Ignoring Advice and Achieving Success in Financial Services

Mary Beth Franklin [00:00:00]:
And then as I followed my heart when I found this topic that had great public interest but very little information, Social Security and Medicare, and I asked people, do you think I could build a business around this? And most of the experts said, no. I think it's much too narrow. And I chose to ignore that too. So may maybe that's maybe that's my thesis.

Leah Alter [00:00:24]:
Advice is ignore advice. Yeah.

Mary Beth Franklin [00:00:27]:
I sometimes that's the case is that I I guess I had an inner compass on some of these things. And I felt because I had studied these issues in-depth more than people who I was asking for for advice that I thought, no. There there's something here, and I think people will pay for this. And it turns out I was right.

Leah Alter [00:00:57]:
Hi there. Thanks so much for joining us. I'm Leah Alter. And I'm Joanna Ehresman. And this is WomenShare, a celebration of women in financial services. Before we dive in today, we'd like to thank Catchlight, our presenting sponsor of WomenShare. Catchlight helps firms save time and grow their assets by predicting which leads will be most likely to convert and suggest content and ways to engage them. To learn more, you can check them out at catchlight.ai/women

Joanna Ehresman [00:01:31]:
share. Well, we are so excited about our conversation with today's guests. Mary Beth Franklin is a name synonymous with Social Security and Medicare expertise. For over 40 years, she's been guiding countless individuals through the complexities of these crucial retirement benefits. But Marybeth's journey is far more than just impressive credentials. She's an award winning journalist, a certified financial planner, an author, a captivating speaker, and the host of her own public television program, Social Security and You, and we are just thrilled that she is joining us here today to share her career story, some planning insights, and her passion for bringing more women into this industry, which we share as well. Marybeth, welcome to WomenShare.

Mary Beth Franklin [00:02:14]:
Thank you, Joanna. Thank you, Leah. I'm delighted to be here, and I fully support your mission of bringing more women into the financial planning profession. I think it betters the profession. It better serves clients and creates great opportunity for women for a flexible and satisfying and financially rewarding career.

Leah Alter [00:02:36]:
Absolutely. Check. Check. Check. Yeah. Well, Marybeth, we're just so excited to have you here. And your journey into the planning industry isn't necessarily a traditional one, which we love that too. With your start in journalism, we'd love to hear your story of how you went from that and took that into, your career as a certified financial planner and now nationally renowned expert in Social Security and Medicare.

Mary Beth Franklin [00:03:07]:
Well, it's interesting. I think no one's life path is a straight road. It's always those coming to the fork and choosing sometimes the the less traveled one. I had always wanted to be a journalist. I was in college during the Watergate years where everyone wanted to be Woodward and Bernstein, and it, created huge numbers of journalism students. And the first thing I did when it came to career advice was ignore the advice I got because the traditional advice was, well, you can't start in Washington where I went to college. You have to go out into the podunks and, you know, make your mistakes in the little TV and radio stations and newspapers, and I thought, I don't wanna do that. I like Washington.

Mary Beth Franklin [00:03:51]:
So I managed to convert some professional contacts I had during my student years into my first job opportunity in Washington DC for a very small wire service that focused on specialty information. In that case, commodities, like corn, wheat, soybeans, gold, that sort of thing. I knew nothing about commodities, but I knew how to be a good journalist, and I learned on the job. Another traditional, path that I ignored was the rule was never leave a journalism job for something in, say, government because you'll never come back. But early in my career, there was the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island that happened in Pennsylvania where I was from, and I was captivated by this. I thought, I wanna be a part of this, and I became part of the president's commission on Three Mile Island as part of their public information staff and learned to be very disillusioned by presidential commissions and knew I wanted to go back to journalism. And I found out that, again, breaking the rules, if I would tell these prospective newspapers that I was coming from a presidential commission, they said, you know, let's hire you. So I came back into journalism.

