All right,

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
1:26

here we go. Last episode, we were talking about divorce this episode. We're going to talk about being child free and we bring those up on the no BS wealth podcast because that reaches a different demographic in the world than we're typically used to. The media loves to go about the normal business owner or the normal married couple with two kids and. The American dream, if you will, but today we're going to go the child free route. We're going to bring that into into order and no better way than with Jay Zigmont. He is the child free planner. He is who has created all of this. And I am very excited to ask him a bunch of fun questions, but also get to know his story and why this part of our industry or our market, if you will, is so important to him. So without further ado, sir, how are you doing?

Jay Zigmont, CFP®:
2:10

Good. It's funny that I'm the child free guy here. And I always get it. Like I'm in the financial world and the child free when I was at a conference this weekend for childless folks. And I was just the money guy there. It's like the different identities you get to pay on which audience you're in.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
2:21

Absolutely. Absolutely. Take us down your journey real quick. Of where you went, how you got started and then how you ended up being the child free guy in some cases and the money guy and others.

Jay Zigmont, CFP®:
2:32

Yeah. So I have actually one of those weird people that a career changer to finance. I come out of healthcare and academia. My background, PhD is actually adult learning to come out of kind of the coaching world. And after you do a whole bunch of coaching, you realize people are more willing to pay for financial coaching than anything else. But then you eventually become a CFP and work through that. And when I was becoming a CFP, the interesting thing to me was there was never once a mention of the concept of being child friendly. It just doesn't exist. And there's pre kids, post kids, emptiness but like the choice when I say child free means you don't have kids ever just doesn't exist. And my wife and I are child free. And I started asking the question how weird are we? We are weird. 2 PhDs. We sit around talking about research studies. We're a little weird, but like, how weird are we for being child free? And come to find out I actually found a Reddit group. There's about 1. 5 million folks in there in the child free subreddit. That's a Reddit. So Reddit's it's own cesspool sometimes, there's a bunch. And it turns out that about 25 percent of the U S is child free or permanently childless. So we're not a small group, but I had no clue that a quarter of the U S would be there.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
3:40

No, not at all. A quarter. That's a pretty big number. Like a pretty large number

Jay Zigmont, CFP®:
3:45

that number actually is based on a study out of Michigan with adults over 18. In the same study, they found that just about 8 percent were the LGBTQ plus community. There's a bunch of overlap between the LGBTQ plus and child free, but we're three times the size of that community and nobody would guess that

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
4:04

zero, zero percent of people would. That's crazy. So after you figure this out, right? And being in academia and being nerds as you are, which is perfectly fine. How and why did you just start attacking it? Obviously the why's there, but how did you start going about it? Because there's not that many statistics out there.

Jay Zigmont, CFP®:
4:22

Yeah, and interestingly enough in the financial literature, there's nothing so like when you're like, Hey, I want to start a firm and everybody's talking about what nature needs you want to serve what group and we can have a separate discussion. I've really can be 25 percent of the US via your own niche, but whatever I started researching it and going back to read. I actually put an ad out. I said, share with me what your life is like as a child free person or child free. And it was actually flagged as hate speech just for even asking about being child free. Hey, directed at you, director. I'm like, oh boy, what am I getting myself into? right? And I started researching it and I found that it changes just about everything. About your life and finances, yet all like our software, all our financial planning process, everything has built in there. We have a child wealth podcast, my cos there, she's finishing her CFP. Now, we've been doing a series on what's taught in the CFP and what changes. And it's almost everything even like the financial planning process, the core process changes. And once you start figuring them out, you go, there's a big problem. Now here's the thing for anybody that's ever started a business, you find something like nobody's doing. The first question is should I do that? Cause if nobody's doing it, there might be a reason why they're not doing it. And it's worked out well for me, but it's Man, do I really want to create something that doesn't exist? Our chief market officer calls it we're doing category creation. We're creating something that just doesn't, it's not there. And when you step that far out, you're worried you might just be stepping off a cliff.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
5:51

Which is that, that feeling now to a degree at like my, at Black Mammoth we're doing more of the modern family office perspective, which is different is not near 25 percent like you are stepping off a cliff, but I get that feeling of when you're out there in this wilderness by yourself and in theory. Everyone judges you and comes at you from different perspectives. So as the business owner piece of you, how do you go through that every day? On OBS wealth podcast, we get a lot of business owners on there. So I want to get to your emotional side of how do you go through being essentially alone in this vast world doing what you're doing and how do you keep going every day?

