How a Woman With No Blueprint Reached the Top 1%

to be the very best of what they do. They just have to want it enough. They just have to be persistent

“enough. The people that ultimately end up being successful have had a ton of setbacks and a ton”

of failures, but they don't leave it at that. They don't stay down when they get down. They rise right up and they keep going after it. Andrea Williams is a trailblazing resilient and faith-driven

financial advisor, author, and the founder of Enlightenwealth Planning, known as the first African-American

woman in Northwestern Mutual's history to rank in the top 1% nationwide. If you don't tell the world who you are, if you don't control that narrative, then that is just up to people to guess, and it's just such a great opportunity that you can kind of snatch a first impression from someone mold it and hand it back to them in the way that you want, so that you can dictate how people are viewing what you do and how you do it.

The living your legacy podcast for those who live to leave a legacy. Open! Check out the list of latest info in the podcast not on the planet. You can live your dream! Welcome back to another episode guys of the Insight Success podcast. Today I am joined by Andrea Williams. Now you just finished up your recording. Talk to me a little bit about how you're feeling now on the other side of things. I'm feeling really good. It was really nice to share my story and I'm

excited to work with everyone to get it all tied together in the concise way. You know, put a nice little bow on it, make it all neat and tidy. So speaking of your story, what are some things that our viewers here are going to be able to learn from your story? Well my story is a story of resilience and setbacks and how that kind of sets you up for your comeback and it's all about looking at things instead of seeing obstacles, really looking at those obstacles and identifying

the opportunity. So yeah it's certainly a resilient story so I think people are going to learn a lot about how to kind of lean in and latch on to grit and continue fighting. Yeah and the world of entrepreneurship you absolutely have to. Because entrepreneurship is going to kick you in your chest every single time. It doesn't let up and that's one of the key things that we try to

“you know, that's one of our selling points here at Inside Success is we want to let people know”

that like there are all of these people that are successful and so many different fields

but there's always a unifying characteristic. That's right. And for me that unifying

characteristic is always grit. How much grit do you got? How much can you take from life? And still get back up every day and be you. Absolutely. What would you say to that? What would you say to like your determination, your ability to get back up even when things are going not the best? Yeah. I think that the people who are successful, I always say they wanted it enough. Like when you look at J. Low or Cardi B or whoever. At the end of the day, sometimes people

don't need to be the very best of what they do. They just have to want it enough. They just have to

“be persistent enough. And I think that we, you know, we see that a lot in the entertainment world,”

also in the athlete world and that absolutely applies to entrepreneurs. I think the people that

ultimately end up being successful have had a ton of setbacks and a ton of failures but they don't

leave it at that. They don't, they don't stay down when they get down. They rise right up and they keep going after it. How many attempts can you get on the board? Right? And it's not like, if you think about like you mentioned athletes, if you think about like athletics as a numbers game, right? LeBron James has scored the most points of any basketball player in the NBA in history. Right? He's also probably had more shot attempts, right? Totally. He's had the longest career.

His longevity has allowed for him to have that iPad. And like this might be like a bad analogy for his like business because LeBron James is scoring at a clip that most business owners might not, like you're probably going to have more setbacks than wins. Yeah. But it's a numbers game at the end of the day. How many attempts can you get for that win eventually comes up? Now you, you brought up athletes and entertainment. So I want to do a deep dive here a little bit

Sure. Well, years ago when I founded my practice, which was about 18 years ago,

“we began working with primarily health care professionals. And that really let us establish”

a nice foundation where there are thousands of doctors and dentists across the nation. And that really helped us build a business that was replicable. So I kind of, at that point in time, declared my major and really focused on building that up. Since then, we've added a lot more advisors to our team to support all of the, you know, the large clients, all that we have across the nation in that area. And that has then allowed me to specialize in working with athletes and entertainers

now later in my career and really creating support and infrastructure so that they can focus on

living their lives. But we can also teach them a lot about building an enterprise. Because these days,

it's not just about getting a contract and going and playing ball or, you know, or, you know, filming and getting deals. It's way bigger than that. People have to really think about themselves as a business, as a full-blown enterprise and a brand. Yes, exactly. And it's interesting, not only for the athletes and entertainers, but even for, you know, business owners and the physicians and dentists that we work with and even for myself, I have to look at myself as a brand.

