Ana Limon

Welcome to the Wealth Gap Warriors Podcast where we dive deep into the pressing issue of wealth inequality in communities of color, cultural money beliefs, and personal finance.

Some of our families are struggling. Even people are actually homeless.

Join us as we interview inspiring individuals and organizations across the United States who are dedicated to eradicating this disparity through their creative solutions and innovative approaches.

Approach it together. Let's explore how we can build a more equitable society for all. Here's your host, Louis Barajas. Let's get into it.

Welcome back, everyone, to the Wealth Gap warriors podcast. I am really excited to share one of my a guests that's been one of my friends for the longest time, Anna Trujillo Limon. I pronounced it right. It's Anna, not Anna.

Yes.

And Solana has been a friend of mine, but I've known her through when she was an editor in chief for the FPA publication and that's the Financial Planning association publication. Then she went to the Carson Group and is. I guess you are the. What is it? You're the director of content, right. Of content for and coaching for advisor content for the Carson Group. And now you're also starting the ser that says Summit, which is. She'll give us more detail on. On that as well. But here's why I have her on, because as a Wealth Gap warrior and I constantly focus on talking about how to mitigate or eliminate or eradicate the wealth gap in in communities of color, Ana has really been involved in the Latino community, especially with Latino advisors, and she's really well connected. And I wanted to share some epiphanies she's also had today with us about what's going on with advisors, maybe with Latino communities and what we what her bird's eye view of what she thinks we can do better and how we can do better to help these communities out. And I thank you so much for, for joining us today. I really appreciate you and I'd love for you to just share a little bit of where you come from, like from where you started with your parents and kind of how you made it out of Colorado and into the big time now here with us.

Awesome. Well, thank you, Louis, for having me. I'm so honored to be here on the Wildcat warriors podcast. I just saw Janice Torres episode that just dropped recently and I'm so excited about her book and everything. So I feel like I'm really starstruck to be here. So thank you for having me. So I come from a little town in Southern Colorado called Antonito, and my mom, she Calls us Indio Hispanos. Right. So we are a very unique subset of people within the Latino community. You know, our family has been there for many generations, five generations traceable back to the sun. Louis Valley, the northern New Mexico, southern Colorado area. So it's very unique in that, you know, my family's been there since it was Mexico. And then the border kind of crossed us and, you know, with one the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, we were suddenly Americans. We're no longer Mexican. So it's an interesting culture down there. It's a very, very cool culture, very rural, lots of ranches and lots of, you know, people who work the land and just the beautiful people that I come from. So I'm very honored and grateful to be where I'm from. And my parents are both teachers. I grew up in an educational household, and I'm the youngest of four kids. So I'm the only one who's not a teacher in. In a sense. So my sister's. My sister is a teacher professor at Metro State and my brother is a teacher, a math teacher. And then my other sister, she's actually an engineer, so she's not a teacher either. But yeah, so we come from long line of education educators. And so that's kind of, you know, the. The brief CliffsNotes version of it.

Fantastic. Now, you went to school, you. You studied journalism, correct?

I did. I double majored, Yeah. I double majored in journalism and political science. So initially wanted to be like a political reporter kind of on the campaign trail, you know, writing about. About politics and stuff, but politics kind of depressing. So, you know, after I did go into. I studied journalism, political science at the University of Miami, and then I moved to New Mexico and started working at the Santa Fe New Mexican, which was a really exciting first job to have because it was. It's really neat to report on the community there in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which is one of the most beautiful cities and the most interesting cultures in, you know, the Southwest. So I really, really enjoyed that job.

Okay, so. So lead me to. Was there a moment in time where. Because I've always, since I've known you from, from the beginning, you've always had a really strong sense of community. And you love to tell. You're a storyteller, right? You love journalism, you love to write. And I saw you parents were teachers, I get that part. But what is it that. Was there something that, I don't know, it was in childhood or in high school that something happened where, you know, you mesh the two, because it seems like this is who your essence is, who you've been since I've ever known you. It's what you do now in the financial planning community with, with, with Said and, and other people that I know.

It was that something that you were just born with or, or things happen in your life where you saw community really important and to write about that.

