Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Michelle Waymire. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Michelle, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What do you think Corporate America gets wrong in your industry?

There’s a lot to critique about financial services, but I take greatest issue with the lack of diversity in the industry, along with the strong emphasis on products over people. More specifically: Young people don’t need their parents’ advisor, or some other old white man in a suit peddling products. They need financial advice from someone who is approachable, knowledgeable, and not going to talk down to them. So many “financial gurus” out there right now are focused almost exclusively on numbers, investment returns, and selling products. What they’re not focused on is in actually helping regular people achieve their goals and navigate the emotional side of money. “Personal finance” is more personal than it is finance; you have to actually listen to someone and hear where they are uniquely struggling in order to help them live their most abundant life.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your background and context?

Hi! I’m Michelle Waymire, and I’m the CEO and founder of Young & Scrappy, an independent personal finance firm here in Atlanta. I’m a fiduciary financial advisor and coach, leading a small but growing team of other money nerds. I specialize in helping young professionals, entrepreneurs, and members of the LGBTQ+ community make sense of their finances, build wealth for the future, and grow thriving businesses.

By now, you may have guessed that I’m a huge money nerd. A lot of people ask me if I’ve always been like this, and my answer is a resounding NO! On the contrary, I have a B.A. in International Studies (Liberal Arts degrees, unite!), taught Theatre in an inner city charter school, and have always preferred poetry to math. Through life’s weird twists and turns, however, I found myself in a Masters of Business Administration (MBA) program studying finance, and I ended up LOVING it! Cut to a couple years later and I’m a big hit at parties, showing off my color-coded spreadsheets, teaching my friends about credit scores, and trying to convince folks that investing is not as scary as it sounds.

Becoming a financial advisor and coach was a logical next step; my first foray into this work involved teaming up with a Knoxville-based firm. They did great work, but we didn’t have a lot in common in terms of target audience and services offered, so in January 2020, I took my scrappy little business fully independent.

Right now I mostly work with clients one on one, but we’re currently working on building out new programs such as the Money Squad financial literacy subscription service and the Abundance Intensive Retreats. I am always looking for new ways to make good, thoughtful personal finance advice as accessible as possible.

I’m very proud of my casual and kind approach to the work–my goal is to make things way less scary than people think they are. I’m also way gayer and more colorful than most advisors.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

My old boss once called me a “workhorse,” and I was so incredibly proud of my diligence and hard working attitude. As a result, I always assumed that if you wanted things to work out / achieve success, you had to be constantly on that grind. (The only grind I really want now is coffee.) I’m doing my best to unlearn this habit, which has only led to burnout, and start to embrace work from a place of ease and flow. This doesn’t mean things are ALWAYS easy or that I’m opposed to hard work, but it does mean that I’m decoupling the expectation that the only way to get ahead is at my own expense.

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

I’m an introvert but I love people, so for me it was one-on-one networking. I made a list of 100 people I wanted to connect with–some were traditional centers of influence in the advisory space (tax professionals, bookkeepers, estate planners, etc.) But also other small business owners I thought were doing cool work, therapists, trainers, etc. I wrote each a handwritten card inviting them to coffee and seeing whether we could mutually refer to one another. A surprising number of people took me up on it–this let me get to know lots of people around town without resorting to high volume (read: stressful) networking events. I also have found success through joining Facebook groups where my target audience was hanging out; in my case, groups designed specifically to provide opportunities and support for women, LGBTQ+ folks, and other money nerds.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.youngandscrappy.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theyoungscrappy/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/youngandscrappy
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wayfire/
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/young-scrappy-atlanta-2

Image Credits
Lyndsay Hobby Photography