The New Skool Approach: How FiComm modernized marketing and helped advisors strengthen client relationships

Narrator: Welcome to Great Aspirations, Wealthspire Advisors’ podcast series on life, wellness, and financial advice. Each episode shares the experiences of extraordinary people whose stories inspire others to think big, find balance, and explore the possibilities of achieving health, wealth, and happiness. And now here’s your host, the CEO of Wealthspire Advisors, Michael LaMena. 

Michael LaMena: Welcome to Season 2 of Wealthspire Advisors podcast, Great Aspirations. This season, we’re highlighting the people behind the innovative ideas and concepts that continue to level up our industry and elevate the client experience. For episode 2 of Season 2 of Great Aspirations, I couldn’t be more excited to have as my guests, Megan Carpenter and Candice Carlton from FiComm Partners. Today’s episode is titled The New Skool Approach, How Megan Carpenter and Candice Carlton Modernized Marketing and PR for Financial Advisors to Strengthen Client Relationships.

As a way of background, not that they need introductions, but Megan Carpenter is the founder and CEO of FiComm Partners, an integrated communications agency serving the industry of wealth management and financial advice. Megan’s expertise spans over 15 years of helping wealth management businesses connect, communicate, and engage effectively with target audiences. Megan is also a sought after speaker at a wide range of industry events, including Pershing Insite, Echelon Partners’ Deals and Dealmakers Summit, and countless other industry forums.

Candice is head of Advisor Education, a marketing and PR coaching membership designed to supercharge advisor growth at scale. She’s an expert in advisor video, podcasting, and social media. Candice is passionate about helping advisors find their authentic voice, something we’re eager to talk about today, to stand out, attract new clients, and extend the impact of financial advice. She’s coached hundreds of advisors across the country and, like Megan, is a sought after expert speaker at industry events, and is also the creator and co-host of an award-winning New Skool podcast. Prior to FiComm, Candice spent her career at some of the fastest-growing and most innovative RIAs in the U.S., Mercer Advisors and United Capital, which was acquired by Goldman Sachs. She’s also spent time consulting for firms like XY Planning. Megan and Candice, welcome to the Wealthspire podcast. Such a pleasure to have you with us today. 

Megan and Candice: Thank you for having us. 

Michael LaMena: Well, this season is about people that have brought energy, enthusiasm, and really have had an impact on the client experience. And both of you have done that. And I’d love to just dive right in.

The New Skool Approach. Tell me about it. I think it’s incredibly aligned with some of the things we’re doing at Wealthspire. But tell me about the background, the genesis. How did you guys come together to bring this to the RIA industry and really start having a game-changing impact on the way advisors intersect with clients and ultimately curate meaningful client experience? 

Megan Carpenter: Well, you’re right, Mike, that I think that the New Skool mindset is very aligned with what you and your team have built in our building at Wealthspire. So we’re very honored to have the opportunity to be here today to talk about it. I think, well, first, the New Skool is a mindset. So it’s our mindset. It’s our worldview. It’s our beliefs, sort of our ethos. And it’s really about bringing vulnerability and authenticity to what we think is the otherwise old school world of finance.

So when we traditionally think of financial services, you think of overly professional, overly polished, buttoned up, a lot of jargon, like leading with assets under management and other credibility indicators, which can be really, really difficult for consumers to connect to. And so the New Skool is the opposite of that. It’s about leading with a very human-first, heart-centered approach to how financial services businesses, how financial advisors and wealth managers really build their business and then how that translates into marketing. So that’s what New Skool is, New Skool is a mindset and to answer your question about how it came about, I think Candice and I both had really interesting experiences that shaped our careers leading up to when we had the opportunity to start working together at FiComm, which is where the New Skool mindset was sort of conceptualized.

And so quickly for my background, I’ve been working in this industry my entire career. I actually started when I was 20 years old as an intern and I’ve always done marketing for financial advisors and advisory firms. And at the time there was very limited, if any, support for marketers in this space. There was no career path development. There were no training opportunities. There were no study groups. You know, I think that there’s still a great opportunity for that today. I know that Angela Giombetti at Wealthspire runs an amazing study group just for that specific need for marketers in this space, which we love. 20 years ago it just didn’t exist.

