Episode Transcript
Glenn Harper [: 00:00:00
Hello everyone. Welcome to another edition of the Empowering Entrepreneurs Podcast. I’m Glenn Harper.Julie Smith [: 00:00:04
Julie Smith.Glenn Harper [: 00:00:05
What’s going on, Julie?Julie Smith [: 00:00:05
Well, you know, the seasons are changing.Glenn Harper [: 00:00:07
We got new cups.Julie Smith [: 00:00:09
It means it’s Christmas.Glenn Harper [: 00:00:10
Does it say Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays? I can’t remember.Julie Smith [: 00:00:12
I don’t think they could take a stance on that.Glenn Harper [: 00:00:14
I know it’s tough out there. Well, it’s dreary and rainy in Columbus in November, just like normal. But our guest I think is in sunny California where it never rains in Southern California. And I’m gonna do a little introduction here and I’d like to introduce Shannon Ryan, a hardcore certified financial plan planner who doesn’t just manage your money. She makes you feel not guilty for making and having money. Shannon’s journey included many a stop as she climbed the corporate ladder to eventually hang her own shingle with Ameriprise Financial Advisors. Now she is a financial advisor and managing director of investments for Wells Fargo Advisors in Bismarck, North Dakota. Kidding.Glenn Harper [: 00:00:50
Where would one expect when with her skill set and accolades to be camped out Louisiana. Of course we will hear from Shannon on her transformation from looking at money as a one dimensional measuring stick for all those in the west seem to think matters to actual understanding that money is more about how one feels about money versus what money they actually have. As soon as she looks into your soul, she can diagnose without some pesky psychological degree what your traumas and wounds that you have accumulated through your life. This enables her to help you, her client, understand what is it that you really want, but more importantly, what you really need. Once this is addressed and discussed, the investing is easy. She just invests your assets in tequila trees in Costa Rica and just lets the trees grow. I’m kidding. Of course.Glenn Harper [: 00:01:32
Life is easy when you can have someone with Shannon’s skill set to dig deep until she finds your true passion and can suppress your fears. Shannon is a master of this and a diverse education life path has pushed and pulled her to eventually being where she is meant to be. In her spare time, Shannon enjoys shark diving and running marathons in the desert. Beach yoga keeps her grounded with her inner Zen as she embraces every day with the vigor and attitude of who can I help today free themselves from their shackles of pain and regret. Please welcome Shannon to our show as we delve into the emotional side of money. Thanks Shannon for being on our show.Shannon Ryan [: 00:02:01
Oh my gosh. Glenn, Julie, CPAs with humor. You’re the best.Julie Smith [: 00:02:05
He just wants a five star review for that introduction.Glenn Harper [: 00:02:08
I worked really hard On I worked really hard. No, I worked really hard on that one, but I think I nailed it. Anya. Except the business.Shannon Ryan [: 00:02:14
You know, I do like to diver sharks. I mean, some of the humor is ring true.Glenn Harper [: 00:02:19
Awesome. Well, I really, we really appreciate taking some time. Again, you’re in California, it’s like 4am There or some ungodly hour. So I appreciate you taking the time. I know you’re busy, you’re probably watching the markets open up this morning. But you know, we’re trying to, we try to get to know our guests a little bit and figure out, you know, where they’re from, what they do and all these things and, and really the only thing I could find out is that you grew up in a ranch in Topeka, Kansas. Is that where you grew up at?Shannon Ryan [: 00:02:43
No, I grew up in California, so I’m a California girl through and through.Glenn Harper [: 00:02:49
What city did you grow up in?Shannon Ryan [: 00:02:51
I grew up in Huntington beach, so Surf City. And I’ve lived all over the coast, so I’m, I’m a beach girl. Love scuba diving and skiing and I have run marathons. Not in the desert, thank goodness, but I’ve stayed pretty active here on the west Coast.Glenn Harper [: 00:03:06
Are you a big fan of Aviator Nation?Shannon Ryan [: 00:03:09
They’re actually literally about three blocks from my home and so we were Aviator Nation early, early adapters. I do love their sweatshirts. They’re pricey, but boy, they, they wear. I’ve got some of the ones, early ones that I’ve had probably for almost 10 years now.Glenn Harper [: 00:03:27
Yeah, you got to sell a kidney to get one of them. But boy, they are certainly fashionable, but that’s half the fun. So you grew up in Huntington beach, like where you, what’d your parents do for a living?Shannon Ryan [: 00:03:38
My dad was an oral reconstructive surgeon and my mom was a business professional. Hr primarily a human resource vice president of different firms.Glenn Harper [: 00:03:49
Was your, did your dad have his own firm or. He worked for a company?Shannon Ryan [: 00:03:53
Did he had a private practice. So that’s I was going to do. I thought I was going to go into oral surgery. I was actually accepted from high school directly. USC has got a six year dental program which is the foundation of oral surgery. You do your become a dentist first, then you get your anesthesiology and then you get your surgical degree as an oral surgeon. So I was going to take it over dad’s practice, but I have just been fascinated with money and it’s not what you think. I mean growing up in the 80s, you know, all the movies, Greed is good.Shannon Ryan [: 00:04:24
You would think I’d be fascinated with the stock market and trading, and I am fascinated with all of that. But I’m more interested in the human being behind the money and why they’re doing what they’re doing with their money. And it literally started when I was 13. So when I got accepted to USC dental school, phenomenal school, I had a moment of like, oh, man, I don’t think this is what I want to do. I want to go into finance, which was completely off the rails in my medical family. So I did an about face, went back to undergrad at Long Beach State to figure out who I was in this crisis of man, I don’t want to be a doctor and thank goodness, and landed exactly where I should be in life.Julie Smith [: 00:05:04
So tell me, did any. Did you have brothers and sisters and did any of them end up going that route?Shannon Ryan [: 00:05:09
I have two younger sisters and none of us ended up going the medical route. I was really the only one all along that probably was going to end up in the medical.Glenn Harper [: 00:05:16
The chosen one. The chosen one.Shannon Ryan [: 00:05:18
I was the oldest one, the driver, the one that’s going to fall on dad’s footsteps. But, yeah, the only one who.Glenn Harper [: 00:05:23
Well, your dad has to be so disappointed in you. I’m totally kidding. But it is funny. Like he probably every father or mother wants their daughter or son to follow in the footsteps because they set the table. You just kind of, kind of do the work and show up and you’re in a finely tuned machine. But, you know, looking at stocks and bonds or fixing people’s teeth, I don’t know. It’s a hard choice.Shannon Ryan [: 00:05:48
