You get I suppose you could touch more people if you um if you operate on a business-to-business basis, which is really gonna provide, you know, a huge um you know, a huge level up for a lot of those people in that are fortunate enough to be with those companies.

Client Led Training For Firms

SPEAKER_01 26:50

So we have a monthly training program. We call it our Amplified Planning Core program because basically people are like, Hand them, we want more. Like, this is cool that you have run a two-month program, but like we need more. And so we have a library over with 60 different kind of courses, each one's a client meeting. So, what makes us so unique is everything starts with the client and moves out of this. So, like, you're not gonna hear us like be like, here's the 10 ways to do a Roth conversion, or here's how you know, you know I'm here in the States. So one big beautiful bill impacts clients from a tax standpoint. That's not our that's not us. But what we're gonna do is we're gonna say, hey, here's the fact set of this client, here's how it applies. So everything starts with the client meeting, um, and then we have them, we're old school, we're still having them do meeting notes. Um, it's a soapbox I have. Um so we have uh the client meeting, we're having them do meeting notes, we're doing document walkthroughs to basically say, what do you look for as a financial planner when you're looking at these documents? Like, because people don't know, right? It's this training gap. And then we have them do some um application piece of it. So we have this monthly training program that has 60 client meetings, and we now have this library where we're talking with people recently divorced. Um we have people who are starting from zero, we have near retirees, we have young couples starting out. We student loans is one that we just incorporated into what we're doing. So really showing that it's diverse, like how do you work with clients in all these different kinds of capacities? So, what we've seen on this is about half of the subscribers to that program are actually working at firms. So firms are actually adding their people to this. And so, what we're seeing in our conversations with firms is that's kind of the first level. Um, where and then this entry level, they're like, okay, we're just gonna subscribe them to this. We're gonna have them do one or two kind of courses every month. So it's gonna be that foundational training. Um, we are we have um prototyped this already, and we're gonna be launching more and more. Um I can't tell you the secrets, Chris, right now. It is like one of the coolest things I've worked on. I like I'm like so giddy, like it's gonna be so good of what we're trying to build out next, um, which will be much more kind of in-depth training, very focused on skill development. How do we actually measure and quantify skills for firms? Um, helping people like grow in very specific ways. So that's gonna be coming out later this year.

SPEAKER_00 29:13

I'm intrigued now you've said that. She'd have to keep it.

SPEAKER_01 29:16

I know, like you're gonna have to call and bring me back, Chris. Like I'm I'm like nothing, there's nothing in our space like that.

SPEAKER_00 29:24

I'm very, very uh excited to hear what that's what that's gonna be. Do you do you do things um and you know, obviously I I've uh I've looked, but for the listeners online, things in person, things just online, like how how does it work?

Running A Fully Remote Team

SPEAKER_01 29:39

Right now, everything's online. So I'm a good millennial. Uh everything is on the internet. I come into the office, it's just me with a camera. Um, we have dabbled with the idea of doing some things in person. Um there's obviously efficiency and scale that that has. Um our team is virtual. So even our like my paraplanner, who she's not even, she's paraplanner slash firm manager manager now. Like, she I've never met her in person.

SPEAKER_00 30:08

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 30:08

And she basically runs my entire practice. And so yeah, it's it's real cool. So like we're very like we we know and understand, like we're we're digital natives, really. Um, and so it makes all all the online stuff make sense to us. Um, so it is really fun though, because I do go to conferences and I run into a lot of folks, so that that makes that that does kind of fill my fill my cup a little bit on that side of it.

SPEAKER_00 30:31

What's your favorite conference?

SPEAKER_01 30:34

Ooh, that's a good question. Um, I think for me growing up in financial planning, it was FPA retreat because I gotta build so many deep relationships there. Um gosh, I also love the nection, FPA next gen gathering. That's been that was again very core to kind of who I was growing up. Safety Connections is putting together a very good conference. We're like three years in this year. It's been incredible. I've been I've been very impressed with them.

SPEAKER_00 31:00

Awesome. I'll have to uh have to come and check some of these out. Um yes.

Skills That Transfer To UK

SPEAKER_00 31:05

A lot of so a lot of UK advisors will be listening to this, and they're obviously gonna be thinking, like, you know, how does this apply to us? What would you say to them?

