E325: Maddy Roche - Legacy without the script

Do you feel that in a time when we are more connected than ever, we are drifting away from real human connection especially to ourselves? I do. Hi, I'm the Tisillatino and I want to invite you to join me and my very inspiring guests in exploring ways to reconnect to your essence, to your definite purpose. To what makes you tick? Are you ready? Hello, everybody and welcome to a new episode of Back to Basics, Reconnected to the Essence of You. My guest today is Manning Roach, founding team member at XYPN, former vice president of Getting Shipped on, executive business coach and podcast host. She helps build the systems and culture that support the thousands of financial advisors for entrepreneurship while coaching leaders through mindset, burnout and the courage to live by success on their own terms. Now a chance we trust she continues her mission ensuring people have access to values, align financial guidance and permission to build lives that actually fit them. Hello, Manning and welcome to Back to Basics. I let you shine nice to be here. I'm very excited. I like your approach, the titles of your companies. I can see you're bold and I love the kind of guests. It's just very intriguing when I was doing research on you on what you do right now. We're going to get into it, but I just feel I'm going to learn a lot on this episode. Thank you for being here. Yeah, absolutely. I'm looking forward to sharing what I know and introducing your audience to the concept of the child-free demographic and who we are and how life can be different. Awesome. Let's start the origin story and I'm sure I've said this many times in my interviews, but it's true. Every time I introduce somebody, I say, "Probably we're not dreaming about maybe doing the career or having the career you're having right now, but I'm sure somewhere there's a superpower of a passion that was showcased early on. So tell us about young Maddie. Oh, young Maddie. She was always so worried. I feel like now as an older, not an older adult, but as I've reached almost 40, I'm finally looking back at life and realizing I did not need to stress as much as I did. The first so long, I was worried about money and what I was going to do with my life and how I was going to make it. And if I knew where I would be at my age when I was young, I would have been a very different young Maddie. But I wouldn't want to change anything. I was always quite driven. I was always very interested in my own personal finance, whether it was me saving every dollar I ever earned as a babysitter or really managing and trying to figure out how to pay off my own student loans when I graduated from college. I was really drawn to the personal finance space and didn't realize it was a profession until a few years after I graduated. And I ended up getting a really impressive and wonderful opportunity to be the first employee at an organization called XY Planning Network. And that was an organization that helped financial advisors run their own businesses. And we grew that network to over 2,000 advisors around the country in 10 years. And I knew almost every single one of them in their entrepreneurial journey. And I was so impressed with what it took to build a financial planning firm. But during that time, I was also becoming financially sound myself and learning the language and understanding what it takes to be able to begin to relax into your own financial picture. And it was actually during that job that I met my current founder, Jay Ziegmont, who is running child-free wealth. And child-free wealth is a financial planning firm that works exclusively with child-free people. And I'm a queer woman and I have no children and I'm not planning on having any children. And it really took my breath away as I did a one-time session with him around how different my life is going to be because I'm not going to have kids. And that is what kind of catapulted me into my new journey, which is helping build child-free trust. And it was really a kind of full circle having a financial planning session with Jay to your point, Latisha, around who young Maddie was, just how different life is based on what I thought it was going to be when I was young. And you know, one of the things I really love is to find niche. Obviously you found a niche and it's specific, but I also love the fact that it's almost on apologetically. Like I respect that because I do have friends that they chose not to have kids. And I find myself having to defend them very often because people want to create who knows whatever story is about why this is. You know, it's very respectful to say this is having kids is not for everybody and the fact that you know, own and it like saying, I'm not going to do it and not only that, I can actually be more intentional about my financial plan because everybody says, well, they don't have kids. So of course they have disposable info. So your money is great in your kids when you do have them. But just that realization is very, very powerful. Yeah. And it's an identity that not all of us have adopted. And it really wasn't an identity that I adopted before I got into this business. I knew I wasn't going to have kids for a long time. It just hasn't happened. I didn't really want them. And as I've grown older, I've just decided that this is actually a really proactive choice of mine. But it wasn't like I was waking up every day like, I'm child free and I'm going to look for child free things. And it just was, I have a community of women in my life that don't have kids. And to your point, it is not the easiest conversation to