Debra Brennan Tagg: Challenges and Opportunities for Women in Finance

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Welcome to Barron's The Way Forward. I'm Greg Bartolis, and my special guest is Deborah Brennan Tagg, president of Dallas-based BFS Advisory Group. Today we'll be discussing how women can use their natural strengths to turn challenges into advantages. Welcome to the podcast.

Thank you. I'm very happy to be here.

Thank you so much for joining. Before we dig into the topic at hand, tell us a little about your career, how you got into it, and how you, you know, arrived at BFS.

Great. So my dad started Brennan Financial Services back in 1983, and I joined the firm in 1998. My brother and my sister were already advisors there, and I worked with him and with the two of them for many years. We ran it as a family-based firm. And then in 2017, Dad passed away, and we decided at that time it was a good idea for all of us to break up and run our own companies. We did that for all sorts of really good reasons. And so I founded my firm at that time, really in 2018, and I went out on my own. I'm a CFP. And so we established BFS Advisory Group as a financial planning-led wealth management firm.

Okay. And tell us about your practice today, who you serve, etc.

Sure. So our sweet spot is the $2 to $20 million in investment management clients, mainly because of the complexity of what they are dealing with and the kinds of people that they are. They generally tend to be people that have either are running a business and have sold a business, or they're highly paid executives, tend to have complex financial planning issues to deal with, but are really wonderful clients, very appreciative of us, and we have a really great relationship with them. They are smart people who need strategic people to help them with their financial planning, and they just feel like they're not as confident with their decisions as they would like to be. So that really is the, the main type of client that we deal with. The team is 9 people, so we have 2 CFPs, and we have one who is gaining his CFP soon. We have a portfolio analyst, and then we have administrative staff.

Now let's talk about the subject. Tell us first about the, the current situation in terms of what, what's happening with women in terms of wealth and paint the picture first, and then we'll dig into challenges and opportunities.

So I've been in the industry for 25 years now, and I turned 50 a few years ago, and I looked back at my career and I thought, we're serving really great clients with this really great team. We're well known in the community, but we really haven't seen anything change with the way that women show up in our industry. And the older that I got, the more success how successful my friends got, as you can imagine. And so they would come to me and say, you know, what is going on with your industry? There are just not that many women. There aren't people that we feel like we can trust. And, you know, maybe we don't have a wealth manager or we're having trouble finding one. And so it occurred to me that we have this pervasive issue, and obviously the data are all around us that this is pervasive and really hasn't changed very much despite, I think, a lot of really well-intentioned efforts to try to change it. And so we looked into what's going on, and a lot of it has to do with the fact that there are just there are not as many women in wealth management as there are men. I think there are a lot of wonderful men in wealth management. However, women are just not as representative in wealth management, and therefore female clients may not feel as comfortable coming to wealth management as maybe a male client would say, hey, there's somebody there that, that can identify with me, that I can identify with, that I can trust.

And what do you trace a primary reason for that? Because I know this topic's been talked about for a while. I mean, I don't want to put words into your mouth, but tell me, what do you think is behind that?

Well, what tends to be frustrating to me is all the material that is around in wealth management that, in my opinion, tells women that they're going to fail. So we can all acknowledge the fact that there's a fairly significant wage gap that's obviously well documented and is improving a little bit, but is not at the place that women need to be to say that there's real parity in comparable compensation. And so obviously we look at that and we would say, okay, they're not making as much money, so they're not going to be as financially productive as men because they're not going to have as much money to be able to put away. If you look at a lot of materials in wealth management that have to do with women and their financial planning, it's how they fail against men as opposed to these are just the issues that women deal with and how they can be successful in their financial planning. So it's that you're not going to have as much money, you're going to live longer, you're going to live by yourself. You're going to take time off to be with family, so you may have some gaps in your career having to do with advancement and just the compensation you would get during that time period. So all these reasons that women are not going to be as successful as men. And truthfully, if there's any industry that says, gosh, you're just not going to be as successful, women are probably not going— anybody would not be as attracted to that industry as someone says, hey, come on in and we can help you to be successful.

Right. I mean, that's really interesting because it almost becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy then. If you hear it enough, then people might be like, oh, that's par for the course or expected. So it may reduce the initiative or the likelihood that, you know, hey, let's meet this challenge head on. So tell us a little more about what, you know, women can do in the aggregate. Or, I mean, you've talked about how these are obviously headwinds, but that you can create opportunity from this.