Yeah, I think two separate things happen and then merged. I, I've been, I love to write since I was a little girl and would make up like all of these stories and play all of these characters. And my sister still teases me about my plays. My best friend Alicia and I used to put together these plays and they were horrible. They were horrible to be honest. And, and we would just be like acting out and people would be just my family, like, are they serious with this? Like they're making us sit through this horrible stuff. But, you know, so I would just write and my brother in law, he was a, he's a, he is a poet and he gave me a brother's word processor. And I just felt so fancy because it was like it was a typewriter, but it was also had a little screen on it. So I felt like I was like in the space age. And I sit in my room just writing stories on my brother's word processor. And then fast forward to when I was 15. I joined the National Hispanic Institute and it was founded by Ernesto Nieto in Texas. And it's throughout the whole country now. But I remember just feeling such a sense of community there in nhi. We kind of, we had. The Valley where I grew up in is very segregated. A lot of towns and still kind of is. Are either white or Latino and it's kind of very segregated. And so we had a school down the road that had a healthy mix of both and the NHI chapter was actually there. So we would go there and we got to know all of the Chicano students there too. And we had so much fun and we just, we'd go and compete in like extemporaneous speaking. And I just remember like that sense of pride, like all of us being together, all a bunch of nerds just nerding out all of this, you know, cool stuff. And so, I don't know, it just kind of from there the two kind of came together and it just became kind of my mission to, you know, write about the community, be part of the community, make connections within the community. And those are kind of the two roots that led to the tree that is now.

That's fantastic. And then how do you transition into writing for the Financial Planning Association? Because, I mean, we're talking about now. That's a. That's a big shift. Right. And did you have any interest in the past on finances or. Or how did that. How did that happen?

Yeah, so I always like to say that the worst times in life are always followed by the best times in life. And so back in, I think it was like, 2014, early 2014, I was laid off from my job. I was a editor at an outdoor trade publication, and they did a round of layoffs. And I remember at the time feeling like, man, I'm just so scared. I don't know what I'm going to do. And I. Finances were never my strong suit. I was not in a very. I didn't know anything about finances. Like, my sister, the engineer was always really good about finances and trying to give me advice and stuff. And so I remember the day after it happened, she kind of sat me down, she made me a budget, and she was like, well, this is how all of this stuff works in your unemployment checks, and you need to apply for them. And so it was kind of like, man, she should. She's amazing at this stuff. And so that was kind of my first introduction to. I need to take care of this type of stuff for myself. And so, you know, part of the unemployment stuff is you have to apply for jobs. You know, you have to apply for a certain number of jobs. So I applied for this job at the Financial Planning association, and I was like, I don't know anything about financial planning. So I Googled it, and quite funny enough, like, you were one of the results that came up. And I remember, like, looking at your books and stuff in the Latino Journey to Financial Greatness, which I actually bought and read cover to cover. And that was one of. That was one of my first introductions into the profession. But so I. I interviewed at the fpa and I don't know if you remember Carly Shulaka, but I always speak very highly and fondly of Carly because, like, the moment I interviewed with her, I was like, man, she's like. Like, she just. Her soul was good. You could feel it. And so she kind of, you know, I had one more interview and then they offered me the job. And it was. I. I would read the Journal of Financial Planning cover to cover those first, like, three weeks on the job. And, you know, not just because I work there, but that is one of the best publications and still is one of the best publications in the industry, like the. The Body of Knowledge and the research that was there, I didn't know. You know, I would write things down and go define them and make note cards. And so it was like such a cool learning experience experience. So it really was just happenstance that I found a job opening at the fpa and then I met someone as amazing as Carly and then it kind of. It all just worked out the way it was supposed to. And you know, you've been part of time. It was 2014, so my first, my first March of 2014 is when I started there.

Fantastic. I don't know if you know, I was actually the first minority on their national board, not the first Latino, the first minority on their national board into. From 2004 to 2006.

Oh, gosh, I didn't know that. I, I mean, I knew you were the first Latino, but wow, no trend.

