IAM1073- Financial Coach Educates Young Professional Clients

“Does that make sense?” is one question Tina asks to make sure the message of financial improvement is getting through. She is passionate about educating young professional clients, to motivate them to act in improving their current financial situation. She's a military veteran, wife, mom and serves as a deacon at her church. She's also the author of It's Your Turn: Walk in Your Financial Purpose.

• CEO Hack: Delegating
• CEO Nugget: Dream big
• CEO Defined: You're a servant

Website: https://www.thefinancialt.org/

Order books and tees: https://thefinancialt.org/tinas-book-and-ts

Facebook: www.facebook.com/TheFinancialT/
Twitter: www.twitter.com/TheFinancialT
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/thefinancialt/
Instagram: www.instagram.com/the_financial_t/

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Transcription

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[00:00:21.10] – Intro

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders and value your time and are ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

[00:00:48.60] – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast, and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Tina Smith of the financial t. Tina, it's great to have you on the show.

[00:00:56.79] – Tina Smith

Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited about today.

[00:00:59.60] – Gresham Harkless

I'm very excited as well. You're doing so many phenomenal things, and what I wanted to do is just read a little bit more about Tina so you can hear about some of those awesome things that she's doing. And does that make sense? This is one of the questions she asked to make sure the message of financial improvement is getting through. She is passionate about educating young professional clients to motivate them to act to improve their current financial situation. She's a military veteran, wife, and mom, and serves as a deacon at her church. She's also the author of It's Your Turn, Walk in Your Financial Purpose. Tina, great to have you on. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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[00:01:31.70] – Tina Smith

Let's do it. I can't wait.

[00:01:33.90] – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Well, let's do it then. So to kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock and hear more about how you got started, what I call your CEO story.

[00:01:40.79] – Tina Smith

Oh, I love being able to share this because I believe that if I can, step out on my own in the financial industry, anybody can step in on their own, depending upon, you know, what their gifts and talents and purposes. But for me, I was working with a financial firm, for about five years. Now I do recognize that I was a client of said firm for about thirteen years before I decided to, become an agent or an adviser with that particular company. Fast forward five years from the moment that I started, and, I decided to write a book, like you had mentioned. The unfortunate thing is the company that I was with didn't support that effort about me being an investment broker and writing a book about why it's important to do your money right and how to manage it properly.

So we parted ways and, I decided that I didn't wanna stop helping people, and improving their financial status. I wanted to keep going. And so, I found a way to do just that. So, I believe the reason why I started being a financial coach was because as I left the firm that I was adjoined to, I found that companies like the one I left and others were increasing, the minimum requirements to become clients. And so if you wanted help on managing your finances, having a good spending plan, if you wanted help reducing your debt, you couldn't join those agencies unless you had a particular net worth or a particular level of annual income. And the people that I was working with, didn't have those, criteria, if you will.

And so I wanted to make sure that I still did the important work of helping individuals, improve their financial situation. And so that's my CEO story. So if anybody listening, believes that, you know, they have a passion, they have a purpose, and other people, will need what that gift, what that purpose is. I highly recommend considering stepping out and seeing how you would be able to help as many people as you can still using your gift person, your gift, your purpose, and also the competence that you have because there are, a lot of folks who need you.

[00:04:01.50] – Gresham Harkless

I wanted to drill down a little bit more. I know I touched on it a little bit about, like, how you serve your clients, how your gifts come out, and your competency and your excellence. Could you take us through a little bit more about the Financial Tee and what you do to support your clients?

[00:04:11.09] – Tina Smith

Thank you so much for asking that question. First, I always like to say about the financial t is that we are an independent, friend in the financial industry. What I mean by that is we do not sell any products. I don't consider my book as a product per se, but we don't sell products, but we do, talk with our clients concerning the best way to manage their dollars, you know, having a good spending plan. How is it that we're able to optimize the income that we have coming in and then spend the least amount of dollars? We do help with, budgeting. Debt reduction, is super huge, especially in this market of home purchasing. Individuals want to go ahead and, you know, start planning on either buying their first home or going a level up.

