Insights: Why does wealth management arrive too late?

**David Brear** (0:14)
I'm David Brear, and today we are talking about one of the biggest moments in a founder's journey and exit. For many entrepreneurs, selling a business is seen as the finishing line. But in reality, it's the start of a completely new set of financial decisions. Suddenly, there are questions around tax, investing, planning, family, purpose. And if you're anything like today's guest, a flood of unsolicited emails from wealth managers you've never met before. Weird, huh? So why does financial advice often arrive at the biggest decision decisions have actually already been made? And if we were designing wealth management today, would it look anything like the industry we have now?
That's what we're going to be exploring on today's episode. And to discuss this, we are joined by some super duper awesome guests. First up, we have Stephanie Kirkpatrick, who is the founder of Pretty Smart Money and Orum. Hey, Steph, how are you doing?

**Stephany Kirkpatrick** (1:07)
Hey, David. Good morning. I'm doing great. Thanks for having me.

**David Brear** (1:10)
For anybody that doesn't know you, do you want to give yourself a bit of a background?

**Stephany Kirkpatrick** (1:13)
Absolutely. Hello, everybody. I'm Steph. I'm the former founder and CEO of Orum and a long time certified financial planner. Actually, over 15 years of the time I've spent building in tech companies, most of that time was spent not in payments, which is where Orum was born, but actually in financial advice and wealth management. I'm the principal inventor and patent holder for a financial advice patent.
I'm just uniquely, I think, interested in this category of financial advice and the world of wealth management. For today, specifically, why is it so weird to have people reach out to you and want to talk to you about money when they've never actually met you? So it's going to be a really fun conversation.

**David Brear** (1:52)
Sounds great and lovely to have you on. We have also been joined by Kate Moody, who is the Customer Strategy Director at 11FS. Kate, I'm pretty sure everybody knows you at this stage, but for anybody who doesn't, do you want to remind them what you do at 11FS?

**Kate Moody** (2:05)
Yes. I wear two hats. One of those hats is getting to meet great people like Steph on the podcast, like today, and the other is working in our Ventures team, so the consulting side of our business at 11FS, where we partner directly with banks, Fintechs, anybody that wants to build and design new products and services in the world of financial services and money, just try and make things work better for customers. I'm a self-certified customer nerd, so just love really trying to understand those customer jobs be done, what those unmet customer needs are, and really think about how we connect those into better products and services. I'm really just excited to learn from Steph and her experience today as well.

**David Brear** (2:39)
Very cool. I feel like we actually need to make those hats for you, Kate.
I feel like we could do it quite literally with Fintech Insider or 11FS swag, didn't we? But I wouldn't say no.

**Kate Moody** (2:50)
I do have a very large head, like literally, hopefully not metaphorically, but they'd need to be quite substantial hats.

**David Brear** (2:56)
Yeah. You meant literally not egotistically. You're actually very down to earth, aren't you?

**Kate Moody** (3:01)
Fingers crossed. We'll find out.

**David Brear** (3:03)
All right, guys.
Let's dive in.
Steph, before we get into your LinkedIn post, that really spurred all the reasons why we're here, I'd love to talk a little bit more about the periods surrounding Orum joining Stripe. It must be quite a weird feeling when those things happen, and the acquisition itself, and leading a company you've started and run for a period of time through that type of exit. I mean, what was the experience like? Is it what you always thought it would be, or is there anything unexpected?

**Stephany Kirkpatrick** (3:32)
This is part of the founder journey that I think doesn't get a lot of conversation. We talk about building, we talk about the goal to have an outcome, and then nothing else. There's very little written, spoken, talked about. So I'm so glad you're asking this question. I have a little bit of a unique experience because I went through an acquisition when I was a part of the management team at LearnVest in 2015 We were acquired by Northwestern Mutual. So I had a version of what it might feel like in my head, but I wasn't the founder. And when you're in the founder seat, you're facing honestly the highest stakes financial decision you've ever made in your life. And not only are you having to think about those decisions that might affect your own future, you have to think about your shareholders, your customers, your employees. So there's a really complex puzzle to put together when you're trying to find the right combination of where to land the company ultimately.