Transcript
Speaker: Welcome back to the Synergize Podcast. I'm Ryan Neal, Editorial Manager at Trade PMR by Robinhood. And you'll notice if you're a regular listener or watcher on YouTube, a little bit different today. We are coming to you live from the Synergy 26 stage.
Speaker: Also, you'll notice my co-host Bill Capell is not with me today. He's on assignment. So I am flying solo. But I've got an awesome guest with me today. I have Grace Arnold. She is a Vice President and Wealth Advisor at Green Up Wealth Management. Grace, thanks for joining me on the Synergy podcast stage. Thank you for having me, Ryan. It's so good to be here.
Speaker: Great. So you write a fascinating sub stack focused on financial education, Girl Math with Grace. Can you share with our audience, ah both here at the conference and at home listening, what is Girl Math with Grace and what was the inspiration we're starting at?
Speaker: Yeah, um so I wanna take a minute and talk a little bit about the perspective that I'm sharing this sub stack before I get into kind of the the overall mission. so I have been in financial services for over 15 years. For majority of my career, I was actually on the corporate side. I led strategy for large organization. um And the reason I bring that up is ah similar to a lot of the conversations we've been having at Synergy.
Speaker: We talked a lot about how to segment, how to deliver value, education, product solutions to large segments of the population. um whether that is millennials or women or pre-retirees, the job was what do people want, what do they need?
Speaker: And so I came from this perspective of of kind of this analytical way of looking at population segments. Green Up Wealth um brought me over as an advisor a couple of years ago. It was a huge pivot for me from the land of you know kind of boardrooms and broad-based corporate strategy in the financial world.
Speaker: But what it taught me when I got into those rooms and I started having conversations with real people, um mostly women, because I think that that's you know that a lot of women are you know looking to a female advisor for help or questions or guidance. But what I found was that there was ah an enormous gap in terms of and financial confidence, comfort, and literacy with a really, really important group of clients that was was ultimately harmful, in my opinion, to them. So I get a lot of people coming to me saying I messed up. i
Speaker: didn't do enough. I started too late. I don't know any of this stuff. And frankly, it just really bothered me. um I wanted to do something about it. I do not think that this stuff is that complicated. I think it is the right of everybody to fully understand their finances and money and all the things that we in this room are talking about.
Speaker: And so I created Girl Math with Grace as a sub stack to put out educational content that I believe reflected a point of view that was more approachable to a female audience.
Speaker: That's great. I can totally empathize with the ah the career pivot. I was a journalist for a long time and pivoted over to ah to Trade PMR, now Robinhood, and still getting used to it. Compliance review is wild. that's something you have to do as a reporter.
Speaker: Well, so yeah i love that that inspiration of of the Substack. Can you talk a little bit, mean, clearly financial literacy is a passion for you. Can you talk about the other side how it's been beneficial for you as an advisor to to grow your brand and connect with those clients?
Speaker: Yeah, so I'd love to say that I had some master plan strategy as I put all this together. But to be honest, it was just one of those things I thought sounded fun and I wanted to do and try.
Speaker: um but an unexpected benefit that's come out of it is that um you know i've I've created a bit of a brand that is shareable. with people in a tangible way. So if you think about it, um my practice that I've built, um I've gone from zero to close to 100 client relationships in the course of two years. I've spoken with a lot of people in the process, um hundreds of women, and kind of understanding what they're looking for, what they need.
Speaker: And um one of the things that I know is especially if you are ah you know if if you're working with younger clients or they're coming to you, a lot of times it's digital.
Speaker: um I do most of my meetings on Zoom. After you have that first call, If you were a consumer, what would you do? You have the first call with somebody, goes great, seems legit. Well, I'm going to go and I'm going to research everything I can find about that person before taking one more step further. yeah further So think about your own digital footprint that's out there as an advisor.
Speaker: um unexpected benefit of of putting out educational content is that you also get the opportunity to showcase you and who you are and your personality. And if you read some of my things, they're they're pretty personal and um they allow me to showcase like this is what you're getting if you're working with me. I'm not trying to be some watered down version of a financial advisor. And so what I hope and what I know happens is that when I meet with somebody, they find that.
