Vision 2030: Preparing Women for the $30 Trillion Wealth Transfer

Debra Brennan Tagg [00:00:00]:

It's such a gratifying industry because you're just helping people all day long. I mean, you're helping them to our our mission is to help our clients to use their money to have the lives they want, But that really that's the whole purpose of all of wealth management. You wanna you you want their money to be maximized so they have this life that they want. And that's a really wonderful thing to be able to do. I mean, it's, it's such a gratifying thing to get to be able to know so many different families and to be part of their success stories is just wonderful. We just need more people to understand what a great industry it is.

Joanna Ehresman [00:00:39]:

Hi there. Thanks for joining us. I'm Joanna Ehresman. And I'm Leah Alter.

Leah Alter [00:00:44]:

And this is WomenShare, a marketing guide for women in financial services.

Joanna Ehresman [00:00:49]:

Today, we are so lucky to be joined by Deborah Brennan Tagg, CFP, who is the president of VFS Advisory Group located in Dallas, Texas, and she was recently named top women wealth advisors by Forbes. She's very involved in her community and has held many boards member seats. She's currently a member of the Financial Planning Association and the Financial Services Institute. You've gotta go to the website and read all about Deborah. She has such a long and impressive list of accomplishments. So definitely go and check that out. Deborah, it's such an honor to have you on the show. Welcome to Women's Share.

Debra Brennan Tagg [00:01:33]:

Thank you for having me. It's such an honor to be here. I'm really,

Leah Alter [00:01:45]:

Well, thank you. We're when we were connected to you, it was actually we we hadn't met. Right? We don't know each other Mhmm. Directly. It was through the podcast, and I I think what made it a mutual yes was hearing from you about the topics that you're passionate about. They're so well aligned with our listeners and what we're all about here on the show, so we're we're really excited to dig in. And one of the things that you shared with us as we were preparing for the show is that you are as passionate about the wealth transfer that's happening right now as we are. So there's about 30,000,000,000,000,000 with a t, dollars expected to be controlled by women in 2030, which is just 6 years away.

Leah Alter [00:02:23]:

So I'd be curious to get your perspective on this. Like, how how does our industry need to evolve to address this big shift that's happening?

Debra Brennan Tagg [00:02:32]:

Well, it's an interesting question because 30 you know, 2030 is just 6 years away. And so this thing is happening whether we're ready for it or not. And so it it we all need to work together to get ready for it as quickly as we can. I've been doing this for about 25 years. It's always been the same thing. There are only about 20 to 25% of financial advisers that are women. And so that is not likely to change before 2030 because we have to get them trained. We have to get them interested in the industry, trained, up and running.

Debra Brennan Tagg [00:03:00]:

That's really not going to happen by 2030. So the question is then, how do we address all of this? We still, I think, need to be making plans to make it easier for people to come to the industry, and I mean that from both the worker side and the client side. There are a lot of women that I know there are even personal friends of mine that are very successful and are not really interested in wealth management or the management of money because our industry hasn't made it very appealing. And so when we think about people coming into the industry, we need to make that a much cleaner and easier entry point for them. So we need to make it clear why they would come in, how they come in, how they can be sponsored, what the different roles are that they can have. But from the client side, which is kind of the here and now side, we need to make it a whole lot clearer in a lot of different ways. So we need to make the communication much more streamlined, much more tangible, and easier to understand. And we also need, as an industry, to make it clear what an investor should expect, what they should expect in the way of fees, services, deliverables, how do they figure out how to align with a different kind of adviser, do they need financial planning or not, And then how do they evaluate that person? So, how do they know that they're getting good value for their money? One of our biggest measurables is just confidence.

Debra Brennan Tagg [00:04:23]:

So, do our clients feel more confident about their decisions after working with us? And if the answer is yes, then we feel like all those things that I just talked about are aligning for them. If the answer is no, you have to go back and say, what is it that we're missing where we're not connecting with these people? Because then we're probably not maximizing their plan and they're not maximizing the money. So there's a lot of work to do, I think, on the building internally side, but then the other piece of it is that the, investors and the people who need financial plans in the here and now, we can all work on that communication, making that clearer for them right now.

Leah Alter [00:04:56]:

So well said. And, actually, as you're talking about, you know, service expectations, we've talked on the show about I personally never expected to be in the wealth management industry, you know, in the early part of my career. And once I joined, I became so passionate about the value that advisors provide. So I started recruiting all of my family and friends to start working with, you know, financial advisors. And and so my mother-in-law works with a financial advisor that I know quite well from working with him, and I encourage her regularly. And, like, you know, you can ask him about that question. Like, she'll have some question about, can I should can I buy a new car? Should I do this? I'm retired now, and I'm like, yes. Yeah.

