I started my financial planning career when I helped my mother transition to widowhood when my dad passed away in 2001. Coming from a generation where men took care of most of the household finances, my mother was at a loss, both emotionally and financially. Could you imagine 50 years of marriage and then widowhood and now suddenly single?

Fortunately, I was able to jump in and help her. I had just completed a financial management MBA program the year prior, so I was able to help her with that transition. But I knew other women may not have had the support like my mother had. What I decided to do the next year was to help women similar to my mother really understand their finances and walk that financial journey with them.

That brings me to one of my first strategies to create raving fans: You think outside of the box. Another strategy I want to share with you is what I call my swan success: #FinancialSwan. Most of my clients are women, and what they have told me over the last 20 years is that financial worries keep them up at night.

What I decided to do was to help them sleep well at night. My logo is a swan, and it has two meanings. One is an acronym, which is Sleep Well At Night. The second one is a metaphor, which means transforming ugly-duckling financial situations into beautiful financial swans. That’s why the #FinancialSwan.

When someone becomes a client in my practice, I send them a glass swan, and I tell them to put it on their nightstand as a reminder of the work that we are doing together and that now they are able to sleep well at night. One of my clients took it one step further. She was so excited when she received her swan that she posted on social media, really delighted and pleased with the work that we’re doing together, and she ended it with #FinancialSwan. So, every time one of my clients posts information about me, they use that #FinancialSwan. What I have created is a community of what I call “my ladies, my swans.” When they become a member of or part of my practice, they become one of my swans.

One way to create buzz about your practice is to get people talking about you on social media. If you are not friends with your clients, friend them on social media. Of course, you can keep track of what they are doing, but you can also highlight what you are doing in your practice. They will tag you every time, and you can start to see and create the buzz that I talked about.

The second strategy I want to share with you is something that I created last year. It was a dark time. As you remember in lockdown, we were worried about how to get toilet paper and hand sanitizer, and we were making sourdough bread — we were doing all these things. I really wanted to cheer my clients up. I love music; I have several Spotify playlists. I decided to make a playlist for my clients, and what I did was solicit songs from them. So, in their review meetings, I would ask them what their favorite song was, I would add it to the playlist, and then I sent the playlist out to all of my clients to enjoy. That created a sense of community, and then I had some clients share it with others. That’s something that you can do as well: Think of something creative that you can share as a community with your clients.

I’m currently working on the My Awesome Client playlist; that’s what I call it: MAC playlist, the holiday edition. I’m soliciting songs right now, and I’m sure on that Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” is going to be on the list because it’s always on there.

The last thing that I want to share with you is my Money and Mimosas event. This is a client bring-a-friend event, where a client hosts the event, and she invites her girlfriends. It’s really a fun and less intimidating way for my female clients to learn about money. I spend about 20 minutes on conversation, and then the rest of the time we have breakfast, and we drink our mimosas. We’re having fun, and we’re having conversations. That has led to a lot of referrals in my practice.