Shelly Dodge | Providing Financial Education to the People of Flower Mound
On this week’s episode of Around Flower Mound, we speak with special guest, Shelly Dodge, President of Visionary Financial Group. Shelly has over 34 years of experience in the financial industry and started learning from the ground up. She began her career in the operations of a brokerage firm, then moved to trust and estate planning. In 2000, she changed her focus to investments with the aim to be able to provide independent and objective financial advice to her clients.
Shelly founded Visionary Financial Group in 2012, and eventually became the recipient of the Flower Mound Business of the Year Award in 2018. She is also heavily involved in the community, serving on the boards of both the Flower Mound Chamber and the Cross Timbers Rotary Club among many other activities she participates in.
We chat about her favorite things about Flower Mound, as well as:
Her goals with Visionary Financial Group and who she aims to be a hero to
Her business background and her journey to entrepreneurship
Helping clients create their financial future
The causes and organizations she stands behind
And more
Mentioned in this episode:
Transcript
Nicole Smith Woodard: Today I'm so excited to introduce you to an absolutely fantastic Flower Mound business owner and community leader. As you know, Around Flower Mound is all about bringing light to community leaders, business owners, parents and charities within our fantastic community. We in Flower Mound are so blessed to have an outstanding citizen. Welcome with me, the recipient of the 2018 Flower Mound Business of the Year and my friend, Shelly Dodge.
Shelly Dodge: Well Hello, Nicole. Thank you for having me on today.
Nicole: Well, I am so grateful for you and for your time today. I know how busy you are. I am so grateful to have met you shortly after I moved to Flower Mound and I've had the pleasure of serving next to you every Friday for a whole year as we served as Cross Timbers Rotary as secretary and treasurer. So Shelly has given me amazing advice that I literally consider every single day. But before we get into that, let me tell you a little bit about Shelley and her business, Visionary Financial. Shelly has 34 years of experience in the financial industry which by the way, you wouldn't, I'm not, Were you a teenager when you started this?
Shelly: Oh, my goodness. Yeah, keep going. I'll explain that when you ask my next question, but it's been a long time.
Nicole: Well, she learned this business from the ground up. She started her investment career in the operations of a brokerage firm, then moved to trust and estate planning. And in 2000, she changed her focus to investments. With the need to provide independent and objective financial advice to her clients, Shelly founded Visionary Financial Group in 2012. To say that she is very involved in our community is an understatement. She serves on the boards of both the Flower Mound Chamber and the Cross Timbers Rotary among many other activities that you do. So first things first, Shelly, what is your favorite thing about Flower Mound?
Shelly: Oh, boy. Okay, my favorite thing about Flower Mound is that you get to live, work and play all in the same place. I love all of the amenities that the town of Flower Mound has brought to our community. It's just the amount of restaurants and shops and all of the great work that the commissioners have done with the roadways here to make it where it's not congested.
I absolutely love being able to get everything done in one town, or at least nearby and love the people. That, so just that you're able to do everything in one place and the people are amazing. And I know everybody feels like their own communities are the same way but this really is a big town with a small town feel to it still. So I love that about Flower Mound.
Nicole: I agree completely. Well, tell us about your company, Visionary Financial Group. So what do you do and who do you want to be a hero to?
Visionary Financial Group
Shelly: Okay, at Visionary Financial, we focus on helping our clients meet their goals for what, for investment goals for whatever that means to them. Most of our clients are focusing on retirement goals. So trying to figure out when they can retire, how much they need to save for retirement, what to put those retirement assets in, that kind of thing. Also, college planning, life insurance needs. Just anything that involves your financial goals is what I'm here to help you with. I love helping people look at their retirement projections.
I've got some retirement projection software that I like to run on all my clients where it kind of takes a look at what you're doing now and what your needs are going to be when you retire and it inflates that number, we put an inflation number in there and it pops out a number and tells you what you need to be doing monthly. So that is a lot easier to obtain than just telling someone you need X number of million dollars before you can retire or whatever that number is, you know, it's different for everybody.
That's what I, that's the most common question I get is, what should you have before you retire? Well, it depends. You know, if you're making a half-million dollars right now, you need a lot more, that number's a lot bigger than if you're only making, you know, $70,000 a year right now, because we all tend to then when we make and it doesn't matter if you're working or if you're in retirement, you're still going to spend, you know, that same amount.
So that's what I try to focus on. As far as who I like to be heroes for, oh, that's really a two-fold question I would think. I get so much out of helping my clients find a way to meet their goals. They come in so many times beside themselves, not knowing how they're gonna do it how, they're going to make it. And after months or years, sometimes we're able to kind of hone in and figure out, Okay, this is what you need to be doing.
