This week In The Suite welcomes Sheryl Hickerson into the guest chair. Sheryl serves as the CEO of two companies, including one of the most successful private membership organizations in FinServ, Females and Finance. In addition to leading Females and Finance, Sheryl is the CEO of Unified Financial Network and AVP of Business Development at Highland Capital Brokerage. Through all expressions of her career, Sheryl brings her energy and her desire to serve.
In this episode, Sheryl shares how she’s built Females and Finance; how she’s continued to remain open and pursue career interests and passions; and her secrets for what women can do when they feel stuck. Through our conversation, it’s clear that Sheryl has managed to meld her passions, interests and experiences into a beautiful life and purposeful career.
Sheryl is a powerhouse of energy – so much so that within minutes, listeners will get a sense as to why she’s known as her social alias, BionicSocialite.
Join the conversation to hear more about:
Referenced Materials
Sheryl Hickerson LinkedIn
Females and Finance
Unified Financial Network
Highland Capital Brokerage
🤩 Thanks for listening, we appreciate your support and 5-star reviews of our show!!!
❤️ Please follow us on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/inthesuitepod/
📧 Want to get in touch? Email me at tina@growintentionally.com
This week In The Suite welcomes Sheryl Hickerson into the guest chair. Sheryl serves as the CEO of two companies, including one of the most successful private membership organizations in FinServ, Females and Finance. In addition to leading Females and Finance, Sheryl is the CEO of Unified Financial Network and AVP of Business Development at Highland Capital Brokerage. Through all expressions of her career, Sheryl brings her energy and her desire to serve.
In this episode, Sheryl shares how she’s built Females and Finance; how she’s continued to remain open and pursue career interests and passions; and her secrets for what women can do when they feel stuck. Through our conversation, it’s clear that Sheryl has managed to meld her passions, interests and experiences into a beautiful life and purposeful career.
Sheryl is a powerhouse of energy – so much so that within minutes, listeners will get a sense as to why she’s known as her social alias, BionicSocialite.
Join the conversation to hear more about:
Referenced Materials
Sheryl Hickerson LinkedIn
Females and Finance
Unified Financial Network
Highland Capital Brokerage
🤩 Thanks for listening, we appreciate your support and 5-star reviews of our show!!!
❤️ Please follow us on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/inthesuitepod/
📧 Want to get in touch? Email me at tina@growintentionally.com
Tina Powell:
Hi, this is Tina Powell host of In the Suite where I sit down with top women leaders and some of the biggest names in the financial services and the wealth management industry. Together we'll discover some of their best secrets and top strategies to grow great business, build a strong brand and lead teams in the 21st century. I hope you'll enjoy hearing their amazing personal stories of triumph, trepidation, and transformation in hopes of becoming better leaders ourselves. The time for you to lead is now and you're In the Suite
Tina Powell:
She's bionic, she's social, and she's In the Suite for this week's episode. You know her as Sheryl Hickerson and she's the CEO of two companies, including one of the most successful in person and online private membership organizations and financial services, namely Females and Finance. Sheryl and her husband Darrell started Females and Finance formally as a community in 2019. And in less than two years, this super power of a marketer has grown Females and Finance membership to nearly 3000 professionals. Females and Finance is dedicated to fostering recruitment, training, advancement and the retention of women in FinServe and FinTech career. She sees Females and Finance as an equitable platform for women and men and the standard for networking groups.
Tina Powell:
A unique feature to Females and Finance Sheryl created as their Male Ally Network. The acronym MAN for short. Sheryl introduced MAN to open more dialogue between men and women and to support the organization's four pillars of focus. No doubt you've seen these MAN featured on Females and Finance website, Facebook group, LinkedIn, and Twitter handle. She also hosts The F Word podcast for almost two years. The F Word is a podcast designed for women working in the financial services and financial technology landscape, as well as the men who champion them. She owes a ton of gratitude for Gary V for inspiring the idea and calling her out by name at a LIMRA event where they were both speaking.
Tina Powell:
Sheryl is also the CEO of Unified Financial Services, AVP of business development at Highland Capital Brokerage, and an international speaker on social and digital marketing strategies for financial services organization. Sheryl Hickerson has worked with thousands of insurance and investment professionals, as well as more than 100 compliance officers to grow the presence of the financial services profession through online platforms. And what I learned about Sheryl In the Suite is whether or not that you're a woman or a man working in the industry, Sheryl wants you to just go and put your big ask out there. As one of the thousands of proud members within her organization, Females and Finance, when we hear the name Sheryl Hickerson, we think giver. So hold on here she comes. I hope you enjoy this high energy episode with Sheryl Hickerson In the Suite.
Tina Powell:
Oh wow. It is such a pleasure. I am so excited for today. I can't think of a better way to kick off the weekend here than a conversation with Sheryl Hickerson. Wow. You guys know her as the CEO and the founder of Females and Finance. We're going to get into that, but you did miss a little bit of the conversation about aunt Rose's China. And the fact is that we are very fortunate to be here with Sheryl today and every day is a day to celebrate. So break out the China, break out the special glassware, right? Don't you think, Sheryl it's a [crosstalk 00:04:09]
Sheryl Hickerson:
I agree.
Tina Powell:
You are involved in so many things and it's one of the reasons that I wanted to talk to you. I want to start out the podcast with just, I think it's great to head to Facebook and I want to read you the following. And this is from one of your Females and Finance members. And this comes from Kate Howerton over at SmartPath and listen to what she has to say about Females and Finance, and you Sheryl. "I love being part of the Females and Finance community because people here are always willing to lift you up and make sure that you succeed."
Sheryl Hickerson:
Oh, I appreciate that so much. I appreciate Kate. Kate is one of our financial service professionals down in the Atlanta area and I got to meet her because of Females and Finance. So I have been in financial services for 30 years. And if people think financial services was difficult, try doing it back when we used to wear pantyhose and pumps and shoulder pads. I lived in San Francisco at the time and trying to navigate the bar and everything else with that. What I found was that in all the time that I've been in financial services, that I'm a pretty much of a go getter. I've been like this, I think, since I was born. I realized that when I got into financial services 100% by accident, I faxed...