Leah Alter [00:05:35]:

It's good. You know? So so I think there is upping the education on service and expectations and making things really clear. It's so so true, and I don't think it's necessarily just toward women investors. It's all investors Right. Absolutely. Are gonna benefit. So

Debra Brennan Tagg [00:05:50]:

And we No. Go go ahead, Leah. Sorry.

Joanna Ehresman [00:05:52]:

Oh, I was just gonna say, and I think this has come up on a previous episode too, which people just assume that having an adviser is only for people who are very wealthy.

Debra Brennan Tagg [00:06:04]:

Yes.

Joanna Ehresman [00:06:05]:

And don't consider if someone doesn't consider themselves to be wealthy, they just automatically go, well, that's not a service I need or can afford or is available or accessible to me, which again goes back to your point about education, which is there's there's so many levels of getting financial advice and getting help so that you can become wealthy or whatever your version of wealthy is. And I think there there's a big gap there. So

Debra Brennan Tagg [00:06:34]:

Yeah. I agree. There's a, I was asked to speak to a group of, so I'm in Dallas, but a group of women here in Dallas that are very successful, and they are leaders. They're kind of self identified leaders. And so they're doing all these wonderful things to lead, but a lot of them were saying they didn't really what to do with their money. So they asked me to come in and speak to them. And, what we talked about is the false stories that are told to women and the true stories that are really out there. So the false story, wealth management tells women on a regular basis, oh, it's gonna be harder for you to do be successful in your financial plan.

Debra Brennan Tagg [00:07:06]:

You're not gonna make as much money, and you're gonna take time off for family, and you're gonna die younger or die die later and so on. Your husband's gonna die younger. And, you know, a lot of that stuff is just it's just individual lives that we're talking about. It's not it's not really that women look like this and men look like this. They're all individual lives. And so women kind of get bucketed into this problematic area with financial planning where it's like, oh, it's so much harder as a woman to do your financial plan than it is for a man. And so I told this whole story, talked about, you know, the true stories around financial planning, how women, it's a positive that we take time off for our family. It's a it's a positive that we choose the kinds of lives that we want.

Debra Brennan Tagg [00:07:44]:

We don't need to die on the biggest pile of money. Had this whole discussion. And the feedback that we got afterwards was that there were so many women in the group that then immediately went to their financial adviser and started having these more thorough conversations because they were having the conversations that you're talking about. They were kind of like, it's just about the investment portfolio. That's it. They tell me what's going on in the market. I walk away. I'm no no better off for it.

Debra Brennan Tagg [00:08:06]:

And so they actually engage the financial adviser on a deeper level, and so they're having a better conversation with them. So it is it's just all about communication.

Joanna Ehresman [00:08:15]:

So I you have this great, theory, this chicken or egg theory about getting more women involved, and I'm gonna quote you. You said, do we try to train more women to attract more female clients, or do we attract more female clients in order to attract more women in the industry? Mhmm.

Leah Alter [00:08:35]:

So I

Joanna Ehresman [00:08:36]:

would love to dig into that a little bit. Which way do you think is most effective in sort of how you are actively working on this now?

Debra Brennan Tagg [00:08:44]:

So I am still struggling with the answer, and I think 10 years from now, hopefully, we'll we'll have really what the clear answer is. When I turned 49, I was at started my 50th year on the planet, and so I decided to go on this kind of little personal journey. I started doing all of these things that I'd never done before. But part of it was also just looking at my career and saying I probably have 10 to 15 years left in this industry, and I wanna do something meaningful. So that was where this whole discussion, this kind of internal discussion started, and I, I started having meetings with people, talking to people who are in this field. I actually was lucky enough to have a conversation with Julie Ragitz, who you guys have not had on previously. We can talk about her later. Yeah.

Debra Brennan Tagg [00:09:25]:

Shout out to her. She's pretty amazing. But you so people who are knee deep in all of this, who have these deep backgrounds in it, who are already doing this work, and the conclusion I came to was that there's lots of great work going on. Investment companies are doing a great great amount of work with this. Broker dealers, the very large organizations are doing a lot of great work with bringing in very diverse talent. But until people, investors, clients, people who need financial plans see it in offices like mine, they're not going to see the difference because they don't see the back office of an investment company. And so they're not really going to see all that. So it's wonderful that that work is being done, but it's probably not changing the kind of people that are being attracted to wealth management.