Speaker: um They gravitate toward it or not, and it it ends up connecting me with really really good long-term relationships. I also think it creates something very shareable um for referrals. So I have a lot of clients that'll share an article with their mom or their sister, like, hey, this same exact thing happened to my friend. I'm gonna pass this along. um So you're really cultivating this this ability for your voice and your brand to be shared more broadly and and hopefully grow your business. Yeah, that's great. And honestly, I didn't plan this, but that's almost exactly why I launched RIA Reflections.
Speaker: During my time with a journalist, I'd met so many advisors and and people in the community, right? Tech executives, consultants, you name it, that had really, really interesting backgrounds and great stories that they would share with me. personally on the conference floor or over a drink after their networking hours or stuff like that.
Speaker: um But they're hard to they're hard to tell. and as a reporter, if someone comes to you and pitches that story, we usually have to say no, because it's it's not news. It's kind of fluff. but But they're great stories out there. So I wanted to launch RA Reflections as a chance to to let people tell those stories in their own words. And and you did that for us I'm going to hold up, get a little self-plug.
Speaker: our Reflections. Grace is our most recent story published online today and it's on the cover of our print edition here. so can you talk about the story you told and and and why you shared it with us?
Speaker: Yeah, so this was so fun by the way. If you're ever fortunate enough to be tapped by Ryan to be interviewed for RA Reflections, I highly, highly recommend um going through that experience because you held my hand through the process and helped me you know get inspiration for what I wanted to write. thisll I'll let everybody um read it. I think it's in our swag bags, but um it's it's a letter to my daughters. like At the end of the day,
Speaker: ah That's my inspiration is what what do my daughters need? um What do I want them to know about life, about money, about making it in this world and and proceeding with confidence? And that's that's what's reflected in there as sort of a nod to how we can all you know ah ah claim our own you know our own paths and and move forward with ownership.
Speaker: um I will also say just as a as a comment on the process, you know being here, it's been so great to be able to interact with other advisors. We were all going through the same thing um you know in different versions of it. We all are like talking to people at the various events and understanding what works for them, what doesn't, what challenges they face.
Speaker: It feels um really nice to have that community so that you don't feel like you know what's going on in in your world is is necessarily that unique. And I think this does a really good job of that.
Speaker: like I really enjoyed reading the other stories as well to feel a bit of that closeness and understand you know other people's paths to getting to where they are. Well, thank you. I enjoyed the compliment on stage. um Well, we'll move on a little bit, because you mentioned working with younger clients. And that's certainly been a major theme of this conference, right? The wealth transfer, next generation, using technology to reach those folks.
Speaker: Is that a big focus of of your individual work with clients or green up as a whole? And what are you doing to help? work with next generation clients. Yeah. I mean, yeah, i think here's here's the thing. i think that like I said, I've been I've been moving through this industry for a long time now. We've been talking about the great wealth transfer for a very long time. It's not going to be a sudden explosion. It's already happening you know in certain in certain parts of the of demographic. um it is It is so important. um GreenUp in particular, we've built the the firm has built the model to you know to be there for that client.
Speaker: And I think the important thing that we're doing is we're not waiting until the transfer occurs. I think if you're doing that, you might have some success, but for a lot of it, you'll you'll be a little bit late to the game. I think the opportunity to earn loyalty, to earn trust from people that honestly need it, like I think of my own my own situation, um this is like this is tough times. You know, you're in your late 30s, early 40s, young kids, life's in insane.