talk about with people that have kids. It's, I'm actually amazed. The number of times I talk to parents about what I do. And my choice not to have children in the varied responses I get from parents around, that's the best thing you could ever do is don't have kids. Or you know, like the people just kind of start confiding and it's, you know, there's a lot of misconceptions about our community too around decisions about why we didn't have children. And we've done studies on reasons why people don't have kids. And just not wanting them is the number one reason. And finances is a pretty close second or third. You know, then there's, you know, components around the environment and passing on mental health issues. So there's a whole varied reason. But not liking children is actually on the lower the end of the research study. So it's a misconception that we don't love children and want to be around them. And I think it's, especially for women, it's this expectation since we were little to have dolls and take care of them. And I nannyed my whole life and held babies that were, you know, just infants and saw them through their, you know, kindergarten graduation, that there's this expectation that women have children. And I really found throughout my life at different turning points that I was really going against the traditional life script. And, you know, from a, from deeply personal ways to kind of who I am as a person. But I decided as I moved into this role and over the past few years to really start embracing that I'm child free and try to elevate the conversation around it. Some more women and men can feel seen about it. No, I think I respect that very much because as I always say, we all have a calling and that those and all involved having families. And I am a big provider. I have two kids. I always say, I feel a little guilty because I love them and I don't want them to grow up. I have an 11 year old and 15 year old. But I always admit that sometimes I fantasize when they are out of the house and I get to be me, my, oh, my own, with my husband again. And we always know, feel a little guilty even and meeting it. And some other parents say, are you crazy? And I'm one ever to live. And I'm like, no, I can't believe it. But also because it's exciting to think of them starting their lives as a adult. That's also very exciting to me. I'm going to miss the little kids they are now. We always say, when you have kids, you lose a child and you gain a child every day because every day they stop doing something you love and that you know you're going to dearly miss. But then they start doing other things that's even more fun. Like even as you get to relate to them as adults, it's very, very exciting. But I'm on your, like, it's like, if it wasn't going to be with the right person, I didn't, I didn't feel like needed to have children to be happier before field. I was always a little different from some people that actually what that was the goal number one is, let me go have kids. And I just find that there's something you've set around, you know, we don't all want families. That's actually some language that we've tried to change a bit because we do have families. You know, I have chosen families. I have my own families. I have my first families. I have my friend families. So this idea of like, oh, you know, there's some bias in language around this assumption of what traditional family is and things like that that, you know, we as child free people are up against that, you know, just because I'm not having children doesn't mean that I don't have a family just because I won't marry my partner. doesn't mean that she's not my person for the rest of my life. Yeah, fair point fair point and I think these are things that as you say it buys in the way we speak and so it's important to relate and life family is something on that as an immigrant and big on you know when you when you left your country left the origin family behind, then. You know that family's, so memory's close to you when you needed the most. So, that it's certainly amazing. So you wear employee number one in this company that you help create what you, for entrepreneurs at there, for people that have their own businesses, I know you're being on burnout, so I also wanna touch upon that, but what peace of wisdom you wanna share from that growing to that extent, from being one employee to, you know, as you say, sharing like we were 200 consultants and growing incredibly fast. - Yeah, I mean, this is, child-free trust is the second, now the second startup experience I've had, and building something from nothing, and turning an idea into reality is a beautiful thing to be part of, and you know, this is sometimes what I think I'm trading children for, is that now I've been part of kind of creating businesses that are babies, and how do we get them to grow up and mature and function without all of us, and things like that. The experience of, and I just encourage entrepreneurs to go get it, if they wanna start businesses, they should, more beautiful things can happen in this world when we have people following and chasing their dreams and starting businesses around them. I really truly believe that the more that we can tap into what are real essences and exchange that for value versus working under the corporate structure of what capitalism gives us, we can really make change. So I encourage anyone who's got the inkling to be an entrepreneur to go do it. But from my experience at XY Planning Network, you know, over the 11 years I was there, we went from one employee, me, to over 100 employees, the hardest part was the people