You know, back then they, when you came onto the board because it was a national board and we had, I think it's almost 28, 000 members. When I was there, they told us not to bring your own agenda. And as, you know, as I came in, I came in with an agenda because back then in 2004, I realized that there were so few minorities, Latinos and blacks in the profession. And I kept telling the fpa, if we don't focus on bringing in more Latino and black financial planners, especially certified financial planners to the profession, to the fba, we would see a big fall in, in at the fpa, you know, and I know that it's not been because of that, but I think now the FPA has like around 17,000 members gone from 20 to 17,000. I had introduced them to Alpha, by the way, the very first. I was the first keynote speaker at Alpha and I brought people from the FPA and I said, this is the team, this is the group that I would love for you to collaborate with and grow.

Couldn't get them to understand the importance of, and the growth of Latinos in the United States and what an impact it would have. And here we are, right, 19% of the population being Latino. But we still have this wide, not a wealth gap, but we have a wide gap between, for example, on the CFP side, Latinos and blacks and in the profession, I think right now we've just surpassed 100,000 certified financial planners in the country. And I think we have only around 3% of them are Latinos as well. So I know that you're doing a, you have a great impact in, in that, but we'll talk about that a little bit Later, I want you to focus on right now with me. Now you're in the profession, you're starting to meet people. Are you starting to see what the profession is like, or are you just focused on creating more articles or, or for the journal? Tell, tell me exactly now how these, you know, you said, I read the first three, you know, cover journals from COVID to cover. But you're starting now to build relationships in the profession, right? Not just within the fba, but outside. And how does that happen?

Yeah, so that's a good question. I think it was both. It was concurrent. Right. Because my initial role at the journal was like an assistant editor or something, and it was. I was really in charge of the peer review process for our research. So that was really interesting because I got to serve as a liaison between people who were peer reviewing this academic research and then the academics who were submitting the research. And so kind of, you know, just facilitating that peer review process, which is very rigorous. You know, the. The journal has a very rigorous peer review process. Is. It was really. That's when I started to build a lot of relationships with a lot of the academics who, who are in the profession who are, you know, on the front lines of creating all of this research, doing all of this research. And then our peer review list was really robust, full of a lot of people who were not only professors, but we, we, we also had, like, we had a formula at the time. I don't know if it's still in place, but where it would be, you know, if it was an academic submitting the paper, it was two academics and like a practitioner who would review it. And then if it was a practitioner, it would be two practitioners and an academic. And that was just to kind of, you know, the person who was most aligned with the subject matter expertise would be the majority of the reviewers. So since that list was so robust, you know, talking to all those people, calling them up, asking them if they could, you know, review a manuscript, getting to know them and their subject matter expertise and who would be the most appropriate people to send those research manuscripts out to. That's when I started to build those relationships. And then as I moved up in the publication, starting to accept submissions, you know, for cover articles and for different types of articles, because, as you know, the journal is a hybrid publication. So part of it is peer reviewed and the other part is not. So I was able to accept a lot of those submissions for the part that was not peer reviewed. So I got to meet a lot more people that way. So that's really how I built the network is people wanting to get published in the Journal, or people I wanted to be published in the Journal, who I would reach out to and ask to submit something based on their area of expertise. And the FBA conferences, as you know, are always some of my favorite events. This is the first time I'm missing retreat Since, I think, 2016, barring the pandemic years, of course. So I was kind of bummed that I'm not a retreat this year, because that is one of my favorite FPV events. But, yeah, just connecting with the membership that way. And as you know, the membership was. Is quite large. Even. Even. Even though it's declined a little bit, still is very. A large membership organization. So that is a wealth of people you get to meet at those events. And so that's kind of how I did it.

Yeah, the retreats are fantastic. They really bring out a high caliber of people and great content as well. So now, you know, you've been in the. In the industry.

Heavily engaged in the industry. You've met a lot of people. I think it's been like, what, like nine years, I think since 2000. You said 14.

10 years.

Yep, 10 years.

10 years in March.

What is your take on the profession? What, what, what do you think since when you started to. Now.

Where do you think the profession's at? What do you see that as professionals again? You know, you're. You're kind of meeting everybody, but you're not. You're not seeing clients. You're. You're not. I don't know if you're not. I don't know if you're licensed. I. I don't have an idea. I don't think you're. You are, right, you. You tremendous colleagues, you go through events. You go like the retreat. What. Have you seen the how or how. Have you seen the profession evolve over the last decade?