SPEAKER_01 31:14

Oh, the skills are the same, absolutely the same. Um, when you think about think about like what does it take to be a great financial planner? And we're gonna like so you like you just like sit in that question of like, what does it mean to be a great planner? And like if you start writing down those skills, like we're gonna have like the baseline knowledge, right? We have to have that knowledge. Like, like in the US, like, do you understand the tax code? Like, God bless us, like we have to know a lot. Um, do we understand the investments landscape? Do we understand like what's going on with estate planning and tax or in insurance? And there's a lot, and then we're not even talking about the cash flow and the behavioral aspects of it. There's a lot of knowledge that we have to hold. And I think we all agree on that, right? Like, that's that's very baseline. Um, and then you start saying, Okay, but we all know that throwing information at clients doesn't help. We have the world of AI. Oh, we haven't even talked about how AI is gonna impact training and how it's and hiring, it's a whole other topic. Um, but now we have AI, like we're more knowledge than we've ever had. So, what's our role? What's our value? And then what are our skills tied to that? And so I really do think it's like how do you sit across a table from somebody and take the complex and make it simple for them, make it actionable, help clients move move them to a solution. Um, and and think about those skills. And those are the skills that you know I used to think you have it or you don't, right? Like that used to be my my mantra. I was just like, you know, because I kind of had it, like I kind of had the neck for it. Like I had, you know, I um but as I've talked to more educators, they're like, no, Hannah, you're wrong. Um, and they were right, I was wrong. Um, if we can name a skill, then we can measure it, and if we can measure it, we can train to it and actually show progress in this. And so be in thinking of that, it changes the way you think about your talent. Um, because like now, even how I how I talk to my my employees now is different. So like we have, it's not just oh, they don't have it. It's okay, what's actually the skill set? So, like to give you a very specific example. Um I was listening in on a client meeting with with the planners on our team, and I was like, oh, they're very uncomfortable when a client throws a question out from left field, and like, what is actually the skill? It's an adaptability skill. Are they able to adapt to that conversation? It's critical thinking. Can they think around it? How do you how do you develop those skills? Because those are very developable. You can you can develop those skills, and so it's changed my mindset as the employer to be like, okay, how do we actually how can I make them better in those situations? And it's not just a you have it or you don't. It becomes how can I develop my talent? And and that I think is where you build firms that are gonna have. I mean, the business case is, I mean, it's right there. You're gonna have enterprise value, you're gonna have better service to clients, you're gonna have, you're gonna retain your talent. My God, all of the stats that we show in the externship, folks are looking for this. They're looking for it just as much, if not more, than career paths. Like career path thing was huge over here in the States for several years and being like, you have to show like career paths of where everyone's going. Now talent is expecting training to match those career paths, and if it's not matching it, like they're not gonna stay. And you know, over here we have you know, it's war for talent, and it's only gonna be getting worse.

SPEAKER_00 34:40

So let's there's a couple of things that I do want to go back to. We're definitely gonna go back to AI if that's okay, because I'm very on it.

SPEAKER_01 34:47

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 34:48

If the profession in the UK and US doesn't solve, you know, this talent pipeline problem, you know, what does it look

AI Threatens Entry Level Pathways

SPEAKER_00 34:56

like in 10 years? Because obviously there's a huge gap that's appearing in terms of age of advisors, you know, people getting to retirement, people selling their businesses, like you said. What does this look like?

SPEAKER_01 35:09

Um, it's gonna be top heavy. So, not to get into the AI conversation too much, but like, but you think about what AI is doing right now, whose jobs is it threatening? It's threatening the entry-level ones, right? That's where it's gobbling up all this work. So, all of the work that we trained our entry-level staff on is getting gobbled up with AI. I was talking to a large firm and they're like, we know that in 18 months our CSA position might be gone.