Mary Beth Franklin [00:05:08]:
At that point, United Press International. I became a Capitol Hill reporter, covering things like the federal budget and tax reform and Social Security reform. That's where I got my first taste of this mammoth retirement program that it would turn out down the road really dictated my career. Then, like many women of my age, I had a couple kids, and working at midnight covering the senate and the filibuster didn't work so well into my family lifestyle. So I quit that job, and I became a freelancer, and I had a newspaper column writing personal finance for and about older people, things that no one had ever written about, like long term care insurance and reverse mortgages and Medicaid planning. And I did that for about 10 years, until I realized that as a freelancer, I was probably working the equivalent of 3 jobs, and I really wanted to work less. And I went to work for Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine. And that's where partway through my career, I discovered these Social Security claiming strategies.

Mary Beth Franklin [00:06:15]:
And I wrote this cover story in 2008 that said 4 secret ways of how to maximize your Social Security benefits. And the response was enormous. And back then, Kiplinger's Magazine's rules was if you got a letter or a question from a subscriber, drop what you're doing and answer it. The only problem was I was getting mailbags. Now this was in the days when people were still writing letters rather than emails, but I was getting mailbags full of hundreds of letters each week asking questions about Social Security. So I said, hey. I have found my niche, but working for the most ethical journalism media company of Kiplinger's Magazine, I would go on the road to teach financial advisors and consumers about Social Security, but I was not allowed to take any money for those speeches. And I remember one day sitting in Omaha on a Saturday morning thinking, well, this is stupid.

Mary Beth Franklin [00:07:11]:
I have to go back to Washington and work twice as hard since I've been on the road, and I didn't make any money. I'm not gonna do this anymore. And just about that time, Investment News contacted me and said, Gee, we would love you to come speak at our retirement income summit. And I said, Well, you know, frankly, it's just not worth it for me. And they said, Well, what would it take to have you come work for us? And I said, let me think about that. And I made that list of all the things I liked about my journalism jobs and all the things I hated about it. And I came back to them and I said, I'll tell you what. I'll write a weekly column for investment news, and you'll pay me x amount of money, but you can't put any restrictions on my outside income.

Mary Beth Franklin [00:07:52]:
So they agreed to that. And here I was starting around 2012, I think, and I started this column and community for financial advisors. And at the process, I was already going through the certified financial planning program. And I said to my readers, I know you who are CFPs did not get a lot of training in Social Security and Medicare. I've gone through this program, and it's a couple chapters, and it's a lot more confusing than that. For example, there are more than 2,700 rules that govern your Social Security benefits. If you send me your questions from your clients in your own practice, I will do my best to answer them, and I'll write columns about them so we can all learn about it. Well, it eventually became incredibly successful, and my secret sauce was Investment News was paying me to write a weekly column that essentially marketed my speaking experiences.

Mary Beth Franklin [00:08:51]:
And that's what I did the rest of the time. I would be on the road almost every week going to financial conferences and to, wealth advisory client events talking about Social Security and Medicare. So that's how you dig yourself deep into a niche that nobody really understood or cared about, and you said, I can do something with this.

Joanna Ehresman [00:09:11]:
I love that, and I love the, the fact that you went to investment news and said, here's what it would take and what I need and how am I like, structure this so it works for me. Right? Which is just so when we first met and you shared that story, I was like, yes. Yeah. Need more of that energy in my life. Right? Like, it was so great and powerful, and I just love that story. So you you were speaking. You know, you got your CFP. So you built this business around this expertise.

Joanna Ehresman [00:09:41]:
Do you have clients directly that you're working with as their adviser, or do you focus on being more of an expert kinda to come in and work with other advisers either to educate them directly or provide that education to their clients. Where are you playing in this space right now?