Jay Zigmont, CFP®:
6:31

Yeah, I think the bonus was for me, at least my passion in helping others, so I follow the Zig Ziglar quote, you can have anything you want to help enough other people get what they want. And I'm like, okay, what I really see the child free group as is a underserved minority group, and yeah I'm the straight white male here talking about being a minority, but like that actually is like part of my identity and part of where it fits. And when you realize that group is getting mistreated. It gets you going. So I did research on this and I asked folks, child free folks. What's it been like working with financial planner? Have you worked with one all that? And they said, it's been terrible. They're like, I go to financial planner. They're like, Oh, you'll change your mind. Or they just ignore me or they make comments about it. And start realizing these are my people that are being mistreated now from a business standpoint, that's a huge opportunity and a huge risk. Okay. When nobody else is doing it, there might be a reason. And I actually talked to somebody who tried to do a child, child free financial planning for a little bit and had to close his firm because he got ostracized in the church and run out in the community and all the judgments. I'll give you an example. I went to buy some software for my company financial software. Meet with the folks. I liked their software. They said, okay, who do you serve? I say, oh, I serve child free folks. They go, oh, so you hate kids. And I'm like, what? This is just the tip of the iceberg. I was at another conference and the person sat up at the front of conference and said, quote, working with people without kids is the worst. And I'm like, could you imagine if he had said like working with women is the worst or, like any other group? No. So it's one of those things where you have to figure out how to balance. Okay. I know who I want to serve. I know how I want to serve them. I know how I want to reach them. Okay. But you also have to get past the haters. Then I'll tell you one of the first people I had to hire was somebody helped me with social media. Cause I can't, I just can't do it. The people on social media that, I ain't want people praying for my soul and Oh, whatever my favorite social media. We did a we did a, on August 1st, international child free day, and we sponsored a billboard in time square to celebrate what child free day is. And on social media, somebody posted that we are a global psyop to depopulate the world. And I'm like, yep, that's what I get every morning. I'm like, how do I depopulate the world? Oh

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
8:46

my Lord.

Jay Zigmont, CFP®:
8:48

Yeah. And somebody explained it to me this way. So I like video games and gaming. And they said, when you're in video games. You're going in the right direction because you start running into enemies. I was like, huh? This is the same with your business. You start running into enemies, you know you're going in the right direction. You're probably right, but that doesn't make it feel

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
9:09

better. This still sucks. I don't enjoy this feeling. That, that's, I, like when we had talked before, I just, that blew my mind that people would treat people that way. Let me back up. It blew my mind that because you don't have kids is the trigger. Not that people are disgusting and would attack someone for anything, but the fact that it's child free, like that is such a, like a fundamental, who cares? They're still humans and it's still okay. But so you figured this out. You're you've launched a business, you've done a ton of things and we'll talk about your book later, but Okay, cool. Now, since it's totally different in the process and the planning process and everything that you do, how did you really attack that side of it? Because there was nothing that I've ever seen that says, Ooh, this is how the planning goes, or these are the stats. So where did you start with that?

