117 - Kaitlyn Carlson: Money, Power, and Your Heart
In this episode of Threshold Moments, Sarah Tacy sits down with wealth strategist and financial planner Kaitlyn Carlson for a deeply personal conversation about identity, integrity, and redefining success.
Kaitlyn Carlson is the founder of Theory Planning Partners who once upon a time advised some of the wealthiest men in America, but stepped in a new direction to stay devoted to a way of higher integrity.
After seeing how the biggest players in the game were positioned for exponential wealth creation, and the financial advisors making plans to benefit themselves, and the abuse she experienced as a woman in that field, she felt called to build a model rooted in greater transparency, deep care, and long-term stewardship.
What begins as a story about an unexpected friendship unfolds into a powerful exploration of what it means to live beyond binary choices — between ambition and alignment, structure and intuition, achievement and freedom.
Kaitlyn shares her journey from a fiercely competitive childhood athlete and national championship hockey player to a successful career in finance, revealing how early experiences shaped her belief in equality, resilience, and possibility. Along the way, she discovered that true wealth isn’t just financial — it’s emotional, relational, and deeply personal.
Together, Sarah and Kaitlyn explore the idea of the “sacred third” — a path that exists beyond the traditional either/or choices many high-achieving women feel forced to make.
This conversation dives into the psychology of money, the importance of representation and opportunity, and how integrity becomes the foundation for both financial freedom and personal joy.
Episode Transcript:
Sarah Tacy: [00:00:00] Welcome to Threshold Moments. Today we have with us Kaitlyn Carlson. I would love to introduce Kaitlyn from the way that you came into my life. And the first layer of that was that maybe three or four years ago, I was walking on the beach in Miami with Kate Northrop and I.
Sarah Tacy: Was just shooting the shit with her. And then she said to me, I met this incredible woman. She has so much financial knowledge. We really hit it off. And she's going on and on about you and about the freedom number. And she was really excited about this and the way it was changing, like her goals and her orientation to things and possibly how it might impact relaxed money.
Sarah Tacy: And it left a little note in me that I would remember, the story that she was telling [00:01:00] me. And then maybe fast forward a few months from there and we're in a bar together
Sarah Tacy: where we went to a mutual friend of ours, Laura Sprinkle, it was her birthday and there was a directive to come. I don't know what it was. All I know is I was wearing sparkly boots and like a bright green leather jacket and a jean skirt. Like nothing that would like generally be in my, and I wanna say in lower fashion, like she wasn't there, but you and I were there and I was like, she must be part of the party because you were wearing a tutu and you were eight months pregnant.
Sarah Tacy: I was like, this lady clearly isn't at the bar, just to put out the vibe. Yeah, she did put out the vibe and as I started talking to you, I was like, oh my gosh, this must be the same woman that Kate was talking about. I put it together there. I was like, oh, I've heard of you. And we hit it off.
Sarah Tacy: We, I think you put out like, Hey, want a coffee date sometime? And [00:02:00] you didn't know yet that I wasn't into coffee dates, so I was like, sure. I did not sure. Pass.
Sarah Tacy: And I think you and I we started working together also in a professional manner before we were in Sarah Jenkins's coven together. So I told Steve and my husband Steve he does a lot of research on a lot of things and was really not into financial planners in general and didn't have a lot of trust around that.
Sarah Tacy: And I said, I think Kaitlyn is going to be different. Like I think that she has all of the knowledge and beyond of what most people bring, but I understand that her format is different. She's different. And if I were to describe you, you are a really strong woman and you lead with your heart in a really big way.
Sarah Tacy: And I don't know if it was Mike Watts who said this, or Steve or someone where it's yeah, like you might show up like casually in [00:03:00] your sweatshirt and this and that and just like with your heart out and someone might. Misunderstand it for a second of the depth and like this boss part of you like this at this like D one athlete, hockey player, part of you too.
Sarah Tacy: That's no, wait, I am really good at what I do too. I hold both. And because sometimes in our world we think it's either or. And a word that I describe my husband with, that I would describe you with is integrity. And Martha Beck wrote a book, I think it's called The Way of Integrity, and she essentially says this is the most important trait we could have for our own freedom and the our own joy in our lives.
Sarah Tacy: And because you are working with people's finances, to me it like amplifies even more like you're holding people's stability and freedom and possibility. Your hands, your caretaking. [00:04:00] And so I think people really pick up on that when they're with you as well. Wow. And if I were to say one more thing before we start I know that you're on a lot of podcasts and I'm guessing this one might be, it might be a little different.
Sarah Tacy: And that part of wanting to have you come on now is that I would love to hear your story. So of course like your threshold, but your story to me really holds the sacred third in it. Where the story I'm gonna ask you to touch into in a moment is a little bit of that. I can be a really successful financial planner, wealth strategist in the patriarchal system, or.
Sarah Tacy: I can leave it all and be a yoga teacher. And I feel like your life is the weaving of a sacred [00:05:00] third.
Kaitlyn Carlson: Thank you for the most thoughtful introduction I've ever received.
Sarah Tacy: I think one of your superpowers is seeing people and you, since the day I met you have always made me feel so seen, so thank you for that. Yeah, it's an honor. It's like one of my favorite things.