And so I really grew up in this industry, trying to solve the problem for advisors, which was they always said the same thing like, “I have no idea how to market, but I also have no idea how to stand out because it really feels like what I do is the same thing that everybody else does.” And so it’s as a 20 something year old with no mentors and no support, I really had to dig deep and figure out “How can I solve this challenge?” And it became quite clear to me when I understood financial advisors that it’s really it’s the relationship that they build with their clients that is so unique. And that apparently can’t be replicated because it’s a human connection. And so that was just a learning that I had at the same time as I was learning about working with financial advisors and helping them grow through the lens of marketing. 

I was a young female professional and then a young female entrepreneur in financial services, which was a difficult environment and I had such amazing supporters and people along the way really advocate for me, whom I still continue to be so grateful for. But it also was just an unfriendly unwelcoming environment where I didn’t have a lot of people that I could, you know, role models to be like based on their careers and so I had gotten to this place where I really felt like I was pretending. You know, like, I felt like I had to be the smartest person in the room. I felt like I had to know the answers to all the questions because if I didn’t, I was terrified that people were going to be like “She doesn’t deserve to be here, you know? Like who brought, who invited her?” And so that clouded a lot of my early experiences and specifically as a female entrepreneur just the self doubt and the self criticism and the negative internal dialogue and I fumbled through that for a long time.

And then I had the opportunity to be a part of the community and one of my greatest privileges in life to have met Candice, who came over to FiComm, we decided together that we wanted to bring a new service to the industry, which was helping advisors be better marketers that to do so in that human-first, heart-centered way, but that started with Candice, working with me, I view her as my coach, and she helped me to get really clear on my vision and my values and how I could align those two together to create change in a way that felt really authentic to me. And so I sort of had this New Skool transformation, and it was so powerful and I felt so aligned, I felt so free. I felt so confident and self assured and happy and like joy filled that I was like “Well this is it, like this is it, and this is what we have to do and this is really the platform by which we now have to take a responsibility to take out to the industry.” So that’s my story and I know that your story is quite different, but we converged. 

Candice Carlton: I mean, that was quite an intro to say “life changing.” I feel the same way, so thank you for that. I think, like, you know, I have a very different career path, very non-linear. As you mentioned in my intro, I worked at Mercer Advisors, I was in the investment department for seven years. I was on my way to be a CFP. I got to estate planning and I was like “This is not for me.” 

I went to work at United Capital where I didn’t have a job description the entire time I was there; I was the point of contact for 100 managing directors, and I had to solve whatever problem came up and then identify if it was a strategic problem. And one of the problems that came up was a communication problem. So we were acquiring firms so quickly at the time, and the impact on the business was that the firms weren’t growing as quickly as we wanted them to because they weren’t adopting updates to the client experience or the investment platform. They didn’t feel as connected and weren’t collaborating as much as we would like them to do. And I remember at the time the head of growth who was my boss, he said to me “Candice, I want you to be more visible. I want you to solve the communication problem, and I want you to create culture.” And I was like, “Oh,” so I went to my desk and I wrote down those three things and I was like “I wonder if he knows that I have a finance degree,” you know, like I have a finance degree. 

So I actually paired up with one of my colleagues who was in Texas and he was responsible for the wealth managers and he said, “Why don’t we do video?” So this was probably 10 years ago. We started shooting videos, we called it UC News and we were colloquial, we had slang, and he edited on his phone. We added rap music and we started sending it out to the advisors. 

Michael LaMena: That sounds New Skool.

Candice Carlton: And because we were talking to advisors the way we talk to them every day, the CMO kept going to our CEO and trying to shut us down and say that we were not on brand, which was true. But we knew how to speak to advisors. And by the time I left we had built two professional studios. We’d actually built an in-house video messaging tool. We were the first to go to the SCP – How do we archive this amount of advisor video? Everything we did was with a video-first approach and it was this really authentic, really human way and at the time, advisors started to say, “How do I communicate with my prospects and clients this way?” 

