In the realm of starting and running your own business, “success has often been defined by how much your business grows. More clients, more money, more employees.
Of course, that’s a fallacy.
At some point the returns of growth diminish, and you’re working harder, you’re less happy, and actually making less due to an increase in overhead and stress.
Wisdom in the realm of the 7-Figure Small approach is truly knowing what you want out of your business and your life. Plus, you need to understand where the line is between good growth, and growth for its own sake.
Today, Stephanie Sammons joins us to share how she’s building her solo financial advisor practice to become a sanely ambitious business. Tune in to hear ideas that will help you decide what your ideal business looks like.
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Transcript
Stay Small and Succeed Fully
Stephanie Sammons: I’m Stephanie Sammons. I’m a certified financial planner and I own a firm called Sammons Wealth Management. I help women professionals navigate midlife and money and I am unemployable.
Voiceover: Welcome to Unemployable, the podcast for freelancers and entrepreneurs who value their freedom, creativity, and income way too much to ever accept a regular old job. For the full Unemployable experience, sign up for our email newsletter for tips, tools, and trends that will take your business and lifestyle to the next level. Simply head over to Unemployable.com to join us. That’s Unemployable.com.
Brian Clark: In the realm of starting and running your own business, “success has often been defined by how much your business grows. More clients, more money, more employees.
Of course, that’s a fallacy. At some point, the returns of growth diminish and you’re working harder, you’re less happy, and actually making less due to an increase in overhead and stress.
Wisdom in the realm of the 7-Figure Small approach is truly knowing what you want out of your business and your life. Plus, you need to understand where the line is between good growth, and growth for its own sake.
Today, Stephanie Sammons joins us to share how she’s building her solo financial advisor practice to become a sanely ambitious business. Tune in to hear ideas that will help you decide what your ideal business looks like.
This episode is brought to you by iThemes hosting for WordPress. iThemes is our host here at Unemployable, and it keeps the site fast and reliable while not breaking the bank. To save even more, simply visit ithemes.com/BC50 to save $50 off your first year. Or head over to unemployable.com/hosting to read our full review to find out about several unique features that iThemes WordPress hosting includes at no charge. And click over from there to your $50 discount.
Stephanie, how long have we known each other and I finally get to have you on the show? This is fantastic. Thank you for being here.
Stephanie Sammons: Oh, I’m so excited to be here. I think, Brian, it has been probably a decade.
Brian Clark: Yeah, it seems like it. And it went by fast, right?
Stephanie Sammons: It did. I’m like, “How am I 49 hitting 50 this year? Where did all the time go? Oh, I don’t know.
Brian Clark: You’re still behind me. It doesn’t matter.
Stephanie Sammons: Not far, I don’t think.
Brian Clark: No, pretty close, pretty close. You can just stay at 49. My wife is turning 50, but I don’t think she’s actually going to.
Stephanie Sammons: Yeah, I wouldn’t mind staying here, that’s for sure.
What Is Your Background?
Brian Clark: You were one of the people who reconnected with me, but also commented on what we’re talking about here at Unemployable. This idea of building a business that is lucrative, but also serves you and your life, your purpose across the board.
The interesting thing to me is that you have kind of run the gamut. I mean, you’ve come full circle. I think you used to work for larger firms when you were an advisor, and then you went out to help advisors market themselves, which is a fool’s errand, we found out.
But, anyway, you’ll tell the story way better than me. Give us the background on how we got to Sammons Wealth Management.
Stephanie Sammons: I spent the first 15 years of my career with large financial services firms. I was a financial advisor that entire time, but I also worked my way up the ranks to management. And so at the time I left, I was wearing two hats. I was a regional manager for my company and also a financial advisor.
I won’t go into all of the reasons why I left, but I basically woke up to the fact that these big huge conglomerates, these corporations, they just aren’t there to serve their people and their clients really. They’re there to serve their own needs and their shareholders. And it kind of creates an embedded conflict of interest.