Debra Brennan Tagg [00:10:06]:

So in my mind, I thought, okay. We need to have the offices, the financial offices of advisers to actually be the ones that are diverse, so it's more client facing and they can feel more welcome. So we started doing a lot of that work. We're having a lot of those conversations locally here in the community. I've started having those conversations nationwide, and, my goal there is to figure out best practices that we can all implement. So I'm working with that on a number, a number of different levels kinda behind the scenes until we have something that's a little more structured that we could roll out as best practices that people could implement on their own. But in one of these conversations, I spoke to a woman who, works with a lot of corporations on a lot of, DEI kind of initiatives, which are no longer as structured that way, but just talking about how to support different kinds of people in the work environment. And her challenge to me was she said, you know, that's a really long game to do it that way because it'll be so long before you can, again, train the people, get them interested, train them, get the bump and running and client facing.

Debra Brennan Tagg [00:11:07]:

She said, really, if you can get to the people first and get the demand going, you will find that more people come to the industry because they will see that there are people that they can serve, and they'll feel more motivated to come to the industry. So I it was a really eye opening, discussion that I had with her, and so I kinda wanna play both ends of the barbell, and see if we can kind of find a way to meet in the middle. But I do think that it's both a

Leah Alter [00:11:34]:

a supply push. You know? We need to have people that are

Debra Brennan Tagg [00:11:34]:

in the industry that You know, we need to have people out in the world who go, you know what? I need wealth management also, and I need to know how to maximize my dollars. I need tax strategy, and I have no idea what I'm doing with my portfolio. And so I think that if we work on both sides, that we'll get to the middle, maybe not by 2030, but

Leah Alter [00:12:00]:

we'll be target anyway. For there along. One thing that stood out to me, and we were chatting a little bit about this before we recorded, is, like, just that you're putting together a coalition of sorts or, like, you know, helping to lead this. And that's really what I think is so impressive about the people we've encountered on this podcast and just the change makers in this industry, like, organically driving this forward and really valuing solving them or working towards solving the macro problems, so to speak, or just changing this dynamic without it coming down to competitive or, you know, well, we're not gonna share what we're doing here that worked because we don't want our like, this is a collective effort, and just kudos for embodying that, that spirit.

Debra Brennan Tagg [00:12:50]:

You know what? I think what's nice about these days is, you know, I've had this in my mind for a long period of time, but it wasn't really until I went through my 50th birthday and that whole journey that I thought, okay. I really wanna put some concerted work into this. But it was nice once I started looking around to see that there were people, you know, running on both sides of me in the same direction. I didn't know when I started this if it was like a one man band in the entire country trying to figure this out, But, really, it is happening in so many places so many more places than ever before in my career, that it does feel like, okay. If we all keep linking arms and pushing towards a common goal, then we are going to get there. It's no longer something that seems like it's so out of touch, and I do think that we're gonna move the numbers in lots of different ways.

Joanna Ehresman [00:13:31]:

I mean, honestly, that's what Joanne and I were talking just recently talking about, which is we kinda felt like we were almost on the same island, right, or running by ourselves, and what we have found in, you know, we're nearing, like, our 20th episode is that there are so many of us that are out here wanting and working towards the same goal.

Leah Alter [00:13:58]:

Yes.

Joanna Ehresman [00:13:59]:

And if this podcast could be one platform of many platforms where people can come and and know that they are in a place with like minded people who are also fighting

Leah Alter [00:14:11]:

the good fight, so to speak.

Joanna Ehresman [00:14:13]:

Right. Then we're I mean, it would just make our whole I mean, that's why we started this. Right? Mhmm. And, meeting people like you along the way who have also worked with people like Julie, who are doing such great work, and are finally getting resources so that something can actually happen. It just really like, it fires us up. Mhmm.

Debra Brennan Tagg [00:14:38]:

It's so cool that you all are doing this podcast because we do need to keep raising the voices and raising everybody's understanding of both what the problem is and how many solutions there are possible to fix the problem. I'm actually interested. I don't mean to turn this around.

Leah Alter [00:14:53]:

Go ahead. Go ahead.

Debra Brennan Tagg [00:14:55]:

Do you and so you've done 20 episodes. Is there a, like, screaming out common theme to you all of this is what needs to be done? Or is it, well, gosh. These people have these 2 good ideas, and these people have these 2 good ideas. It's great that we have, you know, 20, 40 great ideas all moving in the same direction. Are you seeing lots of different great great answers, or is it one thing where you're like, it seems like if we got behind that, that would work?

