Happy holidays, everyone. We are back with another one. I know this is day who knows but there’s 12 of them. And today we’ve got Missy Lynch on, and I’m very excited about her client story, just like we have all been. And at the end, I’ll be interested to see if this theme continues. I’m not going to tell her what the theme is, but I’ll be interested to see if this theme of client stories continues on. So Missy, without further ado, why don’t you start with the client profile and the client story?

Misty Lynch, CFP®:
0:28

Sure. So my typical client profile, I work with a lot of small business owners. People who maybe have one employee themselves or maybe up to, maybe five or so. And so I’ve always liked to work with small business owners since that was how growing up my family my father had a business, he was self employed and we had some really amazing times and then we had some really difficult times. And so I think there’s a difference. That people who decide to either leave corporate or become entrepreneurs that they face. And sometimes, when I’m talking to my clients, I’ll, I think what comes up a lot, especially with their stories is that idea of all or nothing or like feast or famine. Like they’ll have times when the clients are coming in, the money is really good. And then, figuring out a way to hold on to it. Can be really tough, especially for parents, especially around the holidays when you’re like, Oh, I need to, we, we struggled for a couple of months. So now I have to really, buy as many gifts as I can or be as generous as possible, or I want to make it perfect. And and that could be tough, especially when some small business owners maybe you get paid, three weeks into January. Your clients start paying the invoices. And so that’s definitely an area where I like to help people figure out how to not only stay in business, but really find a manageable way to spread the money so it doesn’t feel like it’s always, all or nothing and, that can be really stressful, especially when our brains usually go towards whatever is. The most loud or what’s on fire right now is where our money goes. So thinking about the future can be really tough, especially for people who are used to creating money, but then realize that they might have to do this for the rest of their lives if they don’t plan ahead.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
2:08

tHat’s like the word, right? We started business for Oh, this is awesome. This is great. Wait, do I have to do this forever? And then. It’s just a job, like ultimately it’s just a job. Yeah. So do you have a specific client in your, in mind at all when you come in and go through their path? So if I’m coming to you and it is holiday time and I don’t get paid until Q1 at some point and I’m freaking out, like, how do we handle that? What do you go through and how do you help that?

Misty Lynch, CFP®:
2:36

Yeah. So a lot of times I’ll help, I’ll talk to them about how, how things were for us. So I think for the, when I was growing up the first 10 years of my life, like we, we had a lot of money. They, my parents are very generous. They bought sports cars, a boat. They were very eighties, like extravagant as far as new money would be in the 1980s. And so when I think about my clients who are feeling that pressure of, Oh, I quit my job. I owe it to my family to, to make up for that, for what, the sacrifices that they’ve made so I can run this business. But I do think that there is a lot more when, I think it’s a lot happier to have a peaceful. Rather than feeling like you have to spoil everyone or, make it so your bank account goes back down to the, double digits and then you feel panic and then you have to grind and be away from them to, to build it back up. For some people who are looking at what they want to do, sometimes we talk about some of the things that they remember the most too, when they were growing up. And usually those are like the experiences or those, those things that maybe weren’t The most expensive gift. It’s hard to remember typically, what the best gift you ever got was versus like, what was the best Christmas you’ve ever spent or the best holiday season you had and what happened, because usually it’s a different story and there’s something else behind it that makes it memorable. That isn’t necessarily tied to a big ticket purchase or, something that, You might regret later when you’re looking at the credit card bills in January. So I like to ask people to tell me about what they remember the most and what was the most fun for them, what they wish they could, recreate, and then try to figure out ways that they can do it without necessarily feeling that financial pressure of having to keep up with everybody else that they’re seeing on, on Instagram or anywhere else.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
4:22

Do you believe that it’s more like the business owner transitioning from corporate, whatever they came from ultimately is transitioning from work, job, to more of a, like a lifestyle, like as a business owner, our businesses are life, like it’s all in your mind, there is no, I clock in at nine and I leave at five. Do you feel like a lot of the emotions are tied to that? I know I do this. I do this all the time. Sometimes it’s like on days where you’re relatively slow. I’ll go work out. I’ll go. I’ll watch a movie. I’ll go golf or something during the work hours. And I feel as if like I’m missing, I’m not doing enough for my family. How about when you talk to people, does that come up or you feel like that’s the bigger issue? Yeah,