Yeah, that's a great question, too. And I think the profession has evolved in that I think there's more robust standards that people are abiding to and wanting to. You know, the CFP marks, of course, have always been very distinguished, and people want to get those. I see more and more people valuing that. I see more and more consumers valuing that, too. Like, I think CFP board does a really good job with consumer outreach. And like, I listen to NPR a lot when I'm driving, and so I hear a lot of the CFP word ads. But in addition to, you know, the more robust standards that advisors and planners are holding themselves to. I think we're missing a lot of the population when it comes to advice. People either feel like they can't afford it, or people maybe. Maybe have a lot of assets but don't really know what they're looking for. There's still a lot of confusion among consumers. Like, for example, like, my siblings are doing all right, and only one of them works with the financial planner. And I have been kind of, you know, trying to spread the good gospel since I've been in the profession. Like, hey, you guys. You guys need to work with somebody, you know, and so I think that there's. There's a big gap, like, you know, the Wildcat warriors, as we're on the podcast called that. Um, there's a big gap in who we're reaching and who we're not reaching. And I think that a lot. A lot of the population is missed the way the profession in the industry is now. A lot of people who need the advice are missed. And whether it's because they can't afford it or whether it's because they don't understand it, I don't. I don't know exactly what the cause is. It just. That's how I feel. It is.

Yeah. I think that there's a big disconnect as well. And I will share with you that. I don't know, I'm still having a very hard time coming to a conclusion of what we can do to help these communities where there's a lot of poverty. And the reason for that is that the help that they need is so much. Right. And a lot of handholding and a lot of mindset shifting. And so I'm really proud of, like, my friend, like Sandra Davis has created a lot of coaching. You know, the coaching certificate, the coaching program.

Because I don't know if the financial planning industry is set up to help people in who are struggling, who are really paycheck to paycheck. Right. And I will share with you that I only think that most of the people that the industry is helping is in the top five, you know, maybe top 10% of income earners in America. I really feel that 90% are not being helped. And I will share with you at the bottom, the bottom, like maybe 60%, I think that nobody's addressing their issues. And I grew up in that community. I grew up in Boyle heights in East LA, and back in the 60s and 70s, when there was a tremendous poverty, 65% of Latinos were unbanked. I mean, no checking account, no savings account. They didn't Trust the institutions. And the only financial planners we had in the community were either an insurance agent or a realtor. And that was the cfp, that was the financial planner, or the. What I call the compadre syndrome. You would go to the person in your family that had the most amount of money. That's where you got your advice. And most of the time, you got wrong advice. Right. And so I still see a tremendous need. And then I see the. The complexity of that. I also see a lot of young Latinos coming into the profession trying to help. A lot of young black kids coming to the profession, trying to help these communities out. But they also have to be sustainable. They have to. They have to live. And so the profession, it's been really, really complicated. I'm still trying to figure that out. I know that a lot of Latinos who come from these communities want to help, and so sometimes they come to me for mentorship. And I said, but you got to be sustainable. Because the problem that we have is a lot of Latinos come in, a lot of blacks come to the profession, but they don't hang around. After a couple of years, they're gone because they're not selling fast enough for the broker dealers that they're working with, or there aren't enough RIAs to really bring them in. I'm, you know, I've been working at it forever. I mean, I have a decent staff, but it's just so hard for me to bring on more and more staff because I can't afford it. So there's. There's got to be a solution. I think that's going to happen within all of us together to do something a little different. But I think that the coaching side of it is. Is helping a lot.

Yeah, No, I. Go ahead.

Sorry, go ahead.

No, I was just going to add to that that, you know, it's a lot of systemic issues, too, that we kind of, in the industry and the profession kind of sweep under the rug. Right. Like, the poverty is for a lot of different reasons that we as a profession, we as an industry can necessarily fix on our own. So it's kind of like, well, the 60% of people, like, I come from a very, you know, low socioeconomic background. My. My community is very poor. And it's like the people are not just living paycheck to paycheck, but some of them are in dire situations where it's like.

Right.