Leah Alter [00:15:19]:

I think it's a little bit of both. This one theme, which we will get to, I think, more deeply here is, like, what actually changes the numbers? Like, if women Yes. In leadership and advisory roles, candidly, it's been stuck. It feels like Yes. At 20 to 25% for a while now. And, like, the actual way to change that is through sponsorship and mentorship and that sort of thing, which Mhmm. We'll dive into deeply. But I think what has been eye opening to me is the growth.

Leah Alter [00:15:50]:

Either I'm more aware of it now or this is actually there. It's becoming more common that organizations are talking about bringing more women into the industry both as clients and as employees. Right? Service providers. And there's more events dedicated to it, more content. So I don't know. That's probably a non answer. I think it's I no. No.

Leah Alter [00:16:10]:

That's great. Yeah. I think there's progress.

Joanna Ehresman [00:16:13]:

I think too, I, I think it's becoming more we're we're all becoming more aware of what each other is doing. Yes. And I think it inspires or our hope is is that it inspires a a a new program or something like that within your, our listeners or, you know, their own organizations of

Debra Brennan Tagg [00:16:38]:

Mhmm. We need

Joanna Ehresman [00:16:39]:

a sponsorship program, not just a mentorship program. We need to be in high schools having these conversations. And

Leah Alter [00:16:47]:

Yeah.

Joanna Ehresman [00:16:48]:

We are starting to see that, which I think is the, you know, the fastest way to change is action. Right? So if people are starting to actually create these programs and do those things, maybe we can actually move the needle.

Debra Brennan Tagg [00:17:04]:

Mhmm. That makes a lot of sense.

Leah Alter [00:17:07]:

Yeah. Well, in a long oh oh, go ahead. No. I was just

Debra Brennan Tagg [00:17:10]:

gonna say, I really appreciate that you all started this podcast for this reason. It's been really interesting to hear all the all the guests on and everything that they've had to say. So I I totally agree with what you guys are saying.

Leah Alter [00:17:20]:

Well and related to the topic of of mentorship or sponsorship, and even allies. Right? So knowing that the numbers are what they are. There are just factually more men in the industry. Yes. Leah and I have talked about we've had great male allies in our career, Mhmm. And we know that that's an important topic to you of just having these allies and and true sponsors of your career. So tell us a little bit more about your perspective on this, and we'd be curious to hear. Do you have any, you know, specific examples in your own career of of that working for you?

Debra Brennan Tagg [00:17:54]:

Well, so I I truly believe that while it is still male heavy in our industry, it's actually a huge opportunity for women, especially if you are smart, can communicate well, know what you're talking about, have some ambition. There I mean, men just open the doors for people like that, whether they're male or female. And so I really have not seen that it has been a negative for me to be a woman in the industry. I've seen it actually as a way to be able to shine a little more easily. I think that when we act like women in the industry, we might get treated more like women in the industry. If we just act like people in the industry and just show up at the table, I think it's a lot easier for the men to just see us as people instead of women in the industry, if you know what I'm saying. Like, I think it is easier for them to just see us as anybody that they would mentor or be a male an ally to or sponsor. I will say the the most impressive commentary that I've ever heard is, there's a gentleman that I was introduced to just kind of tangentially, and we were having we we had a whole other topic, but we we tripped into this conversation probably during my 50th year on the planet because I was talking about all the topics.

Debra Brennan Tagg [00:19:05]:

But he said, you know, I consider myself a male ally, but what I realized recently is that if I say that I'm a male ally and keep taking the seat at the table, I'm not really a male ally. And what it means is when someone asks me to go into a leadership position, I need to say no, and I need to suggest a female to replace me. And I was blown away by that. I just thought that is so meaningful. Yeah. I mean, it was and I said, do you have any idea what that means? And he said, well, he said it's empty. And he had daughters that were becoming adults. And so he said it's just empty to say I'm a male ally, but to not actually do something productive to change the future so so that we don't need male allies anymore, and that we're all just here together and that it's not that, you know, we have fewer women and all this.

Debra Brennan Tagg [00:19:53]:

So he I thought that was one of the most impressive things that I had really ever heard as far as male allyship, and he had already done that a few times. He wasn't just saying it like a light bulb, like, oh, he should do it. He had already done that a few times, and he said it so gratifying to me to see these women lead. And he said, honestly, they were better in the positions than I was. They just it was people were asking me and it was, you know, friends in the industry that knew me were asking me to do certain things, and they just didn't know the person that I knew. So I think, you know, that is a really clear example of what it really looks like to be a really strong male ally. I was lucky enough. I mean, the firm that I'm in now, the parent company was really, my dad's firm that he started 40 years ago, Brennan Financial Services.