management. The hardest part was getting the right people on the bus, making sure they were sitting in the right seats, making sure that we were all driving in the right direction. And it's yet to be seen if that's the same challenge the child-free trust has. It's a very different company, it's a very different market, it's a very different service offering, but I'm excited to see after a few years with child-free trust what the learning is from that startup experience. - Well, it sounds fascinating. And you know, you make it sound easy and nice, but they saw obviously anybody that has done startups and created something from nothing. It's overwhelming. Many times I'm sure you and that are doing things. You didn't know how to do it. And you have to figure it out so many times. So that leads undoubtedly to burnout and like feeling you cannot do it. I mean, how many times in that journey maybe you said that this is not possible? I mean, how do you overcome those situations and also how do you recognize in your case burnout? And you're also a business coach, as I understand, right? So what have you seen in that that? Where do people get stuck and what do we do as individuals in our jobs that allow ourselves to burnout? - Good question. I've spent a lot of time thinking about what my theory is around helping other entrepreneurs build businesses. And what I've really settled on is that we as a culture are very addicted to the growth mindset. And to this, we must grow if we're not growing, we're dying. I don't agree with that philosophy just at a fundamental level. I think there's a lot of beauty in remaining still and present and maybe even reducing in size and turning inward. So I've started to really kind of conceptualize this idea of sustainability versus scalability. And the entrepreneurs that I've worked with over the years have been primarily financial advisors. And there's this idea that, well, I've got to scale a business. I've got to be able to make more for less work. And I think that's a really dangerous mindset to go after when you're a creative entrepreneur. When really, I think life is about finding balance and finding a way to be sustainable in the business that you're building. And from my experiences at startups, making sure that we're okay when we slow things down and when we focus on what will feed us and emotionally and personally and at the business level that keeps us in this business longer than just trying to always make more for less. When we're focused on growth, growth, growth, I don't believe humans are satisfied by accumulating money. Yes, money solves a lot of problems. I will not argue with that. There is data around that, happiness increases of a certain threshold, but it doesn't increase at certain thresholds also. So this idea that more and more and more is what's gonna invite satisfaction in life is not true. And what I've seen among the entrepreneurs I've worked with, the people that are growing for a dollar amount, burnout. People who are growing to be in this business long-term and love their life are in it long-term and love their life. - That's a beautiful, say, feedback from people that maybe don't see like in your position, you get to see, you get to plan, you get to financially advise people. And I do agree with that that when you chase in the dollar sign, probably happens faster, but at a price, I've seen in my own environment where I've seen great families unfortunately, these band that are people completely seek or even committed suicide, unfortunately, I had a good friend that thought that was the best option he had and it's just so painful to think of that. And mostly because of money, it's always something related to money in the mix. And so this is something that, you know, for those chasing that, let's say the longer term, as you say, you end up seeing more fulfill. But do you feel that they also sometimes getting patient like when it doesn't happen fast enough that you say you kind of say you're happy with your life, but the inevitable, inevitably human beings, we leave by comparison, right? Like chasing off the Jones' famous theme. And so I wonder from your perspective and you see all sorts of people, you know, what is it that you see? What does it take to be patient enough, to build a life you want as it relates to the financial stability? Really good question. And, you know, comparison is the thief of joy. It just is. Anytime we start comparing ourselves to someone else, we immediately, neurologically, semantically feel like shit, pardon my language. (laughs) It happens when, if that is our yardstick, for how well we're doing, we are living externally. And part of my own, you know, religious philosophies and things like that come back to that external is not where we need to be looking, it's always internal. So, you know, part of this is also, how do we remain confident and trust the process of what life is unfolding and how it's unfolding? And trusting that there's more to be discovered with life versus thinking that we can always be in control, that we can always be planning, we can always be doing to ensure the future, we don't know what the future has to offer. So I think that the balance I tried, have over the years tried to instill in my coaching clients is getting really comfortable with the discomfort of what it means to sit and be patient. And, you know, what's amazing is as you look back as hindsight, you know, we started our conversation with a look back at Young Maddie, I would have never been able to picture what the past 25 years transpired. So any of us trying to think what the next 25 is gonna do is impossible. And