But I think the foundational thing there is I too was going through a self transformation where I was trying to figure out what my career path was and I was in this group of really highly educated very smart, very fast moving individuals. And I was having panic attacks in the box room at work, because I was feeling like I don’t know what my path is. I’ve studied finance and economics, I don’t want to be an advisor, I don’t know what I’m going to do. And I really had to discover who I was and embrace who I was and it was a journey and so one of the decisions I made at the time…and I had a lot of coaching just FYI because self development requires it. I had a lot of coaching to say, just have fun, find joy here, try to connect with people. And the more I was myself, the less stressed I was, the more I enjoyed myself, the more the impact of the work was successful, and it just continued and continued and I had the privilege of speaking to advisors across the country when we do business check ins. 

And we do these full days of business meetings and then we go to dinner and they talk to me about portfolio accounting. I’d be like, “Oh my goodness, can we talk about something else, please?” And so I’d ask them, “Do you meditate?” Because I was meditating, and these types of questions and what I discovered is, most of them were not sleeping. They were super stressed. They had all these things that were going on in life because they feel this great obligation and responsibility and working with their clients, and then added to that this front that you know we’ve been taught to put up not just as an industry but I think as a society of pretending to have it all together.

And so when we really think about the New Skool what we’re doing is we’re saying to people, “Stop pretending.” As Meg responded and even in my experience and all the videos that we did like no one talks like a brand, we talk like people, we connect with people, we all like to have fun because our jobs are quite serious, right? And so, how do you actually create a firm, and for me it was kind of a great career pump in alignment with your truth, your Dharma, what you’re meant to do and all the coaching I’ve ever done with any advisor. There’s a reason they became a financial advisor and it’s deeply heart centered and it’s usually because of some experience they had early in their life when they decided, “I’m not going to let this happen again.” So, when we think about New Skool, when we think about marketing we just simply think of marketing as an expression of how that advisor works with their clients when they’re in their highest resonance, when they’re in their zone.

Michael LaMena: Yeah, connected to the fundamental “why” for why they do this. I mean, what a launching pad for discussion when I listen to the genesis of it, I mean, it is authentic, it’s real, you both have been on a journey of transformation and awakening to the idea that we don’t have to put this front up there. And what strikes me is our industry, if you look at RIAs, most RIA websites, the narrative is going to be a deep trusted relationship. But if it starts with, I feel like I have to have this facade that I have all the answers that everything’s buttoned up and perfect. I mean, the reality is life is messy, the journey is going to have twists and turns. And the more advisors can embrace one, their own journey as to why they are an advisor, if they’re in tune with that and allow that to come out, and they’re expressing openness, clients are going to meet them there. And I think we achieve what we want, which is really deep personal conversations that actually create trust. It sounds so simple, but as you guys have rolled this out and engaged with countless advisors to kind of bring that, you know, what’s the experience been like where you’re met with, “Yeah, that makes 100% sense and let’s lean in right out of the gate.” Or has there been resistance? “No, I can’t do that. I can’t be vulnerable. I can’t let my clients know I don’t have all the answers.” Talk to me about as you took this, this, you know, work of passion around your own discovery and said like this is real for advisors when you actually started deploying it, what was that like?

Megan Carpenter: It’s a really interesting experience. The timing was serendipitous in one way, excuse me, in the sense that when Candice and I started working together it was three months before COVID. So it was in January of 2020. And so I was able to do all this work with her and go on my journey of transformation and we were able to conceptualize all this sort of during the beginning of the pandemic, and then think about taking it out to the industry. And so when we brought the New Skool, when we sort of came up with the name New Skool, we launched a podcast as a way to demonstrate the mindset, it was during the beginning of COVID. So we had a lot of really early interest and people were excited about what we were talking about, who were very drawn to the conversations we were having because they were quite different. 