Mary Beth Franklin [00:09:56]:
I'm sort of in transition. When I spent, 10 years at Investment News and my readers were financial advisers, It was very lucrative for me to have those financial advisors, engage me as a speaker and to come out and do client events either in person or online. And then I would also do that at things like Financial Planning Association conferences, retirement income summits because my presentations, because they were educational, qualified for CE credits. And, again, as a CFP, you know you wanna take every opportunity you can to maximize those 30 CE credits every 2 years you have to get. So it really was a win win situation for me. And because, Investment News was paying me to write a column, I felt that all my interactions with advisers and their clients was basically field research from my column. So I did not charge anybody for that advice. My decision when I left Investment News at at the end of last year, December 2023, it was just time.

Mary Beth Franklin [00:11:04]:
There was a new management, team in place. The publication was going a little bit of different direction. I've been writing that for, you know, over 10 years, and I thought, you know, I'm pretty much done with the column, the regular column. But I still enjoyed the opportunities to, speak to people either in person or on online platforms. So I have continued to do that on my own pace. The nice thing is, when you're self employed like I am, I can say yes to Scottsdale HourZone in February, no to Indianapolis in January. So I pick and choose where it is I'm going and preferably at some place warm where I can pay play pickleball.

Joanna Ehresman [00:11:45]:
I love that. While we're on this topic, will you share a little bit about getting the CFP certification and, again, how you kinda didn't you you bucked the normal convention and made it work for you because I think that's a really interesting story.

Mary Beth Franklin [00:12:00]:
Yes. Well, when I was at, Kiplinger's Magazine, and my job was to write about retirement income planning, taxes, anything about money and retirement. And I we always had to find the, quote, real people for the stories to photograph and give it a personal spin. And my method of doing that was contacting financial planners and asking, you know, do you have clients that fit this per particular profile, and would they be willing to speak to me? I found in all those many, many conversations that the advisers who were CFPs really did seem to be the sharper tools in the box, And I was impressed with them, and I am part of me kept thinking, well, you know, I could probably do this, but I'm the sort of person who likes in person learning. And it turns out that the University of Virginia was starting a certified financial planning program, certificate program, and they opened a satellite campus a mile from my house in Northern Virginia. I thought, alright, this is the universe telling me it's time to do this. So I would take one course per semester because I was still working full time and editing the annual retirement planning guide and doing videos and things. So it took me about 3 years to finish the CFP program, and I knew there were 3 components to this.

Mary Beth Franklin [00:13:19]:
It was 7 college level courses. It was studying and passing the very difficult CFP exam. I was the last group of test takers that actually took it on a paper version where it, was a 10 hour test spread over 2 days and had a 50% passage rate. And I said to myself, I am only doing this once. And I treated it studying for the exam like a job. I finished my education program in June. I took the summer off. I signed up for the CFP review course, on Labor Day and was going to sit for the exam in November.

Mary Beth Franklin [00:14:01]:
So I spent from Labor Day to November studying every single day for this test, and I took the last week off before the test to just cram. And I took a review course and all that sort of thing, and I am happy to say I did pass the first time around. But there was still one more hurdle to cross, and I knew, my situation did not meet the criteria. That at the time, the experience requirement of the certified financial planning board was either 2 years of face to face client experience or 3 years of back office experience. I was a journalist. I didn't have any of this experience. But I said to the CFP board, I answer at least a 100 emails a week from individual clients and financial planners about Social Security and Medicare and how it fits into the broader retirement income plan. I'll tell you what.

Mary Beth Franklin [00:14:56]:
I'm gonna blind copy you on every answer, and you tell me if I don't have the experience. And after a couple months, they asked me to stop, take them off the blind copy, and, they said, please be patient. We will work with you. And to their credit, they came out with a new exception for personal finance journalists that on a case by case basis, those who had passed the college requirements and the exam and based on their personal experience could qualify for using the CFP marks. And I am thrilled to say I was the first person who qualified under those new definitions, and I have here on my wall my CFP. I think it was, 2015. So I've always been very grateful to CFP board and particularly to the CEO, Kevin Keller, who for thinking outside the box. And he took a lot of, complaints from some CFPs who said to him, just because you can write about brain surgery doesn't mean you can perform it.