there's studies that our brain actually choose and thinks better around five to seven years than ever trying to plan for the future. And so when we think about, you know, financial planning and, you know, in the world of child-free people, a lot of us child-free people are gonna have a very different financial life because at some point we need to start de-accumulating. I don't have to pass on wealth to my next generation. I don't have a next generation. So the idea of I need to accumulate, accumulate, accumulate. So I die with a couple million in my portfolio, isn't my future. So how do I change my mindset instead to, how do I start using money in my current life to make sure that I enjoy it the whole time and not necessarily have to chase what others are chasing, which is accumulation, accumulation. - Hmm, that's fascinating. In your perspective, because I do tend to agree that we, and you said we had, we come from this mentality where more and more, it's needed, right? And I think people, some people, some fortunate people are a massive, incredible amount of money that they're not gonna leave to enjoy. And then most of those people also don't take the time to enjoy. But let's say you take the time to enjoy, but it's so much that you obviously are not gonna, I mean, there's so many travels and so many luxuries you can have, right? So the help of the mystify, like why in your mind even for the clients you advise, assuming you're a working person and you're the kind of person that even if you have children, you say, well, my children will figure it out. I want to leave my life and they have to figure their own life. What is that number that you say allows you the freedom to travel and joy life in a way where it's not like Suburban, but also not your common day. It's like, is that because you say you always say, "Well, a millionaire is not a millionaire anymore." Of course, what's the millionaire guideline these things? Because I think that we part of what people get unhappy is that they don't have a goal. I always say, "Take that opportunity." The life I want, I have a nice house. I never dream about bigger house. I come from a place where in nothness makes me happy. I never try to work and I like to chase, of course, but more for myself development, not so much for the financial. But of course, you also want to have that piece of mind, like I can do what I want to do when I want to do it. Totally, totally. Let me just be clear for the audience, I am not a financial planner. I've never been one, but I have coached hundreds of them over the years, if not thousands. There's a million one-liners about the 4% rule. You can portfolio, you can pull four to 8% out every year, things like that, and you can find your number. It requires you to know exactly how much you're going to spend over the years. And we just don't know. But I do know from lived experience, and I know a community I'm building around me also agrees that when we are constantly trying to add things into our lives that are material, we aren't anymore satisfied. Now, there are things that we can buy with money, like time and comfort, that really change happiness. And when I see entrepreneurs and people working, working, and grinding, grinding, and their kids are growing older, and they've not taken any time to pause, they're not earning for any reason other than to accumulate money. And that you're missing the purpose of life at that point. So I would encourage people to think about how do you get more of your time back? Time freedom is one of the best things we can have. Health freedom remaining healthy, longer is a huge opportunity that we have. And then giving, giving is a huge part of this. And for the child free community, we're huge givers. You know, when we, when the advisors of child free wealth work with child free people, they will present to a child free couple that they have an $8 million problem on their hands, that you have too much money, and you're not spending enough, because you're going to die with a couple million dollars, and where's it going to go? To your charities, great, but they charities probably could have used your money while you were alive. And you could have given more, because you have better tax benefits if you give while you're alive versus when you pass away. So how are you using the money you have currently to help other people start businesses? Help, you know, I'm in the business right now with child free trust. We're raising money from an investor level. And what has shocked me about investors is how tightwad so many people are. When we know they've got a lot of money. And to me, if I ever came into a lot of money, I will be giving that money away to any woman that wants to start a business. Any queer person that wants to start a business, you can buy money, you get to go do it. So I'm amazed where there's still this mentality of scarcity with people. And willingness to share what truly can change the world, which is money. Money is a fabulous tool. How do we get people to want to give more? And I think audience members like, please think about your gifting strategy, whether it be that anyone you see that's asking for money, you give money to or you have at least charities you want to give to, or you've got some entrepreneurs, you want to help them bootstrap their businesses with no strings attached cash and injections. There's just a lot you can do with it. I think that's a very valid point. And I have to say, I totally agree. And I only became apparent how bad it is with people and given when, you know, if you want to know for yourself, you're not going to have a