Yes. And I think that the biggest thing is for women to understand that there is a wage gap, which is a natural fact. That's a fairly substantial barrier. So then thinking about ways that you can combat that. So one of the easiest ways is to start your financial planning early. So the earlier that you can start and have the market working in your behalf, you know, for your benefit, the better use you can make of your own money. So a male and a female, if both of them, one starts at age 25 and one doesn't start until age 40, if they're making the same amount of money, obviously the one starts at 25 will be better off. I would say that even one's making less money at the age of 25 is going to be substantially better off than someone who's making more money but doesn't start until 40 because you've lost all that time.

Compounding, yeah.

Right, that the market can be working for you. So to start early, and I would say just don't accept the statistics. There's all this kind of foregone conclusion, "Oh, women are going to make less than men." Let's make sure that doesn't happen. The way to do that is to negotiate on your own behalf. We have talked about this for years in our firm and have even had events where we've taught women how to negotiate. If women know what they are worth and they fight for it and they say, this is the opportunity that I want financially or a benefit that I want in my job or a career step, I do think that women can start to move the needle on their own and that will then give them the means that they need to have an equally successful financial plan for men. So I think negotiation is a big deal.

And to that point, I hope you don't mind me saying the following, but there's a wonderful YouTube video.

Is there?

There is. And it happens to have you in it. And it happens to have you talking about negotiating. And no, it's really great. It's very powerful and it's great. There's a lot of wisdom in there. I highly recommend it to anyone who's interested. Just type in Deborah's name and negotiating or negotiations and you'll find it quickly. So you have the issue of negotiating. You have when do you start investing in terms of the wage gap? What else do you think is at play? Is there a hierarchy of what's the biggest challenge or it's hard to discern exactly?

Well, I think a lot of it, like you were talking about the self-fulfilling prophecy, there's this whole conversation that keeps going on that women don't take as much risk as men. I think that when you look at the data, that's been pretty soundly refuted, but women hear that. So it's sort of, "Oh, well, women don't take as much risk as men. I wonder if maybe I shouldn't take as much risk as men because I don't understand the stock market." If you take the proper amount of risk aligned to your goals, so I'm not encouraging anybody to take more risk than they feel comfortable with or than would be appropriate for their goals, but if you take the proper amount of risk, especially thinking back, you know, a 25-year-old who puts money into a stock fund and lets it sit for 50 years or 40 years or whatever the number is, as opposed to putting it in savings, that is going to be a wildly different result for that person when they go to retire. So making sure that you are working with somebody who can guide you the point that you are taking risk in the right places and that you're taking enough risk to be able to, again, take all the benefits of the stock market and that you will realize that that has nothing to do with wage gap. It has nothing to do with somebody who's going to pay you a certain amount of money. That works the same for everybody. So making sure that women are investing enough so that they get the ability to be able to benefit from that the same way that everybody else does.

Yeah, I mean, it's such a simple but remarkable truth. I mean, if you even put in like $2,000 and someone's born, put it into VTI ETF or an index fund and you just put in $2,000 a year or leave it. Yeah. This over time, that'll just really blossom into something. I do want to mention on negotiations. What's interesting is you gave an anecdote about someone who felt they were deserving of a higher pay and like, oh, I deserve so much more. But you talk about the importance of getting the data, getting the facts. Marshaling the facts to make your case and being really clear about what you want. And just tell me a little more about that.