Misty Lynch, CFP®:
5:04

it comes up all the time where they feel like. It’s hard when you don’t have a manager telling you that you’ve completed a project or you’ve done enough or you’ve been online for enough hours, that’s on you to budget your time. And so I think a lot of us go into entrepreneurship because we want that control of our time. We want to be able to work out at noon if that feels better for us. And then we get to the point though, where we’re like, oh my God, I need to be working. All the time and there’s no breaks. And so I think it’s really important to I’ll treat my calendar like it’s my boss. And if it says that I’m going to, if I’m going to go play golf at two o’clock, that I do it. And I just figure, because I made that decision ahead of time and that everything else that I need to do has a place in the calendar, because it can feel overwhelming when you feel like you’re, you should be somewhere else. And people in corporate do this too. I know a lot of people who feel like they’re. They’re maybe on the train where they wish they were home with their kids or something like that. And they feel like they’re not really fully engaged at work. And they’re also not fully engaged at home because their mind is on the business. And so I’m a huge fan of kind of blocking my time, scheduling things out ahead of time and building in time to be creative, time to be free. Where I don’t feel like something else is necessarily losing when I’m focused somewhere else. And that’s been really helpful for me because it is hard not to be thinking about what’s next, especially for people who are overachievers or high achievers, because that’s just how we’re built is what, okay, what else could I be doing? What is everyone else doing? Why am I not doing that? Instead of just like having a little bit of space in your brain to reflect on what you’ve done, maybe feel good about it, or maybe, think about, ways you could be using your time that helps you feel better.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
6:52

And recognize it, it all takes time, right? This is a lifelong journey. This isn’t a sprint, right? So you’re going to always be high, strong and what’s next. What’s this, what’s next. You’re going to burn out. And ultimately burnout is usually what happens with a lot of business owners. That’s why they fail. They make, poor decisions because they’re burnt out. When you speak and you’re working with these clients, how much are you focusing on very short term problems and goals and compared to like long term and making them realize that like the issue you’re dealing with in four or five, six, nine months, isn’t going to be there. Can you talk through that

Misty Lynch, CFP®:
7:27

short term versus long term? Yeah. I think the long-term, like the actual vision for the client, a lot of times it’s, I just don’t wanna work for somebody else anymore, or I don’t want that. But it’s trying to figure out what you actually do want, and then overall what is like the overarching purpose for what you’re doing. And if the things that you do can align with those goals, then they’ll feel better. They won’t feel like. necessarily a waste of time or like it’s not worthwhile. So I think that I do spend a lot of time when they, when clients do say that they’re transitioning from a corporate role into their own business, usually they’re very excited at that point. So I like to capture. Everything they’re telling me, what they’re doing how they plan to get clients. A lot of times they’ll say, Oh, I have a bunch of referrals. And it’s okay, then what’s next. When that, when maybe that runs out or, what are some of your other plans for growth and for that next step? Because I do feel like it’s always good to have something on the horizon that you’re headed towards, whether it’s financial independence or work optional or being able to, Eventually retire. It’s good to have that thought out because a lot of times business owners, they’re just so caught up in the day to day that they just don’t have a clue what they would do without work anymore. And this happens for a lot of other people as well. So I do like to focus on like the tactical things that you could check off a list. Sometimes that just feels really good to say, okay, we set up this account. We funding it this way. We’re going to have these things running in the background so that they can continue to be. A visionary, they could start to, look at where they want their business to go. If they feel like there’s. Something new that they want to learn, like having some space or some budget to actually invest in their own brain and their growth. I think some people could say, I can’t spend that much money on that. I have to do this, and, or they get caught up in buying the next new system or tech or coach thinking that’ll be the right answer. But really a lot of the answers are in their own head as far as what what they really want to build and what they want their legacy to