It’s a big choice, I will tell you that. I think he really was. I lost him at a young age. He died very, very young. So I haven’t had him with me for a long time. But he was the one who started my many lessons at 13. And it was interesting because he wanted me as a woman, especially at that time, there weren’t a lot of women involved in finance. And he wanted me to at least understand the basics.Shannon Ryan [: 00:06:10
A lot of what you guys talk about is the strategies. I mean, I, all three of us, it’s year end, we’re looking at strategies with the big beautiful bill and all the things we can do right now with our taxes and our financial planning. He always wanted me to understand those fundamentals. But more important, he was talking about EQ, not just IQ. So the emotional quote when I was 13 and why people responded to money, why they used it as power and why there was shame around it. So he was well ahead of his time. So when he pushed back a little bit on me not going the medical route, I’m like, hey, you lined me up perfectly for going into money. But he was worried it was be a rough road because I did not think about money in the way that everyone else did at that time.Shannon Ryan [: 00:06:54
Meaning that I was, I was different. People weren’t thinking about the emotional side of money. They still aren’t enough. They were really looking at trading stocks and bonds. So yeah, lots of deep family conversations about why I did what I did. But you know, 30 plus years later, it was a great decision for me.Glenn Harper [: 00:07:13
So the question we always ask is when people go on hang their shingle and entrepreneurs and then you’re obviously with an organization, do what you do now. But at some point did you, as Julie would say, what, paint rocks or.Julie Smith [: 00:07:27
What did you do growing up? Were you ever an entrepreneur growing up.Shannon Ryan [: 00:07:30
Trying to Julie, I not only painted rocks. I remember one time I would sell anything to anyone. I was the number one salesperson for Girl Scout cookies. Of course I always had this drive. But the painting rocks is kind of a funny analogy. I remember once on my blog that I took a bunch of pebbles, I poured paint on them and they made these little clumps that ultimately look like a little piece of art. And I tried to sell those to my neighbor. So I had been an entrepreneurial from the start.Shannon Ryan [: 00:07:59
When I was with Ameriprise, I was independent. I also had the opportunity of being a field vice president and I ran the western United States and led about 150 independent advisors for over 10 years. So I am with a larger firm now, but it’s still my shingle just plugged into a larger firm. And I did that because I write books, I teach financial literacy, I’m an adjunct professor for the cfp. I do a lot of other things. So I wanted a firm to partner with to turn the lights on and worry about some of the things as entrepreneurs that, that we have to worry about when we’re running our own office. But I am an entrepreneur at heart and I work with a lot of business owners.Julie Smith [: 00:08:42
Did you play sports growing up?Shannon Ryan [: 00:08:44
I did. I was a runner, I was a hurdler. I you can’t see, but I’m six feet tall so I was able to clear those girls hurdles like nobody’s business. I could just step right over them.Julie Smith [: 00:08:53
I love it.Glenn Harper [: 00:08:54
So what’s your favorite girl Scout cookie?Shannon Ryan [: 00:08:57
Oh my gosh. Is Thin Men. I mean, how could I not love a Thin Men? I Mean, you got to put them in the freezer, they need to be cold, and you have to have a really hot cup of tea to go with them.Glenn Harper [: 00:09:06
What about the do Si dos? I mean, it’s gotta be second at least.Shannon Ryan [: 00:09:08
I like the do si do. I like them all. I like the Tagalog, the lemon ones. I forget the name of the lemon ones, but they came out a little bit later. And those were really good, too, with the powdered sugar on top. Those are good.Glenn Harper [: 00:09:20
I’m getting hungry just thinking about it. Well, you know, it’s funny, we always have this, I don’t want to say debate, but this discussion of, you know, are entrepreneurs born that way or was there a monumental thing that happened to, like, waken that up? Or is it something that knocked them in the head and they gotta go over here? Like, it sounds like you probably have always had that thing that says, I gotta be in charge of me and what I wanna do. Right.Julie Smith [: 00:09:47
She’s the oldest of three and they’re all female. I mean, she clearly had to. She’s got the personality, right?Glenn Harper [: 00:09:55
I would think.Shannon Ryan [: 00:09:56
Yeah. You know, it’s so interesting because I think there’s entrepreneurial spirit in all of us, and I. But it is. Being an entrepreneur is frightening. Terrifying is you can fail faster. There’s not that giant safety net. And it’s one of those paths that you go down and you have to accept the work and the sleepless hours and the lack of a defined, you know, benefit plan and a, you know, 401k that you haven’t set up. And if the copy break, copy breaks copier, you have to be the one that fixes it.Shannon Ryan [: 00:10:33
So there’s. There’s a lot that goes along with being an entrepreneur, but I do think. I think it’s a mindset of somebody who’s willing to be uncomfortable, willing to. To work and take risk in an area that they love. And I. I firmly believe there are a lot more people that are entrepreneurs that have the ability to overcome fear, which I believe is one of the greatest things that we face in entrepreneurialism as well as in our money and take that next step. Many times not even knowing what’s going to happen next and walking away from safety nets that a lot of us find in big corporations to be out on our own. And it’s a unique personality, and I think it lives in more of us than that.Shannon Ryan [: 00:11:20
Are entrepreneurs just because of the fear factor.Glenn Harper [: 00:11:23
You said the dreaded F word we never use on the show, which is the failure.Julie Smith [: 00:11:28
Well, entrepreneurs Always just pivot for whatever reason failure would be if we quit. Right. But none of us quit. We pick ourselves back up, we think of something else, we do it a little differently.Glenn Harper [: 00:11:38
But non entrepreneurs, to your point, they look at as a failure if it doesn’t work because it’s the fear of it not working. Right. And being judged and like, oh my gosh, they lose their whole identity. Whereas an entrepreneur is like, well, that was just today. What about tomorrow? I think I can make this happen tomorrow. That it’s just that mindset. Once you can get through that hurdle, you can then achieve your greatness. Right.Glenn Harper [: 00:12:02
Which I think what you talk about most of the time, what you do for a living.Shannon Ryan [: 00:12:05
