Women's Money Wisdom

Episode 261: Shifting Identities for Women Including Career and Motherhood with Hannah Moore, CFP®

• Melissa Joy, CFP® • Season 4 • Episode 261

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Ever wondered how to balance your career ambitions while thriving as a dedicated mom?

In this empowering episode, we’re diving deep into the balancing act of career ambitions and motherhood with an honest, heartfelt conversation about redefining success on your own terms. Melissa Joy, CFP® is joined by the inspiring Hannah Moore, CFP®—a dynamic leader, entrepreneur, and dedicated mom—who shares her journey of embracing multiple roles while staying true to herself.

Whether you’re navigating the complexities of the corporate world, building your own business, or managing family life, this episode offers practical strategies and transformative insights to help you thrive in every aspect of your life.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

✨ Embracing Multifaceted Identities: Discover how integrating your roles as a professional, entrepreneur, and mom can empower you both at home and in the workplace.
✨ Navigating Real-Life Challenges: Hear authentic stories of the struggles and successes that come with balancing career and family.
✨ Prioritizing Self-Care: Gain actionable tips for carving out time for yourself amid the daily chaos.
✨ The Power of Support: Learn why asking for help, setting boundaries, and delegating responsibilities are essential to sustainable success.
✨ Redefining Success: Explore how to challenge societal expectations and create a definition of success that truly resonates with your core values.

Tune in for an episode filled with inspiration, actionable advice, and a celebration of the incredible journey of modern womanhood. Join us now and step into a life that celebrates every facet of who you are!

The previous presentation by PEARL PLANNING was intended for general information purposes only. No portion of the presentation serves as the receipt of, or as a substitute for, personalized investment advice from PEARL PLANNING or any other investment professional of your choosing. Different types of investments involve varying degrees of risk, and it should not be assumed that future performance of any specific investment or investment strategy, or any non-investment related or planning services, discussion or content, will be profitable, be suitable for your portfolio or individual situation, or prove successful. Neither PEARL PLANNING’s investment adviser registration status, nor any amount of prior experience or success, should be construed that a certain level of results or satisfaction will be achieved if PEARL PLANNING is engaged, or continues to be engaged, to provide investment advisory services. PEARL PLANNING is neither a law firm nor accounting firm, and no portion of its services should be construed as legal or accounting advice. No portion of the video content should be construed by a client or prospective client as a guarantee that he/she will experience a certain level of results if PEARL PLANNING is engaged, or continues to be engaged, to provide investment advisory services. A copy of PEARL PLANNING’s current written disclosure Brochure discussing our advisory services and fees is available upon request or at https:...

Melissa Joy:

Welcome to the Women's Money Wisdom Podcast. I'm Melissa Joy, a certified financial planner and the founder of Pearl Planning. My goal is to help you streamline and organize your finances, navigate big money decisions with confidence and be strategic in order to grow your wealth. As a woman, you work hard for your money and I'm here to help you make the most of it. Now let's get into the show. And I'm here to help you make the most of it. Now let's get into the show. Just a quick note before we dive in the information that we share is meant to educate and inspire, not serve as personalized financial advice. Everyone's situation is unique, so be sure to consult with your own financial professional for guidance that fits your life. And just so you know, the opinions shared in this podcast are my own and those of my guests, and they don't necessarily represent those of any organizations that I'm affiliated with. For more important disclosures, please go to our webpage at pearlplancom. Now let's get started. It's time for a career conversation. Today on the Women's Money Wisdom Podcast, I was talking with a friend, our guest today, hannah Moore, who is a certified financial planner and really a rock star in our profession, and we were discussing our identities in work, in life, especially as a woman and a career-focused woman, what that means over time. And so I think if you are someone who is in touch with yourself, your identity, your career, this is a conversation you want to listen to. Hannah, welcome to the podcast. Yeah, so thank you so much for having me, melissa. I kind of skipped over the intro because I'm so excited for this conversation. But just before we get started, you founded Guiding Wealth. Actually, we've got a couple of ventures. Can you just give us a thumbnail sketch of what you do and who you do it for? Yes, early in my career I bought a financial planning practice. It's evolved over the years and so I have kind of a boutique wealth management firm where I'm still meeting with clients on a weekly basis wealth management firm where I'm still meeting with clients on a weekly basis. I also have Amplified Planning, which is we run a summer internship type program. It's called the externship. We've had over 4,000 people go through that program.