Speaker: Like I have a soccer tournament this weekend that I have no idea who's driving to or where it is. I think it's like an hour away. And all these priorities in your head. Meanwhile, career is starting to become more complex. and earnings are starting to become higher and you're trying to make the right decisions, but then costs are also higher with it. So all these things happening, I'm like, this is when you need a financial advisor. yeah It's not necessarily when like I'm 65 years old and I've inherited $2 million. dollars You know what I mean? like's This is the moment when if somebody came to me and said, oh, I can help you,
Speaker: I would love that person for the rest of my life. And so green up, we are like one of our foundational principles, for example, is that there we don't establish fee minimums. um you know That's kind of up to the advisor to create within their practice. So if you a lot of a lot of firms might say, we don't take anything below 500,000. We don't take anything below a million. That keeps creeping up, by the way, from an industry perspective, leaving more people essentially isolated Well, the people that you're isolating, those are the recipients of the great wealth transfer in the future. right And so how can we create alternative fee models, alternative delivery mechanisms still you know operating at scale in order to be there for those people in a meaningful way
Speaker: that's that's how That's the long-term mindset I think that you need to take on. Yeah, makes a lot of sense, right? like Build those relationships now, be that trusted partner, guide them through the the complexities of building wealth, and then be that trusted partner for if ah if a wealth transfer comes. Exactly. Yeah, right.
Speaker: Well, great. Well, I know we have a lot of time left in our session, but we're gonna wrap up the podcast. We try to keep these, you know, 10 minutes. If you go over 10 minutes, people stop listening to your podcast, unless you have like a celebrity on. But what we like to do on the podcast is we like to to wrap it up with like one piece of actionable advice. Something that our listeners back home or or anyone here in the audience can sort of take with them and and and implement their practice. So we talked about a a few different things today, but if you had one piece of actual advice or an insight, but what would you say?
Speaker: um i would I would say be you. i know it's really cheesy. um it's It's something I think that is is important. There are so many people out there that need somebody. um And i think that where we do ourselves a disservice, in this industry is by trying to be everything to everyone when there are a lot of people that really just want you and that you could help very specifically so my piece of actionable advice would be to um to really think of how you can create that personalized brand that is reflective of who you are as an individual, bring your story into the mix. I think the more and more we talk about ai and the dehumanization of many of our products, commodities, et cetera, the the more important it is going to be to create and and share these authentic experiences with with clients. um And I think that we all have something unique to serve in that manner.
Speaker: Yeah, I couldn't it better. i mean, that's exactly how I think about it, right? You know, AI is a great tool. It it can be help you be super productive and and get more work done. But, you know, a writer, I'm probably, probably by am biased. But I think if everyone just starts using AI technology to write, you you you lose that authentic experience. And I think that authentic, being in your authentic self, telling your authentic story, showing who you are and what you believe in and what you're passionate about, what are your hobbies? yeah um that's only gonna be more and more important to to separate you and and differentiate you and and you know make you see human in ah in a world where investors can get advice from from a lot of places, right? yep
Speaker: right Well, Grace, thank you so much for joining the podcast. For everyone listening at home and here in the audience, thank you so much. Thank you, Ryan. This was really fun. great And if you like what you're... Oh, yeah, whoa, did applause let's get applause on the recording. Yeah, hey, hey, hey.
Speaker: All right. And if you like what you heard, please take a moment to like, subscribe, wherever you're getting this podcast, whether it's on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music. Anything you do helps the algorithm, gets us out there more, grows our audience. And I'll catch you on the next episode of the Synergize podcast.
Speaker: If you want to join the conversation or connect with us, please visit us at synergizedpodcast.com. This content is provided for general information purposes only. The views expressed by non-affiliated guest speakers are their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Trade PMR or its affiliates. Trade PMR and its affiliates do not endorse any guest speakers or their companies and therefore give no assurances as to the quality of their products and services. This channel is not monitored by Trade PMR.
Speaker: Trade PMR does not provide investment advice, tax advice, or legal advice. Trade PMR is a member of FINRA and SIPC. Trade PMR Inc. is registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission, SEC, and the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board, MSRB.
Speaker: For a transcript of this episode with sources, visit synergizepodcast.com. custodial services provided by first clearing first clearing is a trade name used by wells fargo clearing services l lc member s ipc a registered broker dealer and nonbank affiliate of wells fargo and company copyright twenty twenty six trade pm r inc for a transcript of this episode with sources visit synergizepocast dot