I just got really fed up with that whole song and dance, and I had the opportunity to leave and take a package. I was 40 at the time, so I thought, “I’m going to reinvent myself.
When I thought about just hanging out my shingle and starting my own firm, it was prohibitively expensive even 10 years ago to do that. Because you had to go out and buy your own servers and you had to have plenty of office space to set up shop. It was a big investment at the time. And I thought, “No, I’m definitely not working for anyone else ever again and I don’t want to put that kind of capital into the business. I’m going to keep doing what I did as a manager and help advisors with business development.
I ended up consulting with large financial institutions down to solo practitioner advisors with my little company called Wired Advisor, which I still have today. It’s just small and I’ve decided not to really grow it anymore. I did that for a good while.
That’s where we met. And I really learned the tips and tools and strategies of content marketing and fell in love with it and thought it was such an incredible opportunity, “Why don’t I help financial advisors do this?
As you alluded to earlier, it really fell on deaf ears. There were very few advisors who bought into that strategy and that excitement.
Why Helping Financial Advisors with Content Marketing Didn’t Work
Brian Clark: Why do you think that is? Because it seems perfect. If you’re in the advice business, then content marketing should be right up your alley. Because you can be general and then get specific with the client.
Stephanie Sammons: It’s so ideal.
I would say a big part of the problem is most of the financial advisors out there are employed by the larger broker dealer institutions and they have all kinds of regulations and rules they have to follow. So you really have to jump through hoops just to even get one piece of content approved. And by the time it gets approved, well, if you’re really trying to be timely and talk about current events, that doesn’t work. Many of those firms won’t allow advisors to content market at all.
But on the independent side, which is what I am now, independent advisors are regulated differently, they’re structured differently. There are thousands of advisors who are registered this way, who could engage in content marketing, but they just don’t. I think it’s because there’s no instant gratification. It’s a lot of work. It’s tough to stick with. And what I saw in my consulting business was they would be excited about it and do it for three months and then never again. Never post anything again.
I think it’s work and there’s a payoff at the end, but you have to be invested, as you know, and stay with it.
Brian Clark: Yeah, but it’s weird. I’ve got a friend from college, he’s a brilliant guy, got really rich before the dot com crash, because he had nerves of steel and I didn’t, and I sold all my stocks. But he’s been after me for, I don’t know, 20 years. And I talked to him and he set me up with some – he’s actually gotten into the more startup placement type role, which I guess is a completely different licensing thing. I don’t know. Anyway, so we get to work together that way.
But the way they get business is just to stay in touch with people and you know why they’re calling you. I always hated that kind of marketing. I always wanted people to come to me and that just seems to make sense. But anyway, what can you do?
How Is Being Independent Different?
Brian Clark: You’re doing it for yourself, which I really want to talk about because that’s what’s fascinating here.
Now, tell me a little bit about what it means to be an independent. How are you licensed differently? I know you don’t have to follow the Merrill Lynch guidelines (that’s one hurdle), but what’s different about the license?
Stephanie Sammons: Yeah, those firms, there’s a lot of pressure to perform. Those firms manufacture products and the advisors are really part of a salesforce. That’s the way it’s structured on that side.
On the independent side, we each own our own firms. I’ve got my own LLC and we utilize platforms that work with independent advisors. So to name three of the largest — you’ve got TD Ameritrade, which is my partner. You have Charles Schwab and Fidelity. They all realized, “Hey, there’s this entire group of financial advisors who want to be independent. They don’t want to be beholden to these large firms and have to run their businesses a certain way. And we can support them. And they don’t tell us what to do. We aren’t employed by them.
Those platforms allow our clients to have their accounts at those firms. So my clients would have their assets and accounts with TD Ameritrade Institutional, but it would say Sammons Wealth Management on their statement. Independence allows you the freedom to run your firm the way you want to, to work with whomever it is you want to work with, to structure your fees in a way that is very transparent and fair and unique and flexible, which we couldn’t do with the big firms.