So individuals are looking to possibly move from an apartment to a townhome or going forward. And we're helping them reduce their debt in a way to where they're able to have, not only from debt to income ratio, be improved so that mortgage lenders will consider them favorably. But then also monitor the distance between what the limit is to either a credit card or something like that and minimize that balance. So we need to create that distance between the two so that, mortgage lenders would see that you're in control and have more favor, you know, towards you in an interest rate situation.

But we also serve the community by teaching employees about the importance of managing their money outside of the employer-sponsored plan. So that inside the employer-sponsored plan, you can optimize. So let's say for instance, you work for the federal government, the Thrift Savings Plan, or what you might know as TSP, matches your matches contribution. So if you, as a federal employee, provide or contribute six percent to your employer-sponsored plan known as TSP, then the government and the agency will then also match you up to five percent. But what I find is employees don't understand the system enough to where they're able to say, if I do my six percent, then the government will match me at five, then, wow, I have then made eleven percent, of course, six plus five. Right?

But because you're not because employees aren't optimizing what's going on outside of their finances, like, you know, what they're spending their money on outside, maybe they can see initially that they can only afford two percent. But if you only do two percent, then the government is only gonna match you two. So now you have four. So how do we get from four to eleven? And so being able to help employees understand not only how to optimize as far as contributions, but also how to be proactive in the funds of choice.

And so a lot of people don't understand that you can be proactive and make changes, and you just don't have to accept whatever the plan puts you in. You can do some research, and you can figure out what it is that you can do to see your money grow better for you while you're asleep. And so we train employees on how to do that. So that's another way we serve the community is by going into, small businesses and teaching employees exactly how to optimize. When we do that, there's a benefit for the employer because if there's a match, the more matching opportunity there is for the employer, the lesser the tax burden. So we're able to it's a win-win all the way around. So that's how we serve our community.

[00:07:44.89] – Gresham Harkless

It's huge. So I love, that you do that. And so I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce. You might have already touched on this, but this is what you feel says either you or your organization apart and makes it unique.

[00:07:56.00] – Tina Smith

Yes. And I love, answering these kinds of questions because, of course, the initial thought process of, we're the best or whatever. But I would say that my secret sauce and that anyone listening to this, could find that same sauce is picking a demographic that you can help the most. In our firm, our favorite demographic to help is a millennial professional. So these are individuals who are ages twenty-five to thirty-five. These are individuals who either are starting their careers or individuals who are finally looking at themselves as full-on adults who have full-on adult responsibilities and need to get these things right because they did they messed it up in their twenties.

So our niche market, if you will, is the millennial professional. Do we help everyone? Yes. However, the millennial professional does things that my generation doesn't do. Take, for instance, my generation, and I'm forty-six, by the way. My generation, we don't just go on vacation to an overseas location just because. We go maybe later in life, but not in our twenties or thirties. We didn't even have those aspirations. We were taught old school where you worked for a particular organization, you got your pension, you stayed there two times, you stayed an employee until further notice. But, young professionals these days, they're okay with saying, you know what? I don't like being an employee. I'm gonna start my own company with, like, zero fear.

And I'm gonna go to, you know, Acapulco. I don't know. And I'm gonna enjoy life now. I'm not gonna wait until I retire at age fifty-five, sixty-five. I'm gonna do it now. And so, with us, we enjoy the millennial spirit. We just don't want the millennials to go into debt to do these things that they're gonna do anyway. So that's what makes us different. So that's our secret sauce. And I recommend any, CEO, or or owner of a company to find that one demographic that you can help, that you are so in tune with. The reason why I have such a huge heart for the millennial professional, this may be ingredient number two to the secret sauce, but I've been there. I've done that. I had I had hired my first financial coach at age twenty-five. I know what it's like to be making no money and still trying to figure out how to make ends meet and have two dollars left over, the night before payday. Right? Instead of trying to wait right at the ATM so that Overdraft didn't hit, etcetera.

So when I was twenty-five years old, I was making nineteen, yes, one nine thousand dollars a year gross. Okay? So I don't wanna make anybody believe that I just had some money sitting around and didn't. But it was important to me at that age and at that, income bracket to hire somebody to help me figure this thing out, to say, look. I don't know what I'm doing. There's gotta be more to this. There's gotta be a way that I can save and have my money work for me while I sleep. And sure enough, there was a way and someone coached me. So now I call myself paying it forward or back, and in some cases, people may think.