Jay Zigmont, CFP®:
10:01

Yeah. The way I look at it is my company as a whole is a learning company that does financial planning. So we're always helping our clients to learn. We're always learning. Because. There, there's nothing, there's no playbook. If you look at our process now versus where it was two or three years ago, completely different. Okay, we see these things are different, like the software, for example we use right capitals, our software just recently, they started allowing such you could have couples that are not married. Well, 32. 1 percent of child, free folks will never marry versus 2. 5 percent of parents. Huge thing. How do we get software to go? Okay. You can be in a couple and not married. Mike. Basic things. And what we found is the only way to help child free folks who often like, I get they change their goals like every week. I swear Oh, Hey, I'm moving to another country. I'm doing this. I'm like, all right, cool. Where are we going to say? You want a linear process, not it, but the only way to help them is to help them learn about their money, learn about the process, work it through, and then we've been trial and error. Like going, yep, that didn't work. Yep. That worked. The hard part of that is. Most financial planning. So if you take a parent's financial plan, their financial plans, two different parents are actually not that far apart. The numbers are different, but the actual like trajectory, the standards of life script, you talk about American dream, like there's a standard process. You go to school, you get married, you have kids, you work, you retire, you pass the money. Like it's a pretty linear process. What happens when your clients don't follow that? For example, child free folks want to die with zero. Not everybody, but 95 plus percent. How do you build a financial plan that wants them to die with zero when everything, like Monte Carlo is all about the chance you don't run out of money. Like we got to invert and it starts changing. And what you learn as a business owner in that is if you're going to serve a population where you don't have the book, you don't like, literally I'm writing it as we go along, you have to have that innovation, that agility, that be able to go, all right, we've got to take a hard right turn. And the only way you can do that is by, in my mind, building a learning infrastructure where we're constantly learning, constantly growing. Like after every single client meeting, we have a debrief, what worked, what didn't, what would you do differently next time we have it built into our process. We're literally building the plane while we're flying it. We just hired another planner on and I explained, Hey, we got a great group we serve great environment, but I'm gonna tell you right now, our process keeps changing because we're building it. We're trying to figure out how to do this. And it's not you go work at Fidelity, like there's a very scripted, you follow this process. I'm not saying anything wrong with Fidelity. I'm just saying, that's just the structure where we're like, all so our client came up with something new and we don't have a clue. And I don't know what to do with it. I have somebody like, Hey, I want to start a nonprofit. I want to do this. I want to move to another. I'm like, all right, let's figure this out.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
12:47

That's as a business owner, let's figure it out is probably a sentence we should all say every day. Because I believe that innovation is really what allows you to do those certain things, like learning all of those processes, learning exactly how to start a nonprofit work goes into that. I believe as financial planners, that's our duty. Like our duty is to figure all these things out and learn with them. And adjust and ultimately, and I'll let you answer this. What do, how do clients feel about that? How do they feel about, there's not like a standardized process, right? You're creating it, but how do they feel that you're going to go figure it out for them and with them on their journey?

Jay Zigmont, CFP®:
13:26

So we call it, we do an ongoing financial planning. So we intentionally tell them, Hey, we're not going to be able to give you all the answers. And I've had some good conversations with some of my staff, especially new CFPs. They want to have the answer. If I'm sitting in front of a client, I have to have the answer. I got a PhD, MBA, CFP. I got a whole bunch of letters. I have no problem going to claim and go, I don't know. I'm going to go look that up and I'll get back to you. And when I do that with clients, every time they appreciate it, I had somebody come up with a tax issue the other day and it was something, with foreign tax and this and the other. I'm like, I don't know. I said, I know there's an issue. I'm going to go reach out to some of my colleagues. We're going to have a conversation. I'll get back to you with a recommendation. They were so happy about that because you don't have to have all the answers. You have to be able to work with them. And if you're transparent I believe the way to make money accessible is humor, humility, and vulnerability and transparency. Like just like I make mistakes. You make mistakes. I don't know. You don't know. We're going to learn this and clients like, yep, let's figure it out. And the other thing that does is it allows them to come to you and go, Hey, I know I should know this, but they'll just spill something. Cool. I didn't know it. You admit we're good.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
14:37

That's just being in a damn adult and a human, right? Ultimately, that's what it is. But I, I talked about this a lot and this is what I tell my clients too, is the second question, and I'm just going to focus on the second one is I'm going to have your back. I'm going to figure this thing, these things out for you. That is what you're partially hiring me for is. Things in life happen. Shit happens a lot. The fact is we're gonna go figure it out and you don't have to feel alone and lost in whatever's going on. And I believe that is where our industry is really shifting to with more firms like ours is more of that, which is, I don't know, use a marketing term, holistic financial planning, whatever they're using nowadays. But I believe that's where we're moving to because that's truly what people want. Yes, they want investments and they want returns, but none of that matters if they're freaking out because that tax thing, foreign taxing happened, or they don't know how to start this nonprofit or how to domesticate their business from Iowa to Florida. Like those are the issues that we take care of. And that's like the value part. And this is why I wanted to talk about too, is there's a value in being hyper focused in a niche. I understand that. But how are you positioning your value in this industry specifically with these people when there is, again, there is no stats, there is no game plan that you're building off of.