Then another really important distinction is that most of us are fee-only, which means we don’t sell products and charge commissions. We only charge a fee, and the clients are the only people who pay us. We don’t get kickbacks or fees from referrals or anything, third parties or anything like that. Also, we are fiduciaries, which means that independent advisors are required by law to put the best interests of their clients first.
On the other side, advisors who are registered with the larger broker dealer firms, they do that. Okay, I’m not saying they’re bad people at all (I was one of them for 15 years), but they are not required by law to put their clients’ best interests first.
Brian Clark: That’s fascinating, because the idea of fiduciary duty as a former attorney who became a real estate broker where they have fiduciary duties, but you wouldn’t know it. I mean, that was my impression going into the real estate industry. “This is so amateur that my background combined with marketing, which turned out to be the greater super skill, “it’s just going to be no problem at all.
You know how I got people to know what your realtor is supposed to do for you? Content marketing. They didn’t have any idea. Again, it just comes back to this ability to educate people up front about what that means. Why are you going to be a better ally than someone at the bigger firms, right?
Stephanie Sammons: Exactly. And that’s where I saw a content marketing advantage, putting that kind of education out there.
The majority of the inbound calls or emails that I get are from people who have figured that out. They learned it, they saw it somewhere, maybe they saw a piece of my content and they specifically use those words. “I want to work with a fee-only fiduciary advisor. So, it’s getting out there, which is really exciting.
Brian Clark: Yeah, it was the same thing in real estate with exclusive buyer representation, which never became a mainstream thing. It’s still amazing to me.
I can see this now, because this is me in 2001 going, “Here’s an opportunity to be a better solution as long as you tell people that that’s they deserve.
Stephanie Sammons: Yeah, exactly.
What Was Your “Aha Moment?
Brian Clark: So, when did you decide? What was your tipping point where you said, “Okay, a lot of advisors don’t seem to want to do themselves a favor and do any kind of digital marketing, much less content marketing? And you just said, “But I can do it for myself. What was the “aha moment?
Stephanie Sammons: It took me a while, and it was a culmination of things that happened over time.
For one, the stars really aligned with the technology and being able to partner with one of those well-known financial platforms. That was really important to me. That my clients would recognize the name, that they didn’t think they were putting their money with the Bank of Stephanie Sammons. But the software and everything had really evolved to serve the small advisor, the solo practitioner or the very small firm. So, that was one and it was very affordable.
Another one was I saw the content marketing opportunity.
Another one was really a margin opportunity, because the larger firms charge higher fees. I know exactly how it works, because I know how the sausage is made, as they say. I was there, and I saw a huge opportunity to make a great living to serve the client, to charge fees that were fair and flexible, and it saved them money. I mean, it was just really a no-brainer.
Then the last thing was my Dad owns a health store. My parents own a health store outside of Dallas. He started it 25 years ago, he was 50. He had sold a company, retired and was bored out of his mind and decided to start a health store, a mom-and-pop deal. He’s killed the competition, the Whole Foods, everybody else, the big box providers around him, because he has built in-person, one-on-one relationships with his customers in the town where they live. He does a million plus in business with great margins year after year after year.
And I thought, “Why can’t that work? Why can’t the small lifestyle business owner be successful? My Dad is doing it right here. Anybody can go find that stuff on Amazon for half the price, and they’re coming to him, because he cares about them. He’s giving them attention, he’s giving them guidance and people are really craving that. And that was really my “aha.
Brian Clark: The human element. We’re going to keep talking about this, but that’s what makes a difference. That’s a really cool story. I like your business model better than a bricks and mortar type health store, but good for him. That’s fantastic.
Stephanie Sammons: For sure. He’s got inventory and space and all of that.
We also have some of these larger independent firms out there spreading a message that you’ll never make it on your own. I mean, they have an incentive to say that. They’re trying to grow their presence, they’re trying to get more and more advisors under their umbrellas. But I’m like, “That’s not true. You can make it and you can do very well with the lifestyle practice in this industry.
Brian Clark: I follow another guy on Twitter. You and he are my only financial advisor contacts. His name is Michael Kitces. You know this guy?