Sheryl Hickerson:
I want you to imagine this, I moved to San Francisco at a thousand dollars. I thought I was so rich, I had nothing. I had to get a job and I faxed my resume to the wrong number. This is a true story, faxed my resume to wrong number, MassMutual Insurance called and said, "I think you're looking for something else, but we're hiring. Would you like to come in?" I'm thinking, "Yeah." So I tell everybody, you got to be nice to MassMutual because they take chances on people like me and they did. And they actually hired me.
Sheryl Hickerson:
When I went back, and I actually worked there for quite a few years. I started off as a call director, just answering phones and I quickly became from that to a marketing rep to an account executive with them. I did all of that not knowing a single thing about financial services at all. Other than I did know, my dad paid my car insurance. That is a true story. I think I actually said that in the interview too. But you know, it was a male ally in that office who, when I asked him years later, and FYI Robert Brumby, I will make certain that listens to this because he's still my mentor to this very day. 30 years later, yes, I still go see him. He now lives in Georgia, but I do. I'd spend a lot of time and he's become a very important part of my life.
Sheryl Hickerson:
But I asked him many years later in our friendship, "Why did you hire me?" I didn't know anything. And he said, Oh, 100%. He said it was because you were inquisitive. "I can't teach people to ask questions." You can't teach it. He said, "You can give some people, some soft skills of things and teach them leadership, but being inquisitive is something that a lot of times is inside somebody and they are oftentimes," and he was a school teacher for years, and he said that was squandered and squelched by a lot of adults. Because like, "Oh, you ask a lot of questions." Those are the children that everybody needs to stop and listen to. They're asking questions, don't stop them. He allowed me to ask lots of them, but it led up to where I'm at today. As I was went through this journey, what ended up happening was I found out I was always the only woman in the room.
Sheryl Hickerson:
It was just a lot of it, and it was years and years of it. I and I went through a lot of the sexist, "Hey, go get our coffee. Hey, can you go down and grab our lunches." While they still had a meeting, and I was like, "What?" And it was me having to stand up for myself. "No, I am not going to go get coffee. I'm staying here because the conversation is still going on." And then you get other nasty words or you're called when you are firm and aggressive. But I continued that down that journey. About eight years ago, I got really involved with marketing because if you really back it up 10 years ago, my kids were really involved in my space and I was trying to be like a good mom. I'm like, "Who are you talking to in the internet?" [crosstalk 00:08:23]. "Who is that? Why is Tom? Why's Tom your friend? He looks like a man. Why are you... ?"
Sheryl Hickerson:
You know, I'm just trying to do everything. And then all of a sudden it clicked, "You're talking to people. If you're doing that, I can do that with business." I basically booted all the kids off, and that's what I did is I started getting online and talking to people. So from that the... it used to be Friendster and then it was The Facebook and then it was Facebook. I continued to be really involved with that stuff, which seemed really insignificant eight, 10 years ago. And then what happened was I was invited by LIMRA to come and speak at an event in Boston. Gary Vaynerchuk was the keynote speaker that year.
Tina Powell:
Oh my God. And you and I even before this, I think it was a couple months back, we had our Gary V, right?
Sheryl Hickerson:
How was it?
Tina Powell:
We had a exchange, your picture and my picture with Gary V. Oh my God, and he was the keynote speaker at that LIMRA event.
Sheryl Hickerson:
He was. And he gets up on stage, and what was funny was I'd never forget that Steven Selby was standing right next to me in the back of the room and I had a breakout session after he was speaking. So I was going to be jetting off and over into my room. And he gets up on stage, he starts to talking and he goes, "Wait, where is Sheryl Brown?" And you don't want Gary Vaynerchuk ever to call you out in public. I remember Steven looking at me and goes, "What did you do?" I'm like, "I don't know." He said, "While, you yahoos were asleep," but this was true. He said, "I've tweeted out this morning and asked what do you guys want to hear about today? Her response was, "I found that the only effort they like is finance." But good luck today. If you know Gary Vaynerchuk, it will make sense.
Tina Powell:
Yeah, exactly. Right.
Sheryl Hickerson:
I owe a debt of gratitude to him because what he said was she speaking today, we need to go listen to her. And so after I went to my breakout session, which I would have been lucky to have 30 people sit in, 200 people arrived and that was the beginning of my speaking journey. And today I've spoken at more than 200 events. The events that I've spoken at what happened was I just noticed it was a lot of middle aged white men in the room. Just not a lot of color, not a lot of gender difference. And it was San Antonio, Texas 2017, I left a conference after I got off of stage, and the next gentleman who got up said this, he said, "San Antonio is great. I found that the only way I'm going to be able to protect our retirement plan is to hold my wife's hands in the store."
Sheryl Hickerson:
All the men laughed, the four women, there were four, I remember. The four women, I was very intentional to look at their faces and they didn't. I knew in that moment that had to stop. It had to stop. We did a lot of talk up until that point about... In 2017, there was starting to become that gender conversation about where are the women? Where are people of color? We're starting to just nip at the idea of it.
Tina Powell:
Yeah, because it's sensitive, right? It's like walking on eggshells. It's like all of a sudden in the lines. It's like it's the elephant in the room. We notice it, but how do we talk about it in a way that is not offensive to everybody or it's not accusatory but it's still something that we really need to talk about.
Sheryl Hickerson:
Yeah. There needed to be constructive dialogue and articulate what some of the initiatives were things. So I left that, I went home. I literally erased every single thing on all of my social channels which, you know social media, that's almost career suicide. But I decided from that point forward, I was only going to be featuring articles where the business owner was a woman and the financial service professional was a woman. I was going to call her out by name, and I was going to say, "Look at what so-and-so is doing. Look at what this woman is doing." Because I went to my very next meeting and I stood up there and I had three king-sized sticker burrs. And if you think that grown men are not competitive, give them a sticker burr, and they all jumped up.
Sheryl Hickerson:
I said, "I'm going to ask them questions. Anybody who does it, I'm going to throw... the very first question was who is the CEO of the Nasdaq? I just sat there very quietly. And somebody finally, they're probably Googling on their phone Adena Friedman, very good chuck out the thing. And said, "Anybody here do 401k business? Then they're like, "Yeah." You know, "Okay, good. Who's in charge of fidelity?" And there was silence. Finally, somebody was like, "Abigail Johnson." "Very good Abby Johnson." So what I was trying to make a point of was all of these veins of interest, whether it Stacy Cunningham at the New York Stock Exchange, Adena Friedman at the Nasdaq. You've got all these really strong women, but why are their names not able to be that quick when you ask people about money?
