Message from the CEO - We're Ready to Bloom!
Hello FinGym Friends and Family,
Ten years ago, I had a crazy idea to create a company focused exclusively on working with a population of people that I knew the financial services industry was not serving properly. When I was a financial advisor at Merrill Lynch, I was instructed to not even meet with a prospective client unless I knew for certain that they had over $250,000 in investable assets, otherwise they wouldn’t even count as a new client. This advice never sat well with me, especially as I met people who were looking for guidance and didn’t want to have to figure it out on their own.
For a decade now, my team and I have been working in the weeds with our clients: helping them develop healthy money mindsets, working through the financial barriers that are preventing them from achieving their dreams, educating them on financial topics they never learned at home, in school or at work, and most importantly, helping them build first generation wealth.
A common quote you will hear from me is “everything you do financially is fixable,” and I say it frequently because I’ve had a front row seat to watching clients do exactly that. I’ve seen clients go from a negative net worth to a positive net worth in a matter of years. I’ve witnessed clients go from bankruptcy filings to home ownership. I’ve observed clients break debt cycles, advocate for fair compensation, learn about investing, and take on other financially healthy behaviors that have helped them become something they never imagined they could be….wealthy.
The term "wealthy" means something different to us at Financial Gym than it means to the wealth management industry, but I like our definition better. When our clients build wealth, we’re talking about numbers in their accounts that help them sleep at night, that give them hope they can achieve their dreams, that give them confidence in their futures, and that give them financial freedom.
The actual numbers in these accounts are as wide and diverse as our client base. For some of our clients, that number is $10,000 because they finally have an emergency fund for the first time in their lives. For other clients, it’s $100,000 because that’s the number where they can quit their job and make their side hustle their main hustle. And for other clients, it’s $1MM because they’ve always dreamed of saying they were a millionaire.
The point of all of this is that we don’t determine what wealth looks like for our clients, but we value the wealth that they value, and for years, our clients have asked us to manage the wealth that we’ve helped them build. Because we have not been a Registered Investment Advisor (RIA), we could only educate our clients about investing but not manage their money directly….until now!!
Financial Gym is in the process of registering to become an RIA, and by January 2024, we expect to begin investing assets on behalf of our clients. I have never been more excited about this business and about the direction we’re headed in.
Almost 15 years ago, I looked at the faces of the Merrill Lynch advisors I worked with and didn’t see anyone who looked like me, and it felt unfair. I decided to become a financial advisor because I wanted to create a space where more women could become financial advisors. Then I became one myself and realized that the entire industry felt unfair because they only worked with a select group of wealthy individuals. Now I look at the industry and see that it hasn’t changed since I was in it, and it’s not a place I would trust for our clients who’ve worked so hard to build the wealth that they have.
Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of good financial advisors out there, but they are hard to find and couldn’t take on the thousands of clients we would send them. Robo-advisers have tried to fill this gap, but at the end of the day, you’re working with a robot and at some point, you’d like to speak with a human being.
We’ve seen too many clients with the wrong asset allocations at robo-advisers because they didn’t know how to answer the initial setup questions. We’ve seen too many clients with whole life insurance policies they don’t need because their financial advisor happens to work for an insurance company. We’ve seen too many clients with financial advisors who collect fees and provide little service for those fees. We’ve seen too many clients who feel confused and gaslit by their financial advisors. What’s the point of having an advisor if you don’t want to talk to them?
I left the wealth management industry 10 years ago to start a wealth building business, and we want to continue to work with our clients as they build on that wealth for whatever they need it for. I am so excited to create the wealth management company that I trust for our clients, for my family, and most especially to take care of my son, Will, when he starts his wealth building journey.
If you are a current Financial Gym client and you’re interested in us acting as a fiduciary and managing your money through our sister company, FG Advisory Services, LLC, please email your trainer for more details. If you’re a previous client or have never been a client but you’re interested in this service from our team, please email advisory@fingyms.com for more information. If you are a financial advisor who believes in the power of teamwork, is passionate about financial wellness, and shares our vision for serving clients of all financial shapes and sizes (because there will be no asset minimums here), and you’re interested in joining the team, please email rachel@fingyms.com
Looking forward to blooming with you!
Cheers!
Shannon