113: How a Financial Advisor Can Support Interior Designers
Michele 00:00
Hello, my name is Michele, and you are listening to Profit is A Choice. With me on the podcast today is Brad Kleiner of High Point Financial design located in, you guessed it, High Point, North Carolina. Brad's firm supports interior designers and the journey to financial independence. We'll talk more about what Financial Independence means, the building blocks to creating this, and how Brad's firm differs from others. You will easily see the connection as well as the overlap between your business financials and your family's financials. There's a lot to consider with this topic, so let's get it started. Every day empowered entrepreneurs are taking ownership of their company financial health, and enjoying the rewards of reduced stress and more creativity. With my background as a financial software developer, owner of multiple businesses in the interior design, industry, educator and speaker, I coach women in the interior design industry to increase their profits, regain ownership of their bottom line and to have fun again in their business. Welcome to Profit is a Choice. Hey, Brad, welcome to the podcast.
Brad Clinard 01:10
Michele, how are you doing today? Thanks for having me.
Michele 01:13
Oh, I'm doing very well. Thank you, and I am excited. You and I have been trying to kind of get our schedules synched up for a while now. I am super excited about the conversation.
Brad Clinard 01:25
None of this will sound like a surprise to everybody listening, but 2020 has not gone exactly as I planned, so I know it's taken a little while for us to get together.
Michele 01:35
Yeah, I don't think it's gone as anybody planned. We are recording this towards the latter half of the year, and I'll tell you in some ways, my brain still feels stuck in March. I almost feel like mid-March is where my brain just kind of stopped. And the fact that we're moving into August then September is like blowing me away because we are almost at the end of the year. I still feel that in some ways, the beginning almost feels like a dream. I don't know if others feel that way, but it certainly feels that way to me.
Brad Clinard 02:08
Yes. Well, it's reminded us of the importance of taking moment by moment, one day at a time. There's a lot of uncertainty in life, and I think that's one thing we always talk about is the certainty of uncertainty. Before this, some of us we're not aware of that, and it's brought it upfront and center.
Michele 02:26
Absolutely. Well, we're going to jump in and talk all about financial wealth management today. I know sometimes that term can throw people off. When they hear financials outside of my podcast, which they all love, because they're here for the finances, but that can make us turn off one set of ears. We're not going to listen to that. When you hear this term, wealth management, it is very easy for us to think that means the super-wealthy, the multimillionaires are in wealth management. One of the things that I would love for us to do as we go through the entire conversation today is kind of debunk the myth that wealth management means that you got to be a super millionaire to have money to manage. We're really talking about building up your money and your resources to be able to support you and your lifestyle today, tomorrow, and ongoing. And so well, it's a term that can be used, as well as a continuum today. I don't want that term, to throw anybody off as we start our conversation, but to be open to think it's just about building the best resources that you can with what you have.
Brad Clinard 03:38
And we'll discuss this, Michele, throughout our conversation today, but it's one reason why we decided to call ourselves a financial design firm because we wanted to be very approachable to our clients. I think it's an industry ego thing, in some ways, in regards to wealth management. It may feel great for the advisors, but even the clients that I have, wealth is a very relative thing. We all have wealth, innately, and we have different types of wealth, but when I think of some of my wealthiest clients, if they have $10 million, they have friends that have 50 million, and they have friends that have 100 million. There is a part of wealth that is always relative to the other people that you spend time with. For us, it's really about where you as a person and your wealth, even if you're starting in a very small amount, saving your first $10,000 or $100,000 is where you need to focus, and it needs to be approachable.
Michele 04:41
Exactly, and that's why I wanted to just get that out of the gate. Because the term can be off-putting. I love how you said it kind of that ego. It feels like an Instagram world right where you show only your best side by saying that I'm talking to my wealth manager today. We're going to make this super approachable. We're talking about using and saving the resources that you need for today and for tomorrow is really kind of the easy way to put it.
Brad Clinard 05:14
I like to think of it, Michele; there are advisors that specialize working with billionaire families. None of my clients have the last name Rockefeller. So we help everyday families that have been successful.
Michele 05:26
So Brad, I just saw this a little bit about your company. Please introduce us to your company.
Brad Clinard 05:32
Yes, well, we are a High Point Financial Design. We are located in High Point, North Carolina, the furniture capital. I've been in this business now for 11 years. I joined my mother and father. They were with a traditional wealth management firm, and they've been in the business for 35 years. It's truly a family business, and we independently own our own company. We specialize in Working with interior design and home furnishing professionals across the country.
Michele 06:05
Now, has your firm always been specializing in that area? Or is that a newer specialization within the last few years.