Jay Zigmont, CFP®:
15:59

Yeah, I think to circle back just for a second, I think you and I have the same type of thing going on. We're very focused on who we serve. That's true. We serve different audiences, but we're very focused. I found we, we tracked about a third of our introductory meetings end up in tiers. And we're like, why? So I finally asked people, I'm like, what's going on? And the answer they said it was the first time they felt like they were heard and seen. And I'm like, there's nothing more powerful than that. Just, me, you get me, I get it. And to groups that have, are underrepresented, they're having issues in the, judgments, whatever. It almost doesn't matter what I do from a financial standpoint. If I can understand who they are. And understand structure, we do not advertise, Oh, you're going to get more money out of this or the percentage or the performance. They don't care about that. They care about, I know you, I know people like, and I can get it. And so we're looking at as a company and saying, okay, how do we replicate this? How do we grow this? Because if you look at the U S there's about somewhere around four or four and a half million child free millionaires in the United States, we purposely target people about a million to wonderful 5 million in assets. So we got 4 million folks that are our target, our long term goal, crazy goal. Is to serve 1 percent of them. So that's 40, 000 ish people. For those that don't know in the RAA world, if you serve 40, 000 people, it makes you like 15th largest in the country or something like that. It makes you huge, but it's still only serving 1 percent of the audience that we know has this issue and we know is not being served well, like at one point, like I look at that number and go, that's crazy. And then the other one oh my God, there's all these other people. I can't help. And like, how do you do that? So that's why I spend half my time talking to financial people about child free folks. And the other time talking about child free folks about their finance. It's you have to do a bit of both. Cause I really wish a hundred other firms would start serving child free folks. And that sounds weird, but I actually think it would help my business, honestly, because, I get to say it was the first and I made them a process, all that, they're all copying, but there's 4 million it's not like you're not going to, we're not competing.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
18:19

No, we're not. And that's industry wide really. But even more whittled down to talking about 1%. People don't understand this. I talk about all the time, a one planner, one singular planner, maybe with one staff. In my eyes, if they're doing planning correctly, maybe have 60, a hundred tops clients. I purposed mine is more 40 to 60, but I can see how people can range up to 60 to a hundred. You start doing that math. Yeah. You gotta be a pretty darn big firm just to do 40, 000. And this is where our industry does it really poorly. We always try to compete. It's. There are way too many people that need served than there are us and our capability currently. I don't even know the numbers, I'd have to look it up, but I'm thinking we probably have to at least 10x. Are CFPs even make a dent in this situation?

Jay Zigmont, CFP®:
19:10

Yep. So we use the number 80, but the reason we do is because every client gets three people. So they get a pair of planner, a child, a specialist, who's like their point person and a lead planner. Who's double checking. So it's not like you're doing a loan. You're probably right on the 40 to 60. If you're, primary. So 80. Okay, so I need to find hundreds of planners and by the way, they need to understand the child free client. They need to understand the process. So I just posted for a associate planner, just filled it. And in the job posting, I put 2 questions. These are my screening questions. My 1st question is why do you want to serve child free folks? I don't care what your reasoning is. I just want to see a reason. The other 1 is what do you want to learn? I don't know. I probably had 30 or 40 applications. I interviewed six people. Why? Cause they were the only ones that answered the questions. Oh, Jesus. Thats a requirement. Yeah. They were C, f, P and answered the two questions. Two question. That was entire. That was it. You get an interview if you check those three boxes, and so I'm looking at this and good thing, interestingly I had a lot of folks. Reach out and said, Hey, I like the niche you're serving. I want to serve people like you, like the niche you're in, how you're serving actually will also impact who you're hiring and the funnel of that. But back to your point about we need financial plans. I don't need just financial plans. I need financial plans that can serve folks like we want to serve in the direction. I don't need people just to smile and dial and you'll be selling products. We're not doing that. I need people that want to learn and want to serve. Our folks, and that makes it a challenge. I'm over here. That's the thing that's going to be the determinant of my company is can I onboard train, get them in there and have them serve with the same quality, the same respect, the feeling heard, all that times 40, 000 clients. I got no clue if I'm going to be able to do that. I'm just being honest with it. Current goals over the next five years, when I get to 5, 000 clients and that's our first step. Yeah. I know how many planners I have to have. I know if there's structure, cool. I'm not worried about bringing in clients. That's the easy part because if you Google child free financial planning, the first page nine out of the 10 items is us. And the other press heart like we already owe it. That's the easy part. It's how do we serve people that otherwise wouldn't be getting help? It's not, Hey, you and I are competing. No, like at all.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
21:40

