Last month I headed out to Minneapolis to attend a conference for WAFA. This is RBC’s internal organization for women financial advisors. If you’re wondering why such a thing is necessary, I will tell you what you may already know: I am in the only woman advisor in my office. I am one of only a handful women advisors at RBC in southern California. The first time I arrived in Minneapolis headquarters for a WAFA meeting, I felt this overwhelming sense of community: I wasn’t alone!
At this year’s conference, I was asked to come onstage with Ashley Baerwaldt from our Seattle office and talk about our peer mentoring relationship. Ashley and I met at my first WAFA conference, but at the time I was on a team and she was not. I had no idea what it was like to be a solo advisor. Fast forward to August of 2023, when I made the decision to stay at RBC without my team. Suddenly I knew exactly what Ashley had been struggling with. We began to act like a team, having Monday morning calls and occasional check-ins for about a year.
After our session on stage, about a dozen women came up to me and told me how inspirational that panel was. When I asked them what they found most inspiring, they said it was the idea that they could have a peer mentorship with someone in a different part of the country.
Rise up
Women make up roughly 50% of the population, yet there are very few women financial advisors (one poll puts it at only 16 percent!). Of course we can receive mentorship and advice from men; my father is the main reason I became an investor and my favorite professors in college were men. But having other people who know exactly what it’s like to be in my shoes has been critical to my success as an advisor. We do not know that what we are experiencing is normal until we hear from others that it is.
On the last day of our event we had the privilege of listening to a conversation with Jenny Johnson, the CEO of Franklin Templeton, a global leader in asset management. One of the surprising facts I learned from her is that less than 2% of venture capital money goes to women, but women have twice the return on the average investment. When women-owned start-ups were asked why they were turned down, they claimed “investors did not understand my target market.” It is human nature to ignore what we do not understand, and reject what feels foreign to us. But once you see numbers like this, how can you unsee them? It is counter-productive for everyone when one group is excluded.
The theme of the WAFA conference this year was, “When we all rise, we all rise.” I challenge you to think about how you can lift up someone in your orbit.
Maybe sign up to mentor someone through a local program? I’m active in the Women Leaders Forum of the Coachella Valley, where each year we identify young women through our scholarship program. If you’re a man, there’s Big Brothers Big Sisters. But you don’t have to do something organized. Maybe start a weekly call with a friend in another state. Reach our to a neighbor. Organize a monthly lunch club (I just did this in Palm Desert, so reach out if you are interested in joining.) It takes surprisingly little to make someone else feel valued and less alone - and the impact can be tremendous.
Studies on mentorship have shown that people who take part in mentorship programs - both the mentors and the mentees - tend to find greater job satisfaction, be promoted more often, and get bigger raises.
Review your game plan
A week ago I was asked if I was taking money off the table in client accounts given the high valuation of stocks and the general uncertainty that we read about in the media. There are a handful of reasons to reduce market exposure:
1. We are preparing for your retirement or another goal.
2. Your portfolio has experienced “drift”; that is, when it has drifted more towards stocks than we anticipated because stocks have grown so much this year.
3. Because there is an opportunity to do “tax loss harvesting” – ie., to mitigate your taxable gains with any losses.
When we put a plan together we consider all the variables – and we look at your risk tolerance. It is the best we can do to prepare for an eventual correction.
If you believe we are off-plan, then it is time to review your plan. Otherwise, stay the course. Studies show that taking money out of the market preemptively almost always leads to lower returns over the long run.
If I do not talk to you in the next few weeks, I hope you all have a great Thanksgiving holiday with family and friends. This is why we’re here after all.