Sheryl Hickerson:
You know what I mean? And so I just made a very big stand, a very dark line in the sand that said, I'm going to start a movement, Females and Finance. I really remember saying to my then boyfriend now, husband. I said, "If I get 200 people together, I'll be all right." And so here we are in May of 2020, and we're about to go to 2,800 members.
Tina Powell:
Yeah, I was like, "Okay, we need to add a couple zeros to that." It's two years now?
Sheryl Hickerson:
Yeah, a little less than two years.
Tina Powell:
Little less than two years, 2,800. That is incredible. To what do you attribute the growth? I mean, I think part of that is that you set out with a very intentional platform to just drive awareness and drive community where there was none in a medium that we were all using, right? We were all together on Facebook anyway. We were all in the feed and paying attention to social media and connecting with our friends from high school and our relatives from other places. So did it take off as quickly as you thought you had that original goal of 200, less than two years, it's 2,800. When did you wake up Sheryl and go, OMG.
Sheryl Hickerson:
I got to tell you, I don't know if I've woken up yet and said OMG, because I'm so focused on making certain that I validate every woman who's in our group. I want to know who they are. I meet with them. My calendar is always very, very full and I apologize to people when they want to make time, but it's because I'm making time for each person to learn about their particular vein of interest. When I started it, I think what made me different right off the bat was yes, we were mostly comprised of a Facebook group. Because only intention was, "I'll just start a special interest group and if people want to join me, that's great."
Sheryl Hickerson:
Facebook made that relatively inexpensive for me to do because FYI, I don't get paid for this. No, one's paying a membership to be a fee. I take no sponsorship dollars. So I'm not the hold into anybody else's agenda except my own. And so I had to 100% finance this. So a woman owned and 100%, you know, woman backed by money. That was easier to do in Facebook. Did I encounter the people Tina that said, "Oh, I'm not on Facebook." I did, and I had to say, "I respect that. That's no problem. I'm still here for you." However, this is where I had to be able to have a place for everyone to be. Now, today we have a fairly elaborate website, FYI built with my own two hands still because in every graphic that you see out there today that has a Females and Finance stuff, I've built myself. Everybody [crosstalk 00:16:05].
Tina Powell:
Wow. That is quite unbelievable the content that you... As a marketer especially, I have content envy for you, Sheryl Hickerson, but I have never seen... You are truly bionic... Her Twitter handle is BionicSocialite. Again, if you're following Sheryl on Twitter and a part of her Facebook community, again, Females and Finance, I love it that you've started out with really a mission that was truly your fiduciary and that you've you've assembled this together using your own bare hands, but also too, you've been funding it yourself and not beholden to your point to any one organization or point of view. Like you have freedom of expression, but I do love it's that content envy, I love how you're putting that into the feed. And you can feel from those posts the energy that's behind them. I think the appreciation, the emotion... this is not just you filling up the feed for feed sake, right?
Sheryl Hickerson:
Exactly.
Tina Powell:
This is about making sure that these stories and that these narratives, all of a sudden that these stories become part of the overall collection of stuff that's out there on social media and everywhere else, because these are stories that have not been told, not like this.
Sheryl Hickerson:
Yeah. I think that, that's just it. The number one feedback that I think that I get from our members is that they appreciate having a place that they can come anytime of the day, make a post. And one of the questions I get asked still a lot today, Tina is men they'll say, "Oh, so are you guys sharing recipes? Are you doing like nail? Do you have like hair design?" And I'm like, "No, no, absolutely not."
Tina Powell:
That could not be more insulting.
Sheryl Hickerson:
I know. How do you balance? It's like it goes back to that all day. How do you balance it all? You know, and whatever are we going to do?
Tina Powell:
No, no, no. I really, truly admire all of your energy because you've got Females and Finance. We'll talk about some of the organizations that you also belong to and CEOs. I don't want to skip over an important point. One of the beauties about Females and Finance is to see the male advocacy. How did you attract? Was that again, an intentional? You'd seem very type A, that you'd like to set goals. Did people come to you and all of a sudden that you created some magnetic or did you have to go out to people and find them and saying, "Hey, be part of the Females and Finance community."
Sheryl Hickerson:
Exactly. So before I actually started the community, I interviewed 363, I forget the number, but it's in there, women who work in financial services in different discipline. I came to them with the very intentional questioning of three main areas. One, was recruiting. So how did you get here? I wanted to understand, was it something that was proactive by them? Did they want to be in financial? Was it reacted because they had to find a job like me. I also wanted to understand training. Training was another way where you're proactively going after once you got that job, where you going after training, or were you responding to and reacting to the training that was being offered to you by the organization you were with? And then of course advancement, how are you promoting yourself? Was it lateral promotion where you're moving from one area of finances to another? Were you actually going up the ladder and becoming a senior director, et cetera?
Sheryl Hickerson:
Because in the end, what I wanted to do was actually look at how a group like mine could given an equitable platform, like we have been able to build, how do we look at our retention and our attrition rate? What does that look like? Are we retaining individuals or we're not? When I did that interviewing Tina, I found that overwhelmingly the women all mentioned they had a male ally. "I had a man who hired me. I had a man who brought me in. I had a man who did that." So what I decided to do was create the MAN Initiative and MAN stands for Male Ally Network. So I went to men that I already respected in our profession and said, "Hey, I think that you would be fabulous for this, could I talked to you about what the responsibility for a position like this would be?"
Sheryl Hickerson:
Because what it is, is one, you're not getting paid and you're not paying me, and two, it's a responsibility and an understanding of you will support feminine talent because I always tell everybody because I'm saving the dolphins does not mean kill the whales. There's an ocean of financial service, wealth, and knowledge out there that we can all be a part of. And the other thing I was very concerned with too, was different disciplines of financial services. Because I see a lot of silos out there. People who only want to have people who are CFPs, only this broker dealer, only this insurance office, only this, whatever. And I'm going to tell you at no point, could I've ever anticipated a pandemic. Okay, I'd love to say I'm that strategic, but I wasn't.