It doesn't just stop there. Everyone has to really look at how they can utilize their entire brand and really monetize it because nothing is guaranteed. You know, we might have, you know, a music artist, but their career is not guaranteed. It's not guaranteed that they'll be able to continue to produce music at a successful level all the way into their 50s. They have to make sure that they're capitalizing while they're hot. There's a, there's a funny sort of, so I've, I've also

worked with a lot of entertainers, athletes, some good friends with a couple of the players on the heat. I did Victor, I produced Victor, I produced Victor Ldeepos podcast. That's my guy, shout out to you, Vic. And when you talk about athletes and entertainers, there's this kind of dichotomy there, right? Where now in today's world, you want to be able to mitigate brand risk. Well, in business, you're taught that taking risks will often pay off. Again, we go back to putting attempts up

on the board, right? You got to be able to take risk in business. But in branding, it's almost

“the opposite where you need to be able to mitigate your personal risk when you're, and what do I,”

what do I mean when I say that? Don't be out of the club all the time. Yes. Don't be, taking all of these crazy risks. Don't be bringing random girls home. Like, really think about yourself as a business, right? Yes, because there are certain brands that won't align with that kind of behavior. You might have some deals in the works, and those deals get dropped because they're like, whoa, you know, we saw so and so doing XYZ, and that doesn't align with our brand. So you have

to look at yourself comprehensively as a brand and make sure that every decision you make is in

alignment with your branding, the direction of that, and where you're going. A million years ago,

when we didn't have social media, and we didn't have, you know, the news as in our business, as things are now, it was a little easier to hide, but now as, you know, an athlete, an entertainer, or even someone that has their own brand, you're on watch 24 hours a day. Especially if you're at that sort of high level, right? There's a degree of, like you can, you can get to the NBA and coast. There's plenty of guys that can fly under the radar. That's true, right? You can get to the

NFL and coast. I mean, those rosters are enormous, but in music, it's kind of music and entertainment, it's kind of different. Like if you're trying to get into entertainment specifically, you, your whole deal is, how do I broadcast myself out to as many people as possible? What are you advise on the entertainment side for, you know, people who their personality is their brand, right? What are you advising your clients on the entertainment side when it comes to mitigating

that, again, that person, it's super tough these days, because I think artists are artists, and like they want to be themselves, and they want to be expressive, and I would just, I would hate to work with an artist where, you know, my, myself and their team, we've influenced them to kind of, like, you know, tame their flame and not be themselves. So there's a delicate balance between being their authentic self and kind of, you know, garnering the followers. Yeah, I know.

Yeah, it's tough. Like you want to be yourself, but then on top of that, you're also being told,

“hey, you need to be a business owner, you need to put your business owner hat on and think strategically,”

and make these decisions. So I see, I see our clients that kind of vacillate between the two.

and getting deals and things like that, but then sometimes, you know, I think being their authentic selves can get them in a little bit of trouble, and it's all about striking a balance. But,

you know, then there's always that, you know, any kind of press is, you know, any kind of press is,

you know, it's press is good press, you know, at the end of the day. Well, every time every time I hear somebody say that, I'm like, all press is good, technically good press.

“So you're getting your name out there, but like, yeah, I think we can be more strategic these days,”

because you can build your own press through your social media presence, you know, you know, you know, like that's your press every single day. So you don't have to worry about the news covering you and, you know, saying things about you that you may not agree with, you can, you know, you can take that narrative, you can take control, and you can kind of create your own story for the public to see. I was, it's, it's so interesting that you say that because I know it,

we had mentioned this off camera, but just yesterday we did an interview with Serena Williams, and one of her key talking points about what people should be looking for nowadays is that, you know, back in the day, she's been a media forever. She's been getting coverage on her since she was like 14 years old. And back in the day, your story was in the control of publishers, journalists, they had control over your narrative. You didn't have control over it. Now, you get

you as a public figure artist athlete, whatever it is, if you're in the public sphere, you get to control your own narrative, but that also leaves you with the personal responsibility of thinking about your narrative unfolds, right? So, what do you say to any of our viewers out there who might be thinking of starting up their personal brand? Because I love the, I love the concept of personal brand, especially like working with Rudy, he's personal branding maniac. Yeah.

What do you say to the viewers out there who are thinking about starting up a personal brand? What are some ways in which they can think that's going to help them go out there into the world in a safe way?

So, just being a financial planner, the first thing that I want to say is that one thing that I

know to be true is real wealth is developed through entrepreneurship. And having a personal brand is one easy way to at least get your toe in the water on entrepreneurship and then so much can expand

“from there. So, it's incredibly important, I think these days, regardless of what you're doing.”

If you want to be known for something, if you want to be a thought leader, if you want to make a lot of impact, you've got to start working on your personal brand. And that's, you know, part of the reason why I've partnered with Insight Success is because in my industry for years, they were very restrictive in allowing people who are like actual financial professionals, who carry licenses and designation. So, I'm a board certified financial planner. And years ago,

they really didn't want us on social media talking about personal finance or, or giving advice.