Brad Clinard 06:13
it has been something that we've started in the last few years. I can't name specific names, but the company that my father works for when I joined was a large national bank that most people are aware of. They had very limited restrictions for where we could do our marketing. We could not market anywhere where there were other advisors located which really limited and it was one of the reasons why we wanted to go independent. I was talking with my business coach one day, which actually two business coaches, and he was asking me a question, "if I could never retire, what would I do differently in my business?" And I said, "Well, I really want to have more and more fun relationships with my clients." And he said, "Well, who are some of the most fun clients you have to work with?" and I "Well, I've got a handful of designers from being in high point, and they are the most creative, energetic, exciting, fun people to work with." And he said, "Well, why don't you just do that nationally." So it was part of the reason that we decided to independently own our own company. Now we are able to build relationships with individuals across the country, despite COVID. We've had a lot of clients reaching out. New clients on the west coast, which has been very exciting for me.
Michele 07:30
And don't you have a goal of working with what is it, 99 designers?
Brad Clinard 07:35
I wanted to create a big vision. We had an existing business that my parents had built successfully, and going forward for the new decade, my goal was really to help 99 designers reach financial independence. Each of those designers will define what financial independence means for them. We do see that oftentimes, designers have limitations in their mind. They focus on their business, not their personal wealth, and it's a big vision that we're excited about.
Michele 08:06
So tell me this in a concept, how would you define financial independence? I mean, I know it's different for each person, but how do you define the concept so that you could explain it to them?
Brad Clinard 08:19
It almost goes back, and I hate to use a word because we've already decided it's negative, but wealth. Let's redefine what wealth is. We may have this idea of saying, wealth is having $50 million in the bank and by a lot of standards, that might be wealthy. At the same time, to me, I define wealth as having enough financial independence or wealth is when we have enough income being produced by our investments or our savings, that we no longer require work. And that's very important because everybody has a different number. I have clients that have $5 million, and they are stressed on a monthly basis because they are spending $25,000 - $30,000 a month. So their minimum monthly expenses are very high. At the same time, I think of some of my clients that are the absolute happiest people and have no money worries. They have $500,000 because they diligently saved over their career. They have a small condo at the beach that's paid off, a small house, and very low overhead. So my ideas of being wealthy really fluctuate from individual to individual based on what their personal spending goals are.
Michele 09:34
So this is when we talk about financial independence. I'm going to reframe this and see if I get this right within the kind of the definition that you share. Again, this is the way I talk about it, in my coaching business. It's not so much about the dollar amount. It's about what the ability of that money to do. So, for example, if we're looking at financial independence, everybody kind of financially independent, if they have their expenses in alignment with the money that they have saved for the life they want to live. So your investments, your savings, whatever gives you this nest egg, if you will, this spendable money for some period of time, because you said no more work. We're assuming that this is at retirement, or at a time that we're shifting or we're stepping out of whatever career and work we have. So we are talking about having some money because we're talking about wealth within regard to money. Right now, we all know that there's wealth, a family wealth of love, all kinds of wealth, we're talking about money. So it's having enough for the future that we desire to sustain the day to day way that we want to live or that we're choosing to live, which is why for somebody who has $5 million if they're having a burn rate of 30 to 40,000 a month. They're going to blow through that very quickly, and that would be stressful. Somebody who lives very frugally and has paid off a lot and is work diligently to do that don't require the same amount of dollar for financial independence as somebody else who has a much more expensive lifestyle.
Brad Clinard 11:22
And I'll take it one step back. I wrote an article a few years ago that was titled, retirement may be dangerous to your health. When we talk about retirement, I also like to think that, to me, it's really work optional. A lot of our clients that are designers, they love their work. So it's not necessarily that we need to save up enough money so that we're retired. I call it BYOB, and some people have different definitions of what BYOB are. And a lot of those are more fun than mine. I say it's Be Your own Bank. So from an income perspective, it's when your passive income or the amount of income that you can generate from the savings that you've accumulated over time is greater than your expenses. You are financially independent when you have enough passive income, meaning we don't have to have earned income. When that passive income is greater than our expenses, you have the freedom to do whatever you want in life, work becomes optional. At that point, we really have a lot of freedom because if we want to continue our design company, it's just purely out of the love of doing it not because we have to pay your mortgage or feel like that there's pressure.
Michele 12:38
I love that definition. I love that way of thinking because it frees us up from a number. So instead, it allows us to think about what we want to have. I know my husband, and I were one thing we've talked about is in the Bible that never even gives you the term retirement. So we always talk because we'll sort of my way in retirement, but our work changes, it may become a different work. Not work to your point that's bringing in dollars, but meaning, there's nowhere where we're told to just go sit down and do nothing. We are all going to be choosing to do things; we may just fill our times. And we're really saying, When do we get to the point that we can have more time to do non-income generating activities if we so desire to do that? I just love the way of thinking through that. I know he'd asked me, "if you're going to retire, and I'm just like, not yet." I'm like, "when are you going to retire?" He said, "tomorrow, tomorrow, I'm out." No, not me. I got a good 10 to 15 years because I love what I do. Now, I also know from having worked with business owners, young moms, and dads who are starting out, they have childcare. I mean these days, everybody's now looking to shift just so they can have their kids at home for homeschooling purposes and everything else, but the school situation we have making us working kind of part-timeish. Then we have kind of this time where a lot of people are very all-in. And then I work with a lot of designers on the other side, they're going, "oh my goodness, I now have grandchildren, or I have aging parents or have other things that are happening, that are requiring me to work less than less than the company, either by choice or by need." So the beautiful thing about this not being tied to $1 amount is it moves with you with your life and family goals. Whatever season you're in and wherever you're going, so that you can readjust it. So I love how you have defined it to allow it to do that.