Hannah Moore :

I have a huge passion for helping new and aspiring financial planners come into the space. Well, it was such a challenge for me getting in here and nobody should have to do that. It shouldn't be hard for anyone. So we have a number of different training programs for firms to help train their employees. For people who want to do just month-to-month training and coaching, we have a program for that. And then also our big signature one is the externship that people know us for.

Hannah Moore :

I am also a wife and a mom to a six-year-old, a three-year-old and a two-year-old, so my life is a little crazy some days. Yeah, that's a lot to take on. You're such an inspiration. I have had interns go through your program. I'm a huge, just proponent of amplified planning and it takes a special person to turn your passion and you know kind of purpose, where you see a need, into something that is scalable. So, hannah, congratulations on your success.

Hannah Moore :

But let's talk about what's going on behind the scenes. That's what I want to really dive into today. Because when I see friends like you who are entrepreneurs, who are taking things on, who are also, you know you're living your life. So you've got the kids in the car, the car seats in the you know expanding vehicle, all that stuff, often navigating relationships as well, and then you know building your career. When I see those friends and we're like, even if we don't know each other, well, how's it going. Like there's the message you see on LinkedIn, you know when you get your next award, and then there's the reality behind the scenes, and so that's the real real we want to talk about today. I love it. So you've you know, when we were discussing this program, we could have gone into a lot of technical financial planning details. I love it being a mom in the workplace. What expectations you have for you know, maternity leave, um, uh, having space to be a parent, having space to be successful, but also space to kind of scrape your knee.

Hannah Moore :

Um, that intertwines with this identity and career discussion, although we're not only speaking to mothers. Um, can you tell me how your identity has shifted through different phases of your life or career, and it doesn't have to start with one or the other, but I often find that there's some rhyming there. Yeah, no, absolutely, and I think this is you know. I think this idea of identity is so central. Um, you know, there's a lot of people that talk about goals and I've always struggled with putting out like goals in my business or various things, and because it's who I want to be, right, like, this is about values, it's like I want to be this type of person, and so I think for me it's. I think identity it's not. Values are a little bit different, but it's such a driver for everything. And I think about even the last few years, how my identity has shifted.

Hannah Moore :

You know it was I am a financial planner and it's a core piece to my identity and I'm a wife, right, and what was so fascinating to me? I had so much fear and anxiety built up around how to be a mom in the workplace, because I didn't want some of the things that I saw. I didn't want the grind, I didn't want to have to pick, I didn't want to have to sacrifice my family for my career. I didn't want those things. And so when I became a mom, it was like this, this like new identity popped up and I was like how do I do this, right? How can I be a mom and a financial planner and a business owner and a thought leader in you know, somebody who'd be like there's a wife, right, that matters too, and all of these things kind of navigating through there, and I felt like I had to jump between them. I felt like I was like oh, I'm this and that, I'm this and that at different times.

Hannah Moore :

And what's been really interesting is just seeing where I'm at now. It's I've really integrated a lot of these identities of being like I am a working mom who is a good mom, and I'm a good business owner and my work doesn't control my life. And I think that really starts from how you view yourself. And I've seen I've had my identity shifts. I've gone from I'm a bad mom because I'm not spending every minute with my kids right, my mom was a stay at home mom. In my mind, to be a good mom meant to be a stay-at-home mom. It went from I'm not this to like, so like I'm a bad mom, to be like hey, no, actually I'm a good mom and I'm I'm a different mom, but I'm still a good mom. And so I think there's been a lot of like inner work you know from counseling and coaching and things that I do to really have a healthy view of identity and and what this looks like.

Hannah Moore :

And this, this has changed. I know this is a financial podcast. This has changed how we view money. It's changed how we spend money. It's changed how I interact with my business, with my family, with my money, and so I know I've thrown a lot out there on this, but I do think how we view ourselves and our identity is so critical to, I think, our mental wellness, and I think we show up differently in the workplace when we have a strong sense of who we are and our identity.

