Your Money Story with Sandi Bragar and Cammie Doder

george grombacher 0:01
Well hello, this is George G and the time is right. welcome today’s guest strong and powerful Sandy bragger. And Connick CAMI Dhotre Sandy Cami, are you ready to do this?

Sandi Bragar 0:12
So ready, George?

Cammie Doder 0:13
Oh, yeah.

george grombacher 0:14
All right, let’s go. Sandy is the chief client officer. And CAMI is the Chief Marketing Officer with experience. They are one of the largest and best private wealth management firms in the world. They’re also the host of the money tails podcast. Again, excited to have you ladies on tell us a little about your personal lives more about your work, and why you do what you do.

Sandi Bragar 0:37
I’ll go first, George, this is Sandy. And it’s a pleasure to be here. In terms of my personal life, I’ll start there, I’m in a transition, our oldest child is graduating high school and heading off to college overseas in the fall. So big change happening in our, in our household, we have a younger child, he’s gonna get all of our attention beginning in the fall, which will be a lot of fun. And intent in terms of career. I’m one of those people who is practicing her dream profession. I learned about financial planning when I was in college. And I knew that’s exactly what I wanted to do. Help people make really good financial decisions that are in alignment with their purpose, their goals, their values, and really help them get everything organized and on track to achieve all those things.

george grombacher 1:25
Excellent. Jamie,

Cammie Doder 1:27
George, yeah, Cami Dhotre yeard. So thanks again, for having us. I, the mom married mom of two girls who are eight and six. I am you know, I like to tell people, I’m I’m a CMO twice over. I’m a chief marketing officer at work, and I’m a chief mommy officer at home. And both roles have. They’re awesome and hard at the same time. I love what I do. I love being a mom and I love being a marketer. So on the marketing side for Experient, a wealth management firm where Sandy and I are our business partners in and it’s just a really special firm that we thank you for introducing us. But my role is to help bring this brand to life and connect what differentiates us, you know, help future clients, the firm, go through their own journey and make the right decision. So I really love it. I love telling stories or even hearing stories. And so that’s what I get to do day in day out.

george grombacher 2:30
I love it. Sandy is your youngest excited or terrified that they’re gonna get all your attention.

Sandi Bragar 2:37
I think a little bit of both George thinks she’s gonna miss her. So excited, and maybe a little afraid of what that means.

george grombacher 2:47
It’s certainly be a different experience for everybody. So I’m confidence is gonna go seamlessly. So eyes are crossed. I was checking out the website. And I thought it was great. So credit, everybody who was involved with that. Talking about you want to help your clients feel loved powerful, richer, brainy and far sighted. You could have chosen really anything? How did you boil it down to those?

Cammie Doder 3:14
You know, we we actually asked our clients, and how would they describe what it is we do for them, and through some deep listening and probing what kept coming up with those variables. And I’ll say something, you know, putting loved on a website and, and really being emotive, especially when we put the site together, you know, financial services, can you talk about loving your clients? Is that the clients? Are they okay with that, but we do love the work we do. And we are we’re so connected with our clients. So that just one example of the description that we thought was really important to put out there. That’s what we do. And we have these amazing relationships. And we love to go on this journey with our clients and lifes of clients, a roller coaster, and we’re there with them.

Sandi Bragar 4:08
And I think it’s important that that we distinguish we want our clients to feel loved. Everybody should feel loved by their trusted advisors is really important. And I think it’s a mark of a really good, long lasting, trusting relationship.

george grombacher 4:20
And it’s certainly possible. I don’t know that I can. Well, at some point is a company ever get too big? Or maybe they just kind of forget. That’s right. This is a this is a human interaction. This is a relationship that we have, and we’re talking about the most one of the most important things outside of our family is our money.

Sandi Bragar 4:42
That’s right, George and I think in our society today, we’re taught not to talk about money. And that’s one of the very special aspects of the work we do. We get to have very intimate, honest, deep conversations about money with our clients each and every day. And there’s a lot The work that we put into making clients feel comfortable to have those conversations in terms of setting up the right environment, in terms of asking for permission in terms of asking the right questions, and importantly, maybe perhaps most importantly, listening, listening to what they have to say. And checking in with them to make sure we’re hearing correctly, what they are expressing

george grombacher 5:26
the right environment. I think, without that, people will be uncomfortable, because we’re not comfortable talking about money. And we’re not comfortable talking about money with anybody, really our loved ones, or strangers, or even if you are a trusted professional advisor, it’s not easy. So setting the conditions and making it for lack of a better term a space where people are comfortable to share. That’s not easy to do.

