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speaker-0: Imagine sitting across from a professor, ashamed. Three jobs in three years. A new venture you're not sure will work. Terrified the resume just keeps getting messier. And he says, Maybe you shouldn't be asking why you've had three jobs in three years. Maybe you should be asking why you haven't had more. You've probably heard yourself asking, what does it mean when the path doesn't look the way I planned? What do you do when someone you love is struggling with addiction, mental illness, infertility, and the people you turn to for help don't have answers either. My guest today, Orton O'Connor, built a company out of that exact gap. After watching her family navigate her brother's addiction with no roadmap and no one asking the right questions, she founded Intent Clinical. Now a national firm serving families across 40 states through some of the hardest moments of their lives addiction, mental health, dementia, eating disorders, autism, and infertility. Her own journey to motherhood through cancer, egg donors, surrogates, and more became part of that same mission. And her story of financial awakening Entrepreneurial shame, and ultimately building a business that gives her the trifecta most people never find, meaningful work, a good home, and time for herself. This is a conversation about money, family, resilience, and what it means to build something that matters. Listen in. Welcome to Making Change with Your Money, a podcast that highlights the stories and strategies of women who experienced a big life transition and overcame challenges as they redefined financial success for themselves. Now here's your host, certified financial planner, Laura Rodder. So welcome, Arden, to the Making Change with Your Money podcast.
speaker-1: Thank you for having me, Laura, today. I'm so excited.
speaker-0: Let's see where our conversation takes us. And Orton, I'm gonna start with the question I always do, which is, what was money like in your family growing up?
speaker-1: I was very lucky to have two very generous parents ⁓ who grew up from two totally different financial backgrounds. My dad's side of the family was well educated. They did all pay for graduate school on their own, but they all went to college for the most part. and they came from a father who was an executive at an insurance company. My mother's side of the family was working class. She describes moments where lights were turned out, you know, and basic needs couldn't Or were the I should say they were a struggle to meet some basic needs. And so they came with very different areas of or very different contexts around money. ⁓ and in terms of how that impacted us as kids, we had everything we needed provided for us. So I had no shortage of clothing, food. ⁓ if we we went on trips, if I wanted an internship, which I did, I pursued, I was a pretty academically motivated, self-motivated child. ⁓ I've got an internship working at a DA's office when I was 18. And so my parents figured out a way for me to have an apartment in New York City. My mom came and ⁓ and I worked that internship. And there were a lot of examples of that. ⁓ so it was a very blessed life. I will say it was in my ⁓ time after business school where my dad said, Okay, it