Kaitlyn Carlson: I feel like it's very important for me to go all the way back to coming out of the womb. I came out of the womb believing that I was just as capable as a man or just as capable as a boy growing up. And obviously there are differences, but I just felt we are all souls here trying to meet our potential in whatever way we deem potential to be. And so I was really [00:06:00] big on having an equal opportunity to do that and express myself. And for me, that immediately came in the form of sports. So my first love was ice hockey. And of course I was first put into ballet and figure skating and all of those things, but I was just like bored to tears with, I was in precision figure skating where it's just like a lot of the pageantry and memorization and that just didn't fulfill me.
Kaitlyn Carlson: And I remember watching my brother. Practice hockey with his teammates and he scored a goal and they all celebrated and piled on each other. And I was like, that looks like fun to me. That's what I wanna do. So I switched at seven years old from figure skating to ice hockey. And this was back in the nineties when not a lot of girls played ice hockey, but I just had this passion for the [00:07:00] sport.
Kaitlyn Carlson: I was like, I don't care. I just wanna be on the ice. I wanna be celebrating with teammates. I want that quick, reactive environment where I can just get my, and Sarah, you and I talk about this, but just get like my animalistic instincts, like my masculine, my aggressive, like it was just such an amazing outlet for that side of me.
Kaitlyn Carlson: And hockey led me on this beautiful journey where I ended up sending myself to boarding school because going to boarding school was pretty much the only way that I was going to play collegiate hockey. And then I ended up playing in college and winning a national championship and going into finance after that and just always following my passion.
Kaitlyn Carlson: And I was very lucky to have parents who were just like a hundred percent. Backing whatever it is that I wanted to do. I do realize now, like what a privilege that is. Even when I said I wanted to go to boarding school, their [00:08:00] immediate response was not, oh, we can't afford that. It was like, okay, let's look into it.
Kaitlyn Carlson: Let's look into the possibilities. And I got an 80% scholarship to go to boarding school, like a boarding school that from the outside looking in, like I had no business being at. But going through the application process, it was like, no I do deserve to be here. And so that has just been like the arc of my life is just following these passions and really going for it and giving a hundred percent.
Sarah Tacy: First I'm like, I wanna highlight that you just told me that three of the women on the USA Olympic team, they were teammates of yours in college.
Kaitlyn Carlson: Yeah, I played against them or with them in some cases.
Sarah Tacy: So that's amazing. And then as you tell the story too, I am remembering my first weekend in college when they did icebreakers and they said the first time you realize that there was a difference like how you [00:09:00] presented gender-wise in society.
Sarah Tacy: And I was like, I didn't start noticing that until I went abroad and then later in life. And the reason for that was that my mom noticed that girls were dropping out of the rec league for basketball and other sports around the age of seven or eight when it was all co-ed. And so my mom, who never played any group sport like sport she was all individual sports, like horseback riding and skiing, and she.
Sarah Tacy: Went to the town hall and she made them create more teams that were there. Just a female league. And then the first travel soccer team, I'm pretty sure my mom also was behind that. Like she was never the coach, but she made sure that, oh, my brother had travel soccer teams to play on and so did I. And I played on the first Seco United Soccer League in yeah, I guess in the Seacoast area, which now it's a really big, but it was like, oh, I mean I had a college coach as a [00:10:00] teenager and so many things that I did were actually because my mom saw the discrepancies and I never felt the wave that I couldn't do what my brother did.
Sarah Tacy: I always got the opportunity to work hard and do those things, but I will have to give a lot of that back to my mother who. I Woo. Who really made that possible. I like, didn't even know, I didn't know. I'm like, man, she really took a stand for me.
Kaitlyn Carlson: Yeah. I was just like
Sarah Tacy: so lucky. Yeah,
Kaitlyn Carlson: so lucky.
Kaitlyn Carlson: And it's just such a beautiful, because representation matters. And I think that's landing for me like now more than ever, is that has always been innate, that I want the opportunity to be represented. I want to represent, I just want just give me the opportunity. And to be surrounded by.
Kaitlyn Carlson: Adult. Of course you come across [00:11:00] ignorant people who are like, girls should be playing hockey. But for the most part, I was surrounded by a community where people were very supportive. Even if I remember being in third grade and we won a championship and I was like, front row, only one with my t-shirt on.
Kaitlyn Carlson: 'cause all the boys had their t-shirts on. But like I just was in it and I just I loved that. I just, I loved that I was in an environment where I could just follow my passion all the way through. And so that took me on this amazing adventure and really just solidified my upbringing that yes, of course I can hang.
Kaitlyn Carlson: No. Like I had to be extremely physically tough, especially when I got into checking and. I remember going to a tryout where there was definitely a physical turning point where I could not cry in front of the boys, but I like had my own locker room. And I remember just counting down the minutes.
Kaitlyn Carlson: It was like a 60 minute tryout because I was just getting annihilated, but I did not want the boys to see me cry. [00:12:00] So I like made it through the 60 minutes and then I went to the locker room and then I just balled because I was physically getting annihilated and that's when there started to be like a major difference.
Kaitlyn Carlson: But I still loved the fact that I had a shot that like I had a jersey and that I was out there and I was competing and I really took that into my professional life. And I so I ended up going to Amherst College, which is a sac. You also went to a sac? And I thought I was gonna major in econ.
Kaitlyn Carlson: I ended up majoring in psychology because I was fascinated with like. Why are we wired the way that we are? Like why do we make the decisions that we do? Why do we think this way? I just like how humans work fascinated me, but I always saw myself in finance. My grandfather was in finance, my dad was in finance.
