Ep 337: Becoming An 'Accidental' Entrepreneur When Independence Isn't Chosen But Forced By Circumstance With Danika Waddell

Financial Advisor Success

Michael Kitces

News, Business, Entrepreneurship, Business News

4.8 • 696 Ratings

🗓️ 13 June 2023

⏱️ 103 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Danika Waddell is the President and Founder for Xena Financial Planning, a virtual advisory firm that advises 40 client households of women in tech, and supports more than $275k of ongoing revenue. Danika's unique path involved launching her own independent RIA not as an entrepreneurial endeavor, but as a result of an IAR registration filing error by her previous firm that left her unable to be compensated for her work with clients, and which consequently led her to start her own firm and register herself in order to resume working promptly.

Listen in as we delve into Danika's experience with a state regulator audit that led to an investigation at her former firm, preventing her from working with clients and cutting her revenue by 50%, and which ultimately led to her choosing to launch her own firm to regain control. We also discuss Danika’s inspiration to work with women in tech, strategies she used for the rapid growth of her firm, and methods for building relationships as a solo advisor to overcome loneliness that often comes with the territory.

For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/337

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Financial Advisor Success Podcast, where you go behind the scenes with
0:06.8	financial planner, speaker, and consultant Michael Kitsis to hear stories of how leading
0:12.1	financial advisors navigated the inevitable challenges that arise on the path to success,
0:17.2	and get insight from leading industry consultants about how to break through to the next
0:21.9	level in your advisory business. And now here's your host, Michael Kitsis. Welcome, everyone.
0:28.9	Welcome to the 337th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast. My guest on today's
0:34.4	podcast is Danica Waddell. Danica is the president and founder of Zena Financial Planning, a virtual advisory firm that
0:40.5	advises 40 client households of women and technology and supports more than $275,000 in
0:46.1	ongoing revenue.
0:47.6	What Janika's path, though, is how she launched her own independent RAA, not out of a
0:52.3	desire to be an entrepreneurial business owner,
0:54.8	but because an IAR registration filing error by her prior firm left Danica with no fault of her own,
1:00.6	unable to be compensated for working for clients for an extended period of time,
1:04.3	for which the fastest way to begin working again was to launch her own firm and register herself instead.
1:12.3	In this episode, we talk in depth about the path of how a state regulatory audit of Danica's former firm revealed that she was not
1:17.8	properly registered with the state of Washington and sparked an investigation during which
1:21.6	she was prevented from working from her own clients and sidelined for several months.
1:26.4	How on top of not being able to work with her current
1:28.4	clients, Danica also found that during the investigation, she was not allowed to be compensated
1:32.9	anything beyond her base salary or for any kind of work with clients, even for prior clients,
1:38.7	which ultimately cut her total revenue-based compensation by about 50%. And how even though De Nica's former firm
1:45.3	quickly registered her upon learning of the error, she realized that the only way to work with
	...

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