Stephanie Sammons: Michael Kitces?
Brian Clark: Yeah. I wasn’t sure how to pronounce his name and I hate to mispronounce people’s names. But yeah, that’s him.
Stephanie Sammons: Kitces, yeah, I know him very well. Great guy. Major thought leader for the independent advisor.
Brian Clark: Yeah, I was shocked this guy follows me, and as we talked about before, I’m thinking about these things in terms of Further, my other project.
I want to talk about your podcast, because you’re going after the same basic demographic that I am, and that’s something I recognize even though I have no financial chops whatsoever. I am terrible. I do use TD Ameritrade for the five stocks I own.
Stephanie Sammons: Excellent.
Brian Clark: I’m like, “That seems like a good cross between AI and something I know. I mean, that’s my criteria right now. I’m just like, “Oh, okay.
Stephanie Sammons: Hey, invest in what you know.
How Does This Business Scale?
Brian Clark: It’s not that terrible. So, my point being, he wrote this thing that said the second hundred clients are not the same as the first hundred clients, basically talking about profit margins and scaling, and all the things that people think they need to do and end up regretting. Because you’re not making the same amount of money once you get past whatever the threshold is and whatever industry.
In this case, he used 100 — you’re making a great living. 200, now you’ve got a staff and a nightmare. What are your thoughts on that? How does that factor into where you want to go with it?
Stephanie Sammons: Well, 100 – 120 clients is about the capacity for a single advisor who is very efficient to be able to manage successfully and still have a sane life. It’s a model for, I would call it “sanity and scale to a certain extent. Not scale in the way that we think of with venture capital and firms like that, but what they invest in.
At a certain point, you run out of capacity and you have to hire staff and those clients have to be serviced and taken care of. Technology can help with that significantly today.
That’s what he’s talking about. And a lot of it I saw it in my career in management that these businesses break. So many advisors take on too many clients and then they’re like, “Ah, what have I done?
You have to be, in my opinion, very intentional about what you want your practice to look like and how you want to structure it now, so that that doesn’t happen to you. You don’t end up being forced to go that route, to grow bigger than you want to be.
Brian Clark: Do you feel handcuffed to a certain degree or is that just fine?
Stephanie Sammons: In terms of my potential and the kind of living I want to make and my goals, that kind of thing?
Brian Clark: Yeah.
Stephanie Sammons: Not at all. 100 clients is a great living and it still allows for flexibility, time freedom, a manageable life. It’s ideal. It’s really ideal for me. It’s not all about the money for me.
That’s one thing that’s encouraging with your story is that those of us who were aspiring to just go big, it’s just not all it’s cracked up to be. I think somewhere along the way, I realized that and decided, “You know what? I really value my time and my freedom. If I want to go do hot yoga at 9:30 a.m., I’m going to. If I want to go get on a stage and sing some songs to people, which is a passion of mine, I’m going to go do that. That’s what’s important to me — having the ability to control my time.
Brian Clark: Yeah, that was always my deal, but I keep reflecting on this — why did I just keep going, “Next, more, more, more? Because it was right there in front of me and it was the next logical thing to do? Yes. But I still could’ve said no.
I’m spending a lot of time with this going, “Did you do it because you wanted to see what it was like? Yes. Did you do it because you thought you were supposed to? Probably. And that I hate. I hate the “supposed to. There’s no supposed to, there’s only what you want.
Stephanie Sammons: True. But I think everything we do and have done up to this point, we’re right where we need to be. It leads you and teaches you how to better sculpt maybe what you want the second half of your life to look like. We’re both in midlife and that’s who we’re talking to. We’re talking to people who are in midlife, and you kind of go through these things I think at our age.
Brian Clark: Yeah, I think you’re right. That’s why I say, “No regrets. I learned more from doing that than anything perhaps. But perhaps most importantly, that that’s not what I want to do. I mean, isn’t that the essence of it? Sometimes you have to figure out what you don’t want by doing it?
Stephanie Sammons: Absolutely.
