Shaping her firm around a diverse client base 

Michelle Waymire of Young & Scrappy

By Bridget McCrea

A big believer in the value of one-on-one center-of-influence marketing, Michelle Waymire used an innovative approach to letting people know that she was opening her own fee-only financial planning firm. She came up with a list of 100 people in the Atlanta area whom she thought would be “cool” to get to know—a list that included the usual suspects (e.g., CPAs, estate planners, and so forth) plus therapists, small business coaches, and life coaches.

“I also contacted small business owners, restaurant owners, massage therapists, and bartenders that I felt were doing really interesting work,” says Waymire, founder and financial advisor at Young & Scrappy in Atlanta. “I sent each of them a handwritten note on a handmade card, asking them to join me for a cup of coffee.”

Waymire then followed up with each card recipient a few weeks later and was “pleasantly surprised” by how many people took up her offer.

“I went outside of the traditional marketing channels in a world where very few people send or receive handwritten cards anymore,” Waymire recalls. “It piqued people’s interest in a way that a traditional LinkedIn request wouldn’t be able to do.”

Asked what service she used to send out the mass mailing, Waymire replies, “these hands and a fine-point Sharpie pen.” She says the effort was worth the time because some of the recipients turned into excellent referral partners—especially the therapists. “For a lot of people who experience financial anxiety, talking to a therapist about their worries is a first line of defense,” says Waymire.

Breaking away from the norm

After teaching theater at an inner-city school for “one unenjoyable year,” Waymire earned her master’s degree in business. Finance courses were some of her favorite classes. “I didn’t see that coming,” she admits. “If you had asked me 10 years ago what I thought I’d be doing with my life, financial planning wouldn’t have even clocked on my radar of likely outcomes.”

Waymire spent her first five years in finance working for a mutual fund company. The work was intellectually stimulating, but it wasn’t emotionally fulfilling for Waymire, who wanted to directly help individual clients and families.

She became an advisor for a firm that served a traditional financial planning client base, but she was still looking for something different. “The firm was doing great work, but I wanted to work more with young professionals and LGBTQ+ clients,” says Waymire. “It made more sense for me to gain some creative control by getting out on my own.”

The fee-only route was nonnegotiable

Waymire founded Young & Scrappy in early 2020 and today serves 100 clients who come to her for financial planning, bookkeeping, and advice. She manages about $13 million but tends to focus more on financial planning than on investment management.

“As I began to work with more and more small business owners, I added business coaching and bookkeeping to my menu,” says Waymire, who enjoys providing both services and sees them as a “perfect complement” to her planning work.

Waymire chose the fee-only profession after recognizing the conflicts of interest that come with working on commission. She experienced this firsthand at the mutual fund company, where she says the tensions involved with accepting commissions were obvious.

“That got me interested in pricing structures that are more transparent and favorable for the end client,” she says. “When I became an advisor, I knew that being fee-only was going to be nonnegotiable for me.”

Getting her foot in the door

As an XY Planning Network (XYPN) member, Waymire was introduced to NAPFA through that network and joined soon after founding Young & Scrappy. “Being an XYPN member helped me get my foot in the door at NAPFA and allowed me to leverage some of the organization’s resources,” says Waymire.

“NAPFA is a very open, welcoming community,” says Waymire, who has mainly used the group’s online resources due to Covid-19 restrictions on in-person events.

“Most of the engagement has been digital, but I’ve been really happy with NAPFA’s educational resources and the openness of members when it comes to helping each other out, answering difficult questions, and sharing resources.”

Building trust

In general, Waymire works with young professionals, solopreneurs, small business owners, and LGBTQ+ clients. “The vast majority of my clients probably fall into one or more of those buckets,” she says. “I always joke when I get a young, queer business owner, that’s the trifecta; that’s my ideal client.”

Waymire has a subspecialty in working with polyamorous families and clients. “I find that, in general, anyone with a diverse gender identity or sexual orientation is the client that I have the biggest heart for serving,” she explains.

Historically speaking, these types of clients haven’t necessarily felt “super comfortable” with a traditional advisor. “We work through it together,” says Waymire. “We talk about our families and our dogs. I show up in workout clothes, and they do the same. I think there’s a level of casualness to the work that I do and that builds trust with my clients.”

Exotic investments not her cup of tea

When investing, Waymire primarily uses ETF and mutual fund-based portfolios for her clients. “I’m much more interested in the asset allocation decision than any individual stock picking,” she says, “and I don’t do anything with private placements, IPOs, cryptocurrency, or single stocks. That’s not my cup of tea.”

Waymire likes to tell her clients that the portfolios she develops are “really boring, but they work.” She uses both the Betterment for Advisors platform and Schwab Advisor Services. She finds that for clients with fairly low complexity and a smaller asset base, using a tool like Betterment allows her to deliver a portfolio similar to what she would build, but more economically and across multiple clients.

“For larger clients with more complex historical holdings that take a little bit of time to unwind,” she says, “I’ll slowly transition them over to ETF-based portfolios on the Schwab platform.”

Managing her time

As a solopreneur who relies on outside support from many independent contractors, Waymire says time management is one of her biggest ongoing challenges. “I’m trying to get clear on what doesn’t fall into my specialty areas,” she said, “and then making sure that I’m training and outsourcing with trustworthy people.”

This year, Waymire is also launching a one-on-one “retreat style” coaching and planning program. Business owners, individuals, partners, and/or spouses will stay at an Airbnb in Atlanta, where Waymire will coach them in the mornings, offer some catered meals, and provide self-care activities centered on financial planning and business coaching.

“I want to try and turn what can be a really stressful process into more of an opportunity for self-care and healing,” says Waymire, “which I think we’re all craving after the couple of years we’ve had.”

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What’s in a name? Michelle Waymire knew exactly what she would name her own company long before she even opened the doors to Young & Scrappy. The name refers to Hamilton, and Waymire was sitting in the audience at the Broadway musical when she first heard it.  “There’s a line in one of the songs where he says, ‘I’m just like my country. I’m young, scrappy, and hungry,’” says Waymire, who was working for a mutual fund company at the time. She saw the show before it became a cultural phenomenon. “That line really stood out to me as embodying the type of clients that I like to work with and what I like to do,” says Waymire, who at the time had no idea of what type of business she would open or what its core function would be. “I purchased the domain name, youngandscrappy.com,” says Waymire, “and decided that whenever I start my business—and whatever it ends up being after my soul-searching period—that’s the name that I’m going to go with.”

 

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Young & Scrappy, at a glance

Location: Atlanta

Website: youngandscrappy.com      

Year founded: 2020

Number of staff: 0

Number of clients: 100

Amount of money managed: $13 million

Description of typical clients: Young professionals, solopreneurs, small business owners, and members of the LGBTQ+ community.

Typical client needs: Comprehensive financial planning, bookkeeping, and business coaching.

Favorite financial planning website or app: XY Planning Network

Favorite nonfinancial planning app: Peloton

Piece of advice to fellow NAPFA members: “One of the things I’m most grateful for is that I get to show up every day to work as my full self. My clients know about my family. I am proudly out of the closet, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. So, I would really encourage other advisors and planners to consider this Dolly Parton quote: ‘Find out who you are and do it on purpose.’ I think when we’re able to really show up as our true selves and when we’re open about who we are as people, we attract clients who feel similarly. That allows us to do our best work.”