Kaitlyn Carlson: I just saw myself in that environment. And so after I graduated from Amherst, I got a job at an asset management firm. Initially, I initially started as an [00:13:00] international equity analyst, which is like a very fancy term for saying like you're just picking international stocks and like whether they're gonna work out or not.
Kaitlyn Carlson: So as an intern, I did that. I was like, this is too granular for me. But I went back to the same company on the distribution side, which was like the client facing side, and I went into a management rotational program. So I got to see very high level how the company worked and that asset management firm.
Kaitlyn Carlson: It was a mutual fund company that was sold exclusively through financial advisors. So I was really fortunate because within my first two years of being in finance, I was introduced to the financial advisor career path. And I was like, this is such a cool marriage between my interests. Like I get to work with money and finances, but also with people and faces.
Kaitlyn Carlson: And so I was just like ravenous to understand it, sit for my CFP, all that good stuff. And I met my husband at my first job and he was promoted to cover Louisiana and [00:14:00] Arkansas as a territory. So we made the decision together to move from Boston down to New Orleans. And when we made that move that's when I switched from asset management into wealth management and.
Kaitlyn Carlson: My first two years at the asset management firm were great, like similar environment where it was just like I had an equal shot. I was being taught how to present, how to be a professional, really deepening my business acumen or my investing acumen actually. And then I moved from Boston to New Orleans and my first week in private wealth my instructions were I covered the Southeast as a territory, so I covered Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Alabama.
Kaitlyn Carlson: And there were about like eight offices across those four states. And my instructions were go develop relationships with the advisors because my compensation was tied to how many financial plans I did and how many assets that brought in. [00:15:00] So I had to go around and start making relationships with advisors.
Kaitlyn Carlson: And there was one advisor in particular who my very first week, like just I don't even know how to say it. He like brought me in and over the course of that week, slowly started pushing my boundaries and he shaped it in the form of risk tolerance. And he took it in an inappropriate direction almost immediately.
Kaitlyn Carlson: And being a psychology major, I remember I was 24 at the time, the advisor was 68. And I just remember thinking like, is he taking this where I think he's taking this? And it was ultimately like this like grooming process over the course of a week of just pushing me a little bit more every day, a little bit more every day until finally it got to the point where he said that he was gonna make me the best trader.
Kaitlyn Carlson: And in order for him to do that, I was going to have to take my clothes off in front of him. [00:16:00] And. I just remember thinking like, I can't believe this is happening right now. I froze, like I just sat there for 40 minutes until there was a office wide meeting and I just remember tears rolling down my face and I told him no.
Kaitlyn Carlson: And he was like, I don't want you to answer right now. I want you to think about it. And I just said, no. I remember like shaking, and this was in 2015. So I just remember feeling am I crazy? Is this just happening to me? Like I can't, I'm not gonna be able to work here if this guy works here and am I gonna get fired?
Kaitlyn Carlson: That was like what was going through my head because the Me Too movement didn't happen for another two years. So being so young and in a new city, it was unclear to me like, what are the consequences? I know this isn't right. But like, how am I gonna survive this? And I'm also, I [00:17:00] just left my family and my husband's on the, he was my boyfriend at the time.
Kaitlyn Carlson: He's on the road for over half the month. So I'm like alone in this city. Fortunately, my now husband encouraged me to come forward to my manager and report the situation. And I did. And there was a two week long investigation my husband had to walk me to and from work because I was scared for my safety to go in and outta the building.
Kaitlyn Carlson: And they ultimately did conclude that my statements were corroborated and actually supported by other women in the office that he had this behavior. And allegedly he had done the same thing at Merrill Lynch and he got fired from UBS, but now he works at Wells Fargo. So that was my introduction to wealth management and it was so alarming to someone who had grown up.
Kaitlyn Carlson: Being encouraged to, do everything that [00:18:00] Amanda could do. So I'll stop there for a second in case you have any reflections.
Sarah Tacy: I'm just feeling my feels over here. I'm I'm thinking about how much power it gives us to be supported by family and loved ones and the idea of layer of supports and, that you're, again, not all children will have parents who say, go for it, and some people will go for it anyway, so they found it in themselves.
Sarah Tacy: But I'm thinking of like my own experiences of like, when I first realized oh, it's not the same being a woman in this world. Once I was outside of the bubble. I don't wanna say that my parents helped create for me, but they helped gimme experiences that say oh, if you go all in, you get to have these same outcomes.
Sarah Tacy: And also what I'm hearing here is we talk about how sometimes things build up over time. So what else built up over time? I think here is the ability to speak up and say something [00:19:00] that's so scary. And like you said, me Too hadn't happened yet, but also that you had your husband there.
Sarah Tacy: 'cause every time I hear a story where your husband's involved, he gives pretty good advice, but then he walked with you, right? Like then he walked with you to and from and when you shared it the fact that so many other women then could also say, before the phrase Me Too came out yeah, this is true.
Sarah Tacy: And then, it just sounds really close to so many other. Places where the patriarchy is held up and where men in power just get moved around.
Kaitlyn Carlson: Yeah.
Sarah Tacy: Even once they're found out. And so it's, it's really in some ways disheartening but also an incredible thing. Just as you say this to me now, I'm thinking of another scenario where you are still able to stand up and say what was, what's true for you and what your experience is in the face of possible repercussions.