Yeah. You know, and it’s, I love pivot and that’s what we do. But it’s the reason why I actually use the word fear and failure is because I, you know, you, most of us eat failure for lunch, meaning it’s if I fail, I learn and move, I fail, I learn. And I’ve always said either, you know, we’re winning or we’re learning. And it’s that ability to learn from the failures. And I think by calling it out, whether it’s a pivot or whether you say it’s failure, it takes the power out of it. We’re all primal people, meaning that we want to be admired and we want to be successful and failure takes away from that, from a society norm. And when somebody says they fail, like, oh, sorry, you failed, like, wow, like, you know, kind of COVID your eyes, to me that’s a badge occur.Shannon Ryan [: 00:12:51
I failed because I, I went for it. So next, what did I learn? My favorite four letter word is next. And I think that’s part of entrepreneurial spirit for sure.Julie Smith [: 00:13:00
As you think back on like your childhood or your teenage years, do you think there’s something, I don’t know, something pivotal now that resonates, but maybe didn’t resonate then that you said, okay, I’m going to eat fear for lunch.Glenn Harper [: 00:13:14
With gravy. With gravy on it.Julie Smith [: 00:13:16
I’m going to eat this, you know, for lunch. That like something maybe happened and that was just it, like you no longer looked back, that that was no longer a hurdle.Shannon Ryan [: 00:13:28
Yes, it’s, it’s very emotional. I, I am a child of divorce. My, my dad and mom were divorced and married multiple times. And being the oldest daughter, I remember at 8 years old sitting at the top of a staircase with parents arguing downstairs, getting close to divorce and thinking, all right, I’m the oldest, I needed I need to be, you know, responsible and create a positive. How are we going to move forward for my sisters and I, regardless of what my parents are doing? And it’s out of some of the, my most broken moments, through some of that, those experiences created a resilience that I carry with me. And I, and I find that with a lot of my entrepreneurs is that it’s not that we had the sweetheart childhood and many people do, and that’s beautiful. Intact parents, intact families also breed great entrepreneurs. But I actually find that there’s a lot of us that had very difficult experiences in our childhood that were beyond our control that drove us to say, I’m going to, I’m not only going to get through this, but I’m going to thrive and I’m going to look at it, I’m going to look at it from a positive light.Shannon Ryan [: 00:14:41
Meaning that It’s. Even at 8 years old, I wasn’t going to give up on my family, on my sisters, and I was going to be okay. And I have no idea where that 8 year old found that, but I think that that has been a cornerstone of what has driven me through my life.Glenn Harper [: 00:14:59
Isn’t that defining moment you could have said this is going to define me, but it’s either going to define me in I’m going to give up and be a victim or it’s going to define me where I’m going to rise above it. That is a very powerful moment. I don’t know how many people realize they have a choice for that defining moment. And it’s unfortunate that when things happen to everybody growing up, we all have our traumas and all the things and it’s either going to define you in a negative or define you in a positive. And I mean, at age eight, that’s pretty awesome. That’s pretty awesome to be able to turn it to a positive.Shannon Ryan [: 00:15:40
And it never ends, doesn’t. I mean, there’s defining moments every day of my life. I mean, there’s things that happen to all of us as entrepreneurs. We have desires and we have a plan and this is the way it’s going to work. And we have to do a lot of pivoting, we have to do a lot of, okay, didn’t work this way, what’s going to happen next? And I think the longer we as entrepreneurs practice that, what we learn is that it only gets stronger, it only gets better. Meaning even our darkest moments generally happen right before we have huge breakthroughs. And I think the key in life is just pushing through that. The Struggle and to get to that, that breakthrough.Shannon Ryan [: 00:16:23
But so many people stop short. They get nervous, they stop short of that push through. And it is resilience. And every. I’ve had people say, well, it’s easy for you. You’re a resilient person. Are you kidding? I get terrified too. And what am I doing? I just launched a new book in September, and I used to speak all over the country, and I had two children and I stopped speaking all over the country.Shannon Ryan [: 00:16:45
I’m back speaking and writing books. I’m like, I don’t know if anybody wants to listen to me anymore, but I’m going to do it anyway. So it’s. You’ve got these moments, even in success, that are still terrifying every day. And I, I love that because I know that I’m still challenging myself.Glenn Harper [: 00:17:01
Well, I think as I was reading all your. The notes and whatever and just listening to your talk now, I think what ends up happening. And this is just. Again, you don’t understand this till you get above a certain age when you can look back and go, oh, my. And the oh my is reality. The hardest thing that you ever had to go through happened to you way back when. This is everybody. And the fear of dealing with it, the fear of acknowledging it, the feeling of forgiving of yourself or the others or whatever that happened and what all those things are, that is literally the worst thing that’s ever going to happen to you.Glenn Harper [: 00:17:43
Everything after that is cake. So to your point is as you go and do what you do and you look at opportunities, you’re like, well, this is nothing compared to that. Hold my beer. I got this. Where most everybody else, they can’t do it because they’ve never dealt with that, the prior things. And that is just a sad state of things, that the tools just aren’t there to do that for people to figure that out. And because once they take those shackles off, like I said in the beginning, the sky’s the limit for everybody. But you just can’t get past it.Glenn Harper [: 00:18:14
Right?Shannon Ryan [: 00:18:15
Yeah. You know, it’s. Again, it goes back to what we. How we see ourselves in society and how we want to be seen as societies. A lot of it comes down to this. The shame and the judgment and the desire to be viewed a certain way. So if we risk and we fail, some of that feeling of, oh, I’ve got to pivot, this didn’t work out is. Is not about how we feel about it, it’s how we feel we’re going to be judged by others.Shannon Ryan [: 00:18:45
Like, if I say, hey, Glenn and Julie, you guys are really the first thing someone’s going to think is you’re really financially successful. Wow, those guys have really knocked it apart without even examining the quality of your life. So as a society, we’ve gotten away from really taking look. To me, success isn’t a monetary measuring. Success is, are you going for it? Are you pushing yourself? Are you in growth mode on a regular basis? And that’s what I find with entrepreneurs. I think to a certain extent, we’re, we’re a bit addicted to the, the growth of it all. Meaning that this, the, the finding things that don’t work is a bit exhilarating as well, because we are like, all right, I tried it, I went for it. That didn’t work.Shannon Ryan [: 00:19:30