Sheryl Hickerson:
But when the pandemic hit, a group like ours became invaluable because you know, who are rock stars in our community, bankers, lenders, people who deal with student loan debt, like Kate Howerton, who works at SmartPath, she does a lot in the student loan space. So those individuals, all of a sudden rose to the occasion, they became the phoenix in the community because many of us in financial services, whether we're marketers like you and I are marketing, but for our professionals who are in the advisory role, insurance, they were coming back to them and saying, "Could you explain to me exactly how CARES work? Can you explain to me how the PPP work? Can you explain to me the difference between the federal and the privatized loans?"
Sheryl Hickerson:
So there was a lot of dialogue and I think that having a community structure like this men and women, being able to present their very best expertise in itself and an equitable platform and have it easy to digest, I think this became the real standard for most networking communities that I'm seeing today pop up.
Tina Powell:
Wow. I mean, that's a lot right there. The fact that you interviewed those 363 people around the training and the advancement no pun intended, give you a whole wealth of knowledge. I will say that, Yes, that is very true. We've all had male allies and this isn't like an either, or. This is not a binary type of equation. It is like, you know what? You can have both. But one of the things that I think that you're great at Sheryl is the way that you acknowledge the male allies. I've seen some of your male allies posts, they receive cards and thank yous from you. And the more and more that I hear other women who have... You and I share that same kind of... we've had male mentors, we've had male advocates and you're helping to further the career of a woman or a female executive when you start to cultivate those relationships.
Tina Powell:
So then what happened? Describe a little bit about, yeah the pandemic really threw us all for a loop, but it sounds like you already had a network there that people could reach out to. What were some of the things besides the PPP loans and whatnot? Kind of give us a complexion of what are some of the things like even right now, some resources that are under our feet right now, because we solved, we're not past the pandemic at all. What are some of the support mechanisms right now built within Females and Finance that people can access right now that they're not even aware of?
Sheryl Hickerson:
Yeah. So part of what happens is that most, everything we do is actually free. I do have some founding partners who provide resources back to the women, whether that's training education, again, going back to my pillars of what FAA match with recruitment, things of that nature. So we have a lot of access to things like that. And on our website, every woman can actually sign up for not only just have a membership on the website, but it gives them access to all of the deliverables within that. And those deliverables might be discounts for all of their CE, it might be to keep their licenses and to keep their education going. So we have discounted memberships to other, we do actually partner with quite a few other membership organizations, which I think some people feel is like, "Wow, isn't that counterintuitive?" But it's not.
Sheryl Hickerson:
So if you think of NAIFA or you think of Quad-A or you think of The W Source, or you think of APAG, or you think of something like that. We have a relationship with them, and what that means is that their leadership and my leadership we speak, and we actually build constructive campaigns between us so that they know that I want you to go to a Quad-A event. I want you to be a Quad-A member. And they know that even though I may not... that it means that you don't go into our paid membership, which is $19 a month. If that means that you forego that to go there, then that's what I want you to do. Because I believe that if more membership organizations actually built strategic initiatives and alliances with one another and made it so that it's affordable for everybody to afford all of their memberships, that would be so much better.
Sheryl Hickerson:
It's that drawing the circle. I'm always trying to draw the circle around everybody else, but those benefits are all located under the other good thing too. Is although I love my Facebook group conversationally sometimes, when you want to reach out to somebody, if you're not connected to them and you know, you have to go to the Facebook messenger and all that, you don't have to. In our website, we actually have a member chat feature that you can actually pick somebody out, send them a message and it sends them, well, we have an app too. So the website has, it's an app. So it'll actually pop up and say, somebody messaged you and you can either respond to the app or you'll get an email and you can respond that way too. So I've tried to make things very synergistic, very easy to work together.
Sheryl Hickerson:
The men and the women, we have 88 men on our platform today. We introduce eight new men every month. And so they've been phenomenal. They bring opportunities such as speaking engagements. They bring opportunities, "Hey, can I interview you? Can I do a paper with you?" Even to the point of, "Can I share revenue with you on a case?" I literally just yesterday had somebody on a call because we do these regional meetups. And one of the conversations was I need someone who does 401(k) and a woman in the group said, "That's exactly all I do." They're often doing business together and they would have never met each other if it hadn't been putting all of the... because we regionalized January and putting those regions together so they could meet one another. It's constantly fluid. There's constant synergy and that's what makes me feel like the networking platform that I've built today, my goal for it is to be... this is going to be the standard going forward.
Tina Powell:
So yeah, you're providing a magical matchmaking service here. You talked about these regional events, and I know that there's one upcoming in New York City and at your biggest region, which I am slayed into a 10 virtually. So normally these types of regional events are also two in person and we recently had Sasha Pilch on the podcast too, from New York City FinTech Women, and a lot of us have now, right? We're used to getting together in a personalized setting too. So how is Females and Finance augmenting the personal experience? And so the more virtual right now during COVID?
Sheryl Hickerson:
Yeah, so we were actually meeting in person on occasion. So what I was doing is in my flight, I would show up to a city. We would have a Females and Finance meetup for whatever that particular area was. If we were in Austin, Texas, or if we were in Des Moines and then we would get everybody together. Then that way they could all meet from a local. What happened was even before pandemic actually came, was in 2019. Several of the women came to us and said, "Can we hold local meetings without you?" And I was like, "Please do." I'm very clear that we are not a membership association. For example, with an association, you're filed a particular way with the government, You have to let pretty much anybody in and block this whole thing. This is my business. I tell everybody I'm old, it's my party and I get to do what I want. And if somebody doesn't like it, go start your own party.
Sheryl Hickerson:
That's because I'm looking for the disproportionate amount of wonderful people in financial services to do the best networking that's possible out there. So with that too, by regionalizing, they were starting to do meetings together. So we actually set up delegates is what we call them. We're not chapters. I don't want any notes, I don't want any kind of head count. We're not about any of that because I got enough work on my plate I don't need to go keep all of that stuff. What we're doing is when we have those meetups, I tell everybody who knows me well, and they would all laugh to hear this. "You better put your big ask out there. I want to hear what your big ask is. 30, 60, 90 days, what do you need to move your business forward?"
Sheryl Hickerson:
Interestingly enough, by saying that to them, oftentimes what happens is we pause and we think these people are competitors. I don't want them to know. What I have found in Females and Finance though, is because I'm looking for abundance minded, big hearted exactly client centric people. They put it out there, and I'm going to give you an example. Atlanta region had a meetup and one of the women on the call said, "I need to meet somebody at the Federal Reserve Bank without even hesitation. One of the women said, "I used to work there."
