I Lost My Condo": How This Financial Planner Went from Thousands in Debt to Millions in Revenue

You're making a lot of money and you're spending a lot of money. Your bank balance is high at the beginning of the month and then it's gone by the end of the month. What is going on? Well, we are going to find out today on the Scale or Fail show. Welcome to the Scale or Fail show. I am Alyson Maslin, your host. I am also a business growth mentor and I love highlighting amazing business experts advisors so that you can make the path just a little bit easier. This cross crazy roller coaster we call business. And today I have an unbelievable expert, actually a dear friend. And she is Hilary Hendershot, the founder of Hendershot Wealth Management, a leading financial advisory firm for women where her mission is to motivate women and their loved ones to be financially empowered. I don't know about you, but I'd like to be financially empowered. So with more than 30 television appearances, she's considered the go to finance expert in Silicon Valley for NBC where they have nicknamed her the Investor's voice of Reason. We could all use a voice of reason. She's a TEDx speaker and has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, NBC, abc, Fox, Daily Worth, Forbes and Investopedia. She she was recognized as a top 40 under 40 entrepreneur in Silicon Valley. And in 2018, Investopedia named her one of the top 100 most influential advisors in the U.S. wow. Hilary also hosts Profit Boss Radio and I got to be on her show long time ago. It's an amazing show you've got to tune into. It is a weekly podcast where she and her guests offer inspiration and actionable advice to support women in their financial journey. So Hilary, we are finally getting you on the show.

Thank you so much. It's so wonderful to still be connected. And you know your interview on Profit Boss Radio, I still hear great things about it and so I'm just so happy to be able to contribute to your audience.

I'm really glad you're here. And so you have really a unique, I mean you hear financial advisors all of the time and they give good advice. But what I feel really differentiates you besides that you are super savvy, super smart and just a straight shooter. You say it like it is, but you also really work with women on their mindset, not just what to invest. And so, but before we get into that, can you just tell us a little of your backstory? How did you get into this work?

Sure. So it's kind of a three part and I'm going to do it super quick. We can dig into any piece that you like. But essentially in my mid-20s, my father mentored me, started mentoring me into his business, which was an independent financial planning firm. So I saw around me his clients were in their 60s and 70s. We were helping them manage complex investment portfolios. I look around me, all my colleagues, everyone. I see that around me who's doing what I do looks like my father. Okay? So I think I'm the wrong age and the wrong gender. I had a lot of insecurity and a lot of thinking like, this isn't the right place for me. I was getting the picture, though, that financial planning really is about people. And at the same time, I started realizing, you know what? I'm good at the stock market, I'm good at this technical bit, But I actually have all this credit card debt that I can't seem to pay off. I can't quite figure it out. So I actually had kind of a rock bottom moment. I had to give up the BMW. I lost a condo. And I said to myself, this is not how it's going. So I became an expert on money psychology and behavioral finance. I dug myself back out of debt. I paid off the credit card balances, rebuilt the retirement savings accounts. Now I run a very profitable business that's all women owned and operated. But along the way, I said to myself, if I can figure this out, if I can make this process easy, understand, elegant for people, I bet I could really bring value to people, especially women. So then, to be truthful, Alison, at that point, you brought me into an all women mastermind group. So it was at your. Your invitation. And that's where I learned what it is to be part of the community of women, supporting women. And it touched me. It really moved me. And I realized, well, Hilary, you. When you go look for a doctor, you want to be. You want to go to see a female doctor, well, there had better be women out there that want to sit across the table from a female financial advisor and coach. So I was kind of off to the races at that point and at this point built a pretty robust offering around it. But those are really the three, I would say, most important deciding factors when it comes to how I got where I am.

Well, it's been just so exciting to see you really flourish.

Thanks.

Also have you speak at my event and all that good stuff, so.

What an honor.

Yeah, that was just so much fun. And you've helped so many people and continue to continue to. And so why do you feel that, you know, you've got so many women out there, they're working really hard, whether it's in their career or their business. And they have a stable income, but still often end up in debt. What's going on?