Next. And that, that growth mindset, as I age and I’m coming up on a big birthday next year is 25. I’m not. I’m ready to go. What’d you say, Julie?Julie Smith [: 00:19:42
I said you’re 25.Shannon Ryan [: 00:19:44
Exactly.Glenn Harper [: 00:19:44
You can finally get a rental car, which is big. You know, it’s funny as we. You go through this, how people are worried about what other people think versus what they think. And when it comes to money from where I think I grew up, where you grew up. I don’t know how you grew up. I have an idea, but I don’t know because I can’t judge that because I wasn’t there. But like, some of the happiest people I know have maybe a quarter in their pocket. They have no money and they are the happiest people in the world.Glenn Harper [: 00:20:17
They worry about nothing. They’re like, ah, it’s in God’s hands. It’ll be okay. Some of the most stressful people I have are the people climbing to try to get something because they’re shooting for this number and they’re not even enjoying themselves on the way up. And then the people that have a bunch of money, they’re miserable because they don’t even know what to do with it. So I think circling back to what you do for a living, it’s not about just investing. It’s helping people understand the burden of either acquiring or having. I don’t think it’s a burden if you don’t have any.Glenn Harper [: 00:20:48
It just isn’t. It’s only if you’re trying to acquire or you have it. Could you speak a little bit on that? On how you help people reconcile that? To have that, oh, my God, it’s really this. It’s not about accumulating.Shannon Ryan [: 00:21:00
Yeah, there’s so many studies out there now that talk about there is a certain level you need enough money to, to meet your, your basic needs. And without that. And there are a lot of people in this country and internationally. I just got back from Asia and I was in Cambodia. It’s a very, it’s a beautiful country. People are very happy. But there is a lot of poverty. You do need a certain amount of money to meet basic needs.Shannon Ryan [: 00:21:26
And I think the number, the last one I saw was about $76,000 a year, at least here in the United States. And once you get beyond that, the incremental happiness that comes from making 100, making 200,000, making a million dollars a year, isn’t as much as people would think that it is. Meaning money doesn’t make you happy. You need some of it because it can make you really unhappy if you can’t feed your family. So there is a line there. But what I’ve seen over the years is that as an industry, we watch ticker tapes run across the top of screens. I have clients that look at their statements, you know, or their online access because now we can get online, look at our 401 and everything every single day and measure our worth. It’s like jumping on a scale.Shannon Ryan [: 00:22:09
If the scale says that I’m low today, I’m happy. If my portfolio is up, I’m happy. Last two days, markets have been down. And so people are like, oh, the market’s down. Like, so what?Glenn Harper [: 00:22:19
It comes.Shannon Ryan [: 00:22:20
I’m happy this morning. It is not a way to live. And so what happens is, is that until somebody aligns their money with what they really want to do in life, then the investing I do, the strategies that you guys do around taxes, all the things that we do collectively as advisors to help people maximize their resources is for nothing if we. They don’t know what it’s for. There’s clients I have that have more wealth than they’ll ever spend in their entire lives and they are completely miserable. And it’s not the money that makes them unhappy. My book is called you’d. Money has Feelings and money doesn’t have feelings.Shannon Ryan [: 00:22:58
Money doesn’t feel anything. It’s our reaction to money. And sometimes we live in such fear that we hold onto it so tight. We don’t give it away, we don’t spend it, we don’t use it. So it’s not making us happy.Julie Smith [: 00:23:12
So talk to me about. You mentioned EQ earlier. So obviously your father started that at, you know, 13.Shannon Ryan [: 00:23:19
Yes.Julie Smith [: 00:23:19
When you meet a New client or a new prospect, let’s call it. How do you get inside and understand their EQ around money?Shannon Ryan [: 00:23:28
Jilly Great question. Because it’s one of those things that has defined me early in my career. I’ve been doing this a long time. So when I started it really was.Julie Smith [: 00:23:40
Let’s just remember you’re only 25, age 25.Shannon Ryan [: 00:23:44
I have been doing this more than 25 years. We got to keep that straight. So when I so when I started, everything was really focused on the tech bub. You know, tech was just taken off and things were growing and it’s all, it was all about a stock return. And I think in my early days, I really got caught up in I got this return for you. I did this and hung my hat on a lot of the traditional things that I think some advisors, sadly today still do. And I started to notice that even as things grew and portfolios were doing well, good years and bad years, that people still weren’t finding happiness. So I started to pivot in my meetings by starting them differently.Shannon Ryan [: 00:24:23
And I do the same thing today when a client walks in and I know that you see this in your office as well, they come in with all of their stuff ready to do their taxes and all of. And they come in with all of their statements to me. And when first meeting a client and they’ll say they want to come in and show me, look what I’ve done. And I think it’s okay and I don’t know if I have enough and am I going to be able to retire? All of these questions and I always think they’re plastered to the forehead. They walk in with this big long list of stuff, plaster the forehead and including is, is it enough? And have I done well and do I measure up to other people? Meaning how am I? Do I have more than most people do or less? I mean, all of these questions because nobody talks about money. So typically I’ll take this stack of papers and a lot of it comes electronically now, so it’s a little bit different. And I’ll push it aside, either physically or figuratively, saying we’re going to get to that. And it makes people uncomfortable.Shannon Ryan [: 00:25:13
And I said, before we dive into the numbers, I’d really love to understand what’s important to you about money. And it is startling how often I still get blank stares. And they’ll say, what do you mean? I said, what is this for? Like, well, I want to educate my kids and I want to retire. I said, amazing, but tell me what’s important about doing those things to you and help me understand what your experiences have been so far with money, meaning your family. How’d your family approach money? Do you find that you. You like to look at it? So I start to ask questions. As they start to tell me very much how you are asking me questions today in this. In this podcast, I start to just get very curious about how somebody grew up and.Shannon Ryan [: 00:26:05