And I've had clients, I mean, some even cry in my office telling me, I would have never thought I could have retired at this age right here when five years ago when we met because I just never thought it was going to happen. And you've been able to show me how to do it, what to do and how to invest my money and you've taken care of me and I appreciate that. So I love being a hero to my clients.
But my heart is also in our students, in our youth. I have found that in my nonprofit work, anytime I volunteer for things, I tend to focus and I didn't notice this for a few years, but it always seems to be student-driven. So right now, I actually am a Dave RamseySmartvestor Pro, one of the ones here in the, local to the area. And I had the local Flower Mound High School reach out to me. I've got some teachers and assistant principals that are clients And they reached out to me and said, Hey, would you mind coming and teaching a class on investments to our Money Matters class?
They actually have an elective that's called Money Matters and they use the Dave Ramsey curriculum. And it's absolutely. I would love that. So when first year, I only sold a couple of classes. Well, the second year, they put me in the auditorium with the business entrepreneurship and marketing and all sorts of other classes that could have benefited from that. And I get so much enjoyment out of helping those students learn what they need to be doing once they get into the workforce because without someone showing them or teaching them, they don't know that they need to start putting money in that 401k from day one.
Nicole: Exactly. Well, and you also participate in the LISD internship program, right?
Shelly: Yes, I did. I had, a couple of years ago, she was my intern. I was so fortunate to get her in my office. So for a year and a half, so I had her for half of her junior year and all of her senior year and I thoroughly enjoyed that program. I encourage anyone that's listening, that if you've got a business and you need some part-time help to reach out to the local high schools, because those interns, those students are always looking for internships.
And that was one of the things because that's something that I had done when I was in high school. And because I knew that I was going to be able to afford to go to college right out of high school. So I wanted to get into the business world quickly. And so because somebody did that for me back when I was in high school, that was one of the first things I did was reach out to the high school here. And it took them a couple of years for them to find a good fit for me, but they did and it was amazing. So yes, I highly recommend connecting with the Flower Mound high school or any local high school to get in with the internship program.
Nicole: Well, awesome. Well, you kind of touched on this a little bit, we've kind of laughed about, you must have been a child when you got into this industry. But do tell us a little bit about your background and how you got to where you are today in this career in business ownership.
How Shelly Got to Where She is Today
Shelly: Okay, so the number I give everybody is really from the day I graduated high school. So when I graduated high school, the next week, I started working at 18 years old in an operations department of a stock brokerage firm. But the reason I got that job so quickly was because I had worked, my mother had worked there and I worked there a couple of summers before that. So I've actually even been in the business longer than what I put. But full time since 1986. But yes, so I started doing that and went from the operations side of it to the trust and estate planning side.
And that is where I was able to come in contact with an amazing mentor of mine that I still keep in touch with to this day. And he said to me, you know, if you ever want to be a trust officer, an investment advisor, someone who's actually giving the advice, you're going to have to get your degree. And my family didn't have the money, but I went and worked full time and got my degree. So I got my economics, my bachelor's in economics and finance and got that and it's, never looked back. So I've been able to move along in my career quite nicely since that time.
So had it not been for his advice and him encouraging me during those times, I don't know that I used to be here today. So I have gone from that, then I was at Merrill Lynch for some time and then went to a community bank where they needed a financial advisor. And so I started doing that in 2001. So August of 2001 was when I got my license. So it was interesting. But once again, I had amazing management there at the bank that helped me and guided me. And so we made it through, you know, that that was a rough time, but made it through.
And then they decided to go a different direction with their investment program and I was able to go out on my own in 2012. So that is when I created Visionary Financial Group and have been an independent financial advisor since 2012, which I have thoroughly enjoyed, not just being your own boss, but also being able to spend so much time in the community giving back. So that has been the blessing in disguise that I've never realized I was missing that I've enjoyed the most being a business owner is that I get to plug in so many places in the community.
Nicole: Well, and you do, and we're going to talk about that too. But you mentioned something about being a Dave Ramsey Smartvestor Pro. So Dave Ramsey, obviously, has so much just respect in the financial industry. How is it that you became affiliated with him and that and becoming a Smartvestor Pro?
Shelly: So when I was at the bank as a financial advisor, I was gathering up as much knowledge as I could and going to work, coming home from work every day, I would listen to his radio program and loved it. He is a no-nonsense, he really talks more about budgeting than he does investments but he's just, he gets a lot of really good, no-nonsense advice. He's got some amazing podcasts out there. So if you just have 10 minutes here, 20 minutes there, you can go out there and I would recommend anyone listening to go out on his podcast and listen.