So the data is really important because if you just walk into your boss and you say, hey, I want more money, they're going to feel like that's off-putting. They're going to think that there's a kind of a schism in the relationship that they didn't know was there before. But if you say, this is what I want, this is what I believe that I can bring to the table, and this is why I want it, then if they happen to say no, then you have the ability and say to them, "Okay, why did you say no, and what do I then need to go do?" So it's all about knowing all of the data. So, you know, if you're going to get— if raises are given out in, say, January, you can't walk in December 15th and say, "I'd like to have a conversation," because the budget is done, the decisions are made, all that's already happened. So you want to make sure that you are doing all of your research ahead of time, find out who's making the decisions, find out how they're making the decisions, Find out if you can how much other people are being paid who may be your same gender, may not be your same gender. Forget about all that. Just how much is everybody else getting paid in your position? Also, maybe outside of the industry that you're working in. So let's say that you're not industry-specific, like somebody who works in maybe on an administrative team or in a marketing position. You can do that in many different industries. Are you getting paid what you are worth? And again, All this goes back to your financial plan. So the idea is not just, I want to get paid more just because. You have financial goals. You have things that you want to achieve in your life. So if you're saying, well, gosh, I want to be able to do these things, invest money for my kids, go on vacation, be able to retire and so on, feel good and feel financially independent, you have these goals, you might as well go do the research to make sure that you are getting all the opportunity that you can for what you can bring to the table for your employer.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think just again, being specific about the terms, I would like this by this if I do A, B, and C, and here's why. And just bringing all that to the table makes you, you know, very credible and very serious. And if they say no, to your point, you could ask, well, what do we need to do to get there? And if they're like, it's unworkable, then at least you're not getting the answer you want, but you have clarity and that'll help you decide whether you should move on or not.

Right. And that is one of the things, you know, one of the tidbits that we were taught is, you know, no is just the beginning of yes. So if somebody says no, it's not okay. You know, the answer to no is, well, why not? What can I fix? What can I go do? How can I get to yes? If you believe that I'm a good worker and I want to bring something to the table for this company, let's figure out how we can do this together so that I feel like I'm being fairly compensated for what I'm bringing to the table. And so really understanding why you were asking that question and then, like you're saying, being ready to move on. So If they're your financial goals and it's just, no, no, no, you're not going to be able to meet those needs here, well then it is time to go look for another position.

Right. And if you do, they can't pretend to be surprised. It's like, well, the employer will understand. Like, okay, yes, there's a context. Yeah.

Well, the other thing that I will say is the more we talk about negotiation, the more men will come up to me and go, can you teach us that too? So I don't think it's necessarily that women don't know how to negotiate. I think that women need to sharpen their negotiation. Negotiation and to understand that because we have this wage gap that is acknowledged across many industries, our industry being one of the worst with the biggest wage gap, biggest wage gap, we do need to understand that in order to get where we want to go so that we are not part of reinforcing that statistic, we do have to learn negotiation skills so that when we walk into that conversation that we're going to feel like we won.

Sure. And now acknowledging that there are great negotiators who are women and great who are men. Absolutely. So are you comfortable generalizing to say one is better than the other, or is that—

No, I don't think that they are better at all. I think, in fact, one of the key components to effective negotiation is to exude empathy and to be truly an empathic person. And so what you are looking for is to understand why is that other person saying no? What are they trying to achieve? And is there a goal where we can come together? And and they're happy and I'm happy and we've all achieved something. Empathy is obviously something that is wildly assumed to females on a regular basis. There are plenty of men who have a high amount of empathy, but that is very much a female characteristic. So I think that negotiation is commonly seen as something that needs to be confrontational. I personally don't think that it needs to be confrontational. I think that it's, again, it's the, you know, having a goal, knowing your facts, and then saying, am I going to accept this answer or not?

Right, and I think a great example of that is like, I mean, it's aligning interests. So if you, let's say the employee wants to earn more money and the employer naturally wants to save money, right? So it seems like, it seems on the surface like a zero-sum game, like it's a tug of war, someone's going to win. But if you can structure terms, let's say whereby you can say, hey, if I can save the company 10% in the next fiscal year, then can I get such and such a raise? Then it could be a win-win. So if you understand what's motivating the employer, then you both— then it need not be confrontational, really.

Right. I agree. And I think that sometimes, you know, I've heard this from friends of mine who will say, you know, I don't really have a lot of experience negotiating. And you think, okay, but you have a spouse, you have children, you have— you run a business, you've got a team, you know, you've got all these things. You probably are much better at negotiating than you realize. And it's just being very intentional about bringing all those capabilities together.

No, absolutely. So That's true. I'll just say though, but you know that it's still really, really uncomfortable and it's got to be scary and awkward, if not scary sometimes, for people to do that too. Even if the facts are on their side, it's still admittedly like, oh, no one wants to do that, right? Go to the boss and ask for more money. It's like, ooh. But do you have any advice for people like that who really struggle maybe with that aspect of how they can overcome it? Like, is it just more about keeping your eye on the prize and just knowing this is the right thing to do, even if there's momentary discomfort or something?