Tina Powell:
That's awesome.
Sheryl Hickerson:
I know and it was so funny because the one member said, "You have no idea how much time you saved me by me spending 20, 30, 40 minutes on this particular call, this meetup and that's what all of the meetups are. I mean, I love the happy hours and sitting around and having a cocktail, but let's just be really frank everyone. Let's get down to some business and get things done.
Tina Powell:
Thank you very, very much. I kind of say like enough with these champagne receptions where we're like taking pictures. I'm like, can we please just amplify and share the brain trust? That's in this room right now and In the Suite. Welcome In the Suite and some of these things... Yes, I'm like you. I love the happy hours. I love getting together. However, I also like it balanced and in a more education knowledge sharing. Let's demonstrate the intellect that's in these rooms. And those are the stories that we need to also share. It's not just about taking a selfie.
Sheryl Hickerson:
Exactly, and so our meetups... so the New York regional pick on, is our largest region. We have almost 700 members really when you look at it. But the bottom line is that everybody needs to show up to every meeting. We have them every month, show up when you need to, because you've got things you're working on. Only thing I ask everyone to do is please, if you take, give. Bob Burg is one of my great friends and I come from a go giver, personality and mindset. It's in my DNA. Please give because all... what is it? All boats rise...
Tina Powell:
Yeah, a rising tide lifts all boats.
Sheryl Hickerson:
That's it and that's exactly what it's about. So what we're trying to do is give you the opportunity to continue to lift everyone, and then your responsibility is to give back and they do. Like I said, I leave every one of these meetups because we've gone online. So there was a little shift in having to do that. But since we're already an online community, it wasn't too terrible, other than I know people are Zoomed out and Zoom fatigue is very real, but I tell them, this is not Zoom where you're sitting on the call and thinking, "This should have been an email." This is, you're sitting on this call to present your business of what you need and letting everybody else come and hug your business and pull in and help make those things happen. So those are the takeaways that... and it happened on every meetup.
Sheryl Hickerson:
I've not had a meet up yet where the takeaway was so great to every person who was there. They were recipient of something really good for what they needed. I'm so grateful for the delegates who volunteered their time to do these. We do a lot of the promotional part for them. So again anybody in our organization, if they want to do that, I give them their pro memberships for free. I don't believe that you should pay to volunteer your time. I see a lot of organizations that do that and I think, "That is just not right." So Darrell and I made a business decision. If you're helping us, we want to give you everything back that we can, because remember, we're really for the most part, not taking a lot of income from this. This is something that's 100% funded by me. So I want it to be that it is a value to every person who comes.
Tina Powell:
So what's the future vision? Where do you want to take this in the next two years, five years? What I see also too, in your future is that when we are back to all getting together, I could see this being the female conference, the must attend, the go to conference of the year. I do.
Sheryl Hickerson:
I appreciate that. I appreciate. Well, I have such good quality people in the group, and I have been asked since the first day that we opened the Facebook group, "What are you going to do? A conference? I will tell you this, so we started doing retreats and we had a retreat actually scheduled this week. We would have been in Florida for our retreat. And it was a significant financial loss for us because we had already prepaid everything. I will say this, that we returned every penny of every money that any woman paid. We were out lot of money for the other things. And so that conference, I want to do it when I know that we are able to come back together and be together and it will be different.
Sheryl Hickerson:
I will tell you this, anybody who's listening, if you want to steal this idea, please do. If you have a conference where you want to attract women, please, please, please, please, the best business's done is in the hallways. Please provide proper networking opportunities for people to be able to get together and do business with one another, not just go from class to class, to class, to class, to class. That is not where the best business is done, we all know this. And the second thing that I'm also going to say is, please, please, please also provide a networking space that is quiet.
Sheryl Hickerson:
I will tell you as much as I am very extroverted, I am very introverted. So I'm an ambivert. I go back to my space and when I want to meet with somebody, there is nothing more difficult than trying to find that corner, quiet place to talk to that person, and then the extroverted people are in your space all the time. And you're like, "Please stop, I'm trying to talk to this person." So I think that's some of the things that the women find challenging at a lot of the conferences is that they're thinking masculine. The food is masculine, the setup is masculine. The rooms are masculine and you know what? It's not about emasculating as much as it is being inclusive. So let's try to provide some give and take on that.
Tina Powell:
Wow, those are really great suggestions. Yeah, and I've noticed the best conferences also have that outdoor availability as well, too. For those kind of networking spaces for that quiet time even one of the things I did this morning as I took a walk outside in nature, and I need that to balance for the amount of time that I'm spending in front of a computer and electronic device. I've actually done studies where I've taken certain tests and whatever on myself and that my default is that I have to actually use nature as a way to get my energy back. But you're really talking about all these themes from a mindset of abundance.
Tina Powell:
And I do want to say that the culture of an organization, whether or not it's a Females and Finance or whether or not it's a wealth management firm or an insurance company, or even a marketing consultancy, it takes on the spirit of the founder. It is that culture, whether or not that you realize it's being said or not, it always comes back to the founders. So, there's beliefs and your value system. If there's any time, this one has really, really proved itself that we are truly there for one another, and I love the way that we've been leaning into one another. So that is a very good point and I'll leave it at there. So you guys heard those conference takeaways, please use them and I know that Sheryl would be more than happy to also to connect with you offline and give you more specific recommendations.
Tina Powell:
So besides Females and Finance, which is another reason why I wanted to have you In the Suite today is because you, gosh, you're involved in so many things. And so in addition to being the CEO of Females and Finance, you're also the CEO of United Financial Network. You're the AVP business development for Highlander Capital Brokerage. You also too have a great podcast for Females and Finance called The F Word. Yes, it's so appropriately named. Again, going back to channeling Gary V and I think part of your origin story. One of the things I wanted to ask you is Sheryl Hickerson, what did you have for breakfast?
Sheryl Hickerson:
I know. I get asked that a lot [crosstalk 00:38:15].
