We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Hannah Chapman a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hannah, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you scale up? What were the strategies, tactics, meaningful moments, twists/turns, obstacles, mistakes along the way? We’d love to hear the backstory the illustrates how you grew the firm
The process of scaling my business started before I even took the leap into entrepreneurship. I was an associate financial advisor working in a firm with 3 partners and about 10 advisors in total, at a practice that had been my professional home for almost 13 years. Everyone had worked really hard to get where they were, grinding it out 70-80+ hours per week until finally getting enough clients and enough money under management to start thinking about cutting back…and that was preached as the only path to success as a financial advisor.
And so, I tried! I worked 70+ hour weeks, did everything the way I was “supposed” to, followed the sales script to bring in new clients, asked for referrals from my best clients…and I was absolutely miserable. I wasn’t landing new clients, and the tactics that I was being taught to bring in leads weren’t working very well either. It got to the point that the partners started telling me flat out that I wasn’t going to be successful in this business the way they originally had expected.
I was devastated, and at the same time, I also knew they were wrong. While the illusion of the dream I was trying to build there was crumbling all around me, I started discovering my actual dream. I knew that I was meant to guide people through financial transformation, to help them learn how to make wise financial decisions from a place of inner peace and inner safety, and ultimately to help them create wealth that will transform their lives and the lives of everyone they care about. And I knew that I wasn’t meant to work with just anyone, I wanted to work with entrepreneurs. Business owners with big visions for their work in the world and for their lives. And I also knew I wasn’t going to be able to work with badass, visionary entrepreneurs while I was working for someone else! I had to go out on my own and build a firm from the ground up.
That process of discovering what it was that I truly wanted, and getting really clear on WHY it mattered to me was the beginning of truly scaling. And aligning my time, money, and energy towards creating that vision made it happen! As I kept taking the next most important action to build my business, I replaced my old salary within 9 months. I hit 6-figures of revenue within 12 months. And I doubled that in my second year! Every time I come up to what feels like a roadblock, or a fork in the road, I go back into discovery. What is it that I truly want to accomplish? Why? And then what is the most aligned next step to get there? Then I take that step. And the next one, and the next one…and the next thing I know, I’m looking back at my year and seeing how much of what I wanted to create came into being!
When I focused on talking to visionary entrepreneurs, they started hearing me, and they started coming into my world. That was technically the easy part! The steps that felt scary were relearning to sell in a way that felt good to me, and learning to charge an appropriate amount for my services, and learning how to let clients go who were no longer a good fit…but the same framework applied. Discover what I wanted to create or have happen, connect to the WHY, and then get into alignment and take the next step. The next step wasn’t always easy, in fact it wasn’t usually easy! But when I was connected to my WHY, I knew stepping through the discomfort would be worth it.
Hannah, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I grew up in a family of entrepreneurs: my parents, siblings, grandparents, and many of my aunts, uncles, and cousins are business owners. Growing up, I was learning all about the ability and responsibility we each have to create our own wealth story…while also learning through my parent’s businesses that money is hard to make and hard to hold on to. It wasn’t until I acknowledged, accepted, and healed those money blocks that I was able to create powerful revenue momentum and financial abundance in my own business. And because of that work, I also see through the money stories that my fellow visionary business owners hold on to as a way to keep playing smaller than they really are, empowering them to excavate those stories and walk through to greater prosperity for themselves, their businesses, and their community.
That’s the work of the Entrepreneurial Wealth Coach. Helping you see where you’re holding yourself back financially, where you’re allowing yourself to be underpaid (outstanding invoices anywhere?) and overwhelmed (working with more clients than you desire, at frequently discounted rates?), and empowering you to make big shifts in your business.
I’ve also been in the financial industry for more than 16 years, and during my first 14 years in the industry, I worked for a large broker-dealer, and I saw first-hand how profits were valued over people over and over again. At X-squared Wealth Planning, people and relationships always come first. Understanding who you are and what you need in order to be financially empowered is always the primary driver in our work together.
That’s the work of the Financial Advisor. Guiding you to define your goals and dreams in a quantifiable way, create the roadmap to achieving those goals, and then helping you to create the right accounts and choose the right investments for your unique circumstances.
We do the work in Entrepreneurial Wealth Coaching to shift your mindset, which allows you to make sound financial decisions and implement the recommendations in your Financial Plan, and ultimately empowers you to reach your financial goals.
I am a Certified Financial Planner (CFP®), Accredited Portfolio Management Advisor (APMA®), and Chartered Retirement Planning Counselor (CRPC®) with over 16 years of experience in the financial industry helping business owners and executives plan for and achieve their biggest financial goals and dreams.