Brad Clinard 12:49
One thing that as I'm listening to you talk about that Michele, and we think about this concept of retirement and back to why it's not always healthy. I think it is so critical. We create lives that we love and enjoy because too often, I see. I mean, the number one thing that we saved for clients as far as protecting their wealth is not to get divorced because divorce really takes essentially half of your money, and you've lost half of your wealth. There is a lot that I could talk about around divorce. That's probably one of my number one tips is continue to date your spouse. The problem with retirement and not enjoying your job is we spend 50% of our life at work. If you just grind away until you're 65, and then you retire, then you've entered into retirement, now you've got a lot more time with your spouse, and you don't really know who you are, or you didn't have parts in your life that you loved or enjoyed. It's not a recipe that works well. A lot of my work is about helping people enjoy longevity. I want to make sure that people are enjoying their life during their working years that they're passionate about the things that they're doing. I also find that that's very important in having a being able to flourish over our entire life and not just waiting for this one moment that we call retirement.
Michele 15:17
We could take this podcast in a whole different direction right now and have a really interesting conversation about that. What we do see a lot if we're watching, looking, and listening, is that people work themselves to the bone, they retire, and they have a heart attack and die. Do you see a lot of that and in the news, and they just were in the real lightning just got done, and they bought a camper, or they bought a house, or they've done something, but something horrible happens that cuts their life short. Or we see that they don't like each other when they're at home together for a significant amount of time, or that they didn't, like you said, find a hobby or something that they enjoy all along the years. I'll be honest, my husband and I, we have tried over the years to be very intentional about keeping our relationship as solid as we could because we knew the boys were going to get up and leave to go off to college. That's the first step of us going, "Oh, okay, so now we are all together all the time. Like what does that look?" Then through COVID, he's moved back home for work and works on one floor of the house, and I work on the other. So now we're together a whole lot more and are starting to have more and more conversations about what does enjoying our life now later look like; what do we do now to have fun for later? So we were having these conversations in our home, that I think in some ways had been exacerbated by COVID. It's pushed us into it a little bit faster. Whereas I don't know that we would have had it maybe in 2020. It might have been another two or three years out before we had that conversation.
Brad Clinard 17:35
I think Michele, this really resonates with me and may take us in a slight caveat. I think we've already talked about the word wealth, and how that's intimidating. It creates a roadblock for designers not being willing to work with a financial planner; that's the second thing that I see as an obstacle is that my industry by large has always fixated on moving people towards retirement. When I got in the industry, I did not like the way that our industry encouraged advisors to work with clients primarily because all of our focus was on this 30-year plan. We don't live 30 years from now; we live today. So our slogan actually, this is a word you just shared Michele, was intentional. Our slogan is intentional planning, abundant living. I remember after about five years in the industry, I felt like as I was making more money than any of my friends, I was not enjoying my life. I was going home on the weekends just collapsing and sitting on the sofa all weekend and watching too much Netflix. At the same time, we had a client who she was a flight attendant. She had traveled the whole role during her career, and she just retired, and she told me that her whole career was spent flying to these exotic locations internationally, but she would never really leave the airport. She would just get on a plane and fly home. So for her, retirement was about going back to places that she wanted to go spend time at, and it was just it was really tragic. And it hit me early in my career, she passed away, just 18 months into this retirement that she had planned. It really affected and impacted me of how I provide advice. Back to our slogan of intentional planning, abundant living, we really feel like that there's this balancing act between we have to look at money as when is its best use and dying at age 90 with X number of million dollars in the bank is probably not the most efficient because we all have the next five to 10 years for most all of us is going to be the healthiest time that we have. So how do we look at money, not on this 30-year spectrum that we're just constantly trying to build money for the future, but balancing, let's save some, but let's use the money that we have efficiently. At the same time, and that delicate balance is a lot of the conversations I try to have with clients, not just where are we going 30 years from now, but how are we living our life today?
Michele 20:11
I love that. So who needs a financial advisor? And what is it that you really do and financial advising? Brad will list all the dirty details. What do you do?
