Ep 244: Taking A 'Financial Gym' Approach To Financial Coaching For Next-Generation Clients with Shannon McLay
Financial Advisor Success
Michael Kitces
4.8 • 696 Ratings
🗓️ 31 August 2021
⏱️ 90 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Shannon McLay is the founder of The Financial Gym, an organization that offers financial coaching services on a monthly subscription basis to 3,500 Millennial and Gen-Z clients. Shannon has positioned her offerings in a similar way to personal trainers, helping people get “financially fit” through traditional financial planning services like budgeting, savings, debt management, and financial literacy.
Listen in as we dive into the “aha” moment that led Shannon to launch The Financial Gym, how she convinced initial investors to buy into her business, and why she feels that an important benefit of the monthly subscription model is the accountability it places on her coaches to show value to clients. She also shares why she ditched an off-the-shelf software package and developed her own proprietary budgeting tool for clients, the lessons she learned through that development process, and why she has been able to build a diverse and inclusive team of coaches who can relate to clients in a really unique way.
For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/244
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Financial Advisor Success Podcast, where you go behind the scenes with financial planner, |
| 0:08.4 | speaker and consultant Michael Kitsis to hear stories of how leading financial advisors |
| 0:13.6 | navigated the inevitable challenges that arise on the path to success and get insight from leading |
| 0:19.2 | industry consultants about how to break through to the |
| 0:22.0 | next level in your advisory business. And now here's your host, Michael Kitsis. Welcome, everyone. |
| 0:28.4 | Welcome to the 24th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast. My guest on today's podcast is |
| 0:35.2 | Shannon McLeigh. Shannon is the founder of the financial gym, |
| 0:38.7 | which offers financial coaching services on a monthly subscription basis to about 3,500 millennial |
| 0:44.4 | and Gen Z clients. What's unique about Shannon, though, is that while her coaches, or trainers, |
| 0:49.9 | as she calls them, offer traditional financial planning services around budgeting, saving debt |
| 0:54.5 | management, and financial literacy. She brands her offering is helping people get financially fit |
| 0:59.7 | in the same way that a personal trainer helps someone get physically fit. In this episode, |
| 1:04.8 | we talk in depth about the germination of Shannon's financial gym business model, including the |
| 1:09.5 | aha moment while she was a financial |
| 1:11.8 | advisor at Merrill Lynch and realized that helping her pro bono clients change the trajectory of |
| 1:16.5 | their financial lives gave her far more personal satisfaction than serving her high net worth |
| 1:21.5 | clients. |
| 1:22.9 | While Shannon freely points out that she didn't know the first thing about starting or running |
| 1:26.8 | a business, the idea that she could massively help underserved segments of the population literally kept her awake at night. |
| 1:33.8 | And how even though that Shannon received pushback from initial investors who didn't think she could possibly scale the business because she wouldn't be able to replicate herself, |
| 1:40.6 | she was quick to point out that wirehouses have been replicating traditional financial |
| 1:45.2 | advisors regardless of their background for decades. We also talk about the financial gym's |
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