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
9:25

be. That’s a big part of what they want their legacy to be. I work with business owners as well. That’s really my cup of tea. I, ours is more like a modern family office where we create like more of a team. And I would, I don’t know your practice, but I’m going to assume you’re very much similar where the majority of what we’re doing is really helping you organize and getting your thoughts put on paper to actions, right? And then letting us take off some of that weight, because as business owners, we all wear. A hundred million different hats and your brain’s always running and operating. And if you can carve some of that out of your brain to put onto us or the team, then you do have time for figuring out. How to take care of myself, invest back into my own self, figure out my legacy and get those ideas that probably are going to be successful out of your brain and actually into working, not just some, Hey, this app is going to turn into this or this software is actually going to do it for you. Realistically, it may or may not, but your brain will. But what you

Misty Lynch, CFP®:
10:22

know in there. Yeah, definitely. And I think a lot of times when business owners are starting, they feel like they should know how to do everything themselves. And they feel bad about that where most of the time, you know, depending on what you studied or how your job training, like running a business might not have, the financial end of a business might not have been a part of that. But you might be really good at making money. And so then you’re like, okay I know how to spend it. I know how to make it, but there may be not so clear on how to take care of it because they haven’t studied, to be a financial planner or anything like that. So I think that’s where we can lift a bunch of that burden off of people who feel guilt and shame for not knowing it, even though it’s not. Necessarily that intuitive to know exactly how to run the back end of a business, especially if you’ve only just worked for one.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
11:07

And there’s no reason to know it all really ultimately the ultra wealthy, the most successful businesses, that business owner CEO or whatever does not know how everything is ran. Yeah, they have, they’ve delegated, they have a team that they trust to get those things done to make sure that moving forward, or even if they are the ones that are making all the sales, like they’re not dealing with the back end, they’re out meeting clients, they’re out getting the money to come in to let them operate. And that’s probably the one like lesson that all business owners, if they learned immediately, change the trajectory of their business is just not necessarily delegate is the right word, but understand your lane. And then higher outside of your lane, because you’re only good at what you can be good at. And you don’t need to learn all the things that we know. One and two, it’s a lot. It’s just too much sometimes.

Misty Lynch, CFP®:
11:57

Definitely. Yeah. And there’s some, these might be some things that you just don’t like that have to get done. That’s okay. Maybe at first you have to do it all, but then as soon as you can identify those things, then you can start to figure out how to build a team. I don’t do my own taxes. I trust the person that does them for me, but, and I could do them, but I’m not going to. It’s fine. And it’s fine.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
12:18

I always go back to, and this is the reason I don’t. When I took my first accounting class, I was an accounting major. Just start. I don’t know why like money and math and whatever. I got a 40 percent on my first accounting exam because it was blank and you had to do things that I didn’t know and I was like at that point I knew for a fact Accounting and taxes were not for me, but it’s just, let’s move past that. It’s

Misty Lynch, CFP®:
12:40

not my lane. Yeah. We know enough, enough about all the things that have to happen, especially if you’re the CEO or you’re in charge. But then I think being able to delegate, being able to accept help, um, can definitely make your business, stronger and also free up. Yeah. Again that space, the whole purpose of getting into your own business in the first place is usually to have more control.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
13:01

So let’s get that control back. You talked about reflection and part of this 12 days of giving series is obviously around holidays. Yeah, reflection purposes specifically in this time frame in December, January what are some things that business owners need to be reflecting on both personally and in their business? Yeah,