Well, so there's the whole idea of anchoring in negotiation. And so the idea is, you know, like an anchor on a boat, you throw the anchor over and it's sort of that becomes the base of the conversation.

That's the key point. Yes.

So what I would suggest that people do is just to throw, even if it's a little anchor, just enough to start the conversation. So if they're very nervous about having a big intimidating discussion with the boss than to at least say, I'm interested in moving up and I would like to be able to be compensated when I do move up. Can you tell me how I can do that?

I think it's a great idea. Yeah, that's like a low stress way to just plant this, put the idea out there, but without— Yeah.

And that way they are telling you, here's how to succeed. And then when you go do those things and say, okay, I've done those things, now am I ready to move up? It's a much more— you've already sort of assumed the close.

Yeah.

And they have helped you figure out how to get to this place that you want to get to.

Excellent. Okay, that's really good advice. A significant number of your clients are female business owners. Is that right?

Mm-hmm.

Tell me about their challenges, how you help them, what advisors need to know that may not be readily known, etc.

Well, I think a lot of business owners face a lot of the same issues. So business owners are very busy. They've got lots of people pulling on them in all sorts of different directions. A lot of people talk about the fact that they want to sell sell, for the percentage of people that talk about selling versus the number of people that actually successfully sell, the numbers are wildly different. And so it is very challenging, I think, for almost every business owner to have a really successful outcome as far as selling a business. I would back up and say that a couple of additional issues that women have are really focused around funding. So there's a lot of funding that is happening right now in all sorts of companies. Obviously, private equity is behind all sorts of, you know, growth in many, many, many different industries. It's really extraordinary the difference between the percentage of money that goes to all female firms. So when you look at the money that is supporting in private equity and funding in VC in particular, the number is something around 2% that goes to all female teams versus about 86% that goes to all male teams. And so there's a lot in between, but those numbers are stark.

Can you unpack that a little more, share observations or thoughts on that? I mean, because that is a striking number.

It is a really striking number. I think that the issue is, and I guess in backing that up, what I would say is women don't have less successful outcomes with businesses. Going back to the idea of do women take enough risk, what I have found, and I would say this is anecdotally just in my career, that women take an appropriate amount of risk assigned to something. So they want to understand the risk, they wanna know why they're taking it, and they wanna say, okay, I am clear on why I'm taking this risk and there's a result that I'm expecting, not just take risk to take risk. So I, that's why I think that women tend to sometimes have better investment outcomes because they're really clear on the amount of risk that they're taking. And I would say the same thing in business. So a business owner, if you know that you're not going to have as much capital available to you, you're going to have to grow your business a different way. So you're either going to have to bootstrap it on your own, you have to do family and friends, you're going to have to really use internal cash flows to be able to reinvest into your company. And I think that that becomes a little more exhausting. So I have not done the research to be able to support this, but my thought is that that probably encourages female business owners to want to exit a little bit sooner than if they thought, okay, I have a business that's valued at $10 million. If I had an influx of cash, I could get to $20 million. That's a different story than I'm just going to have to keep grinding this out until I get to $20 million. And who knows when that's going to happen? So I do. I think that there is an opportunity in in the world of private investing to be able to fund more female business owners. And I think that it would be a wild game changer if more female business owners had the funding available and new sources that they could go to so that they could expand and grow.

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Other firms.

Are there any specific actionable ideas or sources or things that you might recommend for people like that?

Do you mean for the people who are funding or for the business owners?

For the business owners.

I think for the business owners, I mean, I have never sought funding, so we're totally, I just own the company and we don't have any debt or anything. So I have never sought funding outside, but For my friends who have sought funding, they have said that it's just knocking on door after door after door, and I think it goes back to some of the lessons of negotiation. So if you have this goal, I want to grow my business, I know to grow my business, I need this kind of funding, no matter how many times the answer might be no, you have to keep knocking. You have to keep asking for more, asking for a connection. Okay, you can't fund me, do you know somebody who does fund, who could possibly fund me? So I think where we are right now It's thinking about that. I think even more importantly, it's assessing your own financial planning situation. So thinking about the line between your own personal financial plan and your business plan and where are you going to get the cash flow from. So let's say that you have a big idea, but you need to be able to fund it with cash. Are you willing to use some of your own personal assets to be able to fund that? If not, you have to fund it from the cash flow of the company. And making decisions around the direction of the company based on those parameters.