And I feel like we find a huge amount of fulfillment in fast forwarding three years and seeing how quickly the industry at large has adopted the concept of vulnerability and authenticity and we see it now spoken about at many conferences and whatnot. But I think that there was almost like a little bit of false excitement or people weren’t actually I don’t think grasping like what we were talking about and the early days when people came to us and talked about the New Skool very early on they equated New Skool’s like video and podcast like a medium of communication. So they would say “Yeah, I want to do video, video is so useful, I want to do podcasts, podcasting is so New Skool.” Well, not necessarily, like it can be if you show up on your podcast or on your video series in a human-first and heart-centered and vulnerable way, but there are a lot of really terrible old school videos and podcasts that happen and so I think it took a little bit of time for people to really fully understand what the mindset is and and I think and you can share some stories about having worked with clients who they want to be New Skool and talk them through the process. 

Michael LaMena: Right, I mean one thing that strikes me is that immediately a subset will go to the safe space. “Okay this is about video, like I can get my arms around that. Wait a minute, I have to actually be vulnerable,” and it’s the authenticity of that openness and vulnerability coming through that actually really is the differentiation not the medium. 

Candice Carlton: I don’t know why but all of a sudden I started to feel emotional. I don’t know why I think of Carl Richards but really, and he came on our podcast but I think there is such immense power. When you give it all up, if you think about all the energy that it takes to pretend to like, look a certain way to speak a certain way to act as though you have it all together. It’s exhausting. And when you’re in that space, it’s really impossible to innovate. It’s really impossible to really create an action. And I think it’s also impossible to do real meaningful work which is like changing people’s lives which is like why we’re all here so when I’m working with advisors, Mike, or I’ve worked with some CEOs on the same thing so really accomplished people who are leaning into it, it’s really hard. Like, I mean, the reality is they come up against this inner friction, this inner tension. They know intellectually that they want to give up pretending. They know intellectually it’s actually what drives human connection. But we’ve built all these defenses up, like our whole lives in terms of appearing really credible. So then the question becomes, “If I’m really who I am with you, will you trust me and accept me? And will everyone still think that I’m smart? Will everyone still think that I’m credible?”

So I think we’ve had many, you know, and it’s our job to kind of like move through that and support our clients to say, “You find the spot that feels right for you and for you right now.” And it’s not the same for everyone, right? So today, who are you and how do you want to drive connection? And I think that’s something that’s really important to say is, when we’re talking about being authentic and we’re talking about being vulnerable, I think it became a little bit popular in our industry. And you saw everyone talking about it from a marketing perspective, but like it wasn’t actually like, grounded, because when we’re saying be authentic and vulnerable, we’re not saying put everything out there and be sloppy, right? We’re not saying like, go out there and show up like unshaven in your shorts now and tell them like all the stuff that you’ve been doing with your…like it’s not about being sloppy. It’s just about being truthful and really it’s about being in alignment with your truth or creating that impact.

So I think I’ll give you an example of some success recently. One of the coaches on our team, Carla Della Molle was coaching one of our advisors. And you know, he said, you know, he started to get really emotional, which is not uncommon in our experience. And he said all of a sudden, the truth coach team on how we’re showing up on video. So it’s really, as your point, it’s not about the media, but it’s how you show up in all these different places. Are you talking from firsthand experience? I think that’s a huge one. Or are you pretending, right? Are you admitting your mistakes and learning as part of that, right? And then are you letting people in to say, and this is what we learned and this is what we’re going to do. But he said, you know, “What I’m realizing is you are untraining me from being the robot that I was trained to be at the wirehouse,” right? We all have this idea that if we follow the rules, if we stay in the box, if we do all the things that we were taught to do, then we’ll be safe, we’ll be accepted. But the actual reality is we start to reject ourselves because we’re not being who we are and we’re not being able to create different paths for maybe other people who want to come along the path with us too. 