Misty Lynch, CFP®:
13:22

I think that a lot of times we just look at the numbers. And sometimes people might say, oh, I didn’t have as good a year or this way, and it depends. A lot of businesses started maybe in the pandemic during 2020. And then there, maybe things have had to shift or change. And so I think that’s the 1st number, but I don’t think that’s the whole picture. I think that what, and I’m guilty of this too, where I used to think, oh, I accomplished so much in 2022. And then I did nothing this year, which isn’t true, but it’s just, that’s how we sent. We tend to be a little bit short sighted as far as What we’ve done. And so sometimes I like to even look back. I’m a big fan of journaling and taking notes and things like that. So sometimes I’ll look back at some of the journals that I had a few years ago that had written down the things that I wanted to accomplish and. A lot of times those things will all have come true, but I just don’t think about them in the same way because now I’m thinking ahead to the next year and what I could do. So I think it’s a good idea for business owners, especially if this year you’re starting out and you want to set some new goals for 2024 to think about what you would do, what would be blow your mind, like impossible goals and start to set them. Because I think sometimes we just think about doing kind of what we did last year, a little bit better. maYbe a few more clients or a few more, dollars or things like that, or raising the fees a little bit. But for a while I was in the practice of writing out like these incredibly lofty goals that still might take me years to get to. But once those are on paper, once you start to think about things in a different way, like they could be real then I think you could see, look at the businesses that you admire, look at the people who inspire you. And then. Get curious about how they got there, what are they doing, how, and I think there’s never been more access to information to see, like, how people got their start. If you want to be the next, celebrity, financial planner what happened in the meantime? What did those people do? Because a lot of times we look at things and think, oh, that can never be me. I’m just here because we just, we don’t have any proof that it’s possible yet, but you’re never going to have proof until you start taking action. I think that’s a really good thing when you are reflecting, when you actually go back and think about would the person, would you five years ago believe? That you are where you are today and for a lot of people that’s a no, I was going, I was unhappy. I was burnt out. I was stressed or I was working for somebody else. And I think sometimes I like to talk to my clients about that just so they can remember, because I think we forget about all the things that we did do to get to where we’re at, even if it felt like a misstep or a mistake, or I didn’t use my degree or I didn’t do that. But yeah, but how did that help you get here? Yeah. And why that can still have so much value and add to your business

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
16:12

as humans. We love to focus on the negatives and the losses as opposed to wins. And we’ve been a lot, right? A lot of what you just said are wins yet. We’re stuck on the one loss, right? For example, yes, I got 10 clients and I met that goal, but my revenue was down 10%.

Misty Lynch, CFP®:
16:29

Or that negative comment or something. And they could be people who love you and then there could be somebody, yeah, who wasn’t happy. And so I think that, and that’s kept us alive as humans scanning for danger all the time. Our, our phone vibrates and we don’t think Oh, that’s probably a happy email from somebody. We’re like, Oh my God, what do I have to do right now? We have lost control of our focus and our time. And so I think, even if it’s a pen and paper, even if it’s just a couple, even if you just write down. Yeah. Some day that, you can appreciate that’s going on right now. And then still, look towards setting bigger goals in the future, then yeah, taking a moment to go back can be really eyeopening. And that is something that I think we just, we’re looking for danger. We’re not trying to reflect and celebrate those things. But I think you should. Oh,

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
17:13

absolutely. So this brings me back to what I had said earlier. I wasn’t going to tell you the theme that is transpiring from all of these stories. And that is, we haven’t talked about the numbers. We haven’t talked about, we haven’t talked about any of that. What we’ve been talking about is the emotional side. Your relationship with money, your relationships, your ability to grow as a person. We have not said anything about you need to be making X or you need to have X in your bank account to retire. None of that comes to fruition. And I want to highlight that even more so and get your opinion on it is because we are in a society. I should say media society that is always driven by your investment return, or how much money you have in the bank because you have to retire in 5 million or whatever the number is, and it’s always like a number, right? We’re always seeing the net worth of this person and this person, but we really don’t truly see what their actual true wealth is. And for me, my definition of true wealth is happiness. Ability to take care of others and live life on your own terms has nothing to do with dollars now dollars help those But it is not the true wealth now being rich equals money rich equals wealth equals happiness So I just wanted to highlight that’s the theme that we’re I’m figuring out is We’re all the same because we’re all talking about more of the emotions And not about the dollars. Yeah. And so that’s the theme that wasn’t told to you, but you said,