That's I, and I'm so happy that you're attacking that. And I really hope others jump on and put it part of their practice or at least come to you to learn. Cause it's again, obviously I represent the under underserved as well. I am one, but personally, but I do appreciate that a lot. So let's spin now. Okay. Let's talk more about those that are right. I'm a client or I'm in that world and I don't have any children. And I feel all these things that people are saying, what are some things I should be doing? Can you give us a few tips? Maybe some resources, something that they should be using to further their wealth journey.

Jay Zigmont, CFP®:
22:17

So we actually new book coming out, the child free guide to life money. We've taken an approach and we say, we want to simplify your finances so your life can be amazing. So we actually, with our clients plan for their life first, then their finances. Great example is child free folks. If you ask them, they'll come to me and say, Hey, when can I retire? And I'm like, do you want to? They go, no. Then why are you asking me when you retire? Because they don't actually want to retire. They want to cut back on work. They want to, it's a different purposes. So what I do with all my clients, I start with, okay, what do you want your amazing life to look like? And often their question, their answer is I don't know. Yeah. So like child free folks, we have what we call the child free midlife crisis, which is when you hit your personal, professional, financial goals. And then you're like, now what? Now, if you're a parent, usually your goal is going to your kids and Oh, Johnny's got to go to college. I, but we don't have that excuse. And I am calling excuse because like you have to address like a big issue. What do you want to be when you grow up? What do you want the next 40 years to realize look like, which changes finance. All right, we figure out what life they want to live. What they'll tell us is 95 percent of them want to die with zero. Okay. That's now change your financial plan. If you want to die with zero, we need to figure out a plan for your long term care. Our goal is by mid forties to have something in place, either a money set aside or insurance policy or whatever it is. The other thing that changes there, this is the one that's been keeping me up at night for two years, is who's going to be your power of attorney or executor when you have next kid? Giant problem. Okay. And if you try to find solutions on it, there's not, we're hoping to have a solution out by the year to do this. We're partnering with a trust company to do it. But if you're in California or Arizona, you can have a professional fiduciary help you. In Georgia, there's one attorney that'll do it, but that's it. Any other state you're out of luck. So much. Good luck. So we have to figure out that we have to figure out a state planning. We have a program we call the eight. No baby steps that walks people through, we start off no debt, simple stuff. But then it's they start changing everything. So for example, owning a home for child free folks, if you're going to move every two years, there's no reason to buy a house. And even if you're going to move every five years, still no reason. Like I sold my house, me and my wife rent, not because we can't afford a house, but I don't have to deal with it. It starts changing things, life insurance, not a big deal for child free folks disability is, and we also get into some interesting things. Our no baby step seven is plan for parents, which is huge for our clients, which is not your plan to have kids, but how do you take care of your parents? And what we're finding is we have two buckets. We have parents that are broke that you're going to have to figure out their care. And we have parents that are super rich. There's nowhere in between. Like we're not finding like, I'm like 1 percent are in the middle, but like they're in the way extremes. And the only clients we take on that are parents right now regularly are parents of our child free folks. And we'll go in and look at their parents stuff. And we actually find out they're broker than we thought or richer than we thought. But what's your plan for that? Like, how do you do this? And how do you care for them at all? Because what happens is for our child free folks, they go, well, you don't have kids, so you can take care of mom and dad. It's just it's a sentence that just. It gets finished. So it becomes part of the plan. And what you're seeing is it's all of these things that change and people look at financial planning Oh what's your best look investments. We follow simple, passive, long term investments, nothing fancy, set it, forget it. Somebody in my interview process asked me like, how much time do you spend in the software? I'm like 5 percent of my time. Like the rest is all like your behaviors or ways of thinking. Like we actually meet with our clients. In the first year on a monthly basis, our process 77 steps and it's all things that have changed. And it's like. All right. We just dig in one little piece at a time. And what tends to happen is once we get through their financial plan, they're like, cool, I'm safe. Now I want to do something completely different. And I'm like, all right, so we're going in a different direction. That's just normal for our folks.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
26:00

Isn't that normal for all of us really though? Not with kids I'm saying, but as humans isn't it normal for us? As soon as we're like, Oh, we're good. Oh, time to do something else.

