We’re thrilled to welcome Jennifer Goldman, CFP® to In The Suite. Jen is a powerhouse who has been published in several magazines, taught workshops, and spoken at several national conferences. From operational management to business development, Jen has more than 30 years of experience transforming service businesses within the finance industry. She’s a mom, wife, and school activist with a huge heart for community, service, and volunteering.
She’s a woman of strategy, systems, and execution with a passion to help more consumers reach financial freedom. Jen’s a CFP®, CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER, who has been published and asked to speak for T3 Technology Tools for Today, Journal of Financial Planning, Investment News, Inside Information, The Trust Advisor, FPA, NAPFA and the list keeps going.
Jen is the Founder and Business Transformation Specialist at Jennifer Goldman Consulting, which launched in October 2017. She teaches service businesses to embrace operational changes so they can thrive and help more consumers.
For 10 years, Jen was Founder and Business Tech Transformation Specialist for her business, My Virtual COO. She had a team of eight or nine people and started to feel out of touch with her clients because she didn’t interact with the end consumer as often as she did when the business was smaller. She made a rewarding decision to scale back and redesign her business model.
Oh yes, it was scary, Jen tells us, but it was necessary strategically to evolve. “You’ve got to follow your passion, and what you absolutely love to do,” says Jen. You can hear Jen’s ardor for helping businesses succeed and thrive. She has so many sage tips on technology transformation and operations agility.
In this episode, we chat about how COVID has completely changed the way the game is played. We know that remote work is both productive and collaborative, not a time-wasting isolation tank that people once imagined. Plus, people don’t need to trade off family needs for work or to commute.
We talk about how technology has been a huge part of the remote workplace—business planning, project management, video conferencing, scheduling tools! Jen tells us how awareness shifted. Business owners can now see the issues at hand, it’s not one issue or two, it’s multiple and they come all at once. But that’s good news.
In this podcast episode, Jen walks us through how to create a life career mission statement and how to get nitty-gritty with business goals. “You can always work with the honest truth, you can’t work with those that are living in the clouds,” says Jen.
Diving headfirst into those initiatives can feel like a belly flop but Jen teaches business to float and swim their way to the finish line. And hey, if you do flop from time to time, which everyone and every business does, you can grow from it. “Being real and being authentic is what it’s about. And there is no shame in talking about the failures because others can learn from them,” Jen comments.
This episode is full of valuable information you can help but jot down. Listen to Jen’s episode and think about these three bits of advice.
- Create a life career mission statement. Jen says to start by asking a few important questions to help you acknowledge your personal and professional goals that you want to hit. What is the idea? What’s the benefit? What’s the ultimate goal? Who’s going to lead it? And when? It helps to have a plan and process for the future rather than only planning for today.
- Vision board or mind board business goals. In a collaborative environment with your team, visualize and think about all the major initiatives you have. Jen’s advice is to mind board or vision board the benefits, who was going to lead it, best time of year for the project. Write them down physically somewhere, whether it’s with pen and paper or in a Word document.
- Protecting your time is essential. Use technology as a time-saving tool. There are online collaboration tools like Asana, Google Drive. Trello. These types of tools cut down on the time it takes to do other tasks such as emailing someone or sending over a document, it can be accessed via technology.
Show Notes
Today’s episode of In The Suite with Jennifer Goldman, CFP®. Jen is a problem solver and a process geek with more than 30 years of experience transforming service businesses within the finance industry. She’s a mom, wife, and schools activist with a huge heart for community, service, and volunteering.
“You’ve got to follow your passion, and what you absolutely love to do,” says Jen.
Jen has been published in several magazines, taught workshops, and spoken at several national conferences such as T3 Technology Tools for Today, Journal of Financial Planning, Investment News, Inside Information, The Trust Advisor, FPA, NAPFA, and more.
In this podcast episode, Jen talks about how to create a life career mission statement, why protecting your time is so essential, and so much more. She’s a woman of strategy, systems, and execution with a passion to help more consumers reach financial freedom. Be sure to listen to the full episode!
Join the conversation to hear about:
- Changes in technology since the start of COVID (06:10)
- Shifting toward permanent acceptance of a virtual business model (10:15)
- Why Jennifer chose to scale back her business (15:00)
- Why it’s easier to make choices if you have a vision for the future (20:55)
- The end of the “Yes” person (27:50)
- Transforming the people within the business (32:25)
- How to create a life career mission statement (36:50)
- What consulting with Jen looks like (39:10)
- Why protecting your time is so essential (45:10)
- Jen tells us about what it was like to create her educational courses (47:30)
- How to get in touch with Jennifer (54:00)
- What Jen’s superpower is! (58:00)
Referenced Materials
- Jennifer Goldman CFP® Consulting
- Jennifer Goldman CFP® – LinkedIn
- Jennifer Goldman CFP® – Twitter
- Jennifer Goldman CFP® Business Operations Online Courses
- “The Challenger Sale: Take Control of the Customer Conversation” by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson, Book on Amazon
- #FASuccess Ep 092: Taking More Vacation Time By Standardizing Workflows And Processes In Your Advisor CRM with Jennifer Goldman
