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1. Stepping Into the Unknown: Launching 'Planning and Beyond' with Ashley Quamme · Planning & Beyond® - Where financial planning meets human understanding

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Planning and Beyond Podcast.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: I am your host, Ashley Kwame.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Well, here we are, my friends, the first episode of the first season.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: I gotta be honest with you, there's a lot going on for me emotionally.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Hearing myself say the first of the first, it uh definitely brings up and stirs up quite the emotions there.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you've heard your own first of the first type of experience, and you can relate to all the feelings that go into that.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: The anticipation, the anxiety, the excitement, the worry, all of that just kind of sitting inside, bubbling up.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: It reminds me of the Disney movie Tangled.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a Disney fan.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if that's a deal breaker here for our relationship, but the movie is about the story really of Rapunzel.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a scene where Rapunzel finally, after almost 18 years, she makes it out of her tower.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's a thing that she's been waiting for.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: The anticipation around it is just palpable.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: She climbs out of the tower on her hair, obviously, right?
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: And as her feet are touching the grass for the first time, you see her light up with joy.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: And there's this realization really that comes together around the thing that I've wanted for so long is finally here.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: And you watch as the scene unfolds.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: She's overcome with excitement, with joy.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: And seconds later, then she's also overcome with anxiety, fear, and doubt.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a lot like that moment for me.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: That's what this experience really is: being with you here, the first of the first.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: This is so amazing.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: I can't wait to do this.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: And simultaneously, oh my gosh, what if this is terrible?
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: The freak out moments, right?
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not freaking out, so you know, hear me.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: But it's a culmination of just a lot of different feelings all here coming together for one experience.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: All right, so you're probably wondering by this point.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: I get it, this chick likes Disney, but what else is she about?
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: And what is this podcast really for?
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm glad that you thought that.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm glad that you thought that, not because I want to sit here and give you a 15-minute spiel on my resume, which I'll be honest, is probably way outdated by this point, but because I know that in order to have a good relationship, it requires vulnerability on both ends.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe you don't think about listening to podcasts as having a relationship with the host, but I definitely think about doing this, sitting on this side of the microphone and having a relationship with you.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: And in order to make a relationship work, it requires vulnerability.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: It requires some give.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: And if I'm going to sit here and ask that you listen in, that you digest the content that we talk about every other week, that you share your thoughts, maybe through email, that you ask questions, that you engage, then I need to also be willing to be vulnerable myself and give a little bit along the way.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: I've been a therapist for close to 15 years now, primarily focused in the couples space.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: And in many ways, being a therapist has been part of my identity.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you can relate as a financial advisor.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you feel that that role is also a part of your identity.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's who I am.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: But for the last five years, I've really struggled with that identity piece, the who am I?
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not just talking about as a wife, as a mom, as a sister, as a daughter, but professionally, like, where is my identity?
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: And is that what I want it to be wrapped up in?
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so I've struggled with the identity of being, quote, just a therapist, sitting in the trenches with clients week after week, six hours a day, five days a week.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: There's an emotional and mental load that comes along with that.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: For any of you advisors who maybe practice uh surge meetings, right, those intense times where you're just doing client meetings.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's in the fall, maybe in the spring, maybe both.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: You may have the experience of doing multiple meetings in one day.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: And the toll that that can really take, sitting there listening to clients intently, trying to serve them well, right?
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: It takes a toll on you.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: What led me to the mental health space was the desire and passion to be impactful.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I hadn't really connected the dots there so much.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: I thought, oh, I wanted to be a therapist.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: But as I stepped back and really kind of looked at what is it from an identity place that I want, I realized that I could be impactful in other ways of just being a therapist.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: That no matter what it was, as far as the how piece, as long as I was being impactful, that's really what mattered most to me.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to impact lives.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to impact systems.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: So I ventured out into the unknown parts of financial services and began to reimagine how I could be impactful, how I could take all of my skill sets, my clinical experience, my knowledge.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: How can I bring that to the financial services space?