Debra Brennan Tagg [00:20:33]:

And so I was lucky enough to grow up in that firm, to start in that firm, and my dad always just told me that I could be absolutely anything that I wanted to be my entire life, and I just believed him. So that has been a huge piece of my armor over the years. So he's kind of the original male ally to me. And because of that, it just never occurred to me that anybody would treat me any other way. So every room that I walk into, I'm just I don't really see male, female. I I actually generally walk up to a group of men before I walk up to a group of women. At least, you know, I'm going to industry events and so on. And so it it doesn't really occur to me that I need the male allyship.

Debra Brennan Tagg [00:21:14]:

I just feel like I show up and present. Ozaic, who's our broker dealer, they asked me to be Ozaic, who's our broker dealer, they asked me to be the inaugural chair of their national advisory board, and, that was a big deal. So they just started it three and a half years ago or so, had never done it before. I needed someone that they knew was a good leader who could, you know, bring it together. And they they picked the original board that was coming together, but they needed me to lead it and to kind of gather everybody together and get it organized. And so, they put me in that position, and that was a pretty bold move. I mean, there are plenty of wonderful male advisers at those used to be adviser group is now called Ozaic. And they were, there are plenty of great people they could have chosen, and they asked me to to chair it.

Debra Brennan Tagg [00:22:02]:

And so that was a big, leadership role for me also. So I've had wonderful male allies throughout my career.

Leah Alter [00:22:08]:

I love that. And shout out, Ozaic. Well done. Well done.

Joanna Ehresman [00:22:12]:

Yeah. Absolutely. Well and you've been researching, we'll call it the gender gap, right, in our industry for a long time. In in thinking about these organizations, what role do you see from an organizational standpoint? What do you see that their role is in kind of assuring more women into the industry?

Debra Brennan Tagg [00:22:34]:

Do you mean the role of a broker dealer in particular or just all the different

Joanna Ehresman [00:22:38]:

Broker dealers, just like the larger organizations that are out there recruiting advisors, quite honestly. So broker dealers, RIAs, etcetera.

Debra Brennan Tagg [00:22:49]:

Well, I mean, you know, unfortunately, the easiest thing to do is the

Leah Alter [00:22:54]:

same thing you always have

Debra Brennan Tagg [00:22:54]:

done to be successful. And there's no shortage of people that are coming into the industry that look like people who are already in the industry. You know? So that is the easiest way to be successful. It takes a whole lot more work to find people who are outside of kind of the traditional people who are the service providers currently. What is nice about the larger companies is that they have a larger budget, and they do have a larger amount of employees that they can deal with. So I'm an 8 person team. To make a change in my team is a big deal. It we either have to replace somebody we already have or we have to add a whole new expense to bring on somebody if we're trying to bring on a certain kind of, you know, background into our into our firm.

Debra Brennan Tagg [00:23:37]:

In you know, and we would that's a huge expense. It's a huge amount of training. It's huge amount of time. For these larger organizations, they have many more seats that they can fill in different ways, and they have bigger budgets, and they have more people than on the teams to be able to train the new people. So it's not just a kind of one to one training. It might be a 20 to 1 training. So I do think that the larger organizations can make a really big shift in doing the recruiting. So going out to the high schools and the colleges and making sure they understand that there are wonderful careers in wealth management, maybe not as an adviser, but in operations or in legal or in trading or whatever it is.

Debra Brennan Tagg [00:24:15]:

So many great ways that you can be involved in wealth management to really be doing that education. And then that, if if they can provide that kind of, publicity to what wealth management is all about, then people like us will find it to be easier to find people that can come into our industry or that we could use as industry changers. Know, somebody might have started another industry, and they're like, this isn't really for me. I'm looking for something else and to be able to bring them over. So I do think that just raising a profile of what a great career it is to work in wealth management is where those bigger firms can really be very helpful.

Leah Alter [00:24:50]:

I I think that's a great perspective. And when you're talking about, you know, what's always worked is is what they're probably gonna continue to do. Like, this is a very risk averse industry. Right? And it feels risky to change things up and go for it. But to our earlier conversation, what gives me energy around this is there are more organizations that are willing to take that risk. Between Carson, we had, Maria Bethel from Nextel on, that sort of thing. I think there's there's more there's more coming, and I'm so we are I'm here for it. Leah's here for it.