Hannah Moore :

Well, one of the things I want listeners to hear from that last statement, which is so powerful, is that you are making choices about how you see yourself and your identity and you're doing work on it. It may not be a worksheet, but you are really having conversations with yourself, probably with others, with your peers, with people you trust, about how you see yourself in the world, how you want to be represented, how you want your children or your spouse to see you, and that doesn't happen if you give away authority for how you see yourself to what you think the rest of the world sees you as, and it goes very. It works very closely with a recent episode we had from Morgan Whiter about the worthy wardrobe and how you present yourself in the world, and I just want you to know if you have a sense of deceit, like unease when it comes to your career, if you have a sense of you know less thans or you feel like you should be doing things that you can't make time for or room for right now. That is a choice, and doing this work of defining yourself and how you present yourself to the world is an option that may alleviate some of that unease. So one of the things, if I can jump in, yes, please, my first maternity leave. So I'm a business owner, so I have some flexibility in how I define things, which is wonderful and terrible at the same time, like it's. It's both sides of that coin.

Hannah Moore :

My first baby, my maternity leave I mean it was by the, it was picturesque, it was perfect Right, my husband works with me. It was not, I should say, perfect, but I really got to design it exactly the way I wanted to, and I was like, man, this is amazing, look at, look at what, look, what we can do. My second baby um, it was the biggest shit show you could possibly imagine. I was back to work less than a week after she was born and it was awful, like it was truly awful. Um, so many different levels and and, from employees leaving to just the work that we had to do. It was really, really hard and there were consequences to that. Like I, she was born in February and by the end of the year my body basically stopped working, like it was like I couldn't work more than 30 hours a week, like I would literally just be like, okay, I have to do this one thing tonight, and I would just sit at home at my laptop and I like I, my brain just shut off, like I could not do things. It was fascinating. And so I was like, okay, I have to start taking care of myself more on some of this.

Hannah Moore :

And then my third I was pregnant with my third and I was like I want to write a different story. I don't, I don't want this again. I don't want, I don't want what I did for my second baby to be for my third. And so I started working with a coach a couple months before, a month or two. Well, he was early, there were complications, but I started working with a coach and I didn't want to do a business coach because I'm like this isn't a business problem, like, but I didn't want to do just personal, because my business and my professional life I can't separate them right. Like these are two different things. And so I started working with a coach.

Hannah Moore :

She's wonderful, oh my god. I could sing her praises forever, um, but I was like I just want somebody who can help, add, help me, advocate for me in this, and what do I need through all these, these steps? And so it's I, you know, make it sound so easy. Hey, you just integrate like I'm a good mom, I'm all these things. But this has been now years of coaching. I mean, this is two years of coaching with her, of helping reshape that identity and helping like every we meet monthly now, and every month I come and it's something else. I'm like, oh my gosh, and this came up and like how am I processing and working through that? But I think that's some of that deep work that helps ground you so deeply in what do you need in these seasons of life. So I also just want to throw that out. Like this is I know this is kind of like it might be like oh, hannah, this sounds ideal. Like there's work you have to do and having people come help you has made a huge difference for me. It's not some just magic wand that I can just, you know, with a quick mindset trick, figure it out. Like this has been deep, hard and really good work. Like there's so much joy in the work that I do and how I show up in all the different places. That is incredible.

Hannah Moore :

It's so interesting to think about how you develop the resources that you need. First of all, talking about asking for help, asking for professional help, just like the work that we do on financial planning. Some people don't need a professional, but I think many people. For me, I started to use I've had executive coaches and gone through coaching programs in financial planning which have been very powerful on the business side and did all the programs that I've done also address work-life integration, work-life balance, how to have boundaries, things like that. But I also decided to start to see a therapist every other week so that I have space and at least half that time is talking about business and talking about personal. There's, you know, complex identities within our family and needs, et cetera, and so it's not always achievable to just kind of set your standards based on what everybody else in the neighborhood is doing and really having somebody that can give you know encouragement when it's due and also remind me about the boundaries I've asked them to help me be accountable for and things like that. So you know, I think that when you see people that you think have it all on the outside, whether it's career or family. Some of these things are going on under the hood. Yeah, no, I completely agree. And yeah, and some some months when I meet with her, I need I have issues with my kids. I'm trying to work through of how I need to show up for my kids and other times I'm like how do I work with this employee? How do I it's, how do I have better expectations? I've really struggled with the idea of being a woman and a leader because of my background, so like it really kind of varies. But yeah, it's having somebody to check in with you on these things. It can make a world of difference. Can we also talk a little bit about delegation, because I think that's something that I want to bring up frequently on this podcast.