So three major things I think are hindering us. First, especially as women, it's not. It's taboo to talk about money. So I don't know what my friends are doing with their money. I don't know what other people are doing with their money that's successful. So I have no one to emulate. Okay. Communication is what differentiates us from the apes. The second thing is really a misunderstanding or a lack of acknowledgment of the importance of mindset and how we think what we believe to be true about money. And then the third is just that a lot of people think that making money has to do with earning it, bringing it in. And we forget that preserving wealth, building it, saving it, and growing it is a very separate skill set. So, for example, you've heard of lottery winners who receive hundreds of millions of dollars, then they lose it.

All.

Right. And that really is. They end up worse off than they were before. Yeah. And that's a function of. They brought in the money, but they didn't have the skill set to keep it. So I think there's a lot of things stacked up against us. And if that's you, if you're in that place right now, it's understandable. Right. There's a number of factors stacked up against you, and so it's all right and you can transform it.

So what are the biggest roadblocks when this is happening and they're not effectively handling saving, investing their money, what's going on?

Well, life is expensive. We're all incentivized by ads and messages to spend a lot of money on maybe things that don't make a big difference. But honestly, spending money is okay as long as it's an investment in your future. I think that ultimately one of the biggest roadblocks is that a lack of understanding. Understanding about money. So women say, we say to ourselves, oh, I'm not good at math. And so therefore, we just decide we're not going to take action in our financial life. We delegate it to our husband, or worse, our father. Right. That as we're coming into our own, I say finances are the last frontier of feminism. It's like we're making strides in the boardroom. But even those executives, trust me, some of them are still broke because they're spending everything that's coming in. So it's time for you to start building up money in your own accounts that are in your name and keeping. Getting insistent about keeping that money for yourself.

Yeah. You know, in my. In my past marriage that I'm since divorced now, I've been with my husband for several years. But in that marriage, going through the divorce, I ended up with nothing. I mean, like zero. And I remember just feeling, hilary, I will never be in this situation again. You know, as bad as it was like yours, it was a big wake up call for me. And I thought, no matter what, I want a great relationship, but I want to be able to stand on my own. Right. And have the finances and not worry about that again.

And that really is a necessary step to achieving financial freedom, is making that decision to be financially free. And not every, every woman has to get to a moment where she says, never again. But it sounds like you had your moment, I had mine. And I was like, I'm never going to be in this position again. This is. I have no choice. I have no dignity, I have no freedom. I have no. It's like if you don't have enough money, there's so much in life that you can't do and can't be. So I. It really is time for us to take it seriously. And money deserves attention and time and resources in your life. And it's just like anything. If you garden, if you sow the soil and take care of, nourish that area of your life, it will grow and take care of you.

Yeah. Power of intention, for sure. And so let's talk about the mindset a little bit that is such a big part of this. How does that play into this?

So I'll just give you an example from my life. So when I. So first of all, you need to understand money is very conceptual. It's very hard for a child to understand money. And what the neuropsychologists and money behavior experts already know is that for many of the areas of life that are most conceptual, money. Excuse me, your language or your beliefs rule the day. Beliefs exist in language, Right. So you have a money operating system or a money mindset that you made up as a child. You decided, what is this weird thing called money that people keep talking about? My parents keep fighting about, my mom keeps crying about. Right. Someone said to you something like, money doesn't grow on trees, and you decided there's never enough money. That was my story, okay? My story is not the only story. There's other money operating systems, like money is the root of all evil or there's always enough money. And you know, there's probably 10 common ones. And this was the subject of my, my TEDx talk actually. And, and then that strongly held belief becomes a network of strongly held beliefs in your life. And so you're just going to manifest whatever that is to be true. So now counterintuitively, and this is where it gets a little kind of funny to look at because when I believed that there was never enough money. Well, I graduated from college, I'm a recruiter in Silicon Valley in the height of the dot com boom. So I'm making six figures almost instantly while I' maybe making 120 and I'm spending 130.

Right.