SPEAKER_00 35:34

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 35:34

And like, that's wild when we think about career development. So, what's gonna happen? That's been such a foundational building block to train people to be ready for that next step. And this isn't just financial services or wealth management or financial planning, this is across the board, right? Like, you talk to any college student right now, they're terrified of this. Of like, how do I get a job when AI is eating up? I don't know, Chris, if you saw this, this whole thing was going around, like all these graduation ceremonies, all these folks, whenever they mention AI, the whole like like the whole college grew, like the graduating classes all booing them. It was like a whole thing. Um, kind of just cheeky funny. But but like there's a real fear of that. So you think about if we have this training gap where the roles are actually getting removed, and like we're seeing it, right? Note takers. That used to be the job of an entry-level staff, and I can when I talk about note-taking, there are so many competency and skills that are built in this. We see this all over. We're often, we're many times client or our um, these aspiring planners, first time ever seeing a client meeting. They are literally sitting there in a fire hose of being like, what's going on? They're trying to track the conversation, they're even they're struggling doing that. But then to actually understand everything, to be able to interpret it for a client and then a firm, like there's a lot of skills going on in that, in that process. We're basically outsourcing all of that to AI. Um, okay, so where does this somebody learn this? Like, what are gonna be those those skills? So I think if we don't solve this problem, we already are top heavy, right? It um the Schwab Benchmark survey talked, um, they asked folks where they get, they ask firms where they get their talent. Number one is personal network, um, number two is universities, and number three is other firms. So, like, we're just poaching each other's people at this point. Like, we're grabbing them from universities, grabbing them from our personal, and we're just poaching. Um, and and I think that we're gonna see that more and more. So if if we don't solve this problem, we're gonna have we're gonna be so top heavy. We're gonna have the people who are skilled. Um, they're gonna become even more in demand from firms are gonna have to pay way more in talent and in talent cost, and then it's it's we're gonna be poaching at the top, and then we're gonna have a huge gap where folks aren't trained. Um, and so that's if we don't solve some of this, um, we're still gonna, you know, we're still gonna serve the top 1%. I think the opportunities missed, massive business opportunities missed. I don't know about you, Chris. In the US, like there was um a stat I saw of folks who are looking for financial advice, willing to pay for it but don't know where to go, astronomically high. Like to the tune that you extrapolate it, tens of millions of people who are looking for help on their personal finances and don't know where to go and they're willing to pay us. The opportunity is incredible in this space of like, yes, we have the older advisors who are retiring, we have the established business that's there. This is our generation's opportunity to step into what can be and when we look at this. And so if we don't, if we don't figure out this talent, sure, we can stay status quo, we'll figure out you know, maintain status quo, but like the opportunities missed are I mean transformational.

SPEAKER_00 38:51

Agreed. I mean, it's it's um it's it's a huge, it's a huge change coming up, and it's really interesting what you said about you know learning the basic skills, you know, that again that you know ultimately can be replicated by AI, but it's such an important building block for you to build your career on and to you know and to show that you can do it. It's really interesting as well. We we interviewed someone as a developer um the other day, and they it was very clear that they were using uh clawed code or codecs to write their code. And the question was to them was is that can you actually do it yourself? And they came back in 100% was I don't need to. Like, why do I need to do this myself? It was almost like you know, you were asking a stupid question. Um, but I think the point is that when it doesn't go right or when invariably it goes wrong, like do you have the skill set to unpick it and really understand where it went wrong, or you know, like how how are you gonna how are you, you know, how do you actually know what you're doing is right?

Liability Black Boxes And New Skills

SPEAKER_01 39:50

Um and then like the credit like we have to like what's so what's fascinating to me about the AI conversation. Sorry not to cut you off there. I was um I was demoing this cool AI tech, right? Where you basically put the clients' information, just upload their statements, they spits out the whole financial plan for them, right? Like I'm like, it's pretty slick. And I'm I'm watching the process, like they're doing the demo, and I sat there and I'm looking at it, and like it's it's slick, right? Like, um, and I was like, wait, why are you even going to financial advisors? Like, this is ready for consumers. Like, why are you even going to us? Why don't you just go directly to consumers? Without missing a beat, the guy was like, Oh, we don't want the fiduciary duty. We don't want the liability. I'm like, wait a second. So you have this slick process, and you want me to assume the liability of this? When, like, truly, it's kind of like a black box of what's actually going inside of this. And so you think about the skill sets that we're gonna have to hold as financial planners because AI is coming, right? We know it is, it already is here. Um, and we can't run away from that. Like, to your point of that developer, it becomes how do you use it? So, what I want is I want people on my team. I have anybody who's using these AI technologies had better darn well know what's going on in that software just as well as a software knows. Like, our skills are gonna have to be so sharp. Our skills are gonna have to shift, right? It's not gonna be about data entry skills anymore. It's not gonna be about like those things. It's gonna be this deep critical thinking. It's gonna be quality of thinking, it's gonna be us challenging the inputs, it's gonna be us using research-based thinking. Like, our skill set is going to have to radically not radically, for some people, radically change from just being like, I'm the receiver of information to I'm actually auditing the process throughout all of this. Because if there's a 5% error, that's on me. That's my liability. And like that's a big deal. And like this is the whole thing, right? With AI. Like, when you have professional level standards, like I use AI, right? Like, who's not using AI right now? But when you have professional level standards, that that's a high bar. Um, and it's not like it is not enough to sit and be like, oh, I'm just gonna take the inputs and walk away with it. Like, you have to be able to, and even like the architecture of how you have to do it, what are the safeguards? What is a human's role in this? Like, there is so much that's gonna go into this for us to actually do it well, where like we could actually stay in an auditing situation or in a lawsuit situation defend our recommendations again. How the skill sets are gonna have to change in this field.