Hannah Moore :

Many of our listeners, some of our listeners, are building the basic building blocks of financial success, fun Earlier in career, trying to rebuild, etc. Other people have accumulated more money, they have more options and opportunities, but again, there's societal expectations about what you shouldn't hire out, what you shouldn't, you know, ask others to do, and that often, more frequently, can be either, you know, kind of self-imposed or never really feeling like you have the opportunity to make a different choice, and or it could be in a relationship where there's just expectations for partner roles, but for me, it's been critical to be able to delegate, both in personal projects and you know who cleans the house, who cleans the pool, is the yard getting mowed, do we mow ourselves or have somebody else mow and also at work as an entrepreneur. What have you done to make things more manageable? So I think one of my superpowers in life, now that I look back on it, is I'm able to identify what I'm not good at and get help immediately Not immediately, but very quickly. Like I'm very good. I don't sit and wallow in like, oh, I'm not good at that. Like I'm like, oh, I need help on that. Like that's not my zone of genius or whatever language you want to use around that. So that's been something that has been really helpful for me. So I think that's the first thing. So you'll see that in my professional life, everyone's like Hannah, how do you do it all? I'm like, yeah, because I hire for help. That's how I do it and I take home less money. If you looked at how much our top line revenue is for the last couple of years you'd be like, oh, you should be making a lot more, and I'm not, because I'm not willing to sacrifice my life for this and so I get help, and that obviously has financial implications. I do think that sets me up better for the future. I think that I look at most of some of our peers who are burning out. I see it on a regular basis. I don't feel like I'm on that path. Knock on wood. I hope not, because I've been so focused on helping build supports for me, because I can't do it all when it comes to a family. I think this is one where we have struggled, not struggled.

Hannah Moore :

I think we've tried a lot of different things, and I think this is one, too, where different seasons require different things out of you. Um, so we, we have a nanny that works, um, you know with us. Um, we have there's been a lot of issues, um, with you know, the great thing about a nanny is you have something that comes into your house like I'm not having to like dress my kids every morning, like she will come and like feed them breakfast and they're in their pajamas. I'm like, sorry, guys, this is all I got. Bye, yeah, and and that's great, right, uh, and they have a school that she teaches at, so she brings them home, you know, like all of that stuff, um, but I've realized that, like there's different seasons where you need different things.

Hannah Moore :

So, um, I've had we tried a house manager for a while and it sort of worked, um, but I realized that, like, which is so simple on our eating now, like it's so basic with kids. I mean, like I was talking to my husband before this, like we're having like tacos chicken strips and like I don't know, like I was talking to my husband before this, like we're having like tacos chicken strips and like I don't know something real simple for evening meals. And so I realized like, hey, like I tried to outsource that, but it didn't quite work with our family. It was more work for me to try to communicate and again, I understand the delegation piece, but that just didn't seem to fit for our family, where I'm like I can just do this very fast and efficient on this. So that's one that we tried for like six months and it just didn't quite work. But we tried other things too. So we have a lady who'll come and clean our house.