And the reason I'm spending all that money is because when the money comes in, oh, I got $6,000, my paycheck is six grand. Right. Well that's enough money. So now to manifest there's not enough money, I have to spend it all, I can't save it, I can't keep it, I have to get rid of it and fast. Because this contradicts my, my strongly held belief. So the human brain doesn't like cognitive dissonance. And I know that that's kind of, it's frustrating, hard to understand, but that really is what overspenders do.

Yeah, you know, it is interesting. It's like we create the scenario that we believe to make ourselves true. You know, that's right. Just like sabotage, like dating.

If I think all men are jerks, surprise, guess who I'm gonna date. I'm gonna find myself wildly attracted to married men.

I had that too. Mine was at the abandoned, therefore I would attract guys that were non committal. So yeah, it's crazy what we do to ourselves, you know, but the key is then the awareness. Right. And being aware of it. And I know this is what you, you help women do and it's, it's truly life changing. And you have a step by step program that you help people to shift these thoughts, beliefs, behaviors.

Can you talk? I do. So literally after I was done transforming my own financial life, I looked back and said, okay, how can I make this very simple, very understandable for people? And I came up with seven steps. And what I say is that all these seven steps are critical and necessary in order to achieve financial freedom to have financial peace of mind. And any one of them dropped out can actually ruin the entire picture. So we actually already talked about the first step and that's decide. So you really have to decide to be wealthy to achieve financial freedom and the second step is Speak. So we did actually talk about speak. That's your money operating system. What are you saying about money? We've all said or heard our friends say really destructive or disempowered things about money. The number one thing is, I can't afford that. Right. What you're saying when you say, I can't afford that is money is more powerful than me.

Right.

You get to take responsibility. You don't have to buy everything, but you can just say, not gonna buy that. I'm not interested in that. It's not coming out of my bank account and going to yours.

Right.

But the other thing is, if you. If you really want it, if. And that's something you're really committed to is like, wow, let me go figure out how I'm gonna get the money for that. That's an empowered thing to say. You don't have to have the money today, but, gosh, there are a million things you can do to make money. Right. And so it really is a mindset of being empowered about money. And for most people, we've never even looked at, what do we say about money? So take an inventory. What are you saying to yourself and other people about money? Most people don't talk much about money, so you're probably talking mostly to yourself and then your spouse. And hopefully you're not saying terrible things to your spouse about money. But unfortunately, a lot of couples do fight about money.

Yeah. I think it is the number one topic that couples fight about. So. Yeah.

Yeah. And that's one of the. Sorry, that's a whole other.

That would be a whole other show. That's a whole other show. We won't go down that road. But, yeah, I think it's. You know, all of those things are really crucial. And, you know, our brain is wired for survival. Right. So it's a tendency is to go there. So you really have to work on that, be aware of that. You know what I mean? And you probably have no idea how many times that you're going towards those, you know, survival or poverty consciousness.

Yeah. Even. Even in my own business right now, you know, I just surpassed seven figures in revenue. And I told a colleague of mine, that's all that's possible. I'm done. I have a strongly held belief that bringing more in means me working harder. And as you know, Allison, you know, my daughter has a chronic illness right now. And so there's just a lot happening in my life. I'm not willing to give more time. And that person said to me, Are you sure? Are you sure more money means more work, you know, and it's like, oh, well, I guess that doesn't necessarily have to be true. I don't have to do all the work. So, yeah, we all have thoughts about how big it can be, how much we can earn. And ultimately, especially if you're an entrepreneur, the world is your oyster. I mean, look at Richard Branson, right? He makes a million times more than me, but he doesn't work a million times more than me.

Oh, no. Oh, no. And I got an opportunity to talk with him. Oh, my gosh, that was such a gift. Such a gift. What an incredible guy.

Well, I knew you would associate yourself with people like him. You're just so right there. That's who you are in my mind.

Thank you. That definitely is a compliment. So, well, what does it look like when women really do make the shifts around money? When they really put energy into saying, okay, enough is enough. I'm going to make a change here. What have you seen?