Are You Tempted to Go Bigger?
Brian Clark: It’s interesting to me, because your spouse is an attorney. She’s a plaintiff’s attorney doing the Lord’s work, as I say.
Stephanie Sammons: That’s what she would say as well.
Brian Clark: She has quite the operation going – small firm, but still, I took a look and they’ve got an operation over there. She’s got partners, she’s got paralegals all over the place. And I think that’s what people expect a solo to aspire to. That you have that team, even though it means you’ve got to have an office, and it means you’ve got to pay salaries and health insurance and worry about supporting other people’s families, which is something I always took seriously. And I imagine she does too.
But when you look over there, are you tempted to create that kind of operation?
Stephanie Sammons: Never, never.
Brian Clark: I love that. Tell me why.
Stephanie Sammons: I had some experience doing that in management. I managed a few branch offices for those larger firms that I worked with, and I know the headaches of hiring and firing staff, managing operations for that many people. It’s on a payroll, like you said, overhead. It’s a tremendous amount of stress that I don’t ever want to have in my business.
However, because of her business, it certainly bleeds over into our relationship that she has those typical headaches and challenges anybody has in running a — I think she’s got 23 people now. She really built it from scratch, and she’s done an amazing job. So, there’s a part of her that really wants to be big and wants to go big, but it’s in direct conflict with her love of cycling and piddling in the garden and having free time and spending time with the boys, and it’s a struggle.
Brian Clark: Yeah, and again, just my perception. But she’s the name, it seems to me she’s the rainmaker.
Stephanie Sammons: Yeah.
Brian Clark: No obvious reference there. So, she should be setting herself up to not necessarily not have the organization, but maybe, I don’t know, it’s just a struggle. If she loves what she does, she can’t just dial it back. That’s hard.
Stephanie Sammons: Yeah, and she has brought on lawyer partners and that is part of her plan to share the workload more, to create more time freedom for herself. But then she’ll get involved with a high profile case.
I don’t know if you know the podcast Dr. Death that’s so popular? She’s the main attorney that represented those patients and people. So something like that happens and blows up and then her business blows up from that.
She’s done very well. She’s very well known in Dallas especially, very successful. And it’s hard to walk away from that.
Brian Clark: No, I get it. I get it completely. There’s not necessarily anything wrong with this. It’s just choice. I mean, that’s what I’m talking about here. If you want to go from solo to CEO, great. If you want to just stay small, also great.
I just hate this hustle and grind entrepreneur thing. That’s a joke anyway, like there’s only one way to do it. “You’ve got to raise money and you’ve got to do this and you’ve got to sell and then you do it the… I mean, why? Is that really a fulfilling life?
Stephanie Sammons: Yeah, I’m with you. I’m right there with you on that.
How Does a Fee-Based Structure Affect Your Earning Potential?
Brian Clark: Okay, first I want to ask you this. Does being a fee-based advisor impact your earning capacity, because you don’t do the commission thing off of products?
Stephanie Sammons: No, because when you’re in that kind of environment, the firm that you work for is taking the bulk of the profits. So it might be a 70/30 split where you’re giving 70% of your revenue back to the company and you’re keeping 30% of it. In some cases, the bigger advisors who are under those larger firms have a better split than that. But still, always you’re giving more back to the company.
As a fee-based advisor, fee-only I should say (there’s even a difference there), as a fee-only advisor, you set your fee. You set what your rate is. A very fair, and really the industry average, is about 1% of what someone has in, let’s call it, “investible assets. But as fee-only advisors, many of us have found that a difficult way to value what we do for clients.
For example, I have a client who owns a bunch of real estate properties and that’s not investible. That’s not something I would manage. But we’re able to price the relationship based on the complexity of someone’s financial situation. So, if they own a business, if they have real estate properties, depending on how many members are in the family, how many different accounts they have, what all they have going on, then you can price your fee accordingly.
I’m making the same amount of money I made in those firms, but with much less stress and I don’t have to have near as many clients and I don’t have to have humongous clients that are worth multiple millions of dollars. And that’s all we could do in the big firms. We had to go after the very large, high net-worth customer. That’s the only way you could make it in the business.