I mean, there are things that need to be fixed systemically that we can't necessarily fix in the industry. But at the same time, when we talk about addressing, like, the majority of people in the country, we're not talking about the people who are in abject poverty a lot of the times, because, you know, what can we possibly do to fix that? And I think a lot of times we sweep that under the rug in the industry. Like, oh, well, they're beyond help. And it's like, you know, but it's like, well, that's where a lot of us come from, that place of scarcity, that place of poverty. And it's like the kids who are living, leaving the industry, who really wanted to make a difference. It's like, that's what I. And I'm speaking from just a, you know, pure. Just opinion here, but like, that kind of hopelessness. Like, man, I just wanted to help my community. And it's like, there's no way I can make a dent because of these systemic issues that I can't fix on my own, you know, so that's just another layer.

No, no. Yeah. We could talk about the server. But I agree with you that one of the problems that I have is that also sometimes in communities like the community that I grew up in, where my office used to be in Boyle Heights, right next to my office.

Was a. I mean, literally the next office over a company. I don't want to. I don't want to say which company, but an annuity company moved in, and I couldn't recruit two kids to take the CFP to come in, right. Because they can finish college. That I grew. But they had recruited all these annuity agents, all Latinos, about 40, 50 people. I can hear them. And it was a big sales. It was like a big sale. They were selling, selling, selling. I remember that one day I was in the restroom and one young kid was there, and he waited for me to come out, and he said, are you. Mr. Baraja says, yes, I'm reading your book and I gotta share with you that I'm in this company and I'm selling to all my family and friends these annuities that I'm gonna save them and. And I'm going to help them. And I had a conversation with this kid, right, with this young Latino who was licensed to do variable annuities. Annuities. And I had a deep conversation. And, you know, he really thought in his head that he was helping his community out. Annuities are, people don't know, really expensive investment products that most of the time aren't what's best for. For most people, especially people who are just starting out and. But he didn't even know that. He didn't even know he was told because his heart was in helping the community. He was not doing the right thing. But he didn't know any better. He didn't know any better. They were trying to push him on how he can become wealthy selling these products in a community that was unbanked and was really sad. And I had a conversation with him. He didn't last long. I think he was there for six months because again, if they're not selling, they don't stick around. And I tried to convince him that financial planning is not about a product and it's not even about a process. It's about helping our people. But at the end of the day, he still had to have a. He probably had a family that he had to come home and make sure he had money to pay the rent and what everything else. Right. But it was the industry that wasn't set up to help these communities. That's why I still think that there's a huge gap that unless you come from these communities, you'll never understand.

You know, and, and to this day, like I said, I still see Latinos say, well, I'm working with Latinos and then I realize that they're in a big RAA firm and I, I go into their website and I'll see that their minimum is half a million or a million dollars of vestable assets. They're helping Latinos, but they're helping the 0.0001% of Latinos. And there's just so much that. That is out there. So transitioning from there. What else now, what are some of your epiphanies of what you thought you would, you believe, what the profession was about and what you see? What epiphanies have you had along the way of what you, what you know, the profession is now?

Yeah, that's a. Oh, my goodness. So I think, you know, like, a lot of the Latinos we talked about kind of alluded to the distrust, right? The distrust of financial services and the misconception that people are, you know, out to take advantage of. Of people, the community are out to kind of just make money type of situation. Like, I had all of these different misconceptions coming in. And especially the FPA community is a really beautiful community, as you know. And like the people, the members and the membership and the, even the staff that works there, like, they're just good people who want to help the members, be better advisors and planners. And so like, that's kind of the biggest misconception. Epiphany. The epiphany that took over my misconception was that people in the financial planning profession specifically are just really good people who want to help people get better. And so they want to share the knowledge, right? It's like, and I, I do believe, and maybe this sounds a little paranoid, but I do believe that a lot of this knowledge is gate kept especially from communities of color because it's profitable to keep us uneducated and ignorant. It's profitable to keep us, you know, buying annuities that we shouldn't be buying or you know, taking out high interest loans and doing all of these things that are maybe not the best for us. It's very profitable for corporations to do that. So I think like the more independent financial planners and advisors that really want to educate their clients and really want to help them make better decisions, like that's the misconception that I've cleared up. And the epiphany that I've had is it's a lot of really good people who are trying to help.