Michael LaMena: Yeah, I mean, a number of things jump out at me. You know, and I think at Wealthspire, one of the things that we’ve done well, and I think you mentioned Angela Giombetti who runs our marketing team. I think we’ve recognized that there’s a quality, a technical expertise that we have to possess, right? We are deep, well-trained financial planners. We know investments. We know trust and estate plans. And we’ve got all the arrows in the quiver. But the magic happens when you’re able to really connect with an advisor, explore deeply. Who do they want to work with and why are they doing what they do? Because when they can figure that out and start to really engage with clients that want to, you know, have that type of trusted relationship around maybe a specialty practice, right? We have advisors that focus on working with women in transition due to divorce or premature spousal death. We have individuals that work and have expertise in special needs. We have individuals that work with entrepreneurs. But oftentimes, some of those narratives go back, as you indicated, to life-changing events, right? Somebody saw, you know, a parent die early and the other parent struggle not knowing where to start with a financial plan. So they’re grounded in a really emotional, personal experience that then motivates them to want to be that source of stability and comfort when someone’s going through a change.

So it’s really interesting to me that you want to, as firm scale in the RIA space, you want to create consistency in the experience, consistency in the quality experience. But at the same time, you want to make it really personal and unique for the end client and for the advisor delivering that. And when I think about what you’re doing, the work you’re doing, it feels like it’s in that space where it’s like we can have both, right? You can have all the rigor, all the discipline around, you know, we’re going to make sure all these things are done when we deliver comprehensive financial advice. But we’re also going to allow each advisor to be their unique self, show up in a way that opens up that authentic, trusted relationship with an end client. And that’s where the magic really, really happens. 

Megan Carpenter: Yeah, that’s right. I think, you know, that it all has to be there. And so to your point about the technical competencies and proficiencies and the elevated client experience and the consistency, especially as a business like Wealthspire grows, that has to be there. But what also has to be there to your point is empowering the individual advisor who’s delivering the service to be really comfortable and confident in who they are. And I think one of the reasons that we love working so much with Wealthspire is because it’s so obvious. I don’t know if you know this, Mike, but it’s so obvious from the outside. Those leaders who are clear and confident and who are leading from a position of like internal power versus those that are leading from a position of fear. And it’s so clear to us that Wealthspire has that position of power because you’re not leading by trying to compete with anyone else. Like, you know that at Wealthspire you deliver a premium elevated experience, but that’s really done so in the way of empowering the individual advisor to show up exactly as they want to show up and to be supported in all the ways that they need to be able to do that really confidently.

We speak with other executives across the industry who will still say things to us like, “Well, we’re not differentiated. Like why would we work with FiComm as an example? You work with all of our competitors. Like why would we hire someone who works with all of our competitors?” That’s fear talking. That’s just fear. That’s fear that you’re not differentiated. That’s fear that you actually don’t have any unique abilities or competitive advantages, but it’s not a real fear because if that leader was grounded in themselves and clear in who they were and clear in their vision and values, that differentiation would be so obvious. And that’s what we see from an external perspective, like looking into Wealthspire, it’s just so clear. What you’re building is so clear. I hope you get that feedback first of all, and I hope that you feel that as you continue to grow the business because it’s not often that leaders in your position have that level of sort of clarity and confidence in what they’re building and how they’re building it. And to do so in a way that’s just not worried. You’re not worried about anyone else. If you’re worried about the people at Wealthspire. 

Michael LaMena: First of all, I appreciate those very kind words, but it’s that abundance mindset that says like, look, we’re not trying to standardize or create consistency because we want to control advisors. It’s all about, Angela and I often talk about amplification, right? It’s honing in on what is that unique aspect of an advisor’s story, who they want to work with, how they want to show up. And once you kind of can figure that out, that’s where it gets really exciting because you’ve got at least at Wealthspire, we’ve got a culture of collaboration where all the technical skills across the organization can be brought to bear on a client relationship, but it’s all done through the lens of that advisor’s deep trusted, authentic relationship with a client that yes, we bring expertise. Yes, we can bring confidence, but we also bring curiosity and vulnerability and openness. And we’re not rigidly locked into a paradigm where we have to have all the answers. Because I think if you have that mindset, you’re actually not listening first, right? So it’s really, really interesting to me. 

So what do you think as you look at the clients you work with, the industry, what do you think the impact of the New Skool Approach mindset has been and where do you see this going in the future? 