Jay Zigmont, CFP®:
26:10

It is, but here's the difference because the way we say it is living a life of child free wealth means you have time, money, and freedom to do what you enjoy. When you have ultimate flexibility, it's actually analysis prowess, like too many choices type routine. My wife, okay. We, my wife and I, we embraced something called the garden and the rose, where one's providing support, one's growing, she's the rose right now. She had offered a job 1200 miles away. We packed up the dogs and the cat, gone, like not a big deal. That's the type of change. Pick it up, gone. That. You can't put in a regular financial plan

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
26:43

We're personally going through that right now. We have a nine year old and a seven year old and we don't really love Iowa. Winter's kind of suck. We want to go Denver, Phoenix, somewhere in there where our friends and some other family are. And that's what we're talking about too. It's like we have a window probably the next two years. Otherwise you're locked in with school and sports and all of that. And I couldn't, I, and when you said analysis by paralysis, and it's that makes sense because. If we had the freedom to do whatever, then what do we do? Where do we go? What do we go anywhere? Let's just do this for a month and that for a month. I can understand that. I can track like

Jay Zigmont, CFP®:
27:19

the editor for my book, actually her and her dog spent, stayed at different Airbnb for a month. Every time for 17 States and just traveled the country. And that's normal for my clients. Hey, I get it in me. I'm like, where are you today? Oh, I'm in Jacksonville. Okay, cool. And that's, Part of our clients and that is just financial planning. Looks very linear. It's just not for our clients and we got people in tech or whatever. Oh, I hit the IPO lottery. Great. Changes everything. Okay. Now I'm going to move to another country. All right. That's every day for us.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
27:53

So this is a little off topic. So with this, I really can't consider it and call it financial planning, although by definition it is whatever. Do you see this, what you're building and figuring out and doing for the child free as part of something that like the rest of us might take into consideration in our planning?

Jay Zigmont, CFP®:
28:16

Yeah, so I call what we do life and financial planning. And I was on another podcast and guy's got a couple of kids. He's wait a minute. So what you're telling me is you want your clients to figure out what they want to be when they grow up and what their life is first before they figure out the finances. He says, we should do that for parents too. And I agree, but what happens is for parents, there's a standard life script that says you do it this order, or this is the structure. And for us, we've taken a hard right turn, and that's where it's okay, if you don't have the script, what do you do? Another example is, so we're working on having a fiduciary pay for your power of attorney executor. And I was on a podcast and somebody said every morning he wakes up thinking he killed his mother. What it was he was the power of attorney for his mom. And she, he knew her wishes, but she wanted, the machine plug pulled, all that, but it's still bothersome. He says, why would I put that burner on my kids? I was like that's a good question. I don't serve that audience, but he's if I could pay a professional to do that for me, they don't have to put on my kids. That'd be awesome. So I'm over here solving a solution for folks that have no other choice. They have no next, but they're going can I use that for others? And I'm like, yeah, you probably could probably should. That's not my group to deal with.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
29:28

Yeah. I a hundred percent agree with that. I tell all my clients that you have to have a third party. Don't do family. Don't put it on your kids. Have a professional who literally that's what they do. So you figured that out. Let me jump on. Cause I've been doing it with a different firm of mine and fiduciary side of things. And I've been a trustee outside of my own firm just to, to handle that because it gets nasty with family. And it gets nasty when there's kids involved in all of that. So I'm definitely on board with figuring that out. That's for sure.