Kaitlyn Carlson: Yeah. I've had a [00:20:00] lot of practice. Yeah,
Sarah Tacy: you have a lot of practice. And it's interesting 'cause I was gonna ask you like if there was, that sounds like it came on really fast. If I was gonna ask you if it was like whispers, people talk about like when signs come, how they come in whispers and then like yells and then a Mack truck type thing.
Kaitlyn Carlson: Oh yeah. That came later.
Sarah Tacy: The Mack trucks still came. Yeah,
Kaitlyn Carlson: it did. Yeah. I was almost like grateful that happened as quickly as it did because so basically after that happened, I didn't say anything to anyone for over a year, didn't talk to anyone in the office about it. Kept my head down.
Kaitlyn Carlson: I, I felt good that I knew I wasn't alone, but I was very concerned with not getting a reputation for being difficult to work with or someone you couldn't joke around with or, I was just very sensitive to that. 'cause I have a good sense of humor and I grew up in a locker room, so I'm very used to like cross language or like off-color jokes or I can take it, [00:21:00] but this was just so different.
Kaitlyn Carlson: This was like exploitative and manipulative and it was the first time in my life that I truly felt so objectified. And so I didn't say anything for a year. And then about a year later, an assistant came to my office on a Friday afternoon and she closed the door to my office and she said, Hey, I heard through the grapevine that you are the one that reported the claim that got this advisor fired.
Kaitlyn Carlson: And she said, I'll never be able to thank you enough. And when she said that to me, I just broke down crying. Because I was like, it reminded me of the Maya Angelou quote and she says like, when a woman stands up for herself, she stands up for all women. And I had still been living with like similar treatment, but not coming forward with any of the claims be again, because I was like, I don't wanna get a difficult reputation.
Kaitlyn Carlson: But then when she said that to me, I was like, I'm gonna report all the other instances that have happened. Because what I realized is like I can lay a paper trail [00:22:00] for these women because what I found out from that assistant and is she had come forward four years before me, but they sided with the advisor.
Kaitlyn Carlson: And why do you think that is? Because he's a producer for the firm and she's an admin, she's a cost center for the firm. And like that just made me so angry and. By the end of my time at UBSI eventually ended up having a business partner who I thought was a safe person, but and he knew everything I had been through and he still ended up physically assaulting me on three different business trips to the point where I said to my husband I feel like I'm gonna have to sacrifice my safety to be successful in this environment.
Kaitlyn Carlson: And that's just something I'm not willing to do. And that was really hard for me to accept. That is when I was just, I had become a fitness instructor down in New Orleans and that's when I was just like f it. Like maybe I'll just be a yoga instructor because [00:23:00] at least I'll feel safe there. And, but I was so hard because in my heart, like I had such a passion for the work itself.
Kaitlyn Carlson: And so that business partner's behavior is actually the reason why we ended up moving back to Boston when we did and I'm so grateful to my manager 'cause my manager in New Orleans, like he was just, he was like a dad. And so I did have these pockets of safe masculine around me when, but I was dealing with like such extremes and also trying to act like nothing was happening and that was just so tiring.
Kaitlyn Carlson: So when we moved from New Orleans back to Boston we had gotten so close, Jake and I actually went to tour properties where like I was gonna do a fitness studio and he was gonna do a fast casual restaurant and I was like, we're just gonna leave it all.
Kaitlyn Carlson: We had literally gotten so close to leaving that I just couldn't leave. Like I so went [00:24:00] UBS and I really had them over a barrel. I was like, look, I'm not going to CNBC, I'm not going to a B, C, I'm not like plastering you on the front news.
Kaitlyn Carlson: I was like, I just want you to pay for me to move home. Get me on a new private wealth team and give me a race. And they did all those things. And I joined a new private wealth team in Boston, but I was like. I was like a shell of myself. Like I was not showing up in the way that, 'cause I just didn't wanna be there anymore.
Kaitlyn Carlson: I couldn't, I could not give that company anymore of myself. And I had joined a team that actually ended up believing in going independent three months later. And it was like during that time period that I was just like, what am I doing? What am I doing? And I, of course, had my whole life charted out and I was like, I wanna start a family, but I feel like my career is a dumpster fire right now.
Kaitlyn Carlson: And that's when I talked to Jake about what am I doing? And he was like, it seems like you're passionate about the work. He was like, if you change who you did it for, do you think that your, do [00:25:00] you think your passion would come back? And I was like maybe. And he was like I've noticed that you love following female entrepreneurs.
Kaitlyn Carlson: You like love cheering on women. Do you think that you could do this work for women? And my honest answer at the time was like, I don't know how, because I had worked with over 300 clients and not one of them was a woman.
Sarah Tacy: Whoa. I had no idea.
Kaitlyn Carlson: Yeah. Not one of them was a self-made woman. If I had worked with women, it was occasional.
Kaitlyn Carlson: And they had either gone through a divorce or they in inherited wealth from their father, but there were no self-made women. And I had very few female colleagues. And it also was clear like if I wanted to be a mom that was going to be tolerated in private wealth, but it wasn't going to be really accepted in private wealth.
Kaitlyn Carlson: And so I had no role model. I had no like, [00:26:00] how is this possible? And so like the level of belief that I had to have that I could make this vision come to life was deep. But then Jake got me going on could you do it for female entrepreneurs? And like, how would you do it? And then I just started riffing on here's everything that's wrong with the industry.