That's a really important decision and presumably a challenging one to know because you, you know, are you really gonna go all in and how much of your personal wealth do you wanna put into business? And if you're not sure, is it even worth doing, right? I mean, so how does someone in that situation help decide what the right thing to do is?

There are definitely advisors for people like this. So I would say we always talk internally about you have to have your guys. I say that in quotes, just meaning, you know, you have to have the professionals around you that are going to be able to help you to get to the place that you need to get to. So I would say most business owners, they need to have a financial advisor, a CPA, a business attorney, and maybe they have a value advisor, but that's kind of next level. So if you're thinking about selling or growing, which is a very common question for business owners, then you really need to have the next level of people come in. That's where you have to have a value advisor, you would start to have a different kind of CPA. You would get evaluation done on your company and really get a very clear look at where you are now. And then to start asking the question, where do I want to be? And am I okay with the work it's going to take to get there? So it might be— and we've gone through this conversation many times with our clients, you know, I can— I'm— I have X number of dollars right now. I'm happy with my lifestyle. I really don't need more, but I know that if I worked for another 5 years or if I grew the company to this, or if I got to sell it for that, it would change my life. Do I want that lifestyle enough to put in all of the work and the stress and possibly the financial risk in order to get there? And I think it's a really, really valuable conversation. We have had this conversation with business owners where they say, wait a minute, I can get to this other number and potentially sell it for 2 times, 3 times, 1.5 times, a significant amount more than what I'm thinking right now. And that would allow me to leave a larger legacy, do more philanthropic giving, do some really intentional strategic philanthropy that I want to do, teach more, you know, more lessons to my kids about money, give money away during my lifetime. There are all sorts of things that people get motivated for to, to be able to put in that extra work. But every business owner knows it's a lot of work. So it's a question of where are you right now? And then what resources do you have to get there? I think based on the very stark numbers around VC funding for female-owned versus male-owned companies, women don't currently look to outside funding as, oh, that's a source I can really consider. It's almost like if I get that, wow, that would be such a surprise and what a great benefit, but it's not something that women can look to right now as a source that they can count on.

There's a real parallel here, what you're describing about asking the business owner, you know, what would you like? And then kind of reverse engineering what it takes to get from point A to point B, which is what, you know, an advisor would ask basically any client, like, what's your dream? What's your vision? Where do you want to be in 20 years? What's the cost? And then you just kind of reverse engineer it. So there's very much very much creating that map of what will it take to get from here to there. Very different situation, obviously, but there is that element of having a path of sorts.

There is. I think that the part that's hard for a business owner is that you know your business better than anything else. Nobody else is going to know it as well as you do. And for most business owners, it represents 70 to 80% of their net worth. So it's a really big deal whether it stays the same, whether it fails, whether it succeeds wildly. Money. And so if you are a worker at a company and can ask someone for a raise, there's money there to be able to answer, yes, we can give you that raise. As a business owner, you really don't know. You are, you are always— every day is a new day. You can have a plan in place, you can have strategy, you can have dependable, repeatable income, but at the same time, you don't know what is around the corner. You don't know if a new strategy is going to work. And so I think that it's a different level of risk that you have to consider If you are a person who's creating a financial plan or working with somebody on your financial plan and you own a business, it is a different situation. That negotiation is not as sure as it could be. No, 100%.

Totally different. If you're not getting a paycheck every 2 weeks, for sure, that's pretty much the same amount. It's a very different dynamic. And I'd imagine another material factor is that if you're just an employee at a big company, let's say you're just one person of many, But if it's your baby, you know, there's a lot of emotion and ego understandably invested. It's your thing. And does that, or, you know, maybe affect your judgment? If you're getting a check every 2 weeks, you might be a little more hard-nosed and pragmatic, but when it's your dream and everything, how do you ensure that you're really looking at the numbers in a hard-nosed way, right? And trying to, and I guess an advisor would definitely be helpful on that level because they bring some more objectivity to the situation.