Jay Zigmont, CFP®:
29:57

The financial part's easy. It's the medical power of attorney that makes a mess. And by the way, our, my argument is I have to have somebody that's going to do all three. And the hard part with my clients is, the way I say this, my wife and I are car crash. Who makes our financial decisions? Who makes our medical decisions and who lets her dog out? It sounds stupid, but these are the, this is what matters. Yeah. And if we're traveling the country, how do they know I'm in Iowa right now? They're like, why are you in Iowa? I don't know. I just am like, and how do I make sure that, yeah. And. The problem is the system is broken. Like the system just has no way to do this. And each state has its own thing. We actually hired a class of interns for the summer to actually look at this from a legal standpoint. And they were like, wow, this is a mess. Thanks. Yup. Sure

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
30:45

is. Oh, love, love breaking ground. What's next. Okay. So this is what you're attacking. You're hiring more and you're growing. You got a book coming out. What. What is next for you? What is this thing that you believe outside of client growth, of course, that you're achieving this forward momentum? What is that for you?

Jay Zigmont, CFP®:
31:08

Yeah. The, one of the things we're looking at right now is we're trying to improve the discussion around being child free. Let's just be honest that there's not a discussion in most areas. One of the things we're looking to do is we're actually looking to partner with employers. And say, okay, cool. We got this book coming out. Let's come out, do some talks. Let's talk about what it's like for your child free folks. And by the way, there's also benefits and other there's a whole pile there, but employers are actually they'll pay for people to come speak on. Number 1 issue is mental health, which makes sense. Number 2 is around issues. But the child free issue is the one like, it's like a third rail and after Roe got overturned, it got worse. I'm in the South, there's a lot of political issues, but we're out there really saying, okay, how do we do that? And we're going to do that really to build community because what we found is while there's millions and millions of child free folks out there, there's not really community. I want to make the AARP for child free folks, I don't know what that is, but like, how do we all get together and go on trips together and hang out and how do we find each other? I was at this summit this weekend for childless folks and it was the first one I've ever been at. There was just, I have a hundred people there and it was just like, Hey, they're all like me. And they're all having a good, bad, and ugly that comes with it. How do we build that community and how do we do it in a sustainable way? The finances, the life, all that's actually easy. How do we do the rest? And so we're using the book for that. Yeah we're publisher source books are all my penguin random house. They think they'll sell, I don't know, 10, 000 copies next year. Something like that. We're trying to say, okay, let's use that to start conversation. About this and I do a lot of press and same day wall street journal and market watch did a feature article on us and market watch called it the best new thing in retirement. And I was like, okay, I'll take that, but it's not really new. We've been around forever. So how do we start having these conversations? And that's why I appreciate people like you, bring me on and have a discussion because. In the child free community, we talk to each other. Cool. But like, how do we have this big thing so that the next person that's going, Hey, are we weird? We go, no, you're normal within the child free community. You might be weird in the overall population, but within this group, you're our people and how do we do that? And I don't know, I'm out there. Anyone that will bring me in to speak. I'm out there speaking. I'm out there on every podcast in the world, everything I can get to just to get the word out there. And. It's mixed, you'll see it when this comes on the podcast, probably one of the higher engagement because people like get fired up about it either way. And it's like, how do we just get to the point where I live my life. You live yours. Like we're cool. And not judge and make it part of that.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
33:46

I love that. I really do. And that's why we're going to have you part of the no BS wealth community as well. And our vetted partners, because the conversations need to be had. We need to be openly able to talk about one of these issues is yours, but also all the other ones. In an open form in a way that isn't attacking one way or another because ultimately again, we're just humans. We're all good. We all just have our different past. And some of our paths are very similar and that's okay. Hell look at us. We're in the same industry where I have hair. You don't you're white. I like, look at all of this and we're building the similar things, except for on the same team and we're trying to do the same thing and that is help others. And ultimately that's where we want to go. So I really do appreciate you coming on. We're going to have you on again for our 12 days of giving series here in the winter time, when it comes to Christmas. Because I believe you have a very amazing client story and people need to hear it. And I want to make sure we do and just focus on that client story. But go ahead. Name of your book again,

Jay Zigmont, CFP®:
34:44

the child free guide to life and money for

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
34:46

pre sale now we'll have links. We'll do all that thing. You know how we do those things, but I really do appreciate it. Keep up the good fight. And we're here with you.

Jay Zigmont, CFP®:
34:54

I appreciate you having it, and you are right. We are more similar than you think. We're just different flip sides of the same coin.

Black Mammoth:
35:01

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