Mary Beth Franklin [00:16:03]:
It's the same thing with the journalists. But I beg to differ, and I think I've been a very good, representative of the certified financial planning community. And part of my giving back to that community is ever since the CFP board established the women's initiative, originally the the panel in 2013. I've been an inaugural member of that group and now continue to serve with our whole purpose of having to get more women to become CFPs. And, you know, we're inching towards our goal. It gets better every year. We have more women sitting for and passing the CFP exam and becoming CFP professionals.

Leah Alter [00:16:48]:
I just saw, actually, yesterday that the pass rate for this last exam was 65%. So it's still pretty low. You still have to be really, really smart and really dedicated. I you

Mary Beth Franklin [00:17:01]:
you have to work for it, but I do think the fact that they moved to a completely computer based program is helpful to test takers because frankly, this was the old days of having workbooks and copying your answer into the little bubble on the piece of paper, and you got one line off, and you just flunked the test. Yeah. Yeah.

Leah Alter [00:17:21]:
Before we dive deeper with you, Marybeth, I wanna give a quick shout out to our presenting sponsor, Catch Lite. We're assuming our listeners are avid podcast listeners like we are, And Catchlight hosts the Grow Organically podcast, and we recommend you check it out. Dan Gilmartin, head of marketing at Catchlight, hosts candid discussions with wealth management and financial pros from across the industry.

Joanna Ehresman [00:17:47]:
Each episode goes deeper into growth factors at wealth management firms and how organizations can continue to be forward thinkers in today's competitive landscape. Add grow organically to your podcast rotation. Learn more at catchlight.ai/womenshare.

Leah Alter [00:18:04]:
Okay. So to pick up on what you were just talking about, Marybeth, you believe that encouraging women to become financial planners is good for the industry clients and, other female advisors. So tell us more about that and what you've observed in your career and how that fuels this passion for you.

Mary Beth Franklin [00:18:26]:
Well, I think if you look back on the traditional wealth planning community, everyone knows it was old male and pale, and, you know, that was fine because that's what their clients looked like. Then they could all talk about golf together and go to the club and have a great time, but increasingly, our clients are women. They're people of color. They're entrepreneurs, people from different cultures. And in many cases, they want to talk to a financial adviser that looks and sounds like them. So I think the business case for a more diverse financial planning profession really is you are serving a more diverse, universe of clients. So I think it really makes business sense.

Joanna Ehresman [00:19:10]:
Yeah. Absolutely. And I and I think I you're on the women's diversity initiative. Is that the right term for this?

Mary Beth Franklin [00:19:17]:
Women's, initiative at the CNCP. Yeah.

Joanna Ehresman [00:19:20]:
Yeah. So can you talk a little bit about what they're driving or kind of their focus areas? Because part of what we're realizing on this podcast is there's all sorts of people in the industry making movements in different areas. So I'd be curious to hear from someone in the know, you know, being close to this at the on the CFP board, what what are some of the key actions they're driving?

Mary Beth Franklin [00:19:43]:
Well, I think they're looking at lot of who are likely candidates to come into the financial planning profession. Now we certainly have a lot more college level CFP programs than we ever had before. So you actually have students coming right out of college with a CFP degree. But, you know, the tough part is there's not a lot of clients that wanna come in and take advice from a 21 year old. Right. So we're looking at how do firms create supportive environments to bring these recent grads into their firms and to give them a solid support and training base where they can be, you know, assistant CFPs. They can work with clients. They can learn the different aspects of the industry while they gain experience and work side by side in a mentoring capacity with more experienced advisors.

Mary Beth Franklin [00:20:40]:
So when they're a little older, they can step into these individual advisory roles. In many cases, there are senior women who can act as mentors, which is terrific. And a lot of other cases, there aren't, but it's having those older senior advisers being open to having a more diverse workforce. And what we have found is, many firms are really interested in hiring women. They just have a difficult time finding enough candidates. And one of the reasons for that is is the old compensation models. I mean, when you think back to wealth management, you either came in as a stockbroker in cold calling or an insurance agent in some sort of training program. And financial planning and wealth management is becoming more holistic and goes just beyond the sales.