Kaitlyn Carlson: Here's what sucks about it. Here's why it neglects business owners. And it really inspired me to just take a whiteboard to the model and be like, this is what I actually think is right. And then like through that exercise, I started getting my passion back and I started getting like my grit and like I just started getting everything back because I was like, this is what I believe, this is how it should be done, this is what's right.
Kaitlyn Carlson: And I created theory off of that.
Sarah Tacy: I have two different thoughts. One is about the time you are by a Xerox machine and somebody was like, [00:27:00] why are you doing that plan? You were creating a plan for somebody that was actually in their best interest, but might not make you the most return. And it was like a long term plan.
Kaitlyn Carlson: Yes.
Sarah Tacy: Yeah. And you're like, oh, what? So we can also say that change and I, and maybe in a moment we can also talk about like how you move from percentage based towards a monthly payment. The other thought I'm thinking about is how often when things are insidious, like when things like slowly build over time, we often don't.
Sarah Tacy: Notice the way it drains our system or how we're out of alignment with it. There's that example, which I don't love, which is that if you put frogs in water and you turn up the heat slowly, then they don't notice until they're boiling. And I think that is sometimes something that we hit and it might not, sometimes it might feel like boiling like anger and other times it might feel like we're empty and we don't know why.
Sarah Tacy: Yeah. Or maybe we think we know why, but it's just like [00:28:00] that overwhelm or that freeze. And I love hearing the process of the whiteboard in a way, as a way to bring yourself back of like how if I could have it right. This is also the reticular activating system. This is getting your default mode network in your brain to begin to.
Sarah Tacy: Dream up new dreams is just if I could have it any way, what would it look like? What do I hate that is not working, and what do I wish that there were? And so it's just, it's so beautiful. I think even just for the listeners or for me to just hear that process of going from numb not alive, doing the best you can to get out of a bad situation, and then working yourself back to a place where you're like, oh, here I am in alignment, in integrity.
Sarah Tacy: And it's hard to be in integrity when you're in an environment that is toxic. Yeah. So it's like the whole time you're trying to be in integrity, but you are surrounded [00:29:00] in a toxic environment, which Gabor Mata often talks about. If you did a scientific Experian experiment and the Petri dish was contaminated, you wouldn't say what's wrong with the specimen?
Sarah Tacy: You'd be like, oh, you need to clear out the Petri dish. So the specimen can thrive. And so yeah, creating conditions where you can naturally come back to life and thrive.
Kaitlyn Carlson: Yes. And the Xerox machine example is such a good one. I vividly remember that. And that advisor still UPS, he is a nice, he is a nice advisor.
Kaitlyn Carlson: But yeah, I was standing there printing a financial plan and he was waiting for like his one piece of information or his one page, and I was printing like 70 pages. And he just looks at me and he goes, that's the long way of money. And I was like, interesting.
Sarah Tacy: Yeah,
Kaitlyn Carlson: because he was like a stock picker. So he just got, he didn't take a holistic approach, but to say something like that, I was like, wow, you are very transactional.
Kaitlyn Carlson: And [00:30:00] that type of, he was the biggest producer in the New Orleans office. So that type of behavior was rewarded and that compensation system. Yeah. And that's also what he was teaching you like. Because I'm so successful. I'm telling you, your way won't get you what I have, which, comes at a price that you're not looking for.
Sarah Tacy: Kaitlyn has a wealth creation boutique serving female entrepreneurs. My husband feels so lucky that he gets to work with you all. Like he has, he actually has so many dental friends who are talking to him and he is I think it's supposed to be for female entrepreneurs.
Sarah Tacy: My wife got me in the door and we're just so grateful. And I didn't know that you were a psychology major. I was too. So tracking, but part of what makes working with you so great too is that you really take in part of the. Onboarding process is not just [00:31:00] collecting all of our numbers and all of our information, but it's also what are your life goals?
Sarah Tacy: Where do you I don't know if this is part of it, but I think in my mind there's a part of imagining your 60 or 70 or 80-year-old self, like what would make you feel most fulfilled and what matters? And is it relational or is it things that you have or is it ways that you've given? And all of that comes into our planning.
Sarah Tacy: And they also have us do the Enneagram so that they can understand us better and how we work. I didn't like my Enneagram answer. I was on at the end of a different podcast yesterday with the q and a. We stopped recording and someone was like, are you a seven? I was like, tell me about a seven.
Sarah Tacy: I was like, I wanna be a seven, but apparently I'm a three.
Sarah Tacy: But, I just really appreciate this holistic approach and that when we reach out with questions, we always feel and know that you have our wellbeing and our family in your [00:32:00] best interest.
Kaitlyn Carlson: Thank you, Sarah. I'm so glad you feel that way because that's everything I would've ever wanted you to feel.
Kaitlyn Carlson: And I never wanted to be distracted by a compensation model going on in the background. And it's like really front of mind for me because I still have some good friends in the New Orleans office and I was just catching up with them last week for my birthday and four teams just left because they changed the compensation structure.
Kaitlyn Carlson: And I'm like, that would've driven me in singing to just feel like a dancing monkey for a grid. Because guess who is thought about last? The clients. That just did not sit right with me. And like I,
Sarah Tacy: I'm like, I'm just having this thought. 'cause I just interviewed Kate yesterday. I think in March and April, relax, money will be coming up.