job, you're not going to have a job. You're not going to have a job. felt vulnerable enough to share these stories. And then, you know, even if they needed to leave paycheck, but paycheck, because they allowed themselves to dream, they align with their passion. We want to make them take, they got out of that. And so I'm very be on that. I recognize it, but I always like to push the audience into that uncomfortable area where it's scary to think of something else. That I can do this for X amount of more days and I'm going to have a retirement. But maybe you're missing on something bigger or something you were meant to do in life. And so that's my BFD. And it's don't get comfy if you're truly happy and fulfilled, fantastic. But if you feel there's something in there that you want to go chase, and you don't have to put your job to chase it, you can find a way where you can make it into what's your do it. So well said. And thank you for that. I was just listening to a podcast the other day talking about entrepreneurship versus staying at your standard 9 to 5. So many of us, you know, have stayed at our 9 to 5s thinking it's safe. It's safe. It's safe. It's what I need to do. It's actually way less safe than going out and trying something that you feel really passionate about. And people often say that having a plan B actually prevents you from really going after your plan A. And there's putting trust and betting on yourself is a really, really strong bet versus betting on that a corporation is going to keep your position in the department that you are at at the level that you're being paid at amongst a very shifting economy in world. You know, this idea like my job will always be there. We're seeing in droves how that is changing amongst different industries. And so this idea of safety, building something on your own and becoming an entrepreneur is actually a really, really great opportunity for people to take. That's great. Thank you for that. So on the on your new adventure, child free trust, is there anything that we haven't touched upon that you want to share with the audience? We've spoken a little bit about the mission, anything that you want to highlight from that work. Sure. Free trust is a perfect example of an entrepreneur saying that there is a problem that needs to be solved and then going after and solving it. And that is our founder, Dr. J. So 25% of Americans don't have kids. It's a much higher percentage than a lot of us understand. A big question that many of us face is who's going to take care of me when I'm older. And that is a question even my mom asked me as recent as two weeks ago. I'm not having kids who's going to take care of me when I'm older. The challenge many of us face is that when we go to do our state documents, when we fill out a will, our healthcare proxy, our medical and financial POA, our trust, we know where we want our money to go. We know what our advanced healthcare directives should say, but we don't have anyone necessarily to act on our behalf for us. And so I'm speaking mainly kind of to the 55 and older group that is looking at a state planning saying, I really need to get this done. But oh my gosh, I don't have someone I trust to make decisions for me. A child-free trust was set up to actually be a professional fiduciary. So we can be listed in your child-free estate documents as your medical and financial POA executor and trustee. So this is the first of its kind offering. There's no one else in the country that's doing this in all 50 states. We can actually serve in those capacities so that if you feel like you need someone, a third party to be able to make sure your wishes are followed and that you don't end up in the guardianship trap or the conservatist should trap without an actual advocate, that is the problem we've solved. And so for $1,000 a year, you can sign up for child-free trust. You can get your state planning documents done and you can have us listed in any of those capacities. So that's something we know people have been looking for. I've seen story after story after story of people's lives at end of life ending in a way that they didn't want because they didn't have an advocate. And that's the problem that we as child-free trust are solving. Well, it sounds compelling for sure. I think I like to say that I can recognize good ideas, good product, good solution. Definitely you're definitely serving an underserved community and providing, making it easy and if it's stressful, this is the part of life that gets very stressful. Like, not knowing what's going to happen. So when you have somebody to rely on and that it understands exactly, it's not that you have to customize to a point where you don't feel that comfortable. This is great. So yeah, I mean, we talk a lot about a lot of things. One of the things that I'm, of course, passionate about is what makes you tick. So that's always going to be my question. So in those days where you're feeling a little bit less optimistic and you need to realize you mentioned spiritually, you mentioned what are the things that are you going to practice that help your soul reconnect to who you are? It's coincidental. I'm meditated for over a decade regularly and I did a 10-day silent meditation this time last year, a little over a year called the Pasina, which is really it's a 10-day no speaking, no exercising, no reading, no writing, no eye contact, silent meditation. And it changed my life and it allowed me very quickly to see what my internal stories are, what we have on repeat, how we physiologically respond to thoughts. And so, you know, as I've been a practice meditator and been