Mary Beth Franklin [00:21:35]:
So it's creating the environment where many young advisers, women particularly, really wanna come into this profession because they want to help people. They didn't come in this to sell insurance or mutual funds. So it it's finding that that, meeting point where we can engage new entries into the field in a satisfying, giving back community. And at the same time, the financial reality of how are you paid? In the past, a lot of this was commission based, which really doesn't feel good to a lot of the new entrants. We also find that a lot of women who come into financial planning are career changers. And, again, the commission only is a deal breaker. If I'm a former nurse or social worker or school teacher and making a decent salary, and now I'm going to switch to this new very satisfying financial planning career, but you're telling me I'm going commission only, that's a deal breaker. So we're seeing a lot of movement in the compensation area that will work with attracting a new generation of advisers.

Joanna Ehresman [00:22:49]:
I love that. And that makes so much sense of Yeah. I've had conversations with advisers who are looking at how to even, you know, buy out a book, and they're like, I can't take 5 years off of having a steady income in order to buy out this book. What do I do? You know? Like, I think that compensation model component of it is a very practical, real issue that it's exciting to hear firms are working on and the CFP board is helping to shed a light on because that is, like, a specific constraint that seems solvable. Right?

Mary Beth Franklin [00:23:22]:
So The other thing that has been very exciting the last couple years, and it's an offshoot of COVID, actually. Prior to the pandemic, the financial planning profession was not known for being tech savvy, and a lot of it was restrictions. You know? There was at one point, advisors couldn't list their cell phone number or couldn't have, you know, social media accounts. And then boom, we're all stuck in our houses, and Zoom became the answer. And I talked to so many advisors who said my business has improved during the pandemic because I was dealing with busy dual income couples who never had the time to sit down together with me, but now I can get them on a Zoom call together. And we can do things like, hey. I know your oldest is going off to college. Would you like me to sit down with him or her? We could talk about some basic budgeting.

Mary Beth Franklin [00:24:15]:
And maybe you wanna invite some of his or her high school friends and maybe their parents, and we can talk about this, you know, foray into financial planning for new college students, and, boom, I just got 3 new clients. Isn't that great? Well, technology was one of the benefits of COVID, and the other was geography no longer mattered. Mhmm. They found because people were embracing technology that they no longer had to hire someone in their backyard, that perhaps they could hire someone from across the country that could still fulfill this role. And I think it was particularly helpful for women with children that as long as they work some key core hours, but maybe they could do some work before the kids went to school or, you know, after they went to bed. So we saw this more flexibility in both where people were located as far as of hiring and also the hours when they did their work.

Joanna Ehresman [00:25:14]:
Yes. That makes a ton of sense. And, again, these little not little. These shifts that are over time going to change the dynamic of diversity in our industry. That gives me hope. Okay. So time for one of our favorite questions, Marybeth. What is the best career advice you've ever received?

Mary Beth Franklin [00:25:31]:
Well, I think as I said at the top of this program, most of the career advice I received, I ignored. And I think maybe that that might have been the secret to my success. I I didn't leave Washington DC for a little mass media market. I stayed in town. I left journalism for a government job and came back to journalism, even though I was told I couldn't do that. I took 10 years off while my kids were little so I could basically freelance from home. And once they were back in school, I was able to take a magazine job. And then as I followed my heart when I found this topic that had great public interest, but very little information, Social Security and Medicare.

Mary Beth Franklin [00:26:16]:
And I asked people, do you think I could build a business around this? And most of the experts said, no. I think it's much too narrow. And I chose to ignore that too. So may maybe that's maybe that's my thesis. Advice. Yeah. I sometimes that's the case is that I I guess I had an inner compass on some of these things. And I felt because I had studied these issues in-depth more than people who I was asking for for advice that I thought, no.

Mary Beth Franklin [00:26:48]:
There there's something here, and I think people will pay for this. And it turns out I was right.