And what their experiences with. With their parents with money. And we have this conversation before I even CR the numbers because it helps me understand why they’re responding or what I may see when we start to look at the numbers.Glenn Harper [: 00:26:21
I feel like you’re looking at my playbook. I’m kidding. Because you’re right. It has nothing to do with the numbers, because the numbers, they don’t even understand them. They just want to know if they’re okay. But I. I wanted to backtrack a little tiny bit. It was.Glenn Harper [: 00:26:36
I don’t know what it was really. It hit. It was happening. I was having this transformation in my head, but it really hit during the dark years of COVID where people were really struggling. You know, CPAs were quitting. Like, clients were freaking out. People were losing everything. And the people that had means were probably the most freaked.Glenn Harper [: 00:26:58
I wouldn’t say freaked out. They were just so depressed. They were going to be okay. But I was like, do you get joy looking at your financial statement or your monthly statement that says you got 10 million sitting in whatever investment and you’re sitting at home and you’re miserable, why don’t you just take a couple million out of there and go get yourself a beach house or lake House for 2 million? It’s still on the balance sheet, but now you’re going to go over here and enjoy it. Why don’t you go get the camper? Why don’t you go do the thing? And people fear that they can’t use their money other than to put it in this thing, but it’s just part of their portfolio. And it was life changing. People were like, oh, my God, we’re going to go here and we’re going to live free and die hard. And.Glenn Harper [: 00:27:39
And they would go do the thing, and they had the same amount of money, but they just were, wow, they got to experience life a little bit better. Do you feel the same thing happen?Shannon Ryan [: 00:27:47
It’s what I get to do, Glenn. Every single day. I have those conversations every day. And it is the coolest thing that I get to do. And it’s interesting because I’m going to say oh, you buy stocks. I’m like, I have to tell you, money is easy. Strategy is easy. I mean, this is all not that hard.Shannon Ryan [: 00:28:02
Investing is not that hard. Tax planning. What you guys. Yeah, this year there’s a lot more opportunities. I hope everyone’s reaching out to you guys at the big beautiful Bill and other things. There is definitely strategy, but that’s what they involve you and I in to do for them. But the reality is, is people need to understand what they want for themselves. And that is the hardest part about money.Shannon Ryan [: 00:28:24
And I think, personally, a lot of it comes from our roots, from our family of origin, meaning we learned that we couldn’t do certain things. And we never quite question why Covid. I loved Covid, and here’s why. I saw my clients all through code. If you remember, right, when Covid hit in 2020, in. In March, the. The markets were down, what was it, 37%, almost in, depending on what index you were looking at in one month. Went right back up in April, but we had it.Shannon Ryan [: 00:28:53
We had no idea if bodies were going to be piled in the street like the Spanish flu. I mean, we. We know now looking back, but at the time, it was one of the greatest, to me, times in history. I mourn and my heart hurts for families that lost people. We had people in our family that we lost that were aging to Covid. But it was also, I believe, one of our greatest lessons as a society. And what I would say to clients is, all right, you are locked in your house with every decision you’ve ever made. Where you live, who you married, the kids that you’ve had, the couch that you decided to buy, you decided not to remodel your kitchen.Shannon Ryan [: 00:29:32
Now you’re locked in your house with your older kitchen, but you still have the money in the bank. Are you happy? I got more raw answers, more raw emotion. And it changed the trajectory of how some of my clients would interact with their money because of that crisis. And for that, I think there’s a lot of people who use that time to really find themselves in a different place of how they use their money. And for that, I was grateful. I thought it was one of the singular, most impactful financial events of our lives because of the awakening that occurred if you allowed it to occur.Julie Smith [: 00:30:12
I have a question, and it’s just a pure curiosity question. When you sit down with, you know, your prospects and you ask that question right, and you get those blank stares, what is the percentage? And again, just raw percentage that you think that people’s value or thoughts on money is because of some childhood trauma.Shannon Ryan [: 00:30:34
98. I mean, it’s. It all goes we, we. And it’s not always trauma. It. Sometimes it’s what we’ve learned through our maturation process. It could be early childhood trauma, like divorce that I went through. I saw money weaponized during a divorce.Shannon Ryan [: 00:30:56
And so you. You get feelings around money when money is weaponized. There are people who have been deeply influenced by the communities that they grew up. There’s a study that just came out that said that kids that grew up in more affluent communities, even if their family wasn’t affluent, do better financially because of what they saw around them. More entrepreneurs, more people running businesses, so more possibility were possible to them than people that grew up in poor neighborhoods where there was more limiting beliefs. So the community that you grew up in, decisions that you made early in your career. I. You know, it’s interesting because we get to see behind that.Shannon Ryan [: 00:31:38
I always say it’s like the wizard of Oz, especially. We get in everything out. Like, we get to see behind the curtain. We see. We see the great and powerful Oz, and there is no great and powerful Oz. Many people think of their finances behind that dark curtain, and they don’t think things are possible. And a lot of that came from Julie, as you said, early life experiences. Maybe not child.Shannon Ryan [: 00:31:59
It could be they lost a job earlier in their career, which created scarcity. So any job they got, they held on to. Even if they weren’t earning where they wanted to earn or living where they want to live or doing what they want to do, they’re so frightened to let go of it because they lost a job early on. So there’s a lot of connections and. And I call it financial wounds. I did a TED talk about two years ago, and it was on what I call financial scar tissue, meaning the things that linger in our body. The body keeps score. Right.Shannon Ryan [: 00:32:27
That have us react to money in ways that we are not even sometimes consciously aware of.Glenn Harper [: 00:32:36
You know, it’s funny. I guess I’d say I’ve done this long enough at age 30 that I’ve got to see a lot of the children of the depression and they are mentally, physically unable to spend money. They just can’t do it.Shannon Ryan [: 00:32:52
They can’t do it.Glenn Harper [: 00:32:54