Yeah, and I do think that, you know, women business owners, again, there's nothing between a female business owner and a male business owner that's any different. They're gonna run things slightly differently, just like anybody would run a company differently. I don't think that that's really gender-specific. The really big issue is the funding that they have available to them. And I think that with all business owners, the exit is very difficult. It's very emotional. It's very, you know, we're coming up to the end, your life is about to change. You need many, many advisors around you that you may not have. They may not have known before. And so for anybody who is a business owner, that's very challenging. I think with female business owners, because they don't have the funding to be able to get them to a place, you know, when you get funding, you're trying to get to a goal. The people who fund you are trying to get to a goal, and you as the business owner, you're trying to get to a goal. And there's kind of a natural exit. You know, we're going to get this much money in, we're going to grow it to this, and then, gosh, we're going to sell it. Right. I don't think there's as much of that with female business owners because they don't have that influx of money. And so it is a different motivation. You start to think about selling your company when you feel like either you can't do anything more with it, somebody else can, or you're tired.

Right. There's less context. I mean, with like private equity, it's more like, okay, there's a, the clock's ticking.

Yes.

There's a timeline. There's a, you know, a period when we're, a deal will probably happen to exit. Yeah. Yeah.

That's right.

Yeah, exactly. And you mentioned, read that 42% of all businesses are owned by women, but the, the all-female teams, you referred to this, the funding was like digits or something last year.

Right. And it feels to me like just a deep blue ocean of opportunities there, because if so much money is going to male-owned companies and 42% of companies are owned by women, the world is missing a great opportunity there to be able to go fund those businesses. And I truly— I've had many, many conversations about this. I truly don't know what the root of that is. I don't know if it's it's just a lack of understanding. I do know that there's much more due diligence time given to female business owners.

For investment. Yeah, the investment committees and then the spending, the term sheets, etc. All of that is a lot longer for women, which, yeah.

It is, which just sounds like, you know, just to be honest, it sounds like they just don't trust them the same way. They don't trust that because they're putting more due diligence into it and more requirements and check-the-box things that they have to go through. And so it doesn't sound like we have as much confidence in you you as we do in the male business owners. There's, there, I just don't believe that that is borne out in facts. I, I don't believe that there's a factual reason for that other than, um, there's just not as much experience funding women to see that they have been successful, that the outcome has been successful. I think whoever figures that out and starts doing that, that's when we'll see a real change in that part of the industry.

Tell me what else is important about the exit gap and, you know, that you can mention that might not be, you know, self-evident to advisors?

To advisors or—

Well, both, either, either both. Yeah, whatever you think is most relevant here.

I think, you know, there's this huge number of business owners that are looking to exit in the next 10 years. It is an enormous opportunity. I don't necessarily know that our industry is totally ready for that. It is one of those situations because you need so many advisors around somebody to have them really exit very, very well. Sell and to have the maximum exit that they can. I don't think that our industry is ready for it, but we could be in a hurry if we really understood what it looks like to do that. So it is a matrix of advisors that are needed to go around a business owner. So like I was saying, it depends on where you are in the process. If you're in the beginning of the process, a basic CPA, an advisor, a business attorney, those are probably good people to get started with, if you say, I'm really interested in looking at what, what this means and can I get myself to a place where I'm going to be ready to exit, then you need another layer of people around you. And it might even include a psychologist to help you understand what does life look like after an exit, a valuation expert, and so on. You know, one of the key items in any business is to always be thinking, am I growing or am I ready to sell? Even if you don't want to sell in the next 10 years, if you are thinking you want to sell at some point, it will help to make your business better. So it is a good thing to start this on the earlier side. And then as you start to move through these stages, they don't feel so foreign, they don't feel so unexpected. And then eventually when you get to the point you say, I'm ready to sell, you're going to need a business broker or an M&A consultant or an ESOP consultant, whatever method it is. And then that's a whole, whole new group of attorneys that get pulled into it and new set of experts. And I don't think that business owners in general have a good understanding of all of this. And quite frankly, if women are not being funded at the level of men where they're being, you know, infused with both capital and ideas, because obviously, you know, VC money and private equity money comes with resources as well. So if women don't have the experience at large of being funded in this way, they may also not understand that this is a whole runway that they need to go down. And there are many steps through getting from I'm running this business and I'm happy with it to I've sold it for the maximum amount that I can sell it for.

Absolutely. I mean, you see, people don't know what they don't know. Is that so evident? It just manifests itself pretty much everywhere. And yeah, the more you can be aware of that and the sooner you can start thinking about it, the better, you know, likely outcome.