Candice Carlton: I think we’ve been incredibly excited to be attending, when we attend a lot of events and conferences because we’re going to go see our clients. I think we’ve been incredibly excited to see that most speaker lineups are using the same, are aligned and using the same words that we’ve been using, authenticity, vulnerability. If you are yourself not having any competition, I think the impact it has on our industry is it frees up, like Meg had mentioned for herself and I think for myself and all of us, frees up all of us to do our best work for advisors. I think what we’re starting to see, if we think about really like why are we all here, like what’s the deal? We could work in any industry, like why are we here? It’s really to expand and transform the impact of financial advice. So if all of a sudden we’re saying as an industry, it is acceptable to be yourself, what we’re actually doing is creating more space for different types of people to be advisors and in turn more people to actually receive financial advice.

So I think if we think about money, it’s neither good nor bad, but it is a super powerful tool and historically had the information around how to manage it well, how to invest it well, it was very exclusive and elite and I think the impact, the far reaching impact of the New Skool is all of a sudden we’re opening up that avenue for more people of all walks of life to understand money and the impact it can have on their lives, to live better lives, to be more in alignment with how they want to look after their families or how they want to invest or basic tools. I think ultimately what we’re doing is we’re empowering people to live better lives and more of them. 

Michael LaMena: I mean, I love it, bringing more people to both give and receive advice, grounded in what matters most to them. I mean, I think that’s the business we’re in and I’m struck earlier on, you mentioned the impact of COVID and the pandemic and it strikes me that as I look forward, there’s all this discussion right now about AI and technology bringing more and more automation to financial services, to wealth management and I think a lot of people view that through the lens of fear, right? Are jobs going to be eliminated? Is the value proposition going to get compromised in a way where there’s price pressure in terms of fees, all sorts of fear-based extrapolations of where it goes? I’m actually really excited because when we think about those authentic conversations and really going deep and understanding what people want, the financial plan to create, right? For them, how the financial planning rigor leads to freedom that allows them to pursue something that really matters to them, whether that’s philanthropic, whether it’s a different career path, whatever it might be. 

So when I look forward, I actually see as technology automates more the experience for comprehensive financial planning-led firms like Wealthspire, the advisor engagement, the actual client experience is going to be increasingly more human and I think the New Skool Approach really taps into that because it forces people to first of all figure out why are you spending your time doing this and how do you want to show up with your clients and lose the fact, the perception that you have to have all the answers and be perfect and it becomes real and I think that opens up all the possibilities for deeper human experience going forward. Thoughts on that? 

Megan Carpenter: Absolutely. I mean, I think technology has been and will continue to be just a great enabler, right? It enables efficiency. It enables sort of expensive relationships, but to your point, it enables advisors to have more time to do what they really excel at, which is to provide valuable life-changing service to the clients that they serve and so I’m totally in alignment with you and I think to your point around like delivering a level of service that’s super meaningful, think about being a client who has for years and years and years felt totally unaccepted by financial services. They don’t see themselves in financial services, they don’t feel heard, they don’t feel understood, oftentimes they don’t feel respected and so for all of us to be a part of this movement, to be able to bring more human-centered advisors to this space to be able to serve more people, like what tremendous impact.

We had a guest on our New Skool podcast named Anna J. Conte who spoke about the work that she does with women who felt so terrified of finance and money. They felt like they couldn’t even ask questions because they would just be immediately disregarded and so Anna built a business around really making sure that that type of woman felt seen, heard, valued, respected and that they had a safe space to come and ask questions, talk about their fears, to talk about their concerns about money, how to treat money, what does money mean to me, you know like you said it’s neither good nor bad but we all have some type of money story that we live with and so I think that that’s just such like a powerful demonstration of what we all have the ability to do and technology will continue to allow for efficiencies and to continue to allow for us to build you know better faster stronger businesses so that we can all do more of the good stuff. 