Brad Clinard 20:23
Well, we do a lot of things. I think everybody could use a financial advisor. Anybody who needs a second set of eyes. We have a process that we go through with clients, but a lot of it is just about starting with asking the right questions, and helping people get organized. I have a process that there's four steps in building our wealth, but before we even get to those four processes, we have to first know ourselves. So that is, Who are we as people, do we know our values? Do we know our communication styles, and there's primarily four different communication styles. That is also a big issue that I've seen with designers is they go into the financial advisor's office, the financial advisor only thinks in spreadsheets, and the designer wants to be creative and enjoy their life. There's a communication gap. So how do we make sure that our company is providing advice in a communication style that works with the client? And then, we want to let the client understand and explore who they are as people. Our industry is based a lot on goals. Michele, you're a big believer in goals, and I like goals. I think goals are important, but goals are very short term in nature, we want to save $10,000, we want to retire at 65, we want to set aside a million dollars. There's nothing wrong with those goals, but those may not connect to who we are our deepest values. So we look first to start with the values. Once we've identified our values, we can start building the puzzle. Do you enjoy doing puzzles, Michele?
Michele 22:06
There are some days. I like those puzzles.
Brad Clinard 22:10
My wife's family enjoys doing puzzles. That's how I think about my job, we are exploring, it's almost a combination of being a puzzle builder and a detective. By starting with the puzzle, we first put all of the pieces on the table and identify the edges. For me, that is step one of getting organized. Once we're organized, we believe everybody should have all of their finances on one page. This is also a big thing when you're communicating with your spouse. If all of our financial discussions are arbitrary, just conversational. That can make communication challenging. When things are visualized on one page, it becomes very easy for us to identify financial headaches that we're facing or challenges and opportunities that we want to pursue. So that's kind of the first starting point that we have with all of our clients is understand our values and get really organized, of knowing exactly where we are today.
Michele 23:13
That's the same way that I start when I coach around the business. Tell me your why. Good old Simon Sinek, Start with Why, and what are your values, what's important to you? If their values, let's say is to be a part-time working, full-time mom, and then full-time business owner. We may create a business financial plan that is very different than somebody who says, I want to work full time in my business, and I want to be firm, and it's going to be a totally different plan. So we do the exact same thing in the business, which is why the numbers aren't the same. It's relative to the choices that we're making, and the desire that they have for the company that they want to grow or that they want to build. it's the same thing personally. I know when my husband Joel, and I met with our financial advisor, those are some of the questions that he asked us like, what is it that you want? What's important to you? What do you want to do with your money? Where do you want to spend it? How do you want to live your life? What's important to you now? We just did another full review with him in January, right before all this, but it came down to when do you want to buy your next car? How many years do you want to buy a car? What do you think about driving cars? Keep one a new one. Do you want not want to do it? And I was at one point I was like, "Oh, my gosh, he's asking me a lot of questions." But he was trying to really help us understand what is it that made life fulfilling for us, so that we didn't die with 12 million in the bank. If we had lived a miserable life of doing nothing that we enjoy. I really appreciate thinking about our personal finances and let's be honest, finances are finances, and so when we have a good framework for how we're going to look at it, whether it be business or in life, we're creating a financial roadmaps, if you will, and always tying it back into lifestyle. In other words, what do you have to have in your home? Let's build the business to give you that don't build a business and not have an idea of what you need. Every time we do it in the business, they're like, "oh, my goodness, now I want to go look at my home that way. I'm gonna look at my personal finances that way." The conversations are really the same. What is important to you? Who are you? What do you want out of this life? What are your values and getting on the same page with it? If you have a spouse getting on the same page with your spouse for that, I'll tell you if one person's values go to the left and the others go to the right, especially financially, that it is the number one cause of divorce. The financial issues. You would think it'd be infidelity. It is not, its finances. So getting on the same page with your spouse, if you have one, is imperative here.
Brad Clinard 26:22
One thing that you kind of touched on in passing, Michele, I think that is maybe some of why interior designers have trouble with financial planners in general is there is a lot of belief that finances are finances. I see a lot of cookie-cutter plans. What I mean by that is, most every financial planner this these days will ask a series of questions, and they'll write those down, and then they're going to give you the same advice regardless, in my practice, We've helped over 200 families since I've been working in 11 years and I can't think of two of those families that their financial picture has been the Exact same. So I think that this is one of the myths that I see. There's a lot of discussion on online and different financial professionals giving advice, where there's formulas, and everybody kind of fits into a formula. And that's how we end up with cookie-cutter plans.To me, the finances are still complicated enough where, once you if you're only taking goals, and you're not filtering it through someone's values, then that's really it can be very cookie cutter. I mentioned, for instance, the life planning side of my businesses, we really try to the value that I think a lot of what we provide is the questions that we ask. So we'll ask a lot questions that are not simply financial related. For clients, we like to have a life plan if possible. To me, that's actually like, well, in the next five years, let's identify one thing per quarter that we want to achieve. So a lot of microphones whites are kind of wired to travel. So this has been an especially difficult time to navigate some of those conversations. I just remember some stories and some experiences of clients. I do have a client right now that's taking advantage of this, and he's in an RV, going across Utah. The last time I checked with him, but we really want to tie not just the money in the financial plan, which can be sort of repetitive. But the deeper that we go in those questions, understanding how it impacts your life, the better
Michele 28:31
100% even in my coaching practice, I am constantly doing what we call backwards financials. In other words, what do you need in your home? What do you need to bring in for lifestyle ruins, and now let's work our way back. The plan is built on how many hours they're going to be putting into the business versus how many out do you want to go do all these things with your family? How much are you really willing to work? What do you want your home life to look like? Let's build the business around the home life, not the home life around the business as much as we possibly can. Different people have different constraints. I've never built the same plan. Now some may look similar because they answered similarly for sure. So I'm not saying that if somebody playing did look like it, I wouldn't give it to him. I wouldn't say I'm sorry, I couldn't give you that it looks too close but what we're doing is we're asking and trying to understand how to make it so that it's stress-free, or as stress relieved as possible. We've got one life here. We don't want to create it to be something we don't enjoy. We hate, whether it's when we're in our business or when we're in our home. And so having these conversations and really digging in, and I love the fact that you made the point. It's not just about asking the questions, it's about them using the answers to the questions to formulate the response, not just asking them so you can say check off I asked and then moving them to the side and throw him into some cookie-cutter plan that you already have.