That's right.

Yeah. And now you'd mentioned earlier the importance of persistence and knocking on doors, but also at the very beginning we talked about, you know, the importance of women tapping into their natural strengths and finding— Tell me a little about that, about the more resourceful aspect or being creative and trying to not just see a headwind or a problem and then maybe being disenchanted or deterred by something, but instead being emboldened and tackling something. Just tell me a little more about that idea?

So I was on a panel one time. This is many years ago, so it's fairly dated, but I was on a panel with two other men. And the topic was what women want from financial advisors. So it was super funny that there were three of us and only one was a woman.

I'm sure. Yeah, anyway.

And behind me on the screen was, there was bullet points of these are the things that you should do to be able to work with women and feel comfortable doing it. And one of them was to, and this is not a joke, to have Kleenex in the room because they tend to get emotional when they start talking about their families, and to make sure to ask about their families because women love to tell stories about their families, and to leave an extra 20 minutes in the meeting because women like to talk about their families so much. So for me, that was a little challenging to sit on a panel where those were the recommendations, because that's not what it's about. So I would say women are family-focused. They are friend-focused. They are well-resourced. They will share information about all sorts of things. The stories that women share with each other about childbirth, and I will just leave it at that, are extraordinary. Strangers will talk to each other about those things. Women will share all sorts of resources, conversations, ways to succeed with each other, and that is a natural strength that women have. Women are not going to say, "Oh, it doesn't matter what the performance is." They're not going to avoid talking about data. They're not going to avoid talking about cash flow. They're not going to avoid talking about the value of their business. They want all of those things just the same as men. So I think that that's where there's a bit of a disconnect in our industry that maybe they think women are not as interested in it or just don't participate in it as much. That is wildly different amongst generations also. So I think that that might be true of an older generation, is no longer true of this generation. This generation, and by this generation I mean the current women who are coming up, and I'm 52, I would say women my age and younger are very much involved in their money and their financial plans and so on. I think it goes back to the idea of I want to know what the purpose is. So women do want to say, you know, I'm running this business. It takes a lot of my time, a lot of my energy. I've got this team. I'm always on. Do I want to keep doing do I want to keep doing this? Or do I not want to keep doing this? So if I want to keep doing this, and I can see, well, gosh, I could grow it, we could, you know, satisfy our customers better, I could build a better team, and that's really satisfying, or I could sell it for more money. If women have a purpose, I think that they are much more likely to keep having the conversations, opening the doors until they get to where they want to get to. I think that where— and then they also might have the opposite where they would say, I really, I'm kind of done with the business. I don't want to run the business anymore. And now it's just time for me to get out. And I want to do that as as gracefully as possible. So I don't think that it really is a male/female thing as much. We have, I think that our industry acts like women naturally just don't do as well with their financial planning. You see that in many, many marketing pieces. However, I do think that women have these natural capabilities that if we just say, we're going to ignore the data. We see the data about wage gap. We see the data about women not getting funded at the same level, but I don't want to be one of those statistics. I want to be as successful as than my male counterpart, and I don't see any reason for that statistic to have any bearing on my performance in my life. And if women just say, I'm going to tap into all my resources, I think it's much easier for us to overcome these sort of challenges that our industry has laid out before us.

That's great advice. Well, we're almost out of time. Is there anything that you want to add that we haven't talked about yet?

The only other piece I would add to it is that whenever we get into these conversations, it always feels like we're kind of knee-deep in all these generalizations. And there are plenty of men and women who behave in entirely different ways than what we've talked about. So really, I think in everybody dealing with wealth management, it is the idea of are you getting to where you want to be with your money? Is, is your money supporting what you want to do with your life, with your lifestyle, with your goals, with your financial independence, reducing risk in your life, all of those things. And if not, to make sure that you do have a plan and that you are earnest and intentional about achieving those goals through negotiation and all the other means that we talked about. About.

Okay. Well, that sounds like a fantastic place to wrap it up. Thank you so much for joining.

Thank you for having me.

My pleasure. My guest has been Deborah Brennan Tagg. For more podcasts and the latest wealth management news, visit barons.com/advisor, and please check out The Way Forward: Next Generation, a new podcast hosted by Allison Tucci that puts the spotlight on the emerging leaders who are shaping the future of financial For The Way Forward, I'm Greg Bartellis.

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