Welcome back to the 235th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!
My guest on today's podcast is Georgia Lee Hussey. Georgia is the Founder and CEO of Modernist Financial, an RIA in Portland, Oregon that offers deep financial planning services to 46 affluent households for a combination of retainer and AUM fees with a $17,500 minimum fee just to get started.
What's unique about Georgia, though, is how she actively seeks to align her own personal values with the values of her advisory firm, the values of the clients that she serves, and the impact that she creates not only for the community she lives in, but on the broader financial services industry as well.
In this episode, we talk in depth about how Georgia went through the rigorous process to qualify as a Certified B Corporation in order to create a structure that would keep herself and her firm accountable for its decisions and actions, Georgia’s “conscious capitalism” approach that prioritizing having a positive impact and running a profitable business are not, contrary to popular belief, two mutually exclusive goals, and why Georgia's clients, more often than not, view her not just as someone to whom they can delegate to, but as someone who can hold them accountable and to be more intentional with their money and financial decisions.
We also talk about Georgia’s planning process itself, which leverages the Money Quotient framework across a series of five onboarding meetings, why Georgia engages in two full-day retreats with new clients specifically to give them the space and time to discover their goals, envision what they want their lives to look like, and figure out how to align their financial decisions with those goals, how Georgia proactively discusses politics in her client meetings as a way to broaden the discussion around how the financial decisions that we make affect the world around us (and as a means of helping her clients gain better clarity around their own relationship with money), and why Georgia’s favorite part of the entire planning cycle is in helping her clients actually implement her recommendations, which can take some clients up to three years to complete because of the depth of the firm’s planning recommendations.
And be certain to listen to the end, where Georgia shares her own background as an artist coming into the financial services industry and how her own involvement with opening and running community events translated directly into generating business as an advisor, how Georgia’s first two jobs in the industry helped her figure out the sort of business she wanted to build and to prove to herself that clients would pay what she felt her time was worth as an advisor, and how that, although being the CEO of a successful advisory firm can sometimes be lonely, Georgia has found fulfillment and satisfaction by building a community of entrepreneurs and business leaders with shared experiences.
So whether you’re interested in learning about Georgia’s focus on having a positive impact both in her community as well as the financial advice industry, how she incorporates the Money Quotient framework into her planning process, or how she’s intentionally building her business to align with her values, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Georgia Lee Hussey.