And they've actually got some section now by subject matter. So you can kind of go pull the ones that would be a specific interest to you versus just, you know, turning on the radio and hearing his radio show. But yes, I reached out to him as soon as I became an independent and was, it took me a couple of years, but I was able to check all his boxes and get qualified.
And through going through that process and an interview process became appointed with him as a Smartvestor Pro in 2017. So I have not looked back from doing that either. That was one of the best moves I could have made because I really thoroughly enjoy working with the clients that I see come through the referrals from that program.
Nicole: Awesome. Well, you are definitely an expert in your field. And from my perspective, and we've touched on it several times, are absolutely are of service to your clients, you're of service in the community. But specifically, as it relates to your business, you are an expert at helping people create their financial future. So why is this so important? Why do you think this is so important for you, and certainly for the clients that you serve?
Generational Unawareness
Shelly: Well, you know, for my clients, I have the 50 year, I call it the lost generation almost. It's about 45 to 60-year-olds. They come in and they sit down with me and they say you know what, I know I should have saved more but I was never taught this. My parents didn't, we didn't talk about this at the dinner table. My parents didn't teach me this. So I didn't know. And I feel like I'm so far behind and I don't want my kids to get behind. So I want you, so I get a lot of parents and then their 20-something-year-old children as clients as well.
And this is what I tell them. I said, You know what, don't beat yourself up about that because this is what happened. Back in the day. our grandparents had pensions because you were with a company for 20, 30, however many years and you had that pension. So when you retired, you didn't have to worry about putting money away yourself for retirement. I mean, some still did but you knew that you could survive on the pension and the social security that you were going to get. Well, so, therefore, their grandparents didn't teach their parents that they needed to do this.
Well, so now their parents, which are the folks that are in like the 70-year-old range, late 60s, you know, 70 60, 70-year-old range, now they're having to, they're suffering a little bit because now some of them do still have a little bit of pension money, but a lot of them are having a hard time because their kids are having to help them out. And I so, those 50-year-olds that I'm talking with, I'm like, you know, your parents didn't talk to you about this because they didn't know either, because their parents didn't talk to them about it.
So I am on a mission to make sure that our students, our 20-something-year-olds, know. I would love it. I love this platform, Nicole, by the way, but I would love it if somebody could help me get on the state of Texas requirements for graduating high school that they have to have at least a half, at least a semester, not even a full year but just one semester of some kind of financial education. Something that covers retirement planning, insurance, how, you know, credit cards, checking accounts, just all of that because they don't know.
And because we have moved from pensions into 401 K's it is now incumbent upon us, those of us at work, to know that you need to be putting X number of dollars away. Well, most people don't even know what that number is. Yeah. So and we aren't going to know until we're taught. So hopefully the 50, you know, the generation that are in their 50s now are teaching their 20-year-olds, Oh, my gosh, I wasn't taught this, so I'm teaching it to you. You need to start saving from that very first job. As much as it seems like it's going to hurt, you've got to do it. So that is, yeah, that is so important. And people don't know.
Nicole: Well, I can hear you, I can hear the passion in your voice for sure. And one of the things that, you know, I've known about you is like, you know, when you were recognized as a rising star in your brokerage of over 650 financial advisors. I mean, obviously, you've experienced a tremendous level of success professionally and also. personally. What is it that you think personally makes some people successful while others may struggle?
What Makes Successful Businesses Successful
Shelly: Oh, wow. You know, I, that's a hard one. That really is a hard one. I personally, for myself, I can't speak for why others may not be successful at this. But for me, I look at it as I educate my clients. So my folks who walk in my door, I sit, we sit down, and we go over their situation. And I educate them as to what their options are. So when people hear Oh, you're a financial advisor, and occasionally someone will say to me, oh, you're in sales? No, I'm not in sales.
Absolutely not. You know, if anything, I'm in the, I find myself as an, I consider myself an educator because I educate my clients on, okay, yes, here are your options. And yes, if you pick one, I guess that is a sale, quote-unquote, that I'm making, but I don't look at it as a sale. I look at it as an education process. I give a complimentary consultation. So I don't charge. There are some advisors out there that charge for their advice.
But you know what, I cannot tell you how many times I've gotten a really good referral from someone who either didn't put business with me or maybe only had, you know, a five or $10,000 Roth IRA to put with me, and I believe everybody needs somebody. Now, some may say, Well, Oh, my gosh, how are you able to handle all those clients if you don't put some kind of dollar amount on it? Well, it's funny you should ask. I just hired a junior financial advisor and he joined our team the first of August and he's in the process of going through the study materials and getting licensed.