Hannah Moore :

My husband was mowing our yard and we were talking about it all the time and I was like, what are we doing? Like let's just pay somebody to mow our yard and be done with this, our newest thing. We're pulling it out of the box, we're gradually integrating it, but we have these chore charts from Mighty and Bright. I don't know if you've seen those. Oh, make sure you want the link. Yes, no, you definitely want this link. I spent a lot of money on this. No, you definitely want this link. Um, I spent a lot of money on this and I was like so happy I'm like take my money, uh, but it's uh, chore charts for kids and chore charts for adults, and so it basically breaks down like the mental load of your like household stuff, and so you can just assign this to people, and so both my husband and I are adhd both of our different flavors, right and so we do very well on the visual side. So, like even even just recently for meal planning, we just started like a visual thing in our refrigerator and it sounds so simple, but it's really helped us, and so it's more of the ways you can just find like the common language to be speaking like with your partner and I've struggled with a lot of guilt around this, where, you know, I think you talk about identity and things, and I think in our society there's a huge thing of like you're valued by your output, how valuable are you based on how much you can do?

Hannah Moore :

And so it's been hard for me when I go on work trips and I'm leaving my husband with my three small children, like that's hard, like Let me tell you, it doesn't change when it's your three or your two teens and tweens. So every time I go on a work trip, which is really like it is one of my ways to avoid burnout, because I get to be around people who are experiencing the same challenges that I'm experiencing, which I feel like are somewhat unique and you can't necessarily go over your. You know what went wrong at the financial planning office in Carline, and so they're very restorative. But every time I go to the airport there's so much guilt and I find this is a conversation I have with my therapist it's like the catastrophizing of like laying on that guilt in layers leading up to the trip is can be very just, not effective and diminish wellness. So I get it.

Hannah Moore :

Every trip I take there's tears involved, like with the leaving, like every single trip, and it's just, it's, yeah, we a lot there's, there's a lot there um, I, we were, my husband and I were doing some marriage counseling and um, it was I already mentioned my second born that maternity was just a shit show and um and that's putting it kindly and um, and afterwards, cause I had carried so much guilt around that, like so much guilt around this, and and so he was finally just like Hannah, okay, let's just you keep going back to this. He's like knowing your fact, knowing what was leading up to this, knowing what you had on your plate, would you do it differently? Could you do it differently? And I was like no, I would do it, I would do it the same, because those decisions gave my family so much flexibility and freedom in the future.

Hannah Moore :

And it was just like realizing that like there's um, there's this narrative of like you all, like you never regret the times you, you pick your kids first, like when you put, like you never regret those times. And it's like I think that's way too simple with you, like I, I think it's just way too simple. I don't think it's that simple. I don't think this is black and white, and I think people who say that I think it's doing a disservice to all the moms who are figuring, figuring these things out. Now, I know, you know you talk about the plates in the air, Like I know which ones are glass and which ones are plastic and are going to bounce and are fine, like I know the ones that have to stay up in the air, and I you know, and I know how to respond to that. But I just this mom guilt thing is real and it's hard and it's not fair and I think for me it's some of it's been self-imposed for sure.

Hannah Moore :

Well, there's this phrase that I use a lot in financial planning when thinking about the scarcity not scarcity that resources are finite, which is you can do anything but you can't do everything. And the reality is, as a business owner, as someone who has a commitment to clients, which is, you know, very specific, and we have a fiduciary duty to do that service, and we, of course, we have a fundamental commitment and a priority to our families as well. You can do anything when it comes to, you know, choices in maternity leave, for example, but you cannot do everything. So you cannot be all things to all people and sometimes you have to triage and sometimes you know the everything aligns so that you have the perfect situation and sometimes it's just not the case and you need to make, you need to get through it however best you can with as limited collateral damage as possible.

Hannah Moore :

I often find just like reflecting back to on my decisions to duplicate over time. I find it to be difficult to hire either personal or executive assistants where you're asking them to be kind of your mini me and getting things done of the blocking and tackling of emails and things like that, because they have to be much more of a mind reader. I have an executive assistant now who helps manage my inbox. In the past we've had when our nanny was kind of coming off of the amount of hours needed to manage the primary care of our children because of their ages. Then it turned into a household manager situation and that's where it got more difficult because there's more micromanagement needed and you're someone who's likely just doesn't have the time, especially with an ADHD personality, to set aside and be like, okay, here's our weekly plan and let's do a review of your performance, and it just feels like a bigger burden. I'm even experiencing that we have a vacation rental that we just hired a management company for. And I'm like, why does it feel like I have more work with this management company than when we just had to get the clingings done and have the maintenance man on call? But it does, and so that's something you need to evaluate what's working and what isn't. And it's okay to make a shift and it's also okay to experiment and try things and then be like, okay, we're back to the dry board because the meal planning or the meal service didn't work. Yeah, and it's so.