Sarah Tacy: And I was like, oh, it'd be so fun to like really bring this whole vibe into the [00:33:00] ethos. And so her thing, she said on one of the q and as was she was talking about dirty money, but she said it in the way of most money has gone through systems that are based in scarcity. So yes, I, yeah. And so she's so when I touch money and when I invest with money, I like to think that I am cleaning it.
Sarah Tacy: I told Steve this later, he is I think that's what money laundering people say is that you're cleaning the money.
Kaitlyn Carlson: We
Sarah Tacy: can say like staging or something. Talking about like an energetic cleanse of Hey, what would a new world be where we. Are working more with an ecosystem than a hierarchy of like me or them type thing.
Kaitlyn Carlson: I just had a hot take on this. I was at an event last Monday afternoon at Gloria Stein's house, which was like an iconic moment in my [00:34:00] career, and I had an opportunity to speak and I said.
Kaitlyn Carlson: I think we've been sold a lie about capitalism, that it has to be extractive and it reminds me a lot of regenerative farming where for a long time people thought like monocropping was the way to do it. And then you realize like monocropping is so short term, really like regenerative farming is actually more profitable when you allow things to coexist and that coexistence gives back to the soil and the soil gives back to the crops.
Kaitlyn Carlson: It's natural. There's a lot of overlap with capitalism and how capitalism can just as naturally mimic, just as naturally mimic nature. I love that it's, right now capitalism is rooted in scarcity. And I would love if I'm able to have an influence in this lifetime to model that capitalism can [00:35:00] actually be a force for regeneration and collaboration.
Sarah Tacy: Dude. Okay. So I am, I'm just pulling back to Kate's thing yesterday because she talks about, and she's spoken about a few times, her trip to Egypt and how the download essentially is like she's here to birth a new system. Not to birth, to be a part of a new system where everybody can be, I'm gonna say it wrong, but like where everybody can be supported through it essentially.
Kaitlyn Carlson: Yeah.
Sarah Tacy: And it sounds very much what you're saying with re like the regenerative aspect. And I often get a little confused with the capitalism thing because Yes, you can totally see how there becomes like the haves and the have nots. And I'm always so curious about if we decide, oftentimes I feel like when people are in the spiritual mindset, they decide it's bad, so they don't engage in it.
Sarah Tacy: But then I feel like those people with the big [00:36:00] hearts and the big consciousness aren't. Deciding how things get cycled. Yes. And so it seems to me like it's a way to keep the power in the hands of those who want to keep the either or. And to keep the people with the big hearts financially powerless.
Sarah Tacy: Yeah. And so then there's the curiosity of how do we engage in a way where we can say, we are gonna engage with this thing and be a part of a new way forward? And almost like you creating theory, and I think even as Kate was asked how do you plan on doing that? We don't always know the exact path, but it is taking the next right step, the next step that feels like integrity.
Sarah Tacy: And dreaming into a new world. And even saying out loud what you said at Gloria Steinman's house, which is incredible to be, did I say her last name, right? Okay. To. Be in that room with such forward thinking women. Such powerful women to say that because it [00:37:00] just plants more seeds.
Kaitlyn Carlson: Yeah.
Sarah Tacy: To continue to spread.
Kaitlyn Carlson: I said it in the context of I can tell you how I'm doing it on a micro level. So this is where like my own financial plan keeps me honest. And so because I have my own financial plan, I'm very clear on where theory needs to go in terms of revenue and profit and what I need the company to do in order to reach my goals.
Kaitlyn Carlson: And that puts like healthy parameters. I think you were the one that told me about this, like river banks. It's like river banks are important because if you didn't have them it would just be a flood. And so my own financial plan, and I am also on Enneagram three. So my tendency is to just achieve with no end in sight, because like I achieve something and then I'm onto the next goal.
Kaitlyn Carlson: My financial plan really [00:38:00] allows me to understand what is enough, and I can choose to go beyond that if I want to, but I don't have to. So that's one aspect of it because I, and part of that plan is creating financial freedom away from the business. And when I do that, I lessen the pressure on a sale. Like selling theory.
Sarah Tacy: Yeah.
Kaitlyn Carlson: And that I'm very clear that I will have some sort of internal succession. So a lot of people don't plan for financial independence outside of the company. And then it's the, this all or nothing event and they have to sell to private equity or they have to sell to a strategic acquirer that they may or may not want to.
Kaitlyn Carlson: But if I create financial independence outside of theory, then I'm un, I'm unattached or less attached to what the actual sale price of theory is. And I'm very clear that eventually I will sell to my employees. And so [00:39:00] I was saying this last week, because I was saying like that some of the women in the room had sold to private equity and private equity can be extractive.
Kaitlyn Carlson: Like they just come, not all PE firms, but a lot of 'em have that scarcity energy. But I'm like, if I know what enough is for me, then there's enough to go around and I can sell to my employees who are doing the hard work. Creating the culture versus having to sell out to a private equity firm because I didn't plan accordingly.
Kaitlyn Carlson: So that's my micro example of how I'm doing it. I love this. Thank you. And even in your company, if I could say a little bit more, there's actually so many things I wanna touch on here. But I just wanna quickly touch on that. Within your company, the way you and I have talked a lot about like layers of support.
Sarah Tacy: And so within your company, I feel like you do such a great job of not only giving two layers of support to each client. Which then can take some pressure off of each advisor to feel like, oh, it's all on [00:40:00] me. You have some backup. But then also you have like maternity leaves that are happening and like, how do you support it?