There. There are a lot of good people. There's not enough good people. I mean, there's. That we want more, right? I mean, just seriously, there's some people that, the way I look at someone, whether I'm going to work with someone, because I know all the good and I know all the bad, I'm on the inside of the industry and I always think about like the Sandra Davis is the world. Great friends of mine, would I hire them to take care of my parents who are immigrants from Mexico, right. Who have very limited education, very limited English. And I said, do I trust them blindly to take care of. And there's so many great people out there throughout the country. In fact, to be quite honest with you, if somebody says how I became successful was because I was going to back then I pushed myself to go to a national FPA conference. And being probably one of the very few Latinos, they're probably the only one I remember I couldn't find anyone. I was looking, but I couldn't find any. But I remember that even though that most of the people there that were Latino, they were really extending and helping me out, I would go to them and I would ask them, well, I, you know, I'm working in a community of poverty, but I'm doing this, what am I doing right? What am I doing wrong? And there wasn't anyone that wasn't willing to help me or share their information with me. And that's why I got so involved on the national scale for the, for the fpa. It was a little different here in LA back then, where sometimes in a smaller group, in a smaller location, people saw you as a competitor. Sometimes it was kind of weird. But at the national, at the national level, I got the most amount of help. And in fact, one of the reasons why I wanted the FPA to meet with the, with the Alpha Group, the Association of Latinos in Personal Finance and Accounting, which is now.

It'S not finance in accounting anymore.

Professionals for America or something America.

I think it's everybody, right? That's why they're so big at this point now. But I wanted to meet with them because I went to the first couple Alpha national conferences and they were light years behind the FBA conferences, right? And I thought, wow, if we can get them together to share and share the knowledge, we could grow faster, the Alpha could grow faster and get more help. So, yeah, I just think that it's still, we need a lot of help. So then.

You get involved on. Even though you're working for the FPA and it's not a Latino organization, it's a financial plan. It's an organization for members who are financial planners.

And, but you have this love for your Latino community. You make friends with Latino community and now you start a. It's not an organization, it's not a members organization. It's called ser, which is stand, which the set is. SER is Support, Educate and Recharge. Right. It's. It's the acronym for Support, Educate and Recharge. The summit that now we're going to have on October 9th and 10th in San Diego. But give me some history from where, how, how it started and what the goals are, what you're trying to achieve with that. Give me, give us some context on that.

Yeah, so there's like kind of three different branches of the history. And the one I'll start with is, is actually we take it back to, you know, I think it was 2018 was the first diversity summit for CFP board. And I remember I had called you up and talked to you about the idea of starting an FPA Latino. Like, and you had told me your history, that you had always wanted to do something like this. You had tried it before. And so I'm like, well, I'm on the inside now. Let's see if we can make it, you know, make it happen. And so we kind of hatched a plan to talk to the then CEO at the Diversity Summit to kind of consider this idea, you know, I wrote a whole proposal about how this would help the organization grow and how it would. You know, the idea was kind of more of a member, like a resource group, like the way larger companies have employee resource groups. This was. I wanted it to be like a member resource group, but also to be similar to FPA Next Gen, which, you know, has its own board, has its own conference. And so, like, that kind. That part never really happened. It doesn't have its own board, but it is a community within the community. So I think there's almost like 100 members now. It's headed up right now by Guillermo Gutierrez. I know you know Guillermo. He's also on our set of planning committee. But the idea was just to really provide a space for the Latino members of FPA to get together, exchange ideas, find support in each other, and kind of. We had. And I think it still has, according to Guillermo, like an editorial calendar. So every month there was, like an event where people. We'd have a speaker come in, the members would come and just listen to the speaker. And we never had CE at the time, but that was kind of the seed that was planted, right? So when I left fpa, kind of never let go of that idea, like, of, let's have a conference, let's come together. And like, you know, Alpha does an amazing job, and they have an amazing community. But I think that the space for financial services professionals in particular was kind of, you know, a gap that we felt needed, especially in our niche and part of the industry needed to be kind of served. So I met Vanessa Martinez. She's the CEO of Expressive wealth, based in Chicago. I met her at a Carson conference in September of 2022. And we bonded right away because, you know, like you said, when you're at that FPA conference, you were looking for other Latinos, didn't find them. Like, that's kind of how we always are at conferences, right? And so Vanessa was on a mission to find me. And then I. And, you know, somebody introduced her to me, and we just, like, hit it off right away, and we just, like. So I'm. I'm. We're talking ideas, and we're just like, you know. So I always say that we're kind of the perfect pair because I'm. I'm like a dreamer, and Vanessa is like a doer, and so kind of came together and she's like, well, let's do it. And I was like, well, how is. You know, we started having meetings and just talking to people, and so I called up an angel conte and asked her about it, like, would you want to be part of something like this? And so she's like, it's crazy that you call me right now because I just got back from the American college. The American college has a similar event for African American advisors, Black advisors. She's like. And I felt in that room, I felt like, man, we should have something like this for Latina professionals. Like, let's do this. And so, you know, you, you came on board. Like, we had a team, I think it was, of nine people we started meeting.