Brian Clark: Yeah, again, that’s kind of been my only exposure. The more money I made, the more people were trying to land me as a client. And I always kind of got annoyed by it, because I’m allergic to the transparent salesyness of it.
Stephanie Sammons: Right, the transparent salesyness. I love it.
What Products Do You Utilize?
Brian Clark: What do you see in terms of like… Okay, so FinTech is a big deal, financial technology, where it democratizes this so you don’t have to be a big fish. Even if you have a little bit of money, you can go to Wealthfront or something and basically do the equivalent of an index fund or whatever. Do you have the ability to refer people to products or is it all very much placed by you?
Stephanie Sammons: We have access to every investment vehicle out there that any other advisor might have access to, unless it’s a product that was manufactured by a specific firm like a Merrill Lynch or Morgan Stanley. I wouldn’t have access to something like that. But everything else is fair game.
We have firms that we partner with. Again, my investment management company is in Denver and they’re a really forward thinking — firm and nimble and flexible and really creative with their strategies and their fee structure. So they’re building alongside this model that independent advisors have, this fee-only model.
But our investments are just globally diversified portfolios with low cost investments, ETFs and mutual funds. We’re very focused on low cost, because that makes a big impact on your performance over time. And so it’s pretty simple.
I would say that the biggest difference is what people need more. Investing isn’t rocket science. That’s what Wealthfront and some of these “robo advisors (we call them), they offer investing.
But for real impact and guidance, it’s all about financial planning. And that really takes into account knowing the person very well. Having that personal relationship matters, because everybody’s lives are different, their goals are different, their resources are different. And that’s where working with someone in my shoes would be different than going directly to one of these firms, these robo advisory firms.
What we’ve learned from this in the industry is we’re all figuring out, you need that human element. Money is emotional, it’s difficult for people to stick with the strategy in many cases. So, we’ve kind of come together rather than being competitors, if you will.
Who Is Your Target Audience?
Brian Clark: Yeah, it’s interesting and I guess that’s where I was headed, which is sure, we have all this automation and tech. It’s the same story over and over. I don’t care if it’s marketing or investing or what have you. Without the human element, you’re missing something important.
The more I write for my audience at Further, which is for us, our generation, who are in desperate need of some great advice due to lack of retirement savings, lack of investments in general. And yet, I worry that these are the type of people that your typical advisor is not going to go after, because they don’t have the assets. Are these people you can help?
Stephanie Sammons: Yeah, now these underserved demographics and niches out there in markets are exactly what the small independent fee-only advisor is set up to do, exactly. They’re not going to get service from a large firm unless they have a million plus in investible assets. That’s kind of the benchmark.
Brian Clark: You can read all the articles you want online, but it’s not you. It’s not your situation.
Stephanie Sammons: Right, that’s a very good point.
Brian Clark: What I learned over time, trying to teach people, is people have a hard time extrapolating. If you don’t tell it to them exactly for them, they sometimes don’t get it. And that seems to be the case, especially with investing.
I mean, I just feel like I’m the worst investor, because I pretty much have always thrown everything into my businesses. So far, so good. But then with the sale of StudioPress, I’m like, “Okay, I’ve got to put some money somewhere, and all I do is think about it all the time. I hate that.
Stephanie Sammons: That’s stressful.
Brian Clark: It’s just I don’t like the stock market. I understand real estate, so I tend to gravitate there. A few startups, because I understand what they’re doing and want to support them, blah, blah, blah. But, otherwise, the market is not my friend, I don’t think. And I just feel if I’m that way, then there are a lot of people out there who need some help that they’re not going to necessarily get from the motley fool or whatever.
I really I love this. I love this model. I love that you’re happy.
Technology and Marketing
Brian Clark: Tell me a little bit about the technology you use on a given day. I just have a picture of you with these giant computer monitors with everything flowing by like the Matrix from Wall Street.