Hannah Moore :

You even think about like delegating out, like even just kind of my business progression, if you will. You know I was starting out early on. We couldn't afford this structure we have right now. Like we didn't have the revenue to support that. Right, and it's. It was very task management based. So we are managing tasks and now I'm at the place where somebody else is managing those tasks and so realizing like there's different levels of delegation is big. Um, the other thing, too is just and you know that's good Like the right people around you makes a world of difference.

Hannah Moore :

Uh, when I was sitting, I mentioned that second maternity leave. Keep going back to it. I was sitting there with my little infant in my office my full-time employee and he's great, so like this is not a shame on him at all. But he told me he was leaving 10 days after she was born. And so I'm sitting in my conference room with my newborn baby and my husband was there and I'm just like what do I do? Like um, we'll see, we'll appreciate this. This was a second year of the externship. I had nothing done for the externship and this is this is March now, you know, right before this.

Hannah Moore :

So, like when I talk about, like if I would say, hey, I just want to take a perfect maternity, there'd be no externship, like that's, that's the hundreds of people who've signed up, thousands of people who've got training, right, and that's given my family so much. So it's like it was a right decision, right. But I remember sitting there holding my baby and I was like I am so sick of this. I just want to work with a mom who understands. That was my thing. I was like I'm done. I'm done with like people who just see me on the business side. I wanted somebody who can see me as a mom, too, that I work with. And so we ended up this is so fun.

Hannah Moore :

We went to hiremymomcom because I remember hearing about it a while back and we found two women to replace the one full-time hire. I had Both of them changed how I work. One ran my entire inbox. The other one is essentially running my practice to this day, both part-time still, both when I was getting back into the workforce, when I has a full-time job that she's doing on top of it. So it's finding the right people.

Hannah Moore :

But what was so cool about it is my third maternity leave. I was like, okay, so I can still check in, I can still do this. And they were like no, hannah, don't we got it Like you go spend time with your baby. And it was just so meaningful to me to have like those people in my life supporting me who saw me not just as you know how many widgets can she produce, you know how much you know all of this, like how many to-do items can she take off. But it's like my team sees me as a person as well and that has helped so much in in just everything. I agree, and I'm thinking about how to translate this for people who are employees in organizations. I think one of the things that I would tell someone as a financial planner and of course there are risks with this but if you just come back to me every year and say I hate my job but I'm committed to it, I'll do it for 10 more years. I hate my job but I'm committed to it, I'll do it for 10 more years. It's killing me, but slowly. So I'll just get it to retirement.

Hannah Moore :

If you're surrounded by a toxic workplace, then talking with a career coach, looking for alternatives, you don't necessarily have to be in that role. And, of course, if you're an entrepreneur, you have choices. It's not just the metrics that say, oh, you should have 50% margins in a professional services business. I mean, certainly you don't want to not be making money or to be doing your work as a charity, but the decisions you've made to hire, to be able to scale, to have maybe a lower profit margin today are an investment in your family, but they may also be an investment in the longtime enterprise value of the businesses that you're running. So do know there's that optionality and choices and it could be appropriate to have a discussion with someone like Hannah or me who's a financial planner to say, look, this isn't working for me, but I don't know if I could be paid as much if I did a job that didn't force me to travel every other week. Or, you know, I would have to work for a smaller company and I can't have as much pricing power. Well, maybe that fits in the plan because your overall well-being and would be helped, while your long-term finances wouldn't be hurt so much that it wasn't worth it.

Hannah Moore :

Yeah, and it's just fascinating, there's so many dynamics, to your point of the firm culture matter, the company culture matters so much on these things. And so just assessing, like you know, there's oftentimes things that we can do to help with this. Right, like my pair planner, the one who's essentially running my practice and the day-to-day sides of it. I mean she will come to me and be like I want to work 20 hours a week and I'm pushing 30. And it's like, okay, like we, I know we need to pull back, and so it's like that, even when you hit those boundaries, that's such good feedback for again, in a healthy workplace, to to say like, okay, we, we hit that boundary. That means that we're at capacity. That means that we either need to make some choices, we need to slow down the growth, we need to hire more talent. We need to get more efficient as a business owner. Those are key data points that I just wouldn't necessarily have without her communicating to me.