Cammie Doder 5:56
It’s, it’s not that you can do it. Right. So that’s, I think the key is asking for permission to have these conversations, I mean, with your trusted advisor at some point expected. But I think it’s all about how you go about it. And this idea of permission and going slowly into the conversation, knowing where to push into probe. And being I think Sandy really hit it a really listening, because through the clients and through the person you’re working, maybe you’re talking with your significant other, it’s really understanding where are where are their sensitivities, where, what are their stories? How do they connect? What are their values? You know, all these things are really important to understanding that person’s perspective around money and helping them accomplish things overcome maybe insecurities, or fears or whatever it might be that might hold them back.

Sandi Bragar 6:55
That’s right. And I and I would observe that money is so intertwined in our lives, that often the conversations we’re inviting to clients to have is about their life. What’s going on? What makes you really happy? Where do you want to be spending your time? Who do you want to be spending your time with? Those seem like pretty benign questions to ask. And for some people, they’re easy, they respond to others take more time and thought, but there’s money wrapped up in all of that, right? Because how are you going to afford to spend that time? What are you generating income that’s going to allow you to invest and free up time to do the things that you want to do or you enjoying, whatever work or business you’re you’re building that will allow you to get that satisfaction in life without having to stop work, or stop building what you’re building. There’s so many different for me, for me in coming off my tech, for mutations that I think that’s part of what makes our jobs really exciting. George is really coming in to the conversations with curiosity and learning. And like Amy said, figuring out what’s most important to this client, what are they trying to achieve? And how can we help them get there?

george grombacher 8:16
I think a lot about expectations, and how important those are in every kind of relationship and interaction, whatever we’re doing, it’s better if we’re clear upfront with what it is we’re trying to accomplish. And then everybody stopped wondering, geez, I wonder what’s going to happen next kind of thing. Is that is that part of when you say permission? Say Hey, Kevin said, I think it’s important that we have a conversation about money. And is it is it that straightforward?

Sandi Bragar 8:45
Yes, it is, in some ways, like, Hey, can I ask, I have a question here. Can I? Can I ask you about this? Can I ask you about that? It’s okay, if you prefer not to talk about this. Now, we can talk about something different. It can be that straightforward.

Cammie Doder 9:02
We also have shared we do this on the money tails podcast. And we start with the beginning. Really, you know, just trying to understand because our foundation really is set when we’re young doesn’t mean we can’t change and think differently. But a lot of what how we how we think about things like money, things that are really emotional and connected to us come from how we were raised or influences in our life as we were growing up. So sometimes that again, I do love stories, George. So sometimes it’s his Hey, tell me about when you were growing up that that first time money had meaning to you? I think it just be it’s a softball question. But so insightful. When you hear someone say, Oh, wow, this is I was I worked a million jobs, you know, blah, blah, or whatever, you know, the stories might be and it’s such a great way to start this conversation around money and understand some values and through that, they might say oh, I, you know, I grew up with a scarcity mindset. And I’ve worked really hard to overcome that mindset because I realized it held me back whatever it might be, but to the stories you can elicit so much.

Sandi Bragar 10:12
In Georgia, we like to start with clients. By acknowledging that there’s two sides of money. There’s the technical side, how to, how’s the tax code work? What’s insurance? How do I think about an estate plan, all those things are very technical. They’re very brainy. The other side of money is the emotional side of money. It’s how we feel about money, how money makes us feel. It’s that emotional side of money that really influences the decisions that we make much more so than the technical side, I could talk to you for half an hour about why it’s really important to finance a home purchase with a mortgage. But if you’re someone who isn’t comfortable with debt, and believes firmly against that, I’m just wasting my time, because a mortgage isn’t the right thing for you. Right, so so we’ll explain that with clients. And we will move into that emotional side to understand it so that we can frame the technical side. And a question that I like to ask clients often is, how does this make you feel a client just sold a business and funded all the goals that they’ve set out for them selves for the rest of their lives? Client? How does that make you feel right now? There’s so much insight from the responses. And I think, again, in the financial services world, we’re not trained to ask these questions. We’re not trained to get into this emotional side to get into the heart of the money. But it’s, it’s so important.

Cammie Doder 11:39
And so people are afraid, seems like they’re afraid to ask the question, because they feel like they should have an answer. Sometimes just the there is no answer. You’re just listening. You don’t have to give advice on everything that, that someone says.

george grombacher 11:52
We do have two ears and one mouth after all. And you never know what somebody’s gonna say, if somebody did just sell their business, it could be, hey, you just sold your business, you’re set financially for life, everything you ever wanted, you’re good. Or they could say, Oh, my God, I’m scared to death. I’m terrified. I feel like something’s

Sandi Bragar 12:11
my identity. What do I do now? You’re absolutely right. There’s so many different ways this can go. And so it is important for us to ask the questions to listen. And to help frame the decision making the environment we’re creating to help the client make the decision that works for them. If we if we make that’s one thing about money in conversations with advisors and conversations with any two people, regardless of what their role is, friends, family, if we’re not having open conversations about money, chances are one of us is making assumptions. And those assumptions might not be right. In fact, I would guess most of the time, they’re not.

george grombacher 12:56
It’d be weird, if if I could read somebody’s mind, right. And if I’m not asking, if I’m not letting somebody if I’m not throwing it out there and allowing them to tell me what they’re thinking in that feeling, then I am just guessing and my biases and my perspective on money, which is different from everybody else’s, is guiding the conversation. And we might, you know, do business, I might, you know, you might be my client. But that doesn’t mean we’re doing a good job, or you’re getting your needs met.