Brad Clinard 29:52
And I think there's a difference between foundation building and then more advanced strategies. So what I mean by that that is, I've mentioned that we have four ports to our building wealth process. So that is our income, our savings, protection, and investments. From the protection side, I'll just take one example. So something that a lot of people don't like to discuss is life insurance. And there's very much a foundational perspective of yes or no. Do you have life insurance? If you're already financially independent, then you may not need life insurance. But if you have two young children, you have a mortgage on the home, and you were the primary breadwinner, and your family could not survive. If you passed away unexpectedly and did not have the right amount of life insurance in place. You would leave a financial burden for your family that is very much foundational. It's almost a checklist item. Do we have the right insurance in place and also on the flip side, we don't want to have more insurance than we need to often people that are extremely conservative. They may have way more life insurance in place than they need, and they're paying an expense that is not necessary. So we need to optimize that. That would be an example of sort of a foundational piece that is going to be more of the checklist, but then we also have more advanced planning later on.
Michele 31:18
So I'll tell you when that became a must-have for our family. We had a two and a half-year-old, and I was pregnant with my second child, and he was due. It was August, I was due in September, my husband's best friend's wife had just had their second child in May. We're in August with three months out her back was killing her. She thought she slipped a disc or something from holding a baby. She had a three-year-old and a newborn, then she went to the hospital but never came home. She ended up dying within a month due to a cancer that attacked her bones. It was quick and fast. So she's young 20 something-year-old Mom, I have my baby a couple of weeks after she passed away. What we then saw was she was not the major breadwinner. She was the support parent in the home. She's working like crazy to manage at the three-month-old at the time, and a three-year-old. Her husband now had to replace that position in the home. Not necessarily a wife, but all the things that she did. They didn't have life insurance for her, because they had not thought about that being so young and having such a young family. And it almost broke him to be able because he didn't have family near us. And so he had to he had to hire nannies. He had to hire housekeepers. He had to hire extra support people. The cost for everything that he had to do was exorbitant. Whereas if he had had life insurance on her, it would have put him in a better position to be able to manage the family without having, a horrible financial crisis on top of an emotional crisis for him and family. And that really that got our attention because we were super young, we're under 30. We've got two littles, and we went out immediately to get life insurance on him and me. Whereas in the past, our thought process was get life insurance on him because he was the main breadwinner. We didn't think that we would also need it for the support partner who was doing all of that extra work. I'm telling you, you got to pay for all the work that the stay at home mom does, you will see how much that cost. I love that you brought up that point about protection. I just want everybody to know from our own personal experience is to protect everybody in the family in some way.
Brad Clinard 34:02
And protection occurs on so many levels. One of the big things that always breaks my heart to a degree is when we have young families that don't have proper guardianship paperwork in place. It's a topic that people don't discuss and people. Oftentimes if we're not educated, people are not aware that as soon as you have your first child, it's time to visit with an estate planning attorney and make sure that you have guardianship paperwork in place. Likewise, when children reach the age of majority at 18, we always encourage children to give their parents health care powers of attorney, when your 18-year-old becomes an adult, if they are in an accident while they're at college. You may not be as the parent able to have the type of interactions with the doctors and help your child who now in the eyes of the law is a legal adult. So these are little details that we think are really vital to, if your expertise is not thinking about these things on a daily basis, you may not have the details in place.