Because now I'm reaching back to, you know, the other twenty-five year olds and saying, you got this. Let me show you how. Been there, done that. So I need to share my testimony as far as making sure individuals know that I'm not just over here talking about what I've been trained on, what I read, you know, the tests that I took, and all the certifications that I have and x, y, and z. This has been a walk. So this is me running the marathon. And if you're a runner, I'm not. But if you're a runner, this may hit you. It may hit you differently.

So you're running a marathon, and you've maybe passed somebody struggling, and they were breathing hard, you know, back at mile seventeen. You finish and you're like, yes. I've done my twenty-six point-whatever miles. You turn around and go back to get that person that was struggling. That's me. That's that person that's going back and going getting that person that was struggling. I've arrived at a particular point where if I don't want to, do this, I can stop and we'll be fine and I don't have to earn any dollars. But I have to go back. I have to be that person who finished to turn right around and go help that next person who was wheezing back there.

And you know people, Gresham, who are financially literally wheezing. And so it's up to, you know, somebody like me and other folks in our profession to be able to turn around and say, let me show you the way. Because otherwise, if I don't show you, you probably won't believe me and do anything that I say. But if I tell you my story and show you exactly where I've been and where I am now and say, this could be you. Then I think is a motivation that surpasses just talking about it. Oh, that makes sense. Did that make sense?

[00:12:39.70] – Gresham Harkless

Make perfect sense. I appreciate you for sharing that. Because I think so many times we forget that the journey we go through in life is not just for us. Sometimes it's for others and for us to be able to connect with so many people. So truly appreciate that. And I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

[00:13:01.10] – Tina Smith

I would say what makes me oh, delegating. Oh my goodness. That was so hard for me. At first, I felt as if I didn't make a lot of money in my firm when I first started that I couldn't afford to delegate. But in actuality, my delegating helped me so much, and it brought more clientele. I like to say that my office manager, aka my mother, is a backbone. She allows me to go and, you know, shake hands, kiss babies.

So that way, I'm able to go out and prospect and whatnot. And then I've also hired another talent within our firm. So, I have a multicultural team here. We're onboarding two other coaches, and we've got two coaches currently onboard. And each one has their specialty. We've got, Shamika whose specialty is budgeting and saving, and Kevin whose specialty is debt reduction.

[00:13:54.89] – Gresham Harkless

I love that hack. And I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So this could be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It might be something you would tell a client or if you hopped into a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

[00:14:05.70] – Tina Smith

Dream big. It's okay. What I find with individuals, especially those, trying to struggle, financially, they have not discovered their why just yet. What I find is that individuals who are in a position where their finances are more in an emergency state, don't see past the next check. And when I start removing the scales from the eyes, if you will, to allow people to see that if you peel back all this stuff, what is that big dream that you have? It could be anything. It doesn't matter what it is. But set that as your finish line if you would.

[00:14:49.39] – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely. Appreciate that, Nugget. And now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping out different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So, Tina, what does being a CEO mean to you?

[00:15:01.10] – Tina Smith

Being a CEO to me doesn't mean that you're the boss. It means that you're a servant. You're here to serve individuals regardless of what the business is.

[00:15:13.29] – Gresham Harkless

Appreciate that definition, and I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do is just pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know, and, of course, how best they can get ahold of you and find out about all the awesome things you're working on.

[00:15:25.50] – Tina Smith

Absolutely. Right now, go to the financialt.org. You can find out all the awesome stuff that we're doing. You can also go there to purchase my book, It's Your Turn, Walking Your Financial Purpose. You can also, if you're on social media, I'm already there. Right? So Facebook, at the financial t, Twitter at the financial t, Instagram at the financial_t. I'm also on YouTube. Search me. LinkedIn at the financial t. You cannot miss me. If you are on social media, I'm already there, and I can't wait to connect with you.

[00:16:06.20] – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely. Especially for all you millennials out there. I know you're already there. So, I'm speaking as a millennial as well too. So we will make it even easier. Have the links and information in the show notes too so that everybody can follow up with you, but truly appreciate all the work that you do, the transparency and authenticity that you had and brought to us today too. I think that's wonderful, and a reminder that people aren't alone. So thank you so much for the work that you do, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of that.

16:30-Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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