Sandi Bragar 13:26
That’s right, you need you need to get in there, you need to have this intimate relationship with the client of really understanding who they are and what drives them. And then the relationship that you have is so much more satisfying to each of you. And it also reduces a lot of wasted time spent recommending things that just aren’t going to sit with this particular client because they’re just their interest is elsewhere, or their preferences or elsewhere, their behaviors are elsewhere.

george grombacher 13:58
What do you find? What, what do you think? Because you do so many different things for for, for clients, what is what is some of the biggest value that your brain to a client relationship?

Sandi Bragar 14:16
One of the biggest pieces of value that we’re bringing is objectivity. So we’re creating a decision making environment. We learned who the client is, we know what’s most important to them. And we’re bringing objectivity, and we’re paying attention to their emotion. And we’re presenting them with different choices that are going to help them get to where they want to go in a very non emotional way, which can be really, really important because when it comes to money, people’s emotions tend to run pretty high money can amplify those emotions, whether they’re good or bad. And so bringing that objectivity I think is really important.

Cammie Doder 15:00
I’ll add that then, in addition to the objectivity is this kind of hand in hand, both confidence that they’re getting the information they need to make really smart decisions. And then I’m not sure which comes first education. So really, that’s such a key part of what we do with clients is around educating. So they’re making these informed decisions, and doing it in a way that really resonates. That’s, that’s the ultimate challenge. It’s not, you need to know everything we know and this and the tax laws and all that you can. But you should know a lot of this information. And with that knowledge, and, and kind of the enjoyment of learning, that’s the other part of it comes to the confidence that I think is really critical.

george grombacher 15:51
So funny that that these really deep emotional conversations, help us make non emotional decisions, which those are the better kinds of money decisions.

Cammie Doder 16:03
Yeah, that’s right.

Sandi Bragar 16:04
And I think sometimes it is okay to be emotional about the decision you’re making. When you’re making the decision, you want to try to keep your emotions at bay. And this is, this is something we, we help clients through all the time, I have a client in mind, who is experiencing life as a single person after having been married for decades. And her lifestyle is very different than it was during the marriage. And so she can get pretty emotional about things and just start, you know, spending money on items and experiences that aren’t really aligned with what she wants to do. And so we’ve we’ve put together some policies where you know, if a threshold reaches a certain mark, she knows to call us first just so we can have a conversation. And we can diffuse some of that emotion a little bit and really help her figure out is this something that she really wants to spend her money on? And if it is, we say go for it. And she I mean, she gets to get really excited, right? So I don’t know if that’s a great example. But it’s just something that was coming to mind as we think about these things.

george grombacher 17:14
I think that that’s excellent. I’m a huge fan of self discipline. But I also realize that we need structure first. And then we work towards self discipline. It’s not just like something that automatically have, particularly if my life has was one way for a really long time. And now it’s something totally different. There’s so much value in having somebody that I can work with a partner with for advice, support, expertise, and a little bit of accountability.

Cammie Doder 17:41
I was gonna say they also push you a little bit don’t they do arch right? So I there’s only so much we can do on our own. There’s some of us who can push beyond certain barriers, but I love that these partners, these coaches, they can help us get to that next level.

george grombacher 17:59
I love it. Well, Sandy and Cami thank you so much for coming on. Where can people learn more about you? How can they engage with spirit?

Cammie Doder 18:08
You know, big fine, Sandy, you and I both on LinkedIn that’s on it. So one of the easiest, easiest ways to contact us or go to the experience website, the spirit.com and there’s a start a dialogue feature that we’re happy to connect with you in any way and if you’re interested in learning and experiencing money conversations, you can go to the money tails podcast wherever you find your podcasts.

george grombacher 18:35
Excellent. Well if you enjoyed as much as I did show Sandy and Kami your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas go to a spearmint.com That’s a S P I R I A n t.com. Find Sandy Berger and Cami Dhotre on LinkedIn as well as the experience site. And then if you are interested in finding out if the relationship is a good fit for you, click on that started dialogue button on the website. Reach out to them on LinkedIn and also check out the money tails podcast wherever you enjoy your podcasts. Thanks again Sandy Chemi Thanks, George. And until next time, remember, do your part by doing your best

Transcribed by https://otter.ai