Transcript
Speaker: Energize, unscripted conversations where we explore the evolving role of the financial advisor in an emerging AI driven world. Join us as we bring together thought leaders across a range of disciplines and industry experts, sharing insights designed to help RIAs thrive in the industry of tomorrow.
Speaker: Welcome back to Synergize. I'm Bill Capelle, Chief Client Growth Officer at Trade PMR, a Robinhood company. And I'm Ryan Neal, Editorial Manager here at Trade PMR Robinhood. And Bill, regular listeners of our podcast know that we're all about helping advisors grow their business.
Speaker: But they can't do that unless they're staying up with the the largest trends and forces that are driving and shaping our industry, right? So today, we've got an advisor and a a prominent industry voice who is out there talking about what she believes is a trillion-dollar opportunity for advisors that is coming in the not-too-distant future.
Speaker: And that is a significant opportunity, Ryan, and one the industry should have seen coming more than a decade ago. And what we're talking about is the fact that, and I'm going to put this in the words of our guest, an unprecedented amount of assets will shift into the hands of women over the next three to five years.
Speaker: But historically, advisors have struggled to engage female clients. And frankly, we've made some bad assumptions along the way that allow us to default to that male client's perspective.
Speaker: The reality is our industry is not adequately set up today to serve the market that could reshape every aspect of wealth management. Exactly. So that leads me to introduce our guest today is Carrie Carbonaro. She is the author of a new book, Women and Wealth, a playbook to empower clients and unlock their fortune. Carrie is also the managing advisor at Ashton Thomas Private Wealth. She is a CFP board ambassador.
Speaker: But she's an advocate for women in this space, and she's all about, as I said earlier, pushing the industry to adapt and change to better serve 50% of the population that is inheriting more wealth. So, Keri, welcome to the show.
Speaker: Thank you. Happy to be here with you. i had the pleasure of meeting Kari a few months ago. We were both speaking at the Advisor Hub event in New York. And I have to say, Kari, you blew me away with your presentation. And that's why I was so excited to have you join us here today. But what I want to do is kick it off with a very, very simple question.
Speaker: How did you get introduced to money? you know What was it in your you know in your youth and growing up that kind of brought you into this space? Sure. I love telling this story because it's very unique. So my dad was a banker.
Speaker: He worked for JPMorgan Chase his entire career. So I was the oldest of the three daughters and we bonded over money instead of over sports.
Speaker: So he taught me everything at a very young age. We talked about money. We we did really cool things like He took me to take your daughter to work day before there was a take your daughter to work day.
Speaker: So way back. Then we did foreclosure auctions. We went to together. we We went to straight talk with the Dolans, which was a personal finance couple that used to tour and and do things.
Speaker: I wanted to be a teacher. And so I went to undergraduate to be a teacher And then I got my first job out of college and in in banking instead of teaching. And I said, I'm going to teach money instead of instead of history. And so now that's kind of, and it's funny because I also used to do really fun things like with all my friends, I used to find money in their budgets. I used to do their net worth. I used to figure out, calculate how much they can afford for a mortgage or or figure out how they can refinance debt.
Speaker: And the fact that I could actually do this for a living, I didn't even know it was a profession. So that I'm so fortunate that this is something that I can do and give back to the world. So I actually consider myself a teacher who teaches money.
Speaker: So that's why this is important to me. yeah You know, one thing we talk about a lot on this podcast and in Robin Hood general is the great wealth transfer. And there's a lot of data around that. yeah But there's a McKinsey study that that you have cited that says that women by 2030, women may control, I think, two thirds of of wealth in the U.S. um So can you talk a little bit about that opportunity, ah what you talk about in your book, the opportunity for advisors ah for serving that market and maybe what do they have to do differently in order to capitalize on that opportunity? Sure. So let's talk about the opportunity first and where it comes from and how long we've known about it. So We've known about this McKinsey study came out in 2015.
Speaker: So in 2015 said by 2030, women are gonna control two thirds of the nation's wealth, which is $30 trillion, dollars which is the same as the GDP of the United States, just to put it in context. That's how much money we're talking about. So 15 years ago, we knew this was coming. We are now four and a half years shy of this happening, and it's already starting to to happen. And there's a lot of different factors that go into it, because that's another question that I get, like, why is this happening, right? And so the reason is a lot of different things. It's not just one thing. It's the fact that women live longer and so the longevity portion of women living longer than men. Then we've got women inheriting money from their baby boomer parents and from their spouses.