Let me give you a couple examples from clients that I've worked with. Okay, so the first one, and all these names have been changed to protect the innocent, to protect people's security. But so let's say Danica. Now she, when she came into my program, she was earning about $400,000 a year as a real estate agent here in Silicon Valley. So that's a big number. But now Danica had a strongly. She had a story about herself and surviving a divorce. Okay, she, she had been through a terrible divorce that left her with $300,000 of credit card debt. And she had created this story about herself with her friends and colleagues of being this mother who was a survivor. And she was always surviving this divorce. She literally lived in free living situations on people's couches and in someone's in law cottage for 10 years with her high school age children. So she's an absolute hero. Okay. And when she came into the program, what I pointed out to her is, Danica, you're actually living in something that happened 10 years ago. And yes, you're a survivor, and that's better than having let this kill you off. But the survivor is always 10ft from the summit. You can never reach your goals as long as this is your narrative about who you are in the world. And she got it. The light bulb went on. She went around to all of her friends and family and said, look at, she even named herself Danica 1.0 and Danica 2.0. She said, say goodbye to 1.0 because I am now Danica 2.0. And she said, I am going to win the money game. I'm committed to peace of mind. I'm committed to taking care of myself and then others. I'm not committed to being in debt to the IRS anymore. Right. So really, for her, it all started with the second step, which is speak, right? What is she saying about herself and money? And, you know, we dug into her finances and helped her identify what her overhead is. We helped her plan for her upcoming commission. So we had a dashboard for her to show her what money was coming in. We insisted that she save money for her tax bill. We had her paying estimated quarterlies we created. She funded a $90,000 curveball account, emergency savings during the program that she used to come into our meetings, our mastermind groups, and she would dance in. She goes, ladies, I don't even have time to be here. She goes, it's a Saturday. I got four open houses. She said, I have more listings and I know what to do with. And it all started as soon as she started transforming who she was in people's listening, right? So she ended the program with almost $900,000 in income. And that really is all just out of transforming who she was for herself and other people, because the money just started flowing in, right?

Yeah. That's incredible. I love it.

It was a great story. And then I'll tell you a story about a couple of engineers who was. They had 400,000 DOL income and $300,000 in credit card debt. Okay. So now this touches on the couples issue that you and I kind of touched on, which is that people who are married argue about money a lot. And, you know, they were saving in their. In their retirement savings accounts, but every month they would just pay off the credit cards, pay off a certain amount, and then next month they would have the debt right back again. And so what we did with them was we looked at, well, what the heck is going on here? And when it got right down to it, you know, it turns out he actually had some artistic talents that he fel were not being self expressed. And so he was buying photography equipment, musical equipment to. To actualize this part of his being. Right? And every time she saw him spend, she got resentful and she would tighten her own belt, but she couldn't tighten it enough. And when she said to him, stop buying all this stuff, all he heard her say was, I don't want you to be a fully expressed human being. Right.

Wow.

It was a miscommunication. So we Got them on the same page. And we showed him that he can have everything he wants if he just waits. Right. You can't buy it every month. How about every three months? Right. But we gave them a spending plan, and by the end of the program, you know, they. They both said, first of all, they had paid off $77,000 in credit card debt in just six months. Seven months. And. And they both said to me, I mean, our marriage is better. We're on track to save for the kids, for their son's college. They said, this is more transformational than we knew it could be. And it really is. Just going through these seven steps to wealth, there's no magic. We just go through all the seven steps with people.

Yeah. It's such a gift, though. It really is a gift. Isn't it crazy that money is such a massive part of our life, but there really is no money? Education in school, it kind of. It makes zero sense, you know, public.

Education, I think that's a whole. That's a whole. That's a whole book.

Yeah, it is. Yeah. So where can someone start, I mean, besides doing your program? We're going to give people information on that. But what would be the first, you know, couple steps people could do right now?