Dovetails into this next observation. I’m sure you get to see a lot of the time. I think what the COVID thing did is it brought to the forefront that we’re not here forever. And what good is it to have money if you don’t do something good with It. And most people that I see that have accumulated, accumulated and queued up and save and do this thing and when they finally retire, they’re scared to spend their money. Like, I don’t have enough. I can’t spend. I’m like, listen, you just spent the last 50 years saving it.Glenn Harper [: 00:33:22
Go have some fun. They’re like, well, I don’t think I can. I’m like, sure you can. Let’s go buy this new car. Let’s go on this trip. Let’s take the whole family on a Disney cruise. And they’re like, ah. But at the end of the day they look at it different.Glenn Harper [: 00:33:34
Like, well, Gus, I guess I only need this. I have all this. I’m like, make memories. Don’t wait till you’re dead before you give it to everybody. Go give it to and have some fun now. And the COVID accelerated that discussion because everybody recognized, well, if I died tomorrow, what was the point of saving all this? So I think it’s not having it, accumulating it and then getting rid of it. There’s definitely three distinct phases and we get the lucky to see the clients through that. But you get to coach them as well, which is, I think what.Glenn Harper [: 00:34:04
You’re doing the same thing, right?Shannon Ryan [: 00:34:06
We’re doing the same thing. I mean we, we are hand in hand. I mean it’s the, the CPA and the cfp. You need to have that and an estate planning attorney on your team. And you, you need, you need a team of professionals. Because in the end, we’re talking about the emotional side of many more today. But strategy is key. Like, I mean there’s so many strategies between now and the end of the year.Shannon Ryan [: 00:34:25
I’m sure your clients. Exhausting should be lining up. My clients are lining up. This is my busiest time of year, especially this year, because there’s things that we need to do before December 31st. If we don’t get them done, then we. Tax time is not, you know, it’s just a filing date. It’s not the whole year. We’re doing tax planning and so it’s, it.Shannon Ryan [: 00:34:44
So we have this functional side of what we do, but what we’re talking about right now is the enjoyment of money. And I have so many people that think a lot of what I do is I invest and save. And we’re people have learned to accumulate, they haven’t learned how to enjoy the accumulation. And it, they. A lot of things come into it like, well, what if I get sick and what if I need long term care and you know, there’s all of these, like, I’ve got to hold on to it so tight. Yesterday I was working with a client and. And we. And I’ve been working with it for a while, and he’s actually.Shannon Ryan [: 00:35:14
They’re both CPAs and terrible. He’s getting ready to retire and they’re.Glenn Harper [: 00:35:18
Quitter. He’s a quitter.Shannon Ryan [: 00:35:20
He’s a quitter.Glenn Harper [: 00:35:21
CPAs don’t quit. They die at their desk.Shannon Ryan [: 00:35:23
Getting to quit for a long time now. So finally, in his early 70s, I’m getting him to, to. To relax into retirement as he’s helping.Glenn Harper [: 00:35:30
Good luck. Good luck.Shannon Ryan [: 00:35:32
And so he and his wonderful wife have more than they’re going to need throughout their lifetime. So we’re working on giving some of it away, but they’re planning a trip to Disneyland for her birthday. She’s got a big birthday and. And she’s like, well, it’s 11 people, so all this money, I’m like, good, get sweet. Do this, enjoy it. You know, upgrade your, Your tickets. And so really, I spent a lot of time helping people. People spend their money when it’s in alignment with what they really want.Shannon Ryan [: 00:35:59
And it’s interesting to watch the child come back out and clients and say, oh, wow, I can’t do that. And the enjoyment does return, but it’s. It is very real to have these scars that we carry. And I, you know, I can’t do this. You know, the shoulds. I should do this. I shouldn’t do that. The things that we impose on ourselves, that isn’t real is.Shannon Ryan [: 00:36:26
Can change ultimately our experience with money. And that’s what I’m trying to come at with my book and all the things that I’m doing now to say we, as professionals, many of us, have not approached this correctly. Meaning we’re not helping you by just accumulating.Glenn Harper [: 00:36:40
Well, I think that’s one of the cool things. You’re one of those professionals that you get paid by how much money you manage, but yet here you are telling to please take your money and go spend it and make memories, even though you’re going to get paid less. I mean, what kind of psycho are you? I mean, I think that’s wonderful because again, that’s a true sign of a good professional. It’s not what’s best for the professional, it’s what’s best for the client. And it’s. The people don’t believe that. You can be altruistic about that, or we could be altruistic about that because it really doesn’t matter what we do, like, we’re here to help, and if we make a little less, who cares? You’re happy, I’m happy.Shannon Ryan [: 00:37:18
I think the abundance approach to what we do, there is always going to be enough money to manage. To me, it’s the impact that we all can have with our strategies or knowledge, our years in this business and having the opportunity to look behind the curtain. We still live in a society where talking about money is still taboo. And so it’s sad because people miss opportunities and, and this free flowing discussion around emotions, around money, it makes such a difference in people’s lives when we can step in and give them a different way of looking at it. I’m sure people have said to you all as well, what do you mean? I should go enjoy my money? And it is a hard thing to change in our lives. I had one of my clients yesterday, full client schedule now, year end, like you guys do. And one of my clients yesterday looked at me and she said, okay, Shannon, are you retiring? I don’t know what I’m going to do without you. I mean, I need to come to you for permission to spend.Shannon Ryan [: 00:38:20
I’m like, you don’t need me anymore. I’m not retiring for at least 10 to 12 years.Glenn Harper [: 00:38:24
I’m only 25. Right?Shannon Ryan [: 00:38:25
Yeah, I’m only 25. But you don’t need my permission. Like, now I’ve got to get her to the point where she has. She is asking me for permission to enjoy her money. And like, we got to get to the point where you can give yourself permission because ultimately you are. It’s your money.Glenn Harper [: 00:38:41
This is where we, the whole empowering entrepreneurs, empowering your clients. It’s telling them. It’s. They can make the decision. It’s going to be okay. You like that, don’t you?Julie Smith [: 00:38:50
I do like that. But I want to do a hard pivot because I’m just curious again, just curiosity. Use the word impact. I love that word. Is there something that impacted you? Obviously we talked about, you know, what happened at 13, what happened at 8, but something that, after college that impacted you or a mentor or someone that came along that really defined where you are today.Shannon Ryan [: 00:39:15