Michele 35:09
That is really great advice. We did our wills and everything estate planning at the same time, because we had seen what happened. We had a visual to say that we need to protect ourselves. Just in 2019, when our kids turned 22 and 24, we went back and redid all of it. Now that they were grown, they were in their last year of college or out of college. We didn't need to worry about guardianship, who's going to control the finances, how the money was going to be split, and who's going to be over our estates. We were able to go back now with having two sons who are men, and to do it differently. That was something that I thought was important and had not even been on my radar to be fair and honest because I thought we've done it and then it hit me all of a sudden when my attorney reached out and I was like, I really don't need to say who's going to be watching over my kid or not. Let him deal with the money instead of sending it to some other family member at the time. It's good to stay on top of those things and to have an advisor who reminds you. That is a piece of wealth management, saying where the money is going to go, what it's going to do. 'll also say, having gone through it last year, my husband and I answered some of the questions and made choices differently, than we made 20 years before that, because we were in a different place and phase of life and saw some things differently than we did then. It's nice to continually revisit all of the plans. You probably have a system for when to revise and revisit these.
Brad Clinard 36:51
I think one parallel between the interior design, business and financial planning his clients are always asking for us to justify value of why is it that you are charging what you're charging for me. I've tried to do some pullmantur projects myself. I typically am really good about getting about 75% of the way done. Then the last 25% never gets done. Last year, we hired a designer for a project we were working on and it was just an incredible experience. The end result was so much better. I mentioned that we have kind of foundational parts to our financial plan. That's the checklist items. Do we have the right amount of life insurance or our ratios? Are we saving enough? Do we need to be saving a little bit more? Are we saving for the right place? Do we need to consider a traditional IRA? Do we want to think about a Roth IRA? I think that is sort of year one year two value. Some of the greatest value that we provide clients is really hard to articulate it because it comes in when life changes. I mentioned already that we have the certainty of uncertainty and as humans, we're wired to crave certainty. So inherently, we don't like change. What we know is that life is constantly going to change. I think the greatest value that we provide is establishing a relationship that when a client's life changes, we now have a framework in place that we can do this advanced planning, I mentioned the advanced planning. We start to look at a lot of trade-offs. Trade-offs can be very difficult to analyze. This starts to encompass all the moving parts of our life at one time. But trade-offs can be things like, well, I'm ready to move upgrade, I want to move from my starter home to a to my forever home, or I want to look at moving across states. We want to look at how much of our child's education can we can we pay for and those are sort of the financials, but then to me, the most critical part is We have some clients that want to talk about investments a whole lot. We have some that don't want to talk investments a lot. I've sometimes we everybody has an opinion when it comes to what's the best investment strategy? How should you invest. We can spend a lot of time arguing over doc A versus stock B and stock a was up a little bit more stock B was down a little bit more. To me, the critical point to our financial well being over the course of our lifetime is comes down to one thing, how do we navigate moments of transition? And moments of transition or kind of those critical moments? Where are you making the right decision at the right time? That could be like earlier this year where we had clients that called and they were very scared about the stock market and they were scared about the direction that the economy was going in. The clients that we had long term relationships with that I've worked with for the last 10 years. Those conversations went so much smoother than we had a number of interior designers that reached out the initial conversation where we get a phone call. If we don't really know each other, you don't have a trusting relationship with me. I'm trying to solve a crisis in the midst of the crisis is almost always more difficult. I never know what client's transition moments are going to be. That can be the ones that we see most often or thinking about retirement, thinking about sending children to college, helping adult parents and navigating their health care issues at the end of life, if there is death or divorce. Unfortunately, the millennial generation is we're marrying less quickly, but divorce rates are lower, and the fastest growing demographic that's getting divorced right now. They call it a silver or gray divorce is 55 and above and to me, it's a really tragedy because both financially, emotionally and for healthcare reasons, people 55. And above marriage should be that safety mechanism. Maybe someone has never had a lot of good interactions or communication with their financial advisor, and with their spouse, maybe the financial advisor just took the husband out for golf twice a year every year and didn't spend time with the wife. Now you're going through a financial divorce, that can be very traumatic. So the decisions that we make in any of these transition moments in life, to me, that's really the crux of whether or not we're going to be financially healthy or stable over a period of time.