Hannah Moore :

I say that I know that feels it's easy to say and very hard to do, right. I know that approaching a boss and saying this needs to change, but not in a threatening manner, sounds really intimidating and is not necessarily encouraged in many workplaces. I also know that, for women especially, you know, some of this conversation is about boundaries. Some of this conversation is that there is a limit to what you, to how responsible you are for outcomes, and in many cases there's a partnership. So, whether it's at home and it's with your spouse and you need to work together. It's not just you being, you know, super mom At work. You can only give as much as you know others, you know kind of collaboratively commit.

Hannah Moore :

And so I know, for example, in one of those discussions with someone who's an employee who wants to stick it out for five years, they're like, well, I do 200% and everything because that's just who I am. It's like, well, you could choose to do what's in your job description, but not more, to make your life more palatable so that you could stick it out longer, especially if that's what everybody else is doing. So, you know, knowing that you have choices and knowing that boundaries are appropriate to discuss and if you don't aren't good with boundaries, maybe discuss it with a professional is also another like really important part of that identity discussion. And I think you know I mentioned my coach earlier. This is exactly the type of stuff she works with people on, like this, like these type of conversations, because it's I have been again, this is, I say this and I'm like, ooh, it's like still a little bit of that like you know, hot stove touching it, but like I'm, like I'm worthy without killing myself, like you know it's.

Hannah Moore :

It's like I am valuable if I'm not giving 200%. I am valuable if, if I'm, I give what I can. And that's a hard shift from what I think societal norms are, where it's just, basically, you have to give 1,000% at work, 1,000% to your kids, oh, and you're married, by the way, so you should do that, give that, put energy into that as well. And oh, friends, what are those? It's like we put these expectations on ourselves and just being like, hey, maybe we can shift those expectations. And and again, I think it goes back to that identity piece like am I still good if I'm not giving 200 at work? And that's a hard one? Like it's a really, really hard one. I say it easily, but like, again, that's something I still work with my coach on. We always come back like that. We circle back to that one every couple of months.

Hannah Moore :

Well, first of all, can you, would you be willing to share the name of your coach? Or she wrote the name of a website. Yes, she does, and she's so good and like she has small children too. So she's a mom, she's a working mom and she doesn't work in financial services, but she worked. She was high, like she was coaching high level people in her other field. She's amazing. Yes, love to share. Her name is Alexis Awesome. We'll try to include that in show notes.

Hannah Moore :

But I think one of the things that when we have this identity discussion that I would encourage people to chew on as they reflect upon this episode is that you need to incorporate sustainability within your how you build your identity and so just being the perfect person for today or personally, I find I'm very achievement oriented. That like was kind of ingrained in whether it's DNA or you know the way. I was raised, being a certain generation, gen X women, I really feel like we have this internalized achievement can result in burnout when I'm just comparing myself to businesses that are growing the fastest. But I also have a different vision for our company, where we'll stay small and relatable. Then it may you may not be able to have both, and what I'm hearing from you, too, is like Hannah is like there needs to be some endurance built into the identity that you're working on, that you're seeing yourself as and how you present yourself to the world, and so incorporating the ideas of endurance, resilience and sustainability into how you build yourself are creating a renewable kind of energy force for you to shift in and shape yourself in an ever-changing, evolving world. This is such a fascinating topic, I see. So we're in the same field.

Hannah Moore :

It's very male-driven, male-dominated. If you go to, if you read the all the publications, it's very, the advice is very masculine, like, it's very like. You set your goals, you set your targets, you do your plan, you execute, you execute, you execute. And what's your performance? Yeah, and what's your performance? Yes, how much AUM do you have? Like, what's like? It's so driven on that right, and I think what's so a while back I really started like I'd read all these articles, I was like this just doesn't fit, it doesn't feel good, it doesn't resonate. And the wild part about it is I was like this doesn't feel good, it doesn't resonate, I don't want to do this. And I was still growing at the same rates that they were growing at. And I was like, okay, what's the difference? And so I think it's taking, you know, and again, it's yin yang right this more feminine energy to your business, to your career.