And so the goal really was to provide a space for us to connect and to like, we called it said initially, like to be like, we just wanted a place to be ourselves, to go to a conference where we're not like searching and searching for another Latino or we're able to, you know, all be in the room at the same time and just share our experiences and share knowledge in a space that's culturally competent. Right? Like, it's like there's still valuable information being shared, but it's from the lens of, for us, by us type of of thing. And so that's really kind of the goal for. You know, last year was our first event. We did it FD a pre conference event at FPA's annual conference in Phoenix. And it was just, I always say that, like, the reality of it was like a thousand times better than the dream of it. And the dream of it was really good. You know what I mean? So we all were in that room and it was just like at the end of the day, Vanessa and I, we, we toasted our palomas and we're like, man, this is like, extraordinary. We have to do this again. Like, we have to come together again. So this year we're doing it again. It's going to be about three times the size. We kept it really small last year intentionally because we had a short Runway. First of all, we did lose our original space, so we had to kind of scramble. And who better to make magic than a bunch of, you know, Latino professionals? So we figured it out, made it happen in a really short amount of time, which is nothing short of a miracle. And this year we have, you know, we have a lot of really great sponsors on board already. LPL just signed on as our biggest sponsor to date. So very special shout out to LPL for the support. And so we're just anticipating a really great event this year. We're going to have a guacamole making contest and a family dinner, and it's going to Be amazing.

That's phenomenal. Yeah. I didn't make last, last year's I was actually shooting the television show called Opportunity Knocks. We're just, actually just finished second season, so. But I will be there. I will definitely be there on October. I will be there October 10th for sure. And so I'm so looking forward to it and seeing everybody that I've, you know, I know everybody that's, that's on there. It's will be great to see how big this thing will eventually get to. Right. It's not a membership organization, it's an event.

And I can only see that on the 15th year that, that centro is the biggest party. And, you know, there'll be, you know, 15,000 people there. Who knows how many we have? I know we have over 3,000 CFPs. I'd love to see everybody there. That'd be fantastic. So what do you, what, what do we have at the, at the program? Can you share anything that, you know that a little bit of the agenda of, of who's going to be speaking or what's going to happen?

Yeah. So we have, you know, Elaine King, of course, Elaine's going to talk about our, our theme this year is building generational wisdom and wealth. So we're kind of, you know, taking that approach with the different.

Speakers who are coming on board. We have Elaine King to talk about that. Building generational wealth, helping your clients build generational wealth. We have Dr. Ana Maria Lopez Caldwell. Dr. Ana Maria is a executive business coach and she works primarily with Latinos in the C suite. So she's going to come on board and talk to our executives about, you know, just different elements to consider when, especially if you're, you know, working in a larger firm or, you know, just sharing different wisdom on that forefront. And then also at Expressive wealth, they have like a chief behavioral officer. So Dr. Patricia Villarreal. She, she is a clinical psychologist who helps and she works with clients there. So we're having Dr. Ana Maria and Dr. Patricia get on stage together, Las Doctoras, and they're going to drop all kinds of wisdom about, you know, the behavioral aspect of working with clients and especially clients from a Latino background. And so we're also going to, which I'm really excited about is kind of a lunch and learn. And we're going to have Diana Yanez and Janet Larson and Alexia Gomez. And so we're going to share that generational mentoring. Right. So Janet was Diana's mentor. Diana is Alexia's mentor. And so they're going to kind of Talk about their journey and, you know, kind of encourage people to sign up with each other informally, of course, to be mentors, because I think that's a really important element. And then Freddie Garcia, he's going to talk a little bit about kind of the, the aspect of, you know, everyone can succeed in this profession. Like, you have, you just need your drive and you need, you know, like, Freddie kind of has a really cool story and so he's going to share that element and hopefully inspire like, people to stay in the profession and share his story, to inspire them to do that. So that's just a little bit of a glimpse of what we've got coming up.