Michele 41:41
That's a good point because things are always changing. I know I'm even back in March and through most of 2020 we've been dealing with some of the same types of situations on the business side I know that those that I've been working with were immediately just do what she's telling you to do, like take a deep breath like they trusted the relationship and they trusted us moving through it together kind of linking arms, holding hands, crying on each other's shoulders, standing up, and holding the other up. For those who don't have that advisor or that sounding board or that safe place, it is a bit more shaky and a bit more difficult. I want to touch on this. One of the things that that designers know or any any home professional, whether their work rooms, designer stagers I mean all of this applies to all of them. They know that when you go in to do a sale or you go in to do presentations, you always want the decision makers there. You want the husband and the wife or whoever is going to be involved in paying and making the decisions. We want them there together. Because it is a joint conversation and joint decision making. There is nothing worse than having a conversation with one of them thinking the others not a decision maker really isn't involved and then finding out they are later it causes that broken relationship or like Lack of a built relationship. I love that you brought that up. It's the same kind of thing. I want to encourage those that are listening. If you do have a significant other that you were doing finances with, make certain that you're doing him together that you all know where everything is, my husband and I even went back this year, we've been working to kind of retouch on some of these foundational pieces. We reworked our financial plan or tweak that I want to rework that we did some tweaking based on where we were in our age and kids out of college, that same kind of thing that you mentioned is a life change. That was the one of the tweaks we just did in January, we met with our attorney. We sat down and built a contingency plan in January and February, and marked it. It had to do with getting him on all of my business accounts because my business is solely owned by me. Making sure he had access to those things, making sure that the lawyer had written it in that he could work on my business's behalf in the event that I became incapacitated. Because otherwise nobody else would be able to get into any of my accounts and do anything, making certain because I handle all of the business finances, he handles our home finances. We both meet with our advisor together, but the day to day operation of our home, he handles that so that I don't have all the money handling. We made sure that I knew how to get into everything on that side while he knew everything on this side. Just having that communication that says we both are on this team together, moving through this together, and are there any pieces or parts that the others not aware of? Let's get each other on the same page right now. And I think that's super important for families because we're busy and not everybody sits down with us like husband and wife or whoever your spouse is, we're not all sitting down at one time and paying the bills every month. Usually somebody is taking over the financial management of harm. Making sure that everybody that needs to know knows, and you stay up to date on all that.
Brad Clinard 45:08
So let's talk about time in place because I think money. We were not taught money's proper place in our lives. The reason I bring this up is oftentimes, when we don't have a structure around how our conversations around money or it kind of becomes toxic in that it
Michele 45:29
Contentious?
Brad Clinard 45:31
It goes into all aspects of our lives. So mom and I were joking. We had an older client. A number of years back, he called on Christmas Eve. The stock markets open the morning of Christmas Eve and he was desperate to be making some trades in his account on Christmas Eve so mom and I joked I said, "if your investment plan is contingent on trading on Christmas Eve, you need a new investment plan." When I say that to our clients, too often is they either ignore money completely or it becomes too important. So I really like to have a framework. If somebody's in, we all are at different points in our financial health. My goal with clients is to reach the point where they only have to think about their finances once per quarter. We're going to have an official meeting, once per quarter in the home that the client needs to have a meeting in the home. So for instance, my wife, she is a pastry chef, by training so she's a highly creative mind. She doesn't want to know anything about our finances. We've been married for 10 years now. Every quarter we have a one hour meeting once a quarter and we go through all of our finances where I share with her here's where everything is. Here's what went up. Here's what went down. That works well for us because she at all times can explain on quarterly basis where we are. Now, if couples are having if they're at the beginning of that process, or they're having money, more money troubles, I recommend that be once a month. I also think that my biggest tip is I recommend that people talk about finances on a Tuesday or a Thursday night. I don't I think that people oftentimes wait till the weekend because that's when we have our free time. To me weekend is family time or weekend is fun time. I don't know why anybody would take a stressful subject like finances, and try to have it on a mid Saturday there just seems like a waste of time. So Tuesday or Thursday night, if you need to have a financial conversation with your your spouse. I recommend that being scheduled. So once per month, maybe it's the first Tuesday of every month, we're going to have a one hour financial meeting. And then we're not going to let finances spill over and discuss it the rest of the month. So that's been a framework that's worked well for a lot of people.
Michele 47:58
I love that. One of the things that Dave Ramsey also says to that I think, is part of really understanding money is there money has no morality. Money is amoral. It's what we choose to do with it, that involves morality. Money is a resource, if we can think about is a resource to use, and to have and to multiply or whatever. Then it kind of also puts just money in its proper place, as opposed to letting it grow bigger or not be as important as it needs to be. This is no different than us having a quarterly meeting in our business. Let's talk about state of affairs. In the business, and certainly, for the clients that I'm working with, and we're working on a new financial direction are tightening those things that we do have those meetings more often, until we can kind of get it into that rhythm of here are KPIs, here's what we're going to check into. Here's we're going to look at let's get the, let's get the dashboard view. If we need to have a working session to work on something less than Do LS get the dashboard view. I think the Tuesday and Thursday after work or evening is really great. I would say get a really great meal to have it with if you have to, like make it a fun night, ordering your favorite pizza, whatever it is you have to do, it doesn't have to be something to dread. The other thing that I like to do when we're having what could be for some heavy, like, like, we don't even have time to get into it right now. We'll have to come back and we'll talk about it but there's a heaviness around finances for many people based on their past based on the way they grew up, based on maybe a current situation that they're in or that they're facing. I don't want us to diminish the fact that that can we're not that it can be a very heavy discussion. So what I like to do when I'm having a heavy discussion with my client, with my children with my husband and my family with a friend, as I'd like to have a sit on the same side of the table or in my mind picture on the same side of the table, so that it is the two of us, or the three of us, or the group of us working on the same goal, versus I'm on one side, and you're on one side, and we've had to choose who's right and who's wrong. We've got a negotiate this thing as if there's a winner and a loser. I do think that if we can come to this Tuesday night, Thursday night idea, with the idea that we're coming at it, because we have the same goals, we've worked through your first kind of step up our values, it's almost a great idea in business. What I have to do is go back, reaffirm the why and the values before we look at the finances. So in business, we do that what is your why, what are your values? Now let's look at the finances because we want to look at them within the construct of what we built and the edges of the puzzle as you described it, and so on that Tuesday, Thursday night, give ourselves space to look at our family, right why and values. Now let's look at where we are towards that and we're on same side of the table working towards it. It really does. It's a mindset shift. It does change the way that we approach those numbers which can at different stages of our life be scary.