Well, at the end of this conversation, I'll offer a link to a white paper they could read about the program. You can go listen to episode 77 of Profit Boss Radio, which is called the Seven Steps to Wealth. So you can go through all these seven steps in detail. I think the first two, if you want action items, is literally take an inventory of the things that you say and believe about money. Get really honest. Maybe do it in a group. Right? So you play some music, burn a candle, maybe drink a glass of wine. I don't know. I don't do wine when I do numbers, but I hear people say that. So it's okay if you drink one and then once you really have this inventory, like take a look at it. Is that what you want to manifest in your financial life? Are you committed to that reality? And if not, then at least take a at look, draw, drop, not draw a picture, but create your new story. And I'm not saying that just simply stating that out loud one time is going to make the difference, but it will at least get you to the point where you're honest about what's been going on and you have a vision, a goal in mind.

Right.

And then the second step, I would say, is very, very practical. Literally Download your last 90 days of Bank Statements. Take a look at what you're actually spending on and begin to assess, you know, is this aligned with my values, is what I'm committed to. Oh, if you're a business owner, please make sure you have a separate business account. Your business revenue flows into a separate account. And then as soon as possible, as you get up and running, you're earning high income as a business owner. You're creating consistent income in your personal account. You've got to protect your mind space. You need to have a very consistent personal financial life.

Yeah, yeah, that's a big lesson. And then, you know, all of a sudden, that first time that you owe a decent amount of taxes, you know, that's a massive wake up call.

So, oh, my gosh, put 25% of everything you make into a separate account. You will just. It's such a different life to not have financial emergencies. You know, it's April 10th right now. My property taxes are due today, and my husband and I have a lot going on. He called me up yesterday, he said our property taxes are due, and I was able to write an $11,000 check just because we've been planning for that. You know what I mean? And in the past, that would have been a showstopper for me.

So, yeah, yeah, that's, you know, and it isn't like you're saying it really is about planning. It isn't necessarily working harder. It truly is just being smarter and being better to yourself. So all of this is so, so helpful. It's a great reminder to me as well. You know, our company is, is growing so much. And, you know, it's been interesting in our business too, because, you know, we've had to learn to get budgets for each of the departments of our business, which is a really cool thing to do because it empowers the people in those departments to know, okay, this is your budget. Spend what you feel you need, but also really tracking expenses in your business. We talk about this with our clients all the time. Because even if you're doing well, if you don't watch it even for a month or two, man, it can just. It goes so fast.

I know what we do is we.

Compare it to what we've been doing is comparing like this month to the month, the year before, the same month, and then the couple months before on expenses so that you really can try to get a handle on them. But yeah, so some businesses are seasonal.

So you're gonna have predictable ups and downs in terms of maybe it's January or summer or the holidays. Where you do a lot of business. And so, you know, if you track that year over year, you're gonna be able to predict that and plan for it and also not be upset if you have down months. And it's like, oh, no, these are actually our seasonal months. You could take a vacation that month instead of sitting and worrying what's wrong with your sales and marketing. Yeah.

Yes, we've all been there. Well, this is fantastic. So let's give some links. You mentioned a white paper, so where we'll get that.

Great. So what we did was we wrote a very detailed white paper about the results of last year's 50k wealth multiplier program. You can get a lot of actionable steps from this white paper. Head over to 50k wealth multiplier dot com. So the number 5, 0, then k wealthmultiplier dot com. The white paper is there right at the top. And then if you want to apply to be part of this year's one cohort of the coaching program, the application is right there on that page as well.

Fantastic. I love it. And people, is there a website people can go to and just read more about you?

Yeah, it's just hillaryhendershot.com and Hillary has one L and Hendershot has two T's.

Perfect. Perfect. Well, this is great. It's been wonderful hanging out with you, Hilary. You are just, you know, definitely creating your own trail here and so, so needed. So thank you for the work that you're doing and I can't wait for everybody to learn more about you and download the paper, do your program, and get their wealth in order. Awesome.

Thanks, Alison.

Abundant. All right, thank you all for being with us today on the scale or fail show. And if you are watching this, you can also listen to the audio on itunes. We are on all platforms where they host podcasts. Until next time, get out there and elevate yourself because you are worth it. Bye, everybody.