That's, that's amazing. I'm so looking forward to it. Tell me what's next for you.

Are you right now at the Carson Group? You know, do you have anything special going on there? What's going on?

Yeah, yeah. So I'm still here at the Carson Group. I work with a really tremendous group of coaches, executive business coaches who work specifically with financial advisors and help them with the aspects of, you know, growth and talent development, both for themselves, for their, for their staff members. And then all the way, you know, there's a whole coaching journey that our members go through from, you know, we have something called the Industry Foundations Training Guide, which is really cool, which I'll send to you, Louis, for your, you know, younger professionals. It's a really cool guide to like, all the different definitions and acronyms and all of the things we've got going on in the industry. Explains a difference between a lot of things. Consumers specifically get a little bit confused and then a lot of guidance on things to ask your manager. So it's a really cool thing. So from the Industry Foundation's guide all the way to succession planning, our coaches really have the expertise to help advisors through their journey of firm ownership, of management, of leadership, all of that valuation, getting their valuations up when they're. They're preparing to exit. So it's a really, they're really cool people. A few of them are actually former advisors and planners who kind of made the jump. So they have that special background to really help advisors based on their own experience in, in the industry. So creating content for them is really fun. You know, I'm a ghostwriter by trade, so I get to just sit down and listen to them talk and share all of their wisdom with me, and then I get to turn it into something for them. So that's really what I enjoy doing. Focusing on said, continuing to focus on said. Of course. And, you know, we do have Carson on board as a, as a sponsor for this year's event also. So they're going to be there in attendance. Dr. Julie Raggett is coming to check out what we've got going on as that's going to be fun to kind of marry the two versions of myself in the industry and see them come together like that. So that's really, you know, what I've got going on. I, as you know, we know we follow each other on the Instagram. And Roxy, I like to keep up with your dog and my Balou. He always has crazy adventures. So just continuing to have adventures with my puppy for as long as he's on this earth. And that's really my joy and my family, of course, just hanging out with them.

That's great. That's fantastic. Well, Ana Trujillo Limon, thank you so much for being with us. You are just such a kind spirit. You're a kind soul, your salt of the earth. When people ask me about if I know you, I go, not only do I know her, she's one of the nicest people, the most giving person that I know in the industry. She's a connector. If you ever need to connect with anybody, she knows people love her to death because she's genuine, honest, transparent, and has the best heart I've ever seen in this community. So I want to share with you that I love you to death. I speak highly of you. I'm hoping that this next event is a huge event. Please let everyone know how they can either get a hold of you or go to the website to sign up for the event.

Absolutely. And, and before I do that, Louis, I love you and I appreciate the trails that you've blazed in this profession for the rest of us. So just to put that out there before, thank you again for everything you've done for this profession and for me in particular. And as far as said, we are@ersummits.com we are very active on LinkedIn. We share a lot of, you know, we have a. We call them the Ser Power lunches. And so we do them through this platform Streamyard also. And it's. They're really fun, you know. So if you're. You're interested, follow us on LinkedIn. We have those every month. We have a monthly, sometimes we have them a few extra times a month. Vanessa and I will actually be at Edge next week to do a few interviews. One with Elaine, Elaine King also. So, yes, definitely. Sersaments.com and then follow us on LinkedIn at Ser Latina Advisors Summit. And it's the symbol for Latina.

Fantastic. Thank you so much and great luck again. I'll be there and I'll talk to you soon. I'm looking forward to seeing you in person.

Awesome. See you soon. Thank you for having me.

Thank you for listening to the Wealth Gap warriors podcast. We hope you enjoyed today's episode. I love the show, guys. You're awesome.

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