Leah Alter [00:26:53]:
Yes. I think that Joanne and I talk about this a lot on that inner compass, that intuition that even when it doesn't make logical sense to other people and you know that it is the right thing in the right path, you know, most of the time, it it it is. So,

Joanna Ehresman [00:27:14]:
you

Mary Beth Franklin [00:27:14]:
know, I I will say one more thing, and I I have been married for more than 40 years. And a lot of this was a partnership with my husband that he and I have often been entrepreneurs, sometimes at the same time and sometimes not. And it was many cases, for example, he was working for the government and had great benefits that allowed me to leave my Kiplinger's personal finance magazine and basically freelance for investment news. If he hadn't had those benefits, I don't know if financially, I could have made that leap. And I think that's a real challenge for a lot of individuals that the reality is in this business world, it's all about benefits. And if you're totally self employed, those benefits can be really expensive, particularly health care. But there's also great benefits. For example, yeah, you lose the company 401 k, but you can set up a solo 401 k and put away a lot more money.

Mary Beth Franklin [00:28:14]:
So there are opportunities there, but it can be daunting to people who have always had the protection of a corporate job.

Leah Alter [00:28:23]:
Yes. I mean, Joanna and I dealt both of us dealt with that when we left our our corporate jobs. And, yeah, you have to factor all of that in, but at the end of the day, doing what's right for you and your family is always gonna be the right the right choice. And we're never we're never stuck. Right? We always get to make a different choice. So if something doesn't work, we can pivot.

Mary Beth Franklin [00:28:49]:
Nothing is forever. You know, you make a choice. You follow it. If it works, great. And if it doesn't, you do something else.

Joanna Ehresman [00:28:56]:
That's right.

Leah Alter [00:28:58]:
Alright, Marybeth. What can we celebrate with you today?

Mary Beth Franklin [00:29:02]:
I have a visual prompt. This is a Telly award, and I'm delighted to say that my 1 hour special program on public television, which is called Social Security and You with Mary Beth Greffin, just received a Telly award, and I am absolutely delighted, and please celebrate with me.

Joanna Ehresman [00:29:23]:
Congratulations. Congratulations.

Leah Alter [00:29:26]:
Thank you. That's fantastic.

Joanna Ehresman [00:29:28]:
And you get the honor being the 1st person to flash some legit hardware here on women's share during the celebration part. That's I

Mary Beth Franklin [00:29:34]:
was I was gonna wear it as a necklace, but it's really heavy.

Joanna Ehresman [00:29:40]:
You can get it created in miniature for wearing

Leah Alter [00:29:42]:
your eye. Yeah.

Joanna Ehresman [00:29:43]:
Yeah. So, Marybeth, if someone is interested in learning more about your books, your show, or your speaking engagement, what's the best way for them to get started?

Mary Beth Franklin [00:29:52]:
Really simple. They go to marybethfranklin.com, and that's where my website, which is officially called retire pro. I have lots of free information for both consumers and advisers all about Social Security claiming strategies, some of my recent articles, links to some of my television appearances, podcasts, and radio shows. So everything you want is there, including you can click on ask me a question or book me to speak.

Joanna Ehresman [00:30:19]:
Excellent.

Leah Alter [00:30:20]:
Amazing. Well, this has been such a pleasure and such an honor to have you on the show. Thank you for coming and being here and sharing your story. I know it's going to inspire a lot of our listeners.

Mary Beth Franklin [00:30:34]:
Thanks for the opportunity. I really enjoyed it.

Leah Alter [00:30:36]:
And once again, we wanna give a shout out to Catchlight for backing our mission here at WomenShare. Catchlight's platform can build data rich profiles and score your leads to help you increase efficiency and improve conversion. Check them out at catchlight.ai/womenshare. And that is our show for today. If ours is a mission that you want to share in, subscribe to the show on your very favorite platform. And with that, I'm Leah Alter.

Joanna Ehresman [00:31:08]:
And I'm Joanna Erisman, and we'll catch you on the next episode of WomenShare.