Leah Alter [00:25:21]:

You're here we're all here for it, which is really I can't wait to see. I I I honestly I vacillate between being so overwhelmed, like you said. Like, oh, this is never gonna change to, hey. We can do this, and then this is very much a, hey. We can do this conversation.

Debra Brennan Tagg [00:25:35]:

Well and, honestly, you know, with the number of advisers that are scheduled to retire, there is a massive opportunity for new people to join the industry. And there's no you know, I think that almost every single person that I know that's a really successful adviser doesn't have a really strong background in finance. I mean, I grew up in a firm where my dad was a financial adviser, but he was a corporate tax person before that. So he he he was a an industry changer, and so he started his firm on his own when he was in his forties, and, and there are a lot of people who can do that and be very successful. And we need more and more people to join this industry, and it's such a it's such a gratifying industry because you're just helping people all day long. I mean, you're helping them to our our mission is to help our clients to use their money to have the lives they want. But that really that's the whole purpose of all of wealth management. You wanna you you want their money to be maximized so they have this life that they want.

Debra Brennan Tagg [00:26:31]:

And that's a really wonderful thing to be able to do. I mean, it's, it's such a gratifying thing to get to be able to know so many different families and to be part of their success stories is just wonderful. We just need more people to understand what a great industry it is.

Leah Alter [00:26:44]:

A 100%. A 100%. I mean Absolutely. We could we could go on for for is about all of this.

Joanna Ehresman [00:26:51]:

Absolutely. I well, and it's it it's just I mean, it all just you know, we talk about, like, Simon Sinek's, like, you know, start with why, like, what your why is. Like Yes. Did I understand that when I entered the the industry? No. Right.

Debra Brennan Tagg [00:27:06]:

It

Joanna Ehresman [00:27:07]:

doesn't take long to realize the impact that you have on people's lives regardless of the role that you're in within the industry. It's all working together to really impact people's lives in such a positive way.

Leah Alter [00:27:23]:

Yes. So a question we ask every guest Mhmm. When who comes on the show, be curious to hear what's the best career advice you ever received?

Debra Brennan Tagg [00:27:32]:

Honestly, it's advice that my dad gave to me when I very first started working in the industry, and it was to focus on the client and every other decision will be clear. And so what he was saying about that is we are here to serve the client. You know, we're not we're not gonna go do something else. Our whole purpose is to serve clients and help them with their money. So that should inform who we hire and who we don't, the services we provide and what we don't, the the value that we intend to provide, the way that we're gonna provide measurables about whether we're providing that value, the way that we communicate to clients or don't communicate to clients, the way we want to help them to understand, and the confidence that we wanna build in them. Every single thing trickles down from staying focused on your client and serving them well and having them have a great client experience. Everything else becomes clear. And I would say that's really the very best advice ever given because once you use that lens, it's very easy to weed out the noise and make really strong decisions for your firm.

Leah Alter [00:28:29]:

Oh, and I can imagine yes. I can imagine your clients feel that. Right? Even if it's not expressly articulated, that would become so apparent in working with your team.

Debra Brennan Tagg [00:28:40]:

I hope so. I mean, we actually we did a survey for the first time last year where we, our our one question survey was, do you feel more confident working with us than before you worked with us? And a 100% of the answers were yes. And so that to us was just you know, we were all very choked up about that because that is our whole purpose. That's you know, aside from, you know, did the large cap growth fund perform? You know, that that can be no. It could be yes or no in any given year. But, but when you're when you know that you're providing confidence to people in their lives with their money, that's that's very rewarding.

Leah Alter [00:29:12]:

I was

Joanna Ehresman [00:29:12]:

just gonna say I had a leader in an organization I worked for once say, when the vision is clear, decisions are easy. And anytime there was like a lot of like, what do we do back and forth, hard decision making, He would remind us that we did not have a clear vision, and that was, correct a 100% of

Leah Alter [00:29:35]:

the time.

Joanna Ehresman [00:29:37]:

Your dad's advice was is fantastic. Debra, thank you so much for coming on the show. This has been just such a fantastic conversation, and thank you for sharing what you're doing, your story. It's just been wonderful. So thank you so much. That's really our show for today. And if ours is a mission that you wanna share in, we ask that you subscribe to the show on whatever your favorite platform you get your podcasts. And with that, I'm Leah Alter.

Leah Alter [00:30:10]:

And I'm Joanna Ehresman, and we'll catch you on the next episode of WomenShare.