Stephanie Sammons: I mean, sure, you can look at all of that. But again, the day-to-day market movements and what’s going on in the economy, those things are irrelevant when you help somebody build a plan, a real financial plan where your saving and your spending is going to have way more impact. Your portfolio is going to do what it’s going to do and what it should do if it’s allocated appropriately. That’s kind of the way that I look at it, and that’s how I explain it to my clients.
I got off track there. Tell me again what you wanted me to talk about there.
Brian Clark: How much of your day is marketing?
Stephanie Sammons: Oh, the technology.
Brian Clark: Yeah. So, I want to see how it all kind of gels together.
Stephanie Sammons: Okay. I’ll start with the technology and then tell you how much time I would spend on marketing.
Brian Clark: Well, yeah, I was just thinking of marketing tech – it’s part of it and all that. So, do you kind of have ways to onboard new clients? There’s all sorts of stuff that you may be doing. I’m just interested in how it looks for you.
Stephanie Sammons: Yeah. One of the beautiful things that happened as I was getting back into this business is the integration. All these technology companies, software companies, decided to have APIs, open APIs where they could talk to one another.
TD Ameritrade, the institutional side that works with advisors like me, decided to have an open architecture platform, which I love and I know you’re a fan of that too. Because you can get the best-in-class with your software and have it all work together. So, the TD Ameritrade platform is really kind of the core, but then you have a client relationship manager tool, you have financial planning software, you have investment management software, you have forms.
We’re all regulated, and some of us are regulated by the states where we are allowed to do business, and some of us are regulated differently by the SCC. But we have to be careful, very careful with data and the data that we collect. So we can’t just use any old WordPress plugin, for example, for a form to collect information from people.
Brian Clark: Damn it, I was just about to make one of those.
Stephanie Sammons: There’s one company out there who’s really tackling that and they’re doing a pretty good job. They really are. But I have a tech brain like you do, and I see all kinds of opportunities and holes, and I have to keep myself from going down those rabbit holes.
I use WordPress for content marketing. I’m a huge WordPress fan, always have been. And as you mentioned earlier, I do a podcast, it’s fairly new. So, I spend a lot of time on that, getting that done and doing it right, getting all the pieces together.
So, those are some of the pieces and parts of the business. But honestly, the entire thing can be run on a MacBook.
Brian Clark: That’s what I like to hear. That’s great.
Stephanie Sammons: Incredible.
Brian Clark: Are you able to have clients from outside of Texas?
Stephanie Sammons: Yes.
Where Can We Find You?
Brian Clark: Awesome. That is good because I think a lot of the people listening here, I mean, if there’s someone who needs a financial plan more than a self-employed person, I’m not sure who it is. Tell us where to find you and also about the podcast.
Stephanie Sammons: So, the podcast is called Midlife Money Gal. I am the Midlife Money Gal. That’s what I settled on. It’s out there everywhere — Apple Podcast, Stitcher. I also have a website for that midlifemoneygal.com. And I’m on Instagram – Stephanie Sammons, Facebook – Stephanie Sammons, CFP. I’m on Twitter – Steph Sammons. I’m everywhere.
Brian Clark: And the website?
Stephanie Sammons: The website’s midlifemoneygal.com.
Brian Clark: Oh wait, okay, so I found your advisory site then.
Stephanie Sammons: Yeah. And I have that one too – sammonswealth.com.
Brian Clark: Yeah, see, there you go. Audience-first, leading with…
Stephanie Sammons: Exactly.
Brian Clark: I might’ve actually had some influence on you.
Stephanie Sammons: You did. I love that arms-length distance that’s not all built into one. I think it’s a great way to go.
Brian Clark: That’s cool.
Stephanie, thank you so much for being here. I have to say, I learned a lot just because I’m kind of interested in your industry and I love to see — you kind of downplayed it, but I consider the people doing fee-only to be perhaps a more ethical arm of the industry. That’s basically your value proposition in addition to giving people great advice. So, thank you.
Stephanie Sammons: Thank you.
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