And so he has joined the team to help me out with some of the extra accounts, you know, the smaller type account. But yeah, I believe that that has been a pillar of my success as being an educator and helping people. Not trying to sell them or tell them this is what you need to be doing, or making them feel guilty, well, you need to be doing this and if you don't do it this way, then you're not going to make your goal over here. I just, I always put it in a positive spin. And that's what I personally do. That's what I feel is most advantageous for my clients and our relationships.
Nicole: Well, I can definitely see that. And certainly, your success has been evidence of your willingness to serve. And one of the things we, you know, you were one of the first people that I connected with from a business networking perspective. When I began being active in the Flower Mound world and you were just a great source of information for me
And you, you know, you encouraged me to just visit all the different organizations, get involved in the different nonprofits and really, you know, figure out where my place was where I could serve in this community. And I guess, you know, this the first time I've asked you this question in the context of looking back on that. But how is it that you came upon that strategy and what causes and organizations are now the benefactor of your focus of your time and energy? Your time, talents and treasure as we know that it's called.
Find Where You are a Natural Fit
Shelly: Well, I have found in my whole entire life not just on a professional level, but also on a personal level, that whenever someone does something for me, I try to be that person for someone else. And when I started my own business in 2012, I was fortunate enough to have someone join my team that was well plugged in the community and she helped me come along and say, Okay, this is what you need to go to this is what you need to do.
You need to, you know, fit in here, you need to network here, network there and then find where you feel like it's a natural fit. Well, after you make introductions, it's like being in high school for the first or to a new school and the first day. You don't know anybody, you're making awkward introductions. And so I was a new person. Well, after a while, I was no longer the new person.
I found out what everybody did. And because when you're in the Flower Mound chamber and they're going to the luncheons and the mixers and the networking events, that's what you're there for. And I found that it was more natural for me after I met everyone, instead of having, for those conversations, I thought it was natural for me to greet the new people coming in the door because I didn't want someone else to feel like I felt.
And it's not that anybody made me feel like that, it's just it's a natural thing when you join a group the first time you're, you feel like the new kid on the block. So I wanted to be that person that made someone feel comfortable. So when I would go to any kind of Flower Mound chamber, anything, I would watch that front door and if someone wasn't, as someone came to the door that I did, that had never seen before, I would introduce myself, you know, ask them, you know, what they did, and then I try to introduce them to people that could help them in their business.
So whoever that was, so whether it was needing for SEO or for marketing or for, you know, new people to hire on. And so I became known as that. And so that is when, because I even pulled you aside like, Oh, well, I can help you with this. And I help people all the time. Okay, well, let me know if you don't need my help. But here is, you know, here's some ideas and here's some people you might want to visit with. So I have loved that part of it. And so but I got that because I had some I do that with me, is what I want to say. Yeah.
Nicole: Well, you are definitely a natural connector. I mean, I can tell just, you know, you've just always, well, first of all, you enjoy people, I can definitely tell that and it's just you, you know, you do put yourself in that position where you're helping, you're always coming from a place of service.
And I definitely think that's something that stands out in interacting with you and these various community organizations and certainly, from a business perspective. So that's wonderful. Well, I am just so appreciative of your time, of your expertise and sharing some of what you know with us today. But most importantly, if folks are listening to you today and are resonating with your education-based service and your passion for helping people make great financial decisions, how best for them to contact you?
Shelly: So they can reach out to me a couple of different ways. You can call the office at 972-539-0002. Or you can email me at sdodge@nextfinancial.com. And that's NEXTfinancial.com. And that's my brokerage firm that I clear through. So they could reach out to me on either of those ways.
And there's one thing that I didn't mention that I, one last thing I wanted to leave you with and our listeners with, picking investments and saving for retirement is one of those things that a lot of people think they can do it on their own. They don't think they need the expertise. And this is what I like to tell people. I do not try and work on my car by myself, I do not try to fix my own air conditioner and I certainly don't do my own plumbing. I mean, there's, our electric, any of those types of things, I don't do on my own.
So I would encourage people and it's whether you come and visit me or another financial advisor, there are plenty of good financial advisors out there. But seek out a financial advisor to help walk you through what you're doing to make sure that it's enough. Just find somebody. You need to find that expert because you may not know everything because none of us can know everything.
Nicole: Right, right. That is phenomenal advice. And thank you so much, Shelly, for your time today. And thank you most especially for the service that, all the service, the time, the energy, the talent that you bring to all the different organizations here in Flower Mound I'm very proud to call you a friend. So thank you.
Shelly: Well, thank you for your time today, Nicole and I appreciate the opportunity to visit with you and all the listeners that are listening to the podcast.
