We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Kim a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Kim , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.

Once upon a time, before I was ever a financial advisor, I was a fashion designer. I had a corporate job with all the corporate pay and benefits – and on paper, being a fashion designer honestly sounded pretty great.

I got a great opportunity to travel the country and interview women for a brand we were launching. I was one of the interviewers, so I would sit down with these women and ask them about their lives and their clothes, then have them try some things on.

Every woman I spoke to wanted to change her body instead of the clothes. They had no idea how perfect and awesome they were. It broke my heart…and gave me a full-on existential crisis. I got into design to build people’s confidence, and I was clearly not doing that – so I quit.

I started my own personal styling company using only second-hand clothes, and I LOVED it, but once I left my corporate job I realized that I needed a divorce as well. My kids were two and four at the time, so I needed something more stable. I made a decision- I wanted to spend the rest of my life helping people feel confident and help them reach their goals. I started interviewing friends and connections about their careers, and I kept coming back to financial planning.

In 2021, I started my financial planning practice, and I haven’t looked back. Now, I help build people’s confidence in what they are doing every day – and it still scratches the creative itch I have to take a vision and bring it to life. I just do it in a different way now.

Leaving the financial comfort of my corporate job was a huge risk. In 3 years, I got divorced, left a corporate job, and started two businesses. With each risk I took, I chose to get one step closer to the life I wanted to live. It was scary, but it was absolutely worth it.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

As a financial advisor, I focus my business on working with people in historically underrepresented communities. I aim to create a safe place where people feel like they can show up exactly as they are, because I want people to be able share their dreams and what keeps them up at night without feeling ashamed of themselves or their money situation. We often don’t talk about money in our families or in school – and then people are just supposed to figure it out, which is an unfair system. I want to put the power back in people’s hands so they feel like they can make decisions that align with their goals and values.

I also really love helping people get themselves in a place where they have the flexibility to change their lives if they want to. Maybe they want to leave their corporate job and build the life they want, or to start a family, or buy a home with their partner, but they want to do it on their terms. I want to help people to get there, and to not feel like they have to go it alone.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

Honestly, I think just not making assumptions about people goes a long way. Most people just want to be seen. They want to know you have their back. I celebrate with people when they reach their goals, and I cry with them when the unexpected happens. People know that we are always cheering for them to succeed, and because of that they are happy to share us with the people they love. I still do a happy dance every time it happens.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

For any of you that own a business or love someone who owns a business, you know that can be hard without any other factors at play. I started my financial planning practice in the spring of 2021 when the pandemic was happening, and I was still a single mom at the time. Since then, life has been a series of unexpected events. My brother passed away suddenly at the age of 32, I got remarried and blended my family with my husband TJ, and our kids together are 9, 10, 11, and 12, so we are BUSY. Then my husband and I bought a house and sold two houses, and that next year my mom lost her battle with cancer. Then, when we were still newlyweds, we learned in a routine colonoscopy that my husband had stage 3 colorectal cancer (side note, please go get your routine checks – you never know when it will save your life!).

He has since recovered, but I learned through all of it that this is what it is to live a full life. All of the joy and all of the grief all rolls together, and every time my life changed, I recalibrated and found a new path forward.

Around the office, when life gets real, we say “life is life-y today” so there isn’t any judgement on what we are going through. That saying changes our perspective from “this is a bad day,” to “this is a complicated day with the of the full breadth of what it means to be human,” and it helps us remember to be kind to ourselves.

For more information and disclosures, please go to kimberlymonaghan.nm.com.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://kimberlymonaghan.nm.com
• Instagram: @kim.monaghan.nm
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/people/Kimberly-Monaghan-Northwestern-Mutual/100071739015358/#
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kim-monaghan-7475656/

Image Credits

These were all taken by me or someone on my team, except for the headshot, which was taken by a photographer names Brett Dorrian Benedict.