SPEAKER_00 42:30

Yeah, it's um people are gonna have to level up, and people are gonna really have to to uh to to to be a differentiator. I mean, every every every conference that I've been that said it, they've always said um they've always said it's about the relationship. Like, you know, you need to focus on developing that relationship and developing that personal touch. Obviously, you have need to have a good understanding of how to and be competent enough to deliver it, but you need to really focus on the relationship. How are you using it in your teaching? Or and and what are you teaching on it?

Teaching AI With High Standards

SPEAKER_01 43:02

Um right now we're really just exploring, um, we're just keeping it as a conversation. So we're highlighting how tech companies are using AI. So we're kind of using it from that kind of level right now. Um, you might see it come out in that uh new uh that new offering that we might be coming out with soon. Um so uh you'll see cuts kind of doing that. But we're also being incredibly selective and and um cautious in it because even like I mean, one obvious one is like we're doing training, right? Like even like summaries of these client meetings, and so like we've so extra ship. I mean, we have an insane amount of like 160 some odd videos was last year's number. Um, and so you're like, oh, just throw that all into AI and do it. The quality of AI with us coaching it versus the quality of a person who knows our brand and our voice, like we're still having people watch everything. Yeah, all of my social media handles are still people, it's not good enough. And again, that's where you say, like, where are your standards at? Like, our standards are high and AI is not meeting them. Yeah, so we're we're going old school, we're paying, and that's old school, but like it's also what is from a business owner standpoint, my people know what's going on in in the courses, like they understand what's going on. So, like we're training the like we're training the person, right? Like, and so like that's it's not just all about efficiency, and I think that's where folks are going to. I'm taking an AI course right now, they talk about this a lot. If your goal is just efficiency, firms aren't seeing the 10x response. Yeah, um, you have to read the whole process.

SPEAKER_00 44:37

Yeah, um, I think it's like it's um it's it's very, very interesting, isn't it? Like how much it is gonna impact everyone. And I think like you said, we could go on and on and on about it. Um but um but yeah, it's uh it's a m it's upon us. People need to learn how to use it, and um, yeah, we we need to make sure that we're ready. Um because if if you're not getting ready and if you're not gonna start using it, then you will you you know you will come a propper.

SPEAKER_01 45:06

Um we need the we need the best people to be using it, right? We need the we need the professionals to be the ones guiding the conversations, not the folks who are coming from outside our field. Like we need to be, we need to be there, we need to be guiding that because that's how we make sure that it's it's to our standards.

SPEAKER_00 45:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:23

Definitely.

Why The Work Still Matters

SPEAKER_00 45:24

If a finan like last question from me, I appreciate I've kept you long enough, so thank you very much. But if a financial planner listening to this takes one thing away from the whole conversation, what what would it be?

SPEAKER_01 45:37

Um, there's so much. I think the thing that I would say is that our work matters, and our work is needed more than it's ever been needed. Like, I still like I still get chills when I think about the profound impact we have on our clients. And AI is coming, there's gonna be training gaps, there's gonna be all of these things, but at the end of the day, this work matters deeply. Um, and it is it transforms people's lives, and and like to be part of that is it's just I I think I am in the best field, I think I have the best job, and and I couldn't imagine doing anything different. So um, if you're listening to this, like don't forget that. Like it's really easy to get into the mundanes of our job, but like don't forget that the work that you're doing matters and that it is changing people's lives.

SPEAKER_00 46:27

Awesome. Thank you so much, Hannah. That was really, really insightful, and I think you're doing some amazing work. It's been a real pleasure to have you on Don't Shoot the Messenger. So thank you very much for your time. Uh, and I'm sure well, I'll definitely be uh signing up to my own externship uh and taking other courses as well. So thank you very much.

SPEAKER_01 46:45

Absolutely, thank you so much, Chris. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 46:48

Thank you.