Speaker: So, you know, again, the longevity. Then you've got the gray divorce trend where women are getting all this money at a later age in life from a divorce. Then you have women becoming primary breadwinners in the United States by 2030 for the first time in history. So we've got all this all this happening at once. And then Cerulli came out last year with a new number going out even further. So the numbers just keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger the further you go. And Cerulli says firms that cater to women are going to be positioned for decades to come.
Speaker: And that leads me to my next question. and and And that's, is the industry ready? In fact, when you were writing the book, you were going to entitle it, compel her, don't sell her.
Speaker: Yes. Why did you end up changing the name of the book? ah Well, actually, that was not me. That was the publisher. i still wanted it I still wanted it to be compel her, don't sell her. And actually on LinkedIn, my newsletter is compel her, don't sell her. So it's still my tagline.
Speaker: And I'll tell you why. so So the name of the book is, you know, Women and Wealth. Here it is, a playbook to empower clients and unlock their fortune. But it really is compel her, don't sell her. And why is that important?
Speaker: Because The industry, in my opinion, women don't need to be fixed. The industry does. So there's another study in my book by Harvard Business Review that says financial services is the least sympathetic to women and the one that has the most to change if they get it right.
Speaker: It's from 2009. So obviously we needed a new playbook Right. So and and what is the difference of compelling versus selling? Women do not want to be sold.
Speaker: Women want a relationship first and then they'll maybe they'll maybe they'll do what you tell them to do if it's in their best interest. So compelling means you have she has to trust you. She has to understand what you're saying.
Speaker: You have to educate her. It's a very different process. Compelling is different than selling and it's the right thing to do for a woman. but that But the industry's been trained to sell. I know. how How are we going to begin to evolve that process? Oh, there's I have a lot of answers to that, right? I talk about the three E's.
Speaker: So for a woman, education is key. they you know When they have questions, it's not because they're questioning you or not understanding or you know not as smart as the men They want to have all the facts before they make a decision. And also, if you're speaking in jargon to them, they may and not even understand what you're saying. You're speaking a different language. So education is incredibly important to a woman. She she really wants to know what is going on with her money and the transaction and the planning and and the why. the why is The why is more important than the what. And all of that information. And guess what?
Speaker: advisors, it takes longer. It takes longer to work with a woman. And sometimes people don't like when I say that, but it is the truth. It takes longer. Women are going to take longer as it might take, may take four meetings, may take five meetings to have her become a client because she has to feel comfortable and she has to trust you. What you're saying is in her best interest. So that's step one is education.
Speaker: Part two is empathy. And I always say that she doesn't care how much you know until she knows how much you care.
Speaker: And that's not my quote. I think it's Eleanor Roosevelt's, but I always use it because it's so perfect for women. And it is so important. Empathy is an incredibly important skill and it's not a soft skill. It's a business skill.
Speaker: And then the last part is empowerment. Empowerment is so important for a woman. to feel like you got her from A to B. So for example, most of my clients come to me when, i always say when the when the when it's raining outside.
Speaker: The sun is not shining when they come to me. It's a very, Not in the not in the best, that they don't come to you with the best of things yeah going on right now. They usually have a big, big issue with them. Huge issue. It's either divorce, death, disability, job loss, something terrible happened to them and they're sitting at my at my desk, right? And so i wish they came to me when everything was perfect and the sun was shining and they just woke up and said, i want to find that I want to hire a financial planner. Except that doesn't happen with women. It only happens when there's a life changing event where they feel like they need somebody. It is so rare. I would say in my clients, less than 1% came to me when the sun was shining. Everybody else came when something terrible was happening. So there goes the empathy. But now let's talk about empowerment. So let's talk about a client who um had something terrible. They lost their spouse and their son and their business all at the same time because there was ah an accident. And she came to me, um she couldn't even understand, like we probably had a year of meetings before she became a client.
Speaker: Then we had another year where she brought um like almost like a friend in with her to make sure that she was understanding everything that I was saying. By year three, she was coming by herself.
Speaker: By year four, she was a completely transformed woman. And so what I call that is I call that resilience bonding. And that's also empowerment because you get them from the state that they're in to completely independent on their own. Well, want to shift gears a little bit because I want to talk about a concerning trend in the industry, which is that the majority of women end up firing their financial advisor during some of those really difficult transitions. You you know mentioned things like a divorce or or or death in the family, widowhood, um
Speaker: I think you shared a story about an advisor with a $100 million dollar client and that advisor admitted to you that he wasn't confident that the client's wife would stay with him after after the husband passed. So, you know, in our industry, retention is is so important.