Tina Powell:
Vitamins are you taking? I know you are up, no matter what time I send you an email, bam, it's back. Like it could be 11 o'clock at night, it could be 10 o'clock in the morning. How are you doing all of this? How do you [crosstalk 00:38:30]. How do you manage this energy? It's not about, let me be definitive here. This is a question about energy, not about balance, but how do we take some of that? Because we are women, we're doing a lot of things, taking care of our families, taking care of a lot of people right now, all of a sudden find themselves being teachers to their kids and homeschooling and all this stuff. What is your advice for creating energy?
Sheryl Hickerson:
I think that part of that is that I appreciate that I get a lot, and when I'm on stage speaking, I'm a big energy person too. So I always have to tell everybody like, hold on because here I come. I've been that way forever. I think that creating efficiencies in your practice is really key. So I do a lot, like I said, I've built my website or every graphic you see, every post that's out there. I do all of those things. I don't have somebody who's doing all of that. These two thumbs responding, or that is me scheduling, doing all of that but I have built an incredible amount of office efficiency. So every tool that's out there, I have really narrowed down and gotten very intentional about where I want to be and what I don't want to be.
Sheryl Hickerson:
I'm going to tell you right now, don't call me about your TikTok. You don't care, I'm not doing it. I think it's great if you think it's funny. Send me a funny one. I'll watch it. I'm not on the TikTok don't care. So I had to be very real about where my energy and my space could be. Andre Frazier one time said that it's not about balanced about harmony. And I think that the way I harmonize my life is that I have energy for the things that are really important to me. So if Females and Finance is my passion, it is what I talk and do a lot. I am on staff at Highland Capital Brokerage. I believe in insurance. I went to Riskalyze last year with my... I love insurance and Aaron Klein gave me a hard time about being on the dark side. Well, and it's going joke because I always tease all the planners. I'm like, "You can plan all you want, everybody dies." My thing trumps every time, but the insurance.
Sheryl Hickerson:
But you know, the reality of that is that I bring a lot of business development women's initiatives to Highland. We are part of the advisor group now as of February. So I have a lot of responsibility there to them. And then my husband's company, Unified Financial Network, what he is doing is being very focused in the... he left his medical practice last year after realizing how many people just did not have really good legacy planning. He does a ton in not just legacy planning, estate planning he works with, but he also does a ton in debt consolidation and repair. And it's never been more prevalent than right now.
Tina Powell:
Oh boy, I was about to say that boy, not a shortage of these conversations [inaudible 00:41:10] he picked the right time to launch.
Sheryl Hickerson:
Yeah, he just was very concerned with how many people were living off of credit cards to be quite frank. You know what I mean? When this happened for us, we planned for not a pandemic. We planned for something, what happens if it's bad. He's very good at the forethought of that, and then he also brought a risk management specialist into the firm who insurance for RAAs. So this individual, when people want to put that order in, or they want to work with somebody, we have the capacity to do that, especially if they're Females and Finance because I get asked that quite a bit. So those are my big three. In addition to obviously the... the podcast is much more about giving a voice because I'm putting a lot of attention and focus on the women and I want to make certain that I'm giving our members an opportunity to use their voice.
Sheryl Hickerson:
I tell everybody, you can only get thought leadership out in two ways. You can write it and you can speak it. That's all you have. And if that's all you have, use both of them and everything tells me as a marketer that you need to speak it as often. Video, podcasting, making certain that... and then shoring it up with something in writing so that from an SEO capacity, people can find those things. So I think that the things that I tell everybody else to do when I'm onstage and why they hire me to come in and talk about social digital marketing strategies, I actually use in the practice of what it is that I do, whether it's that Females and Finance at Highland Capital or at Unified Financial.
Tina Powell:
Yeah. Well, I mean, there's no doubt about it that you've mastered so many different aspects of promotion and marketing and you're very tactical in your approach. What types of tools would you recommend? Here's where I see some of the dilemma right now and you and I both have the mission of making sure that these stories right now are being told in audio format, in the podcast format, right? Something like and I won't quote this statistic exactly, it's to the best of my recollection, but there is something like 850,000 podcasts to like 7.5 million blogs. For every single woman that I interview here on In the Suite podcast, I have said, and I have offered, "I want you to have a podcast of your own. I believe in you, you have an incredible story to tell, you've got a great practice." Some are advisors and some are not advisors, but I really think that your stories and the stories of the people that you serve need to be here in the feed.
Tina Powell:
"Oh, by the way, I'm willing to give you my Google doc workflow to help you get started and to do anything that I can in my power." What is your advice? Because I see... we had a little bit of a Twitter thing, you and I going on this morning about the whole mindset and there are so many people right now that are on the fence right now. "I'm not confident about it, I don't know the technical aspects of it, the podcasting, I just don't know." I even spoke to a female, two wonderful woman who I have unbelievable respect for in the industry and there was some political trepidation inside her organization, and that was one of the main reasons or the challenges to her launch. So what do you say to the people right now listening? And we know that you're listening ladies, what do you say to those ladies right now? Those women who are stuck right now or analysis by paralysis don't want to launch a podcast, are fearful for doing it. What do you say to them Sheryl?
Sheryl Hickerson:
Yeah. So you just got to go, I mean, the hard... what do they say about skydiving? The hardest is the first step out of the plane, right? Once you're in it. So I'll give some ideas because sometimes what I do is I back it up with the clients, or with the advisors I work with and say, "I don't think that the fear is so much you putting content out there, so if they don't like the fear of the unknown of the process of what that looks like, right? Or how it benefits them in the end, I'm going to do this work, what am I going to get out of it? So I'm going to give two ideas away right now, two ideas that I've told people actively.
Tina Powell:
Good. Everybody get your pens.
Sheryl Hickerson:
If you want to write a book, a lot of people they say, "There's a book in us." Right? But the idea of actively sitting down and actually writing out every day ideas, then what you should do, and I've done this with several clients. One has written out three books exactly the way I've told them to do it, and that is blog. Take your blogs at the end of the year, take the best of them and make that the best of your work, and make that an actual blog. That book out of that. You've already written the content. I had a gentleman who, you know, winning strategies with Mike McLaughlin. I mean, if you look in the front of his book, it'll say there's a dedication there that to me, because he had said, "I want to write a book." But he didn't want. So he decided that every time he was at the airport, he was going to start writing out a few things and he did, and he ended up creating a book.