Yes. Yeah, yeah. There’s. There’s.Glenn Harper [: 00:39:21
You can’t say Gordon Gekko. You can’t say that.Shannon Ryan [: 00:39:25
Morning, Gekko.Glenn Harper [: 00:39:25
You can’t say that.Shannon Ryan [: 00:39:27
No, Gordon Gekko did not impact me.Glenn Harper [: 00:39:29
All right, good, good.Shannon Ryan [: 00:39:31
That taught me. Ogreen is good. He. Well down my road, thankfully, when that all came out.Glenn Harper [: 00:39:35
Yes.Shannon Ryan [: 00:39:36
You know, money during the 90s when I started, although I am only 25, but money during the 90s, when I started practicing in 1992, was. Was very different. It really was Gordon Gekko. It was, you know, you know, buy a stock, sell a stock. And, and as I said a little bit earlier, especially as a woman, I was one of the few women in MONEY at the time, meaning on the floor. There was. I. I think only there’s one other woman advisor.Shannon Ryan [: 00:40:00
And there were probably 35 of us that started at the firm that I started at. And it was the way that we had always operated, male or female, was. It was a brokerage environment. You traded stocks. You never really thought about the person. And I remember, you know, putting on the suit, keeping my hair short and trying not to. Trying to look the role. And, and all along inside of me thinking, we’re not really helping people.Shannon Ryan [: 00:40:25
I mean, we’re investing, we’re making money, but this is not what I want to do. And, and I remember really questioning myself, meaning, why do I worry about the emotion side or helping people spend money or giving it away completely flies in the face of what the industry was telling us to do as brokers at the time. And I remember it was the late 1990s, and I had clients that came in and tech stocks were just taking off. And they walked into my office and it was one of my first clients, one of my largest clients. And he was really upset that I had only gotten 37% return. He was in a balanced portfolio, and he, his neighbor had told him that he had gotten. When 37% is ridiculous team like, that’s over the top, unrealistic for a balanced portfolio. But his Neighbor had gotten 76% because he’d been in all tech companies like, I don’t know, Yahoo and that were just taking off at the time.Shannon Ryan [: 00:41:21
And they were having. And there was no book value, meaning there was no value to the company. But they were. Were trading at unreasonable levels. It didn’t make a lot of sense. And he came in and he had said to me, shannon, I. I need you to put me all in tech. And this was a defining moment in my client, in my.Shannon Ryan [: 00:41:38
And I said, I. I can’t do it. I. You are two years from retirement. That. And this was 1998. So if you all understand history and what happened in 2000, 1998, and I. That he was one of my largest clients.Shannon Ryan [: 00:41:54
I. I didn’t want to lose him. I was early in my career and I just said, I don’t understand what’s going on with the tech. I don’t know which tech company is going to evolve. We didn’t even know it was going to be Google and not Yahoo. People weren’t Googling anything at the time. Yahoo was the one that was taking off and, and the returns were so ridiculous. That was when one of the, I think it was ABC put the monkey with the dart board.Shannon Ryan [: 00:42:15
They threw the dart and said, well, the dart hit and it went, you know, bananas. And, and so he wanted me to take a diversified portfolio a couple of years from retirement and go 100% stock. And it was the first time that I said, I can’t, I can’t do that. And I’m a, you know, cfp. I can’t do that. And I. And the. And he said, well, somebody will.Shannon Ryan [: 00:42:37
And he fired me. And I remember that. And I. So in the early 2000, I moved from Washington, D.C. down to Dallas, and it was the first time I took a leadership role. And I was running Dallas for Ameriprise for their employee side. And I walked in my office and if you, if you remember, in the early 2000, the tech stock bubble with no book value burst. They made all these returns, but all of a sudden there was a significant loss of money.Shannon Ryan [: 00:43:06
And depending on what you were in, it could be up to 90%. Some of these companies went down and some of them went completely out of business. And my administrative assistant said, shannon so and so’s on the phone from Washington D.C. and it was this client. Whoa. I walked in my office and I picked up the phone and I just said, tell me, tell me you didn’t do what you said you were going to do. And he said, you begged me and I’ve been trying to find you. I owe you an apologies.Shannon Ryan [: 00:43:34
I’ve lost 78% of my investments. I. And I said, well, tell me you didn’t pull out. And he goes, I pulled out. And. And as we all recall, by the end of maybe, you know, in the early tech days, if you’d stayed and you would have been all right, you would have had to rediversify because some of those tech companies were completely gone. Yahoo never fully recovered. But he said, I don’t know when it.Shannon Ryan [: 00:43:58
Or if I’m ever going to be able to retire now. And I. I’m sorry, I owe you an apology. And I remember hanging up the phone and I sat there and I. Bald. I wasn’t. It wasn’t one of those I told you so. You should not, you know, fired me as.Shannon Ryan [: 00:44:11
It was a defining moment for me because I decided then That I would never back down again. The emotional side of money. I would never just accept it. And I, I pushed back respectfully, pretty hard on he and his wife, reminding them of their goals, what they were trying to accomplish. And then diversification was important, but I think I could have pushed back even harder. At that moment, I, that was a defining moment that I even know this. The industry was still stocks and bonds and you know, investments are king. I was going to make the human the king and that, that the human need and what they wanted and the alignment of emotions.Shannon Ryan [: 00:44:48
I was going to go there, I was going to be the emotional person. It was going to approach this from an EQ perspective versus just a iq, how, how to invest. And I’ve never looked back. Best decision I ever made. But it took me having a really difficult lesson. Losing a client and having a client, I don’t know, I could have done anything to prevent his loss.Glenn Harper [: 00:45:10
You know, it’s funny as a chick in the 90s with the big bully telling you who this is going to be and you’re like, I’m not doing that. I mean, talk about big. You know, what’s, that’s awesome. And like I said, that was your defining moment. Probably where you said, I’m not going to, I’m going to stick to my principles, stick to my, my guns. That’s, that’s awesome.Julie Smith [: 00:45:33
But I have to know. So after the conversation, you hang up the phone, you have a moment. Do you guys ever talk again?Shannon Ryan [: 00:45:40