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: How can I be impactful for advisors, for firms, for clients?
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: I landed on the offering of fractional financial behavior officer.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: And the work that I do for firms and serving in this role has been incredibly rewarding, incredibly rewarding.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: I've loved it.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: But because there's usually a but, right?
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, that's not a shock.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: I felt like I could do more.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: I felt like I wanted to do more.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I started to think about how else I can be impactful on maybe a larger scale.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: I've wanted to podcast for a number of years now.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: My husband Clayton, who is a financial planner, you will probably hear me talking about him.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: We had a vision of actually doing a podcast prior to COVID, maybe 2018.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately, with life and business, COVID and kids, all the stuff, right?
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: Podcasting never came to fruition for us.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: But it was always there, like on my mind, as some sort of professional bucket list item for me.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I've always thought one day I'd like to do that.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: One day I'd like to be impactful in that way.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: Some of what has always been appealing to me about podcasting really is the learning and social aspect.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: It offers a medium through which you can meet and learn from so many cool people.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: Whether you're on the listener side or on the host side, you get access to somebody's world, somebody's brain, somebody's thoughts.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I just think and have always thought that it's so cool.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: And not to give it all away up front, because I know that that's not a smart thing to do.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: But season one is full of not only some really cool people, but people who are significantly changing the landscape of the financial services industry.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: They are making an impact, helping advisors, helping clients.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: And they're doing it in ways that really align with a lot of the things that I've come to value and respect.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: When I sat down to craft out the vision for this show, Planning and Beyond, I'll be honest, I had kind of put the cart before the horse.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you've done that before with a few things, right?
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: You get excited about something and you want to take action and you want to dive in.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I started to think about and think through all the ways that, you know, this was going to be great.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, the obvious to me, of course, was sitting down and creating a list.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: And no lie had a list of 50 people that I wanted to, that I wanted to talk to, that I wanted to share a conversation with and learn from.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: I can say it was very arrogant thought.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: I thought that I came up with this list, and there we go.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm done.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: I just got to talk to these people, and that will be it, right?
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and I know that that was very arrogant because there's a lot more that goes into podcasting.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: In the space and time in between, making that list and really starting to take action and other ways of making this come to fruition.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: There's a question that started to come up for me.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: What's it all for?
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: What do I really want for this show?
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: And who do I want to serve?
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I started thinking about that question a lot more.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: And when I sat with it a little bit longer, I realized that the show isn't for me.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's not.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: This show, Planning and Beyond, is not for me.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's for you.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's for all of you.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's for you as the advisor.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's for you as the husband or wife.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's for you as the dad, as the mom.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's for you as a human.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's all for you.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: My vision for planning and beyond is that it becomes your resource.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: It becomes your guide for not only becoming a better advisor for your clients, but also a better human.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to be the best version of you, which is why every episode is not only full of insights and great conversation, and maybe sometimes I'm funny and crack a joke.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, but it's also full of practical takeaways, things that you can begin to implement with your clients, with your business, and even for yourself.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: Look, I know that after 15 years being in the mental health space, I know that when practitioners, and you are as an advisor, you're a practitioner, when practitioners take care of themselves, they show up as better practitioners for their clients.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so while, yes, the show is about deepening your relationship with clients, increasing engagement, understanding how to have a more human first onboarding process, gaining better communication skills.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's about it's about all of that.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: But it's also about you becoming a better you.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's about planning and beyond.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: There's no one else I'd rather be on this journey with than you.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: As you grow and learn, episode after episode, I invite you to reach out and keep me in the loop, like friends do.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: Keep me posted on your own learning and growing journey.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: I invite you to reach out.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: Let me know.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: I want to know how are you really?
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: This is a space where both of us can be vulnerable.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: Both of us can learn and both of us can grow together.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm glad you're here.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time.