Bye.

Bye.

People always talk about they want to be part of seven figure companies. I'm now part of seven, eight, and nine figure companies. I've been introduced to some of the largest corporations, Fortune 500 companies, and it's with Alison's help. She's kind of expanded my horizons and my capabilities. And I think that's the most important thing where she expands. She makes, you know, what you can do and be successful at that.

Being with Alison and being able to learn who to hire and why to hire and how to develop a passionate, creative, inspired team was really, really important for me because I needed to shift some energy in my business. And I feel like with her help.

I've really done that.

Pinnacle helped me grow my company to where at the point a year ago, I made a million more than I did at this point last year. So I really wanted to break that ceiling. I've hit that ceiling for several years in a row and Pinnacle has helped me do that by implementing the thought. It's actually just a thought process and how you view your company and how you view what you're doing. I think a lot of us entrepreneurs are hard on ourselves and are hard on our companies when it's not that we should, shouldn't be that way. So I think it's just looking at things a little bit differently, putting into practice the systems that she teaches us. For example, if you want an example, putting people in place to where I want my business to be at in two, three years. So I've got people right now in place. And it's wild. It's just like it's all the work is coming in and we're in place and we're not stressed out and it's just amazing. It's just an amazing place to be.

What I love about most about being in the Pinnacle is constant access to support. So whether it be my mastermind group or the recorded resources that Alison has produced for us, or the constantly cutting edge information that's coming to us on social media, Facebook ads, how to conduct webinars, you name it, we have a resource for it.

So since joining Pinnacle, we've added 12 new positions to the company. We've increased revenue about 43%. We've increased profit by 111% this year. More importantly, I've gotten out of some roles that I was in, like QA manager. And some of the marketing things that I was doing are now outsourced or not outsourced, insourced to a team member. And I've really focused in on running the business instead of letting it run me. Coaching opportunities as out there and a lot of times I'm a little bit suspicious. It's kind of a sales job, you know, are they, are they in it for themselves? Are they in it for me? And at no time have I ever felt with Pinnacol that my best interest was not number one priority. And it's truly an organization and not just Alison and the coaches, but everyone there. It's a coming from a place of giving and working for mutual benefit. A lot of sharing going on and that's a great team to work with.

Right off the bat, I laid a foundation for my coaching practice and I increased my prices and within one week I had signed two high paying clients that had basically paid for my coaching program with Alison. And since then my income has doubled every single month.

It's been tremendous, but being a part of the community has been the greatest asset. I've been so fortunate and blessed to befriend so many other amazing entrepreneurs who I learn from on a regular basis who always have my back. Like minded people that I surround myself with and, and the environment is so positive. I just cannot speak highly enough of it and I am always compelled to share it with everyone I know. I feel it is the biggest gift to introduce and share this opportunity to connect with this kind of community, with everybody that I know.

Don't be the company. Like I was being in business for over 12 years, looking back and saying, what did I do in the last 10 years? Do it now. Now is all we have. We don't have the past and we don't have the future. All we have is now. I've been in business for 21 years now and I've worked with a number of business coaches and I watched Alison for four years and the results that her clients had when they worked with her and I finally decided this is the next coach that I'm going to hire because she is the real deal. She is available to her people. She absolutely cares deeply about each and every individual and the success of their business. And you know what, we have to in business take risks. And sometimes taking risk is hiring that new coach. This is a risk worth taking.

There is nothing like it. I can't even explain what the opportunity.

And the learning that comes with Pinnacle. Don't even think about it. Because if you think about it, and.

That'S the number one thing that will.

Hold you back, just do it.

You won't regret it.

You just need to do it. I mean, you have to stop being on the fence. You have to get off.

The fence is boring. The fence is. Honestly, I was on the fence for, oh gosh, I was on the fence.

For maybe two years and it was.

A horrible fence to sit on.

I hated the fence because the fence kept me stuck.

And it was when I finally jumped off the fence that my business skyrocketed.