Sheryl Hickerson:
So this very much works. The other idea that I'll give away is the podcast. So if you don't know where to start on a podcast, first of all, you can set up an entire podcast for under a hundred dollars. I promise you can do this. Whether you go to anchor.fm and set up a site, whether you use Canva the free one to create your actual graphic for your podcast, your microphone, put some money into that but you don't even need a super expensive one. The one I'm speaking to you on right now was a $65 and the actual hand thing, that's holding it up so I don't have to have it in my hand so I can talk freely is about $30. And the rest of it is then start getting clients in place of who you're going to interview. So here's the best and easiest way for an advisor who's listening, a financial service professional.
Sheryl Hickerson:
Interview your business owners in your local community and get to know their business. If you just look at your 20 mile radius of where you live from a local capacity and you called them up and said, Hey, so and so who owns such and such business, "I'd love to interview you for 30 minutes on my podcast about your business." Do you honestly think they're going to say no free advertising? Absolutely not. And guess what? Once you get them in there, you can ask them all kinds of questions like you normally would do in your annual reviews or whatever. Your discovery calls. "Tell me about your business. How many employees do you have?" At the end of it, guess what? You have a very rich start and a relationship with this person. You're giving them something that's repurposable content that you're going to put your name on, that they're going to share on everything that they have because nobody comes to them and gives away anything for free.
Tina Powell:
Wow. I think those ideas are so powerful. What we're going to do here, everybody listening, I will make sure that all of this is in the show notes. The other thing I want to say is in addition to the tools that you've mentioned, this idea of just interviewing people provides a level of safety. One of the things that's really great about digital content is that before it goes live, before you hit like, "Yes, publish." Guess what? You get the chance to edit it. You get the chance to actually clip it the way you want. You get the chance to augment it, to have a compliance approve, to think about different manifestations actually for that content to make sure that number one, it's on brand, that it makes sure that your audience is okay with. One of the things that I do here In the Suite is to make sure that every single guest gets to hear the finished podcast before it goes live.
Tina Powell:
And you know what so far, there's been five of episodes for one out of the five there's already been like, Oh, actually this is no longer appropriate. So it was like, "Okay, great." So the barriers to entry in both Sheryl and I would love, if you're listening to this podcast right now, we would love to have an offline conversation with you about how easy it is to get started. Don't get stuck in the weeds and don't apt for perfection. Learn from people who have done it before. Before I started this podcast is that I took myself to general assembly in New York City and I sat my butt down for three hours, and I learned from Jen Glantz, who I then hired to be my podcast coach. And she gave us a lot of resources for free that night and even kept us accountable.
Tina Powell:
I said, "I want to do this and you provided great resources, but I still am not sure. Can you help me?" There's tons of people who are willing to help you. I finance this much like you have Females and Finance. You can be scrappy. Guess what ladies? You can have a premium product and be scrappy and create a replicable workflow. And I love these ideas of these questions that you just presented the advisers here to interview people outside in your local community. What a great time also too, during coronavirus right now to just make sure that everybody's okay.
Sheryl Hickerson:
Yeah. I'll tell you really quick too. I want to make sure I mention because one of the things that I've heard is a barrier has been the editing part. I don't know if anybody knows this. You can go into YouTube. So just create a fake whatever, and they have a fabulous editor. You can upload and cut and paste, and it's really easy to use. I'm all about easy everybody. You see all the things I do, I believe that, that YouTube editor for first time... and I would say that I did, although I created my intro for mine with the music over the talking, you can hire someone on Fiverr, very reasonable to do something like this. So you don't have to be a Tina to do this. You can find tools that are very easy to use. I assure you.
Tina Powell:
Yeah. Thank you for that. I would say, look, I've been scrappy and if you go back, this is a episode... This is about Continuous Improvement. But one of the things that Gary V talks about Sheryl, and I know that you'll appreciate this is to stop caring about what other people think. People [inaudible 00:51:21] we're going to give you the technical, we're going to give you the equipment, we're going to give you the show notes. How do you master that?
Sheryl Hickerson:
Oh my gosh. I literally have a sign right in front of me from Ben Davis. What other people think is none of my business. I have to remember that always go, go, Joe Calloway, Category of One, read this book. His very first chapter is Just Go. Just go. Because if you don't, you will talk yourself out of a million reasons why you can't do something. And do not blame compliance. Every person on here, if you call me and say, "Well, compliance won't let me do that." We'll get on the phone with your compliance officers.
Sheryl Hickerson:
What they want is they want to have fair, balanced conversations that clients have to listen to. And when I've spoken, I've worked now 186 different broker dealers or compliance officers, I have talked to. I keep track of them because of that exact conversation, Tina, you and I are in much the similar boat with marketing, right? "Oh, well, compliance won't let me do that." You've got to stop. Most of them want to work with you, but they also have rules and regulations. They have to work within too. Find the happy medium, go to them and present your idea of what you want to do, and don't say, "Can I do it?" Say, "Help me get this done."
Tina Powell:
The other thing I will say about compliance is that you can easily have these podcasts transcripted also too. Sheryl and I as marketers, we understand this. It's in our DNA, but content, whether or not it's an audio form, text form, video, or pictures still can be documented. So I do want to say the other thing that I love about you is that you're a ray of light and you shine a lot of positivity on the women and Females and Finance and just, you're putting out really good messages and your children and your grandchildren are really an important part of your life in those posts. I think getting to know a person through the feed and through what they post really says a lot about them. And Sheryl, you're a really caring person. You're obviously proud of your children and grandchildren. What are some of your philosophies about being a business owner, being a mom, being a wife.
Sheryl Hickerson:
Wow. So I think that the first thing, the dynamic in our home is maybe different than someone else's. I have a total of six children. I have three of my own that I actually gave birth to. I have two that I got in foster care and kept. And so I've got my little family I found along the way and then I got married and have a little boy so I'm just kind of starting over. At least the other five kids, I'm like, You guys, I know I messed up, but this one I'm going to get right." So I have children of my own that range in age from 21 to 31 and I have nine grandkids. So I stay very busy and they are the light of my lives. All of them.
Tina Powell:
Yeah. It sounds like you're depending a lot on like systems and that type of thing. Like you're just very techie and you're very organized and you're super efficient. Are there any other things besides what we've kind of mentioned? Any overriding, like organizational philosophies that you have, or any shortcuts or any hacks to it? Sometimes we think like, "Oh wait, I can't start a podcast because God, I've got my kids and I'm homeschooling right now." I look at you and it's the reason why I bring it up, not from a life balance perspective, but from a wait, if this woman just started an organization less than two years ago, has six children, how many...?