But even more than that, I am a champion for visionary entrepreneurs. I knows that visionaries can function at their highest capacity when they are supported by the right team of experts who can help lighten the mental, emotional, and spiritual load of building a business that will impact thousands and millions of others.
I speak frequently about how entrepreneurs can Have it All without doing it all, and build a business that they absolutely love while earning an abundant income. I’m also a published author and frequent contributor to Forbes, and an expert on blending the logical work of money with the emotional and spiritual aspects of financial decision making.
Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?
I have been a voracious reader my whole life, and becoming an entrepreneur opened up a whole new world of books to read and listen to, podcasts to follow, and things to learn!
Some of the books that I recommend most often are:
“The Big Leap” by Gay Hendricks – discovering my own upper-limit problems while also becoming aware of my zones of genius, excellence, and competence was transformational for my business. It didn’t all click immediately after reading, but instead it was a process of becoming aware of my zone of genius and refining, refining, refining over time.
“The Go-Giver” by Bob Burg and John D. Mann – using this easy to read business allegory as a starting point, the main takeaways for me were that the more people you serve, and the more authentically you serve them with kindness and with integrity, the more impact you will have and the more money you will make.
And I truly believe that understanding yourself and moving through the world with a healed and open heart is the key to building a business and a life that you love. From that angle, the books I recommend most often for self-reflection are:
“The Four Agreements” by Don Miguel Ruiz – the most simple concepts often take the most reflection and practice to implement…the four agreements are be impeccable with your word, don’t take anything personally, don’t make assumptions, and always do your best. How you get to living in the four agreements is the magic.
“The Untethered Soul” by Michael A. Singer – the questions of “who am I?” and “who’s the voice that’s always chattering away in my head?” are critical for entrepreneurs to answer…and understanding what the internal chatter really is also helps us lift above it and make decisions from a place of true leadership rather than reactionary fear.
And finally, my true “special sauce” is that I’ve gone through many dark nights of the soul and found my way to my next level of truly being the embodiment of my work in the world with each evolution. I believe having a strong connection to your internal compass, your intuition, your instinct, your connection to God, however you describe it for yourself, is a fundamental building block of incredible success. The books and resources that have changed my life in that realm are all of the books by Paul Selig, starting with “I Am the Word,” and learning deeply about Human Design and how I relate to my purpose in the world in addition to how I relate to others.
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
I am what’s known as an “Elder Millenial” as Iliza Shlesinger coined it (aka Xenial, aka Oregon Trail Millenial), and consider myself to be a “digital native.” This is not common in the financial world, where even in my mid-30’s I was the youngest advisor at my firm by 10 years!
When I was at the larger firm I started with, social media use was heavily restricted. To the point where I could barely have more personality displayed than my personal headshot! Creativity and authenticity were not encouraged or approved of by compliance. In a heavily regulated industry, it makes sense…but at the same time, I knew I desired to be more authentically “me” with my online professional presence.
When I launched X-squared Wealth Planning, I was finally able to unleash my creativity and dive into social media as a professional! I’d been on Facebook from the first days when it was a “college year book” website, and the same goes for Instagram and LinkedIn. Over the years, I’ve been able to hone my strategies, but overall I still take the same approach to creating content: what feels exciting and fun for me to share today? And in what way does it feel exciting and fun to share it?
At first, it was through writing. I would write long captions and have a nice stock photo to go with it. I also write for Forbes, and would share my articles. Lots of writing, writing, writing! After about a year and a half of writing every day, I started to feel resistance to writing and posting. I didn’t want to do it. I would procrastinate. I would feel like I didn’t know what to say.
None of that was true though…the real issue was that I was desiring to show up on video instead. I wanted to go from writing everything out to talking things out! So I started just going for it. I knew I wanted to talk, so I grabbed my phone, hit record, and started talking. Then I posted it. Over and over again, until it became easy to share my thoughts and learnings in short-form video!
The feedback I get most often from people who follow me on social media is that they feel calm and inspired by my posts. They stop their scroll, and even turn on the sound to hear my voice (I also caption everything to make it super easy!). They feel like they are seeing the real me, because they are. And that authenticity, that desire to share knowledge and come to my work from a place of service to others shines through.
I don’t have massive social media followings, but they are invested followers!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://x2wealthplanning.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hannah.chapman.cfp/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hannahchapmanfinancialadvisor
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hannahrchapman/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWFfEkX3HkuNerSLalil5NA
- Other: https://www.forbes.com/sites/hannahchapman/?sh=454af31201c8 https://truefreedom.ai/expansiveceoworkshop/
Image Credits
Sarah Parisi Dowlin of Parisi Images (all photos)