Hannah Moore :

I very much believe in kind of like the flow of things I feel when I'm in alignment, like when I am in alignment and in flow, everything is easy, like it is. There is such an ease and a flow to everything we're doing, from me personally to how my business is being run, to all of that. When I start feeling that tension, that push and that pull, and when I'm in flow, things grow, like it. Just. That is just. There is just this energy, like I don't have to put targets on my growth, which we do now, because we have a team and I know it's needed. I love the growth targets too. So that's okay, so like, but it's needed, but like this, this. If we're in this flow and this energy, it is like mad. That's where magic happens for for us, for our business, and so, like I can feel when I'm in it, and then I can feel when I shift and that's usually this, this note like when I feel that shift, it's like something's not working, what needs to change in the business. How can I get back? How can I get back there? How can I get my businesses back there? And that is not something that you see on like 10 year plans, right, like you can't quantify that, but it's something that, as a leader, I can feel and I can sense.

Hannah Moore :

We were looking at growing our practice, and so we were like, ok, let's go all in. And we, in the last like two weeks, I'm just like there was more data that came in again from our employees, right From where we were like, hey, we're going to, you know, we're going to try to really grow for all these reasons. And then our employees we got pushback on it and like, where I thought we had capacity, we didn't. And so it was like, okay, we're going to pause this and we're going to rethink about this, and just in that pause, it's like I just need to breathe. My company just needs to breathe for a hot second and then when we turn, when we decide to strategically do that, which we will later this year, I'm pretty confident there's going to be such an energy and a flow to it versus being that just like we have to do it because it's on our goal sheet, and that, to me, has made a huge difference in the business. How I show, I want to show it to my kids every day giving from the overflow of my work, not giving from the emptiness of my work, and I think that's a huge thing that I just, I just internally watch that's and that's for me, it's that internal metric that I'm always kind of sensing and that's what guides a lot of our businesses, our businesses' goals, things like that, versus just, you know, we have to hit these revenue targets.

Hannah Moore :

Well, if there's one thing I can leave people with as they take the time to reflect upon this, it would be to identify those moments of alignment that sometimes they can be fleeting. So you need to pause if you need a journal, or you just need to be like aha, this feels right and it may be within your family on a great trip or a great meal or a great activity. It may be just when you a high five, when you delegate something that fits, and it also may be in the business, when things are just in flow, in that flow state, and then, on the flip side, identify where there's misalignment, where there's friction, where there's tension. So that's just the day to day. I mean, we're all going to have days that work and days that don't. But if it's enduring, then have discussions with it, whether it's with your financial planner, with your mental health professionals or executive coaches, or with the people around you that matter most.

Melissa Joy:

Hannah, where can people find you to continue to follow your amazing career journey and the work that you're doing, including being a terrific financial planner but also a terrific coach for financial planners?

Hannah Moore :

Yeah, absolutely Well, my practice is Guiding Wealth, so guidingwealthcom is the place we are showing up on Instagram more, so definitely follow us at Guiding Wealth there, and LinkedIn as well, for Amplify Planning. Linkedin is, so it's amplifyplanningcom. If you're interested in the externship. This is a summer slash externship, so amplifyplanningcom backslash externship. You can also especially around Amplify Planning for working with other, like helping coach financial planners. Follow me on LinkedIn. We put a lot of really good information out there, and we have. We're really building a really engaged community on LinkedIn, which is really fun.

Hannah Moore :

Well, keep up the amazing work. I can't see wait to see what you're up to next, but I also just appreciate your vulnerability and sharing your highs and lows, and when we catch up, I'll look forward to hearing how the family's going as well. Yes, well, thank you so much, melissa, and I just love the work that you're doing as well. It's just, it's pretty incredible. Thanks, sienna. Podcast is to forward an episode to a friend or leave a review. Go to pearlplancom and the podcast link to get all the resources and links mentioned.

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Melissa Joy, CFP

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