Brad Clinard 51:12
When you say mindset, I think money is is almost all psychological in a lot of ways and you have to spouses or beliefs towards money are so critical, and a lot of us have not been raised with healthy mindsets towards money. When we're first born into this role, we, our parents, hopefully have made us feel safe. Then we reach a point where we maybe sometime around five or six years old, we have that first experience where we realize that resources are scarce, and we're not going to be able to have everything that we want in life. Oftentimes, that's where a lot of clients have benefited from going back and thinking about what were the first messages I ever learned about money? Maybe mom said, "you don't have a silver spoon in your mouth or dad said money doesn't grow on trees?"
Michele 52:11
Or "do you think I am an ATM."
Brad Clinard 52:14
All of those are stories that that become embedded in our psychology. Then when we're 45 years old at the dining table, and our spouse has a different money narrative, and that's where a lot of conflict can arise from. There is a lot of psychology behind it.
Michele 52:30
Well, Brad, I love what your company does, more than what you do. I love the way you approach what you do. I think that's the differentiator, really wanting to build relationship, long term relationships. We touched on it briefly. Those clients who had been with your your firm for multiple years had a different ease and a different trust factor than those that are just coming in, which is true in any relationship. It's the long term that actually gets us where we want to be. We might have some short term wins, but this is a long game. It really is a long game. I love how you start with their why and the values then you're digging in to help them. Not only save for tomorrow, but to enjoy today. Thank you so much for just sharing how your approach is different. And how you are set up as a firm to be able to understand designers and support them and what they're doing and where they want to go.
Brad Clinard 53:28
I will just say, Michele, I feel so humble and blessed because being a family business, we can operate our business a little bit differently. I think it's such a unique business. We have a number of families that we work now with for generations of the family. And that is just when I think back of some of those relationships started with my father 30 years ago, and now we're working with the fourth generation. It's really unique and it is I've told a lot of people that now more and more individuals that are becoming clients, we hope more that they become like family and friends and then just client. Money is such a personal thing for people. That makes me really love what I do.
Michele 54:10
I love that. I mean, that's exactly what we're all looking for somebody that we can trust that we can do life with that we can journey with and it catches our vision. I think that's important toe Brad is, as your team catches the vision of the designers that you're helping, you're not pushing them into your vision for them.we talked about the cookie-cutter plan, you're catching their vision and helping refine it to be the best possible journey that they can take to get what they ultimately want out of the resources that they're saving. I think that's a beautiful way to do it. Tell everybody where they can find you. Where are you guys hanging out on Facebook on Instagram,
Brad Clinard 54:47
Our company website is HP financial design. People can Google High Point financial design. We are definitely excited for market this year is still to be determined, but anybody coming into high point, we always welcome a cup of coffee and enjoy meeting people. I'm on Instagram as personally, it's Brad Kleiner, and I can be reached by email at Bradkleinert@HPfinancialdesign.com
Michele 55:19
Perfect. We will have all of those links in our show notes so that everybody can just do it. Really quick click and get right over to you. Brad, this has been a fun conversation. I'll have to have you back. We'll dig into a little bit more. There's always lots to talk about. And just thank you for your time today.
Brad Clinard 55:34
Sure, wish you blessings.
Michele 55:35
Thanks to Brad for joining us today. Building a business and building a life are both important for us and they both need to be done with intentionality. That means a focus on where we are, where we're trying to go and on the steps in between. My aim with intent methodology is the pathway to scalability, where we cover the business side of intentional growth. I would love to chat with you about it and see if we're a fit. To journey this together because it's not easy to journey alone. You can get more details as Scarlet Thread Consulting dot com, be intentional about your business and your profit because profit doesn't happen by accident.
Michele 54:55
Creating a marketing and advertising budget is definitely something we need to consider. As we grow our businesses, along with identifying the social channels where our ideal clients are hanging out, take some time to be intentional with a strategy for your company. If you need assistance because you feel like the business is outgrowing you and maybe you're running to catch up, reach out and set up a discovery call with me. I'd love to help you. You can do that on my website as Scarlet Thread Consulting com, be strategic and intentional because profit doesn't happen by accident.