Speaker: And if we know out there we have the data saying that there's a massive retention risk is as a client's wife that leaves, up why aren't we addressing this or what can we do to address it better? Yeah.
Speaker: Well, so we have a couple of issues with our industry. First, we only care about acquisition and AUM growth. Nobody ever asks you about be ah about retention. so and and And it's funny because we know this stat of 70% to 90% leave their advisor when the spouse dies. And it's it's ah almost always a woman. um And every male advisor that I've ever spoken to said, I've never lost a client.
Speaker: So I don't know where these people are going, or maybe they don't even know that they lost the clients. So I think that's the funniest part is that nobody will ever admit that they actually lost the client. But anyway, i I usually get those clients. So, you know, it's it's interesting that I'm always on the receiving end of that. So I know, and and we haven't even hit the great wealth transfer yet. I mean, we're sort of like just in the early stages of it. So it's going to accelerate. I actually had an advisor who was about 65. And he said to me, you know, a lot of my book is at risk.
Speaker: And I said, what are you going to do about it? And he said, I don't know. I think I'll be retired by then. So it's somebody else's problem. Let's talk about that that guy who with the $100 million dollar client who said, you know, she's probably not going to stay. And I said, what are your meetings like? And he says, she doesn't care.
Speaker: She's not interested. She just wants to spend the money, which is another whole, you know, stereotype of women that they just want to spend the money and they don't care about it. Um, the husband takes care of everything, you know, and I said to him,
Speaker: What does she care about? And he said, I don't know. I said, well, first of all, that's the first problem. You don't even know what she what's important to her. Secondly, i always tell people, why don't you have a separate meeting with the with just the wife?
Speaker: And they're like, what? I can do that? I'm like, why not? she she Then you're going to get to talk one-on-one with her. going have eye contact. You're going have communication with her. She might tell you something that she didn't say in the group meeting with with the spouse. Because you and him are talking the whole time and you're not even making eye contact with her. I have a story where um we were sitting in a meeting and a woman took out a magazine and started reading a magazine while...
Speaker: The husband is talking. And I said, you know, this is this is exactly my point. Like if she she is totally just sitting there and she's being a placeholder and we don't want her to be. Because then the next question is, what happens when he dies?
Speaker: Because the likelihood is that you are going to be a widow because of longevity. What will happen then? I mean, you besides the fact that you're lose the love of your life, you're going to be now responsible for this. And if you don't know anything and don't, you know, don't have a relationship with this advisor. It's not a good position to be in. So I try to it's a hard conversation to have, but an important one. And then the other thing is, if you can find out what's important to her, that is incredibly powerful. So in this case, i so this woman happened to be, you know, um into philanthropy.
Speaker: So find out her favorite charity. Find out how she can use her charity to benefit something, you know, something that's important to her and then use the money for that. And that's engaging and that's empowering.
Speaker: Yeah. Find a way to get her involved. and yeah somehow Start, start somewhere. Great. Exactly. Yeah. You know, it's interesting, Carrie, because, What you're saying are the the the techniques we should be using with everyone.
Speaker: Yes. At the end of the day. Right. Right. And there's there's this mystique out there that in a traditional relationship between a husband and wife, the husband will handle all the finances and the wife will do whatever the wife will do. But my point is that treating people with respect, getting to know them, getting to understand them is really critical. One of the things you talk about in the book, and I wanted to you know get you to expand on this a little bit is you mentioned two things. One is emphasizing of the emotional connection which we've been talking about here um through behavioral finance, right? one One technique and you talk about storytelling, right? Yes. And i I want you to talk a little bit about what you mean by that and how you apply that. But the other thing you mentioned, which I found really interesting,
Speaker: as well is this notion of financial therapy. So, you know, you've described a couple of situations with some of your own examples of clients you've you've dealt with. Obviously, i encourage folks to read the book and really learn about Carrie's story in addition to how she got into the business, how she's navigated through the business and reinvented herself on several occasions, largely due to the lack of understanding of where women effectively fit into the wealth management world, right? Yes. And that's just not limited to the wealth management world. We've heard that issue raised again and again in in corporate America. But just putting that aside for a moment, this notion of financial therapy,
Speaker: Share with our listeners ah what exactly do you mean by that, because you know what? It it scares me a little bit. know Do I need to be a psychologist now? do i Do I have to get another degree? How do you handle that? How do you apply that in storytelling?