Candice Carlton: I think AI is never going to replace humans. I mean we had this discussion when it was like the big robo debate you know what I’m saying right it never happens because there our humanity cannot be replaced and so when we’re thinking about New Skool and we’re thinking about connection what are we actually talking about AI technology to automate parts of your client experience amazing right but you’re driving it but then we all want someone to say “I see you I hear you” like you know what I’m saying and that’s why like as you had mentioned like that deep rooted “why” which is what we work on with all our clients and advisors on “why do you do what you do?” When they’ve got that deep-hearted money story they serve a specific type of person who has had a similar experience or one where they can say “Yes, I understand, I understand you and this is how we’re going to work towards whatever it is that you want to create.” So I always wonder why it’s up for debate, I always think about, you know, a stupid example – the grocery stores when they created the self-checkout you know self-checkout they thought that that would eliminate jobs. Has it? No, the jobs just change and I think that’s what we’ve seen throughout history. Technology comes in and our jobs just change.

Michael LaMena: It’s also created the opportunity for me to be the coach in the grocery store because I always go to the grocery store with my family and I’m the somebody people see me with a gun doing the self checkout. By the time I get there everything’s done and somebody will be like “What are you doing?” I’m like “Oh, let me tell you this is the way to do it. You’re going to save time.” So yeah the work just shifts but it’s all you know part of an experience.

So look, this has been fantastic, I think the work you’re doing is amazing, you know, I think we’re deep believers that the differentiation is about those true relationships and really going deep with clients. You have to have all the rigor but if you get advisors in tune with their “why” and create the environment where they can really be vulnerable and engage authentically, genuinely with clients, that’s where our industry really just amplifies impact and amplifies satisfaction. I think about our industry, we often talk about it gets lumped into the broader financial services, and I don’t think it gets enough visibility for the kind of meaningful careers that individuals can have really positively impacting the lives of people and I think that’s a story that we’ve been trying to tell and I hear you guys doing the same thing. Let’s get more people interested in this industry because you can really have a huge impact and you can show up as your authentic self. So any last thoughts? I mean this conversation has been great and I’m even more excited for our advisors to continue to lean into the New Skool Approach to client experience. Any final thoughts from either of you? 

Megan Carpenter: Well thank you for the opportunity, Mike, it’s been a pleasure for us to be here and have this conversation with you. I would say my last thought would be, and we say this all the time, but if there’s an advisor listening to this that feels like they want to go on this journey but they don’t know how, I would just encourage everyone listening to reach out to people.

Michael LaMena: That’s the starting point, right? It’s actually saying “I want to go on this journey and elevate the client experience and stop feeling like I’ve got to be perfect and show up a certain way?” That’s the opening, right?

Megan Carpenter: That’s the opening, and so step into it, but also know that you don’t have to step into it alone. We at FiComm love to offer free resources to everybody in the industry no strings attached, you can come to our master class you can submit questions that we’ll answer specifically for you, but like step into it confidently knowing that there are people, coaches, consultants, executives who have your back, who want to support you, who want to help you on this journey and who will do so in a way that makes you feel like so good and so fulfilled. So that would just be my like what I would want to say is like yes step into it and we are here for you.

Candice Carlton: Mike, thanks so much for having us on the podcast, it’s been such a delight and obviously you’re New Skool and so we love it so much, but also I want to say to advisors out there if you don’t show up as who you are and you don’t step into what you’re meant to do, the people that need what you have aren’t going to get it, right? And as Meg mentioned, there are tribes out there so if it’s not at your firm, it could be somewhere else. If it’s not where you’re working when we launched our podcast we had no idea if people were going to be into it or not and then all of a sudden we had founders in and out of our industry, advisors, CEOs coming in and telling us about their story of transformation and the business impact that they were able to drive once they really stepped into who they were and they owned it, so it’s possible there are people out there and so you just need to find them. 

Michael LaMena: That’s awesome. Thank you both for an amazing conversation and all the great work you’re doing. You truly are having a tremendous impact on the client experience at an individual and an overall industry level, so thank you for the time, it’s been a pleasure.
Narrator: Thanks for listening to this episode of great aspirations presented by Wealthspire Advisors a registered investment advisor and subsidiary company of NFP corp. If you have feedback including suggestions for future topics and guests contact us at clientrelations@wealthspire.com.