Sarah Tacy: Even though it's hard because again, you are in a Petri dish that isn't supporting you to support that. But I do think that you keep showing and in the way that you show up for your clients and the integrity that you have, like you just keep showing a new way forward.
Kaitlyn Carlson: Aw, thank you Sarah.
Sarah Tacy: And the other thing I wanna say that is really sweet for me is that my dad built a business for 40 years.
Sarah Tacy: So hard. He worked so hard. And when it was time for him to go out, he always talked about trying to put yourself in circles where people are smarter than you. And he was so proud to be part of this, like CEO circle that, I think it was out of UNH and he's they're all smarter than me. They all have bigger companies than me.
Sarah Tacy: And and it was because of them that he started thinking about a succession plan. And I know that he could have sold to a corporate hospital and gotten so much money for that [00:41:00] land. And his business generally supports over a hundred local high school and college students and coaches and teachers during the summer.
Sarah Tacy: And it's a really big part of York, Maine. Everybody knows the place. And he really wanted to pass it down to his top two employees who had been there for a long time, but then trying to figure out like, how is that sustainable for he and my mom and, on and on. And then I could also call out my mom, like my, we've had a family business for I think like 110 years.
Sarah Tacy: And so my mom also creating a succession plan for her side of the family. That was in the benefit of what her father would want most, which is to continue to like, like it wasn't selling out to a big company again. And so sometimes you cut, take cuts in certain places, but because they've so mindfully built their portfolio and in different places, I feel like they could say this is what feels best for the family, for the community, for the long term.
Sarah Tacy: And now I'm just thinking wow, I'm so proud [00:42:00] of them.
Kaitlyn Carlson: Yes.
Sarah Tacy: No, it wasn't easy either to exit that way. But yeah, they did that. And so thank you for bringing that up for me. Okay. I'm gonna change topics just a little bit right now.
Kaitlyn Carlson: Yes, please.
Sarah Tacy: Thinking our hard left when we started working with you, one of the things that you showed us were like the different timelines and the ups and downs of the stock market, but the general projection over time.
Sarah Tacy: But the map that you showed me, that was my favorite. And I think, you know what I'm gonna say, 'cause I think I've said it to you before. If everybody imagines a horizontal line, and if we were all to start a few inches below that horizontal line with starting line and you're like the horizontal line, could that represent like neutral or stability maybe?
Kaitlyn Carlson: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's a fair assessment.
Sarah Tacy: And so say like you're below that and you could feel maybe hopeless, but then you start building up and you're getting close to it. So Kaitlyn took this and she's like, how would this feel? Now I start to feel excited and you're still below the [00:43:00] line, but you're creeping up and then you pass the line, you're like, yeah, and you get higher and then you peak and then you start to come down.
Sarah Tacy: And that coming down, you are so much higher than where you were when you started to get excited when you were going up. But now you're starting to get scared and then it goes down and down and you might go below the line and now you feel devastated and hopeless and it goes up and down.
Sarah Tacy: But to show like actually. I think if I get this right, if we do some financial planning along the way, we can, when there are highs we can put stuff away. When there are lows, we can plan better. And that we don't have to be as emotionally reactive. And I was like, this feels like such a great nervous system map because people sometimes come to me saying Hey, can we do, can I do a session on expansion?
Sarah Tacy: I wanna be able to expand more. And I think that the work you do with finances is not all that different than, that we could do. In general when we look at [00:44:00] our ability to expand, which is that I notice that if I have a really high, I might plan in advance for some time for like containment and I might call in some support systems because often there's like a coming down even just energetically.
Sarah Tacy: And when I look at what you do, I'm like, oh, this is so incredible. Even if people have financial highs and lows, that if they can have something stable, which might be that they're putting aside $50 a week, or I am not the financial planner here, don't listen to me over here on that that it can create some stability in the nervous system as well.
Kaitlyn Carlson: You're exactly right though. And I was just talking to somebody about this when COVID rolled around, they talked about what what helped people get through the Great Depression. And the most common answer was routine.
Sarah Tacy: Oh.
Kaitlyn Carlson: And so it's like the same thing with investing. That's why do, and it's so awesome.
Kaitlyn Carlson: I love how all these things like [00:45:00] coincide. Because like habits with investing, so it's called dollar cost averaging. So if you put $50 in every single week, to your point, Sarah, like sometimes you're gonna be hitting the market at all time highs, and then sometimes you're gonna be hitting it on a dip and then it'll go back up.
Kaitlyn Carlson: It doesn't really matter. And that's the beautiful thing because if you're just in the habit of contributing on a weekly basis or a monthly basis, that it actually smooths out performance over time. And so it's actually so simple at the end of the day. But people have a hard time accepting simplicity in the context of wealth because they think it needs to be complicated.
Kaitlyn Carlson: Just like we do in business. It's wait, is the business too easy? Let me add another service. Let me add another offer. It's can you just hold
Sarah Tacy: everything you're saying is so lining up with the entire conversation I had with Kate [00:46:00] yesterday, which was like, basically that so many of her friends were like, don't put out more offers.
Sarah Tacy: Don't do more things like stay, do this one thing. 'cause I was saying I feel like maybe she misunderstood me, that I thought it was really cute that she was gonna try to do the same thing, but I didn't mean it. That she can't actually repeat and just more of she is constantly evolving. So when you present the same thing as an updated human or an updated system, it's gonna present slightly differently, which is all I meant.