Speaker: So I think of myself as three things. I think of myself as a teacher. I think of myself as a therapist. And then I think of myself as an advocate. And I am all three of those things at once. So, and yes, I'm not a licensed therapist, But I can tell you, i am i can almost do what a financial therapist what ah what a financial therapist can do in the sense of, I know which questions to ask. I know where people get stuck. i know and if i And if I don't get them unstuck, I'm not doing my job correctly. That's right. Because isn't therapy really about helping people self-discover what matters? Yes, exactly. It's exactly getting to the root cause of why they make the decisions they make. Right. And so it's it's very different than ah our profession of crunching numbers.
Speaker: It is incredibly different. There's there's numbers. And then so there's EQ and IQ. Right. And so I actually just wrote an article. for Barron's Magazine that says why EQ matters more than IQ for advisors, especially for women.
Speaker: And it is about the emotional intelligence that you can bring to the situation that is way more important then what your performance is and what your numbers are. It is to me, i believe that The emotional support is not separate from the financial plan.
Speaker: It's what makes the plan work. Yeah. And, you know, you made ah another great observation I want our listeners to think about here is this balance between EQ and IQ. We're a society that is often rewarded IQ.
Speaker: at the expense of EQ. And we're shifting. Yes. Particularly as technology is reshaping our world, where artificial intelligence is really penetrating just about everything that we do today.
Speaker: It's really raising the idea of the value of EQ. And I think that for our listeners, that's probably an incredibly important takeaway from this is that, and particularly in the case of women, EQ is gonna become a much stronger part of the strategy than IQ because quite frankly, you know, particularly in your case, you know, you're a CFP, you you have multiple degrees, you've accomplished a lot, you're well known.
Speaker: The reality of it is, it all comes down to that relationship. Exactly, exactly. and And what's interesting with that is ChatGPT can be your IQ.
Speaker: It cannot be your EQ. Agreed. you know, what's what's interesting about artificial intelligence is if you're if you're a strong thinker, it'll make you stronger. Right. Right. If you're very creative, it can help you make you more creative.
Speaker: If you're neither creative or a strong thinker, it will amplify that. So it doesn't replace intelligence. What it does is it helps you strengthen and give you another perspective,
Speaker: Well, great. think that's a good segue for me to lead into our wrap up. Carrie, what we do here on the show is we like to leave our listeners and viewers, if you're watching this on YouTube ah with some actionable advice that they could take back to their practice and implement. So what's one thing we've covered a lot of ground, maybe top level, if they want to start thinking about how they can serve women better, what's like one piece of advice you can give them to to to go get started?
Speaker: Okay, so first thing is you have to read my book because there's at least 150 actionable items in the book. Then there's also in the book, there's how female friendly is your practice? It's a 20 question quiz, super easy. So you can audit where you are.
Speaker: Then you have to look at your communication. Are you, how are you speaking to your clients? Are you alienating women indirectly without even knowing? And then there's also another quiz in there how um Looking for your blind spots with implicit by bias and unconscious bias. Because again, you might not know what you don't know, and it's alienating women. And so that's another that's another thing.
Speaker: Listening, um slowing the meetings down, taking longer, figuring out what's important to the female client, even if she's in a couple.
Speaker: There's, and I mean, this is not really rocket science. This is really simple things that anybody can do. I think also in the book, I have questions to ask yourself and questions to ask your client at the end of each chapter. So there's a lot, a lot, a lot of content and information. It's almost like a textbook. It's your, it's your textbook of how to work with women.
Speaker: And it's not exclusive to just male advisors. No, it's for, it's for everybody. Yeah, women advisors get as much out of it as their a male counterpart. Yes, and it's interesting because the women seem to be liking it better than the men right now because, and even i thought the women would know almost everything in the book, and they're still telling me that they're learning.
Speaker: Great. Well, fantastic. Sounds like, you know, i love ah love taking a good quiz. So check it out. ah Take the quiz with your firm and and see where you can improve. So Carrie, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. We'd love to have you.
Speaker: Thank you for having me. Thanks so much, Carrie, for joining. And as always, thank you everyone who is listening or or watching us. We want to keep building these communities and telling these great stories. So wherever you got this podcast, if you could take a moment to to like, subscribe, share, comment, all of those things, whether you're on Apple or YouTube or Spotify, anyway, your podcast.
Speaker: It all helps the algorithm and we appreciate you. That's right. And stay tuned for our next episode where we'll bring even more insights and actionable ideas to help you grow your business. And remember, the challenge is yours to capitalize on what the future offers.
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.
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Speaker: Copyright 2026, Trade PMR Inc. For a transcript of this episode with sources, visit synergizedpodcast.com.
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