Misty Lynch, CFP®:
18:41

yeah, no, and I’ll I agree. I think having financial peace and knowing your numbers, knowing how much it costs to be, you can cause can make things a lot easier, especially as somebody who hasn’t had money for all of her life. I feel like I remember I know which one is better in America. But I will say that doesn’t necessarily mean, and you and I both have probably talked to people with plenty of money that don’t feel happy, that don’t feel accomplished or successful, there’s that is not a dollar amount. And a lot of clients will say, how am I compared to everybody else? And if you’re just looking at the numbers, you could say, okay you are on target. You are in this threshold. But if that person is enjoying their life, has done things that they’re proud of, like that’s very hard. It’s a hard metric to, to measure. But I, that’s why I think shifting away from just the figures can be really. Helpful because sometimes people might be able to survive and do well and take a pay cut, but they think that’s what I’m worth. I can’t do that. And it’s no, you’re worth so much that it has nothing to do with how much someone’s willing to pay you.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
19:52

Yeah. Your happiness and your self worth are. Invaluable, like you can’t put a number on it. There is no number. That’s we talk about, we’ll get to this little teaser. We’re going to go pod for pod guests, by the way, listeners. So she’s going to be on mine. I’m gonna be on hers. Anyways, we, a question I always pose in there comes down to your value and your worth. As a planner, right? Because that’s the hardest thing for us is to show our value because our value is not tied to I got you 5 percent right. I, ours is tied to what we just talked about and that is your happiness, your ability to live joyfully. How do you put a number to that? Like how do you organize that?

Misty Lynch, CFP®:
20:32

I think it is. It’s difficult. And I think that the way that I see it is when people, when something happens and people reach out to me, it’s it’s usually because, sometimes they say, I don’t know who else to tell this to, or, this tax situation came up and it stressed me out. But if I say it to my family, they’re like, Ooh, you made so much money. So sorry for you. So being able to be that person, Okay. That people who maybe have had the best year ever, but feel like I can’t, I can’t say anything to my group because it’s just so different just to even just be there to be like, yeah you can tell me like, I’m rooting for you so hard. I love seeing the success, or if something is something terrible happens and people are feeling, that, that. Like a lot of times money is a part of all of these things that happen, all these major life events. But I think being able to be there is where my value has come in, which is very hard to measure financially. But I had a life coaching certification in 2020, and I’ll talk to some clients who will tell me everything about, from their, disaster relationships or businesses or money. And then they’ll be like, when are we going to do some of the coaching stuff? And I’m like, it’s all. It’s all built in right there because really they’re not looking at what were my returns? They’re like, I just want to feel better. And every decision I make financial or not is because I want to feel different or better. And so money does come into the story a lot, but it’s not the full picture.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
22:02

Absolutely. Absolutely. So what do you want to leave everyone with this holiday season to think about as they reflect through Christmas and the beginning of the year? What do you want to leave them with?

Misty Lynch, CFP®:
22:12

Yeah, I’d like, whether you had the best year ever, or if this was a difficult year, whether you, if you lost a job, if you’re changing business, if you have different things going on, your worth is. infinite. You are so worthy of love and respect and happiness and joy regardless of how much you’ve ever made or how much anyone is willing to pay you or anything like that. So I think that’s important for people to remember, especially if they see themselves as like a financial asset to, their loved ones. It’s so much more important for you to show up and to be there. Even if you can’t do the crazy gifts you used to do, you can get creative. You can create memories on a very tight budget. I’ve seen it happen. And I still believe that’s a fine way to be present with people and then reflect on some of the things that you’d like more of, or things you’d like to change and be really intentional as you start the new year. A hundred percent

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
23:07

right there. And if you didn’t. And you listen to this and you didn’t get time to do all of that. Don’t feel bad about it. There’s always time to reflect. There’s always time to figure these things out. And if you need help, talk to us. We’re here for you. Reach out reach out to obviously to Misty and I, but also our group of people, we’re here to help you as much as possible, but to that, everyone happy holidays.

Black Mammoth:
23:43

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