Sarah Tacy: Yeah. But then somebody at the end asked a question too around like, how do we show up if. We don't feel like it. And Kate said part of the wounded feminine is to only act on inspiration.
Kaitlyn Carlson: Damn. That's good.
Sarah Tacy: And now one of her friends recently when she's I'm not feeling inspired to write my book.
Sarah Tacy: She is just show up and do it. And Mel Robbins is always like 15 minutes a day. Whether you want to or not. And then if you feel inspired, you can continue to do more. But it's just yeah, what is that [00:47:00] routine? That I can just it doesn't have to be overwhelming. It doesn't have, because I think we over couple it with the wounded masculine, which is pushed through at all costs.
Sarah Tacy: But maybe that middle ground is just, what is that little dual piece that is small enough that I can repeat over and over. Then sometimes when we get a little bit of momentum with that too, it's just oh, and I can maybe like another, like dollar more next week if, once you get there.
Kaitlyn Carlson: And do you ever notice how like masculine becomes feminine? So I noticed this when I was doing my yoga teacher training, so I was like, okay, yoga teacher training is like very masculine in the sense that it's like you're memorizing the poses, you're practicing, like you have to put in the hours.
Kaitlyn Carlson: It's not sexy. And then you look at you like a master yoga teacher and it's like you are and you're feminine because you mastered your masculine. So I think of like masculine as discipline and feminine as mastery. So it's once you have [00:48:00] put in the reps and the hours, then it does become flow in play.
Kaitlyn Carlson: But you have to have both.
Sarah Tacy: It's just like that example when people say you have to learn the scales before you can improvise. Yes. Alina Brower once said the most feminine thing is a sturdy schedule. Something like that. But it's basically like the schedule. And there's another word I'm thinking about that a lot of businesses are like, if you have the structure that then you get to really relax into it.
Kaitlyn Carlson: Yeah.
Sarah Tacy: And
Kaitlyn Carlson: be a little
Sarah Tacy: bit flexible with it.
Kaitlyn Carlson: Totally. Money works the same exact way. And I was actually talking to chat about this, which was really interesting. People have the hardest time getting to a million, like getting to a million dollars 'cause it does not feel rewarding at all. And then there's this transition from a million into oh my God, I did it.
Kaitlyn Carlson: Oh my God, I'm doing it. Oh my God. Look, my money's making more money than I was making. It's just you like to get [00:49:00] past. Getting to that first million takes a lot
Sarah Tacy: like the warmup.
Kaitlyn Carlson: Yes. But then people are like, oh my God, I see it working. Like I see it working for me. And then it's, once you get past building that initial snowball, then it's like a runaway train.
Sarah Tacy: That's
Kaitlyn Carlson: cool. Yeah, it's like the beauty of compound interest. It's amazing.
Sarah Tacy: We have one minute before I'm switching to the q and a Vicki and Amna, if you have questions, will you just gimme a thumbs up so I know if I should switch. You do. Okay. All right. So here's just a few things I wanna add to the listeners of some of the favorite, my favorite things that you introduced me to financially.
Sarah Tacy: Kaitlyn? Yeah. The first was spent savings. I was like, that's so genius. You guys get that. It's like she looked at like our numbers of what we need for mortgage, for food, for the tuition, for our girls, for, this is how much, and then it's like how much we actually spend. And [00:50:00] then she takes the other number and she's this is spent savings.
Sarah Tacy: And there's no like guilt or shame to that. But I was like, this is so genius because it's like a choice, right? It's if that did just go. And I also love the idea of my money working for me too. If I was able to put that aside, and I understand that there may be people listening being like, I am literally just trying to pay my bills.
Sarah Tacy: But when I saw that, I, it blew my mind and I love the way you phrased it. The freedom number also is so much sexier than retirement. Retirement feels so far away and having a freedom number feels oh, that. If I feel like I have so much choice in it too. Yeah. And it's exciting.
Sarah Tacy: And for Steve, he loved that when we found our freedom number that we could reverse engineer what that would mean, that we would need to put aside weekly or monthly. And it's like such an exciting goal for him. Yeah. And then I feel the same way too. Like it's exciting to feel like we have a little bit more, just like before that it [00:51:00] was like, I don't know, I think, I hope I, maybe I have no idea actually.
Sarah Tacy: Where we seem to be doing okay and now it's a little bit more oh, this is it. It gives agency absolutely
Kaitlyn Carlson: great word for it.
Sarah Tacy: And I think those were the two, but the spent earnings really And the freedom number. Yeah. And giving your money a job like those three are like, that made money feel a little bit more fun and like I wanna be a part of it. A different conversation for a different time. 'cause we are out of time For you and me is just how complicated the systems can be made. Which
Kaitlyn Carlson: Yeah.
Sarah Tacy: For overwhelmed people, which I think is the majority of humans alive right now can be like, it's too overwhelming.
Sarah Tacy: I can't start.
Kaitlyn Carlson: Yeah.
Sarah Tacy: So another time maybe you can leave me a voice memo about is there any steps for people who are feeling that way? But for now, thank you so much for coming on threshold moments.
Kaitlyn Carlson: Thank
Sarah Tacy: you for having me. I'm sorry this is such an abrupt [00:52:00] end. I do have a 12 o'clock and so I wanna leave room and I'll just say