We have not talked again till the apology. He was, he was humiliated. He was, he literally, he just said, I’ve been looking for you. And I said, well, I got transferred. He goes, no, I figured that out. He said, I treated you so horribly and all you did was try to save me from what I, what I did. And, and I, and I asked him, is there anything else? He goes, you could have done nothing else. My ego got in the way.Shannon Ryan [: 00:46:05
So he lived in such deep shame that we never, we were never. It was one of those stunning moments. I mean, I, we hung up and I just sat there just stunned. It’s one of those things in life I’ve. Yeah, it was.Glenn Harper [: 00:46:20
Is that funny? Some people would be like, I frickin told you so. And you’re just like, it hurts because, because you knew it. And you know, you just had to think that that is fantastic.Julie Smith [: 00:46:32
So I have. Well, I have a few more questions before we wrap, but one is, what are some. What’s a valuable lesson that you’ve learned? Obviously you’ve had to build teams, manage teams, lead teams, all the things. What’s a valuable lesson that you could share with our listeners? Maybe someone’s starting off, maybe they’re leading a team, they need to pivot, whatever that is. What. What could you share with them?Shannon Ryan [: 00:46:54
Wow, that’s a great question. You know, I’ve led a bunch of teams, independent big teams for financial firms, part of the Western United States, for independence. And what I’ve learned is that how we approach things, attitude, how we take care of ourselves personally, how we show up every day matters. And that we need to make sure that everyone on our team feels supported and cared about. But we also need to demand that people show up with their whole heads. And this negativity that comes into the workplace is insidious. Meaning that when you have a team and you’ve got one or two, and I call them Eeyores on the team, and you know, that bring people down, we think of it. Well, that’s just how they think.Shannon Ryan [: 00:47:41
It’s. Those are the things that can really rot a team quickly. They don’t get back to clients fast enough because, oh, it’s gray outside, you know, so making sure that you create a team that is in alignment. And, you know, I’m not a Pollyanna. Everybody has good and bad days. But. But how we think and how we approach life and how we interact with clients is defining for us as entrepreneurs. And we cannot accept less than that from the people we surround ourselves with or we compromise our businesses.Glenn Harper [: 00:48:14
So you’re saying you set the standard and the tone and lead by example?Shannon Ryan [: 00:48:19
Yes.Julie Smith [: 00:48:19
And get rid of Eeyores?Shannon Ryan [: 00:48:21
Yes, and get rid of Eeyores. Give them lots of shots. But if somebody is an Eeyore and just can’t see their way out, you can’t fix people.Glenn Harper [: 00:48:29
Nope. What’s your next final one?Julie Smith [: 00:48:32
Well, I have one final question as we wrap. I know you’re only 25 and you can laugh, but I’ve convinced my kids I’m 27.Shannon Ryan [: 00:48:42
I’ve been 27 for 30 plus years.Julie Smith [: 00:48:45
Yeah, that’s what I’m always like. Yeah, 20. It’s 27. Kids, what is your end game?Shannon Ryan [: 00:48:52
I’ve got such an exciting end game. I. My daughter is graduating in a month from business economics in Tucson at University of Arizona at the Eller School of Business there. And she is in the CFP program already, and she’s hoping to be one of the youngest women CFPs. And I’m. I hope that the next 10 years that as she comes into my practice, that I can help transition it, but my end game right now is I just published this book. I’m out speaking again. My deepest desires in the next 15 years is to take all of my knowledge and have an impact on a broader group of professionals, our industry as well as individuals, to change the way we think about money.Shannon Ryan [: 00:49:37
Meaning to take all of my experience, experience and to really have an impact on how we look at money, financial literacy, how money works, but how we think about it. So I’m, I’m hoping to have a big impact in the next 10 to 15.Glenn Harper [: 00:49:51
She’s so funny, isn’t she?Julie Smith [: 00:49:52
Well, so I wanted, I wanted. There’s lots of things to unpack there, but I can feel your passion come through. I mean, I can only see you, right? I can hear you, but I can feel it hit me with a two by four when you talk about it and the impact that you want to make. And so keep letting that fuel you.Shannon Ryan [: 00:50:11
Thank you.Julie Smith [: 00:50:13
But also I’m going to give you the end game is. There is no end game. Because someone like yourself, with that much passion in 15 years, you’re not going to stop. It doesn’t matter that you’re only going to be 40, you’re going to keep going and you can’t unlight whatever that fire is in you. So there is no end game.Glenn Harper [: 00:50:35
She took the corner of helping the clients to helping the people that help the clients. And when you reach the point where you can help the helpers, you have a better impact, a bigger impact, and that’s when you achieve that point. And how could you possibly stop when you know so much and you can help so many people? You can’t do it.Shannon Ryan [: 00:50:54
You can’t stop. I just saw Rolling Stones last year and down at the jazz festival in New Orleans and Mick Jagger at 82 hit the stage and I looked at my close friend that I was with, I’m like, see, I’m just getting started.Glenn Harper [: 00:51:10
Just getting started.Julie Smith [: 00:51:11
You are.Glenn Harper [: 00:51:11
And Mick technically is only 40, but still. Yeah.Julie Smith [: 00:51:14
And empowering entrepreneur years.Glenn Harper [: 00:51:16
That’s correct.Julie Smith [: 00:51:17
He’s great.Glenn Harper [: 00:51:18
Well, Shannon, we really, really enjoyed our conversation today. I appreciate you taking the time to jump on the show with us and I cannot wait to. For this to get out there on the waves. Can you give yourself a plug? Or how people can get a hold of you if they would feel inclined.Julie Smith [: 00:51:33
To and give a. Give something.Glenn Harper [: 00:51:34
Yeah. What you had that they might offer or want.Shannon Ryan [: 00:51:37
Thank you. My website is Shannon Ryan R Y a n@just shannon-ryan.com shannonryan.com and everything’s on there. I’ve got the TED Talk on there, my book is on there, all kinds of resources and this was a great conversation. It’s always so enjoyable. I’m going to go into the day with lots of energy when you’re talking to like minded professionals. So congratulations on what the two of you do. I listened to several of your podcasts before I jumped on and the advice you’re giving and how you interact with clients were so in alignment. And so what a joyful conversation.Shannon Ryan [: 00:52:11
Thank you.Glenn Harper [: 00:52:11
You’re very welcome. And you know, it’s funny, when I first started looking you up, I accidentally typed in Shannon Guns from Hair Nation as the DJ and I thought that might have been you. But then I’m like, wait, I spelled that wrong. So we’re just happy to have you here. And what a good time. And again, another great episode of the Empowering Entrepreneurs podcast. I’m Glenn Harper.Julie Smith [: 00:52:28
Julie Smith.