advancing my relationship to Buddhism, I've really understood just the power of meditation, but it was after that that I've stopped meditating for a long time and it was only just recently that I'm back and I've got my meditation bolster right down beneath me that I've been sitting every morning again. And so quickly, it's like a muscle that you just forget you have and it's a power muscle and it sounds cliche, but meditation and body work and body movement and, you know, of course, running my dogs and mountains and being out in nature, I'll feed my soul, but I am amazed the kind of feedback I get so quickly from returning to my meditation practice. Feels like the secret to life, you just see things so much more clearly. Yeah, silence and shutting down the noise have come up often as one of the things that make people think. It's hard to shut down all that goes on in our brains so I can totally see that. And then, I mean, that's supposed to be my last question, but I'm curious, do you know why you stop meditating after being so constant? Is it something that you allow the business of life to get in the way or if you can share? Yeah, it's an interesting question. I've gone back to this idea that I do a lot to better my set. Like I am sober because of my own relationship with substance and alcohol. I am sober from alcohol. I've done a lot of things like on a daily basis, I have to practice. And there was part of me where meditation felt like I'm just going to let that part of me spin out for a little bit. I'm going to be bad in this area and not meditate like see if I can like muscle through life. And I do and I did and I muscle through life. And it's not like your life totally spins out because you're not sitting every day. But it felt like I was, I forget what the word is where you're just like harmful to your self on purpose. Like that's almost what I felt like as I wasn't giving myself what I knew I needed. And there would be days where I was like, oh, this would have been way easier had I been meditating. And just for five minutes, you know, and it was I went on a trip just last week with my best friend and she said she looked at me and she's like, maybe you should start meditating again because she was seeing me kind of spin. And I said, I'm hearing that from my best girlfriend. I got to do it. And so I got back in the trip every morning since I've been sitting and I will, it will always be part of my life. But I wonder, you know, we can only be so good so often. And at some point we just also have to be human and say like, I don't want to wake up early and meditate, which is totally there. I totally went. That's why I felt that that was an important question because it's like, I know that research you to give yourself permission to and I read it in several things I write about you. So it's almost like you gave yourself permission to put on something, you know, it's good. And that's important because sometimes we know we cannot keep it up with everything that we know it's good. It's very hard. But the important thing is to go back to it. Yeah. To learn to go back to it. I think that's kind of like the important thing. Yeah. And so many of us judge ourselves off of what we can add and remove from life. You know, like I've stopped eating this. I've stopped doing this. I've stopped doing or I've added yoga. I've added this. I've added that. It becomes kind of this back and forth game where sometimes we just have to listen to our body and say, this is the season of rest and I just want to sleep in. And that is. I love it. I love this is the season. I think that's a, that's a, there's some booking there somehow. I feel this is the season two. Oh, I love that. Yeah. A chapter for each thing. - Yeah, I just had a book club last night and the book ended with, we all die, but we have to find the seasons of the strawberry season or something. It's the most beautiful quote of life is suffering and it's our job to find the beauty of it and to remember that we're all on our way to pass away. And it's on us to be gentle and find the peace in it. So. - Beautiful, beautiful. Well, Madi, this has been fantastic. I appreciate your time, your wisdom, the perspective, the different life experience, I think that's true diversity is not of, it's experience for me. It's more than a gender, a theme, a taste, it's just really the diversity in perspective and life experiences that is what makes us reach. And so I appreciate you sharing with us and for you all of their Madi's web page and child free will be on our show notes and you know, wish you all the best and keep up the good work. And I'm sure this adventure not only will it be successful but also your making impact and helping others, which I think is where the biggest fulfillment is. - Yeah, well thank you and thank you for your work and elevating voices. I really appreciate being on. - Awesome, thank you all and to you out there, I hope you enjoyed this episode and please rate and review it. If you like it, share it with your crowd, especially you this one, those that don't have children and need a state plan in health, take care and until the next episode on Back to Basics. - You've been listening to Back to Basics. You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook. If you haven't yet, subscribe, great and review this podcast or NAPL podcast or any of your favorite streaming platforms. This is the best gift you can give us. Join me next week for another Back to Basics conversation. And if you want to find out about other exciting things I'm working on, visit reddicellatinot.com. Thank you and until the next time. (upbeat music)