Sheryl Hickerson:
Nine grandkids.
Tina Powell:
Nine grandchildren, and is CEO of two companies and involved yet in a third. If you're sitting here right now and you're thinking, "No, I can't do that." I think I'm going to challenge you right here and right now and say, "Yes, you can."
Sheryl Hickerson:
Yeah. I think that part of it is that when I look at the makeup of who I am, I thrive in that go, go, go space. I really do. Some people don't and I respect that and I will never be judgy to them for it. But at the same time, I think that I do make certain things a priority. As an example, my grandkids, with their birthdays, I don't miss a birthday, I don't miss my kids' birthdays. It's one of those things where I made that a priority. And because of that, that meant that I had to have really good systems in place at work. I listen to people. When I see somebody doing something very efficiently, very efficiently, I stop and go, "Okay, hold on. What are you doing because..."
Sheryl Hickerson:
Very recently I was one of those people who had an event right, in a SurveyMonkey. I mean, much like many of you all have and then I realized that whether it was constant contact, which had all of those same things inside the same program that I could do from one place. I switched. I switched and you know what, now I'm not popping in and out and having to remember a million different accounts. I have one account. So I do use constant contact for my social posting and for my newsletters and for my surveys and for my events. Then I think that the other thing is that I got rid of a lot of just the fluff of stuff. So I use Loom for my... you know, I can pull it up, I can click it right in there, [crosstalk 00:56:56] do my video and I'm in and I'm out. You know what, I don't need it to look mega polished. I don't.
Tina Powell:
I think mega polished is out right now. Look, [crosstalk 00:57:06].
Sheryl Hickerson:
I do too. If you were able to seeing this, you'd see my husband's bobbleheads in his office across the way. It's like, whatever.
Tina Powell:
I love it actually. I've been admiring... You don't know Sheryl, I've been like, [inaudible 00:57:18] be like, yeah. It might even tie into my last question.
Sheryl Hickerson:
Oh boy, go for it.
Tina Powell:
First of all, where can people find you?
Sheryl Hickerson:
Absolutely. If you just go to the website, femalesandfinance.com. So sometimes people put in, that's not me. So femalesandfinance.com, you're going to get a lot of the overview, you're going to be able to request to sign up. There's just a lot of things that are there. But if you're trying to reach me specifically online, anywhere I'm Bionic Socialite. My last name was Brown for 49 years. I mean, nobody... Sheryl Brown on Twitter, could you call me? I'd like to have my name. He hasn't used it nine years, but okay. Bionic Socialite on whether it's Instagram or... I answer them all. I tell people except for the TikTok, I'm not doing it. I'm just not. I got no more time for it.
Tina Powell:
I'm not doing it either. Let's just do the types of things, and nothing against it. I have an account. I just watch.
Sheryl Hickerson:
I don't even have an account. I'm just not even...
Tina Powell:
I had it when it was Musical.ly. So that's why. It was like [crosstalk 00:58:23]
Sheryl Hickerson:
Oh, I got you. Okay.
Tina Powell:
I had it, and so when it transferred to TikTok and whatnot. You have a lot of bionic superpower here, but is there a physical object that you own that kind of releases a little bit more of that super power and maybe intensifies and multiplies it to the 10X? Anything physical. You and I kind of started out this podcast with my aunt Rose [crosstalk 00:58:48] mug. What is it for you?
Sheryl Hickerson:
It's going to sound really crazy, but I carry in my purse, my pager, my very first pager that goes everywhere with me. And I'm going to tell you why, because I remember when I got my job in San Francisco. The very first thing that I bought myself with discretionary income was a pager. This is back in the day before we had cell phones and all of that stuff, and I do that because every time I think that... You asked me at the beginning of the podcast about, Oh, your OMG. Every day I wake up and I'm like, "Not yet." I feel like you still haven't made a difference yet. And so I'm not there yet. But for me personally, when I reach in my bag and it's there and I look at it and sometimes I carry it in my pocket on stage when I talk, so if you look back, you'll see it in my pocket.
Sheryl Hickerson:
The reason why for that, even I'll set it on my lap on stage sometimes if I'm moderating a panel, because every time I'm not sure of myself that I haven't made something of myself, my mom died when I was six. So I didn't have, there was a lot of things I was just without, and that was my one thing that I bought just for Sheryl. I didn't buy it for anybody else. And it still works. I tell everybody it actually still works. I don't have it connected to anything obviously, but if I wanted to keep it for timing. But for me, it was just my one thing that I hold onto and I think, "Where you've come kid, you're doing all right, keep going, keep going." So that's my pager, my little burgundy pager.
Tina Powell:
Wow. I wasn't expecting that. That's really incredible. You are extraordinary, and I want to thank you for your time today. I know that our conversation just is benefiting someone right here right now. You've made it and then some, but boy, the impact of what you're doing on a daily basis, we all appreciate it, Sheryl. You've made our world such a better place and you've made this industry a better place and you've given it a face. You've given it a name, you've given it an identity, you've given it story and you've given it a expression that is a gift to us all. So Sheryl Hickerson, thank you for being In the Suite today. God bless you and your family and congratulations on everything.
Sheryl Hickerson:
Thank you. Absolutely and you stay safe. Thank you.
Tina Powell:
Thank you. You're listening to In the Suite, a podcast that shares amazing stories of women in business and the financial services and the wealth management industry. This podcast is sponsored by C-Suite Social Media, a digital marketing and social media agency for C-Suite leaders in finance and technology. You can visit csuitesocialmedia.com to learn more and for show notes from today's broadcast. And thank you so much for listening and subscribing and helping to support this podcast with your reviews. I would love it, and it would mean so much if you left us a five star review for this episode, with the Bionic Socialite herself, Sheryl Hickerson.
Tina Powell:
Remember to check her out at femalesandfinance.com to learn more about this thriving community. If you would like to share the name of an outstanding woman in financial services we should interview, please send it to me at tina@csuitesocialmedia.com. We have received a lot of great names so far, and we're working very hard behind the scenes to fit everyone in. Again, thank you so much for listening and subscribing to In the Suite.