Julia Carlson is the founder and CEO of Financial Freedom Wealth Management Group LLC. She founded the firm at the turn of the century, and, with its successes, she has become a thought leader in the financial industry. Carlson is an entrepreneur, speaker, author, educator and expert on the investment landscape. She is recognized as being especially knowledgeable on topics relating to tax strategies for retirement and distribution planning as well as exit planning for business owners.
Russ Prince: At Financial Freedom Wealth Management Group, how do you work with clients to achieve financial freedom, the firm’s namesake?
Julia Carlson: Financial freedom means different things to all of us, and it is often much more than having money. I like to say that most financial firms are in the money business, but that we’re in the helping people business.
We don’t have a client minimum because we firmly believe that when it comes to a human being needing help, the amount of money involved is irrelevant. We want to help people get on the road to financial freedom, whether those people have $1,000 or $10 million. Through our planning and discovery process, we learn what that means for the families we serve and deliver tailored solutions designed for their exact needs. The goal is for our clients to feel financial freedom when they work with us. We make it our job to worry about their financial lives, so they don’t have to.
I started my financial services career at a local bank as an investment advisor’s assistant and saw it as the career path I wanted to pursue. I’ve also always had an entrepreneurial inclination, so after a few years, I became an independent advisor and over time built the team, which is the backbone of this firm.
Ever since the day I launched this firm in 2001, helping others pursue financial freedom has been our purpose. We are a diverse, professional team and are passionate about inspiring our clients to reach toward abundance in all aspects of their life. We help the individuals and families we work with no matter where they are in their financial journey by providing the education, empowerment and guidance they need to pursue their financial goals for a successful, rewarding future.
Our commitment at Financial Freedom Wealth Management Group is to care deeply about our clients and their financial lives. We are a comprehensive wealth management and planning firm committed to helping our clients improve their long-term success and pursue financial freedom. We offer wealth planning and investment services, retirement income and distribution planning, tax reduction planning, family wealth planning, educational events and communication, personalized attention and consulting, and exit planning services for businesses.
Prince: How do you work with clients to create a lasting legacy with their wealth and family?
Carlson: We believe it’s our job not just to help our clients grow their wealth, but also to assist them in building a legacy lasting for multiple generations. Unfortunately, according to research conducted by The Williams Group, 70% of families lose their assets from one generation to the next, and 90% of families lose their assets by the third generation. We believe crucial elements are often missed while the parents are alive. Doing well with money isn’t always just about what you know. It’s about how you behave. And, behavior is hard to teach, even to smart people.
We help our clients create a lasting legacy in three ways:
• Communicate: Parents should teach their children about the value of money and be open about the family’s financial situation from an early age. It is crucial to have a plan and communicate that plan to the next generation
• Engage: It is vital to have a long-term financial plan and an estate plan. Adult children should be brought into the conversation, so they can better understand their parent’s legacy plan.
• Educate: We have found that education is an important piece and needs to be ongoing to see the plan succeed and continue engaging the next generation. We have found that having multi-generational relationships with an advisor can help provide guidance and ongoing support to the beneficiaries.
Prince: While your clients have already accumulated wealth, how do you also work with them to set up the next generation for success?
Carlson: We believe it starts with empowering the next generation by communicating the plan from their parents. By engaging with them, we hope to get them inspired on why it’s important to carry out that legacy and then provide ongoing education and resources—essentially, being a partner and advisor to them.
The desire is often there for the parents to help their children get started learning about personal finance and investing early on, which is something we encourage. But unless the child is truly interested, it’s hard to create an impact and real interest in money. We have found that the education can be more helpful coming from a third party rather than the parents.
We encourage the parents to let us reach out to their adult children and initiate conversations about personal finance and investing. They essentially delegate this to us. We also have millennial advisors on our team who often work with this next generation of clients. We find that it’s mutually beneficial for this demographic to learn and get advice from peers.
A successful strategy we encourage is to allow us as the wealth advisors to facilitate a legacy session with clients and their beneficiaries to initially communicate the family legacy plan and then, on an ongoing basis, to intentionally keep the conversations alive.
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