That's really the problem is that they were concerned that people would take the things that we're

staying and constitute them as advice and then-- >> No, no, no, no. >> So, advice, exactly. >> I'm liable for you. >> Exactly, exactly. So, but things are changing. And now, the industry is a lot more open. And after having my business for 18 years, now we're allowed to start to have a little bit more of a social media footprint. So, that's, again, you know, why I've partnered with Insight Success. And I'm starting to build my personal brand. My brand has always been there,

but now we're able to control the narrative and expand it more by, you know, having that kind of footprint. So, what I say for entrepreneurs, and you know, and anyone who's, you know, a leader in whatever business they're doing, it's just incredibly important for you to tell the world who you are. If, you know, if you don't tell the world who you are, if you don't control that narrative, then that is just up to people to guess. And it's just such a great opportunity that you can kind of,

you know, snatch a first impression from someone mold it and hand it back to them in the way that you want, so that you can dictate how people are viewing what you do and how you do it. >> It's interesting because you can, there's two ways to think about it, right? You can either, when you're going out and you're creating that first impression, you can either create a character for yourself and try to embody that character. >> Like that was exact. >> That was kind of the day,

“that was the way of day's past, whereas now I think in the direction that we're kind of trending,”

the more authentically yourself you can be, the more resonates. >> Yes. >> Because I see this happen all the time where people create this sort of character for themselves, they put themselves in a box and then when they start releasing content where they're not playing

you're not doing the things that I'm used to seeing you do on social media. What is this? >> Who are you?" >> Whereas now you're seeing a lot of content creators come up who are just being authentically themselves. I think that's really, really solid advice for people. I wanted to mention this while you were talking about the risks that used to be associated with being in your field on social media. Were you ever one of those that had to post on social media

and at the beginning of every video, say, "Hey, this is not financial advice." >> You're right.

“>> Yeah. >> Yeah, that's what they're talking about. I mean, even people who are just talking”

about something going on in the economy, everyone has to now put that disclosure up there because you're going to get some Yahoo who was like, "I bought this stock because you mentioned it and you might get sued, you might be seeing liable for things that you're talking about." >> For the viewers, if you are talking about things financial, you probably should preface your video with that. >> Yes. >> I just want to let you guys know like it's not a joke that people do that.

You can really get into serious legal trouble. >> Yeah. Actually, in China, they just made it a law that if people are going to provide financial advice, they actually need to have a background in that kind of advice. They say that 80% of people providing financial and healthcare advice, they're not qualified to do so and oftentimes the information is incorrect. So that's another

reason why you always want to put up those disclosures is because the information you may have may

not be absolutely correct and if you're not an expert in that area, you want to be really careful when it comes to that. >> Say what you will about rules and regulations, I'm actually kind of okay with that. >> Yeah. >> I think you're going to speak on a subject, please be qualified. >> Please. >> It's kind of like, in my industry, we call it compliance, following the rules, but that's really a customer service to the public because we don't need people who are not qualified

or don't have the right information influencing others to do things and then people get burned.

“So I think accountability is important when it comes to branding and it comes to the information”

that you're providing your audience. >> And so one last thing before we go here, is there anything specific that jumps out to you from your episode, from your recent recording that maybe a little nugget that can get people excited to go and watch the episode that you might want to share with the viewers? >> Yeah, I think it goes back to what I was sharing earlier, my biggest encouragement for anyone that is looking to embark on entrepreneurship is pick something

that you want enough. You know, pick something that you are ultra passionate about, where you won't grow weary and you believe that you can accomplish this. Because like I mentioned earlier,

I always tell my mentees, if you don't like what you're getting out of life, you must not want

it enough. Because we see people who might be half as talented, accomplishing things because they want that success enough. So that's my encouragement. Just make sure you want it enough. Find something that you want enough. >> You got to want it enough to work hard for it. >> Absolutely. >> If you don't want it enough, you won't work hard for it. You work kind of hard. >> Right. >> Not hard enough because in business, it takes that. >> Absolutely.

>> It takes the 90 hour work weeks. It takes the sleepless nights. It takes looking at accounts and realizing, I'm not going to be able to make payroll this week. I got to have something that happens. It's got to give. >> Right. >> This isn't working. >> Yeah, I got to pivot quickly, we fastened and are hurry. So for the viewers out there, where can we find you on social media?

>> So my handle on Instagram is Andrea Karin, my first in middle name, and I'm also on Threads

“as well with the same handle. And that's probably the best way to reach me.”

>> Perfect. Do you have a website just in case any time? >> Yes, my website is Andreakwilliams.com or enlightenwealthplanning.com. >> And so that guys is another episode here at Inside Success with Andrea Williams. Make sure you guys go and check out her episode, which should be coming out. Probably shortly following this podcast, but your host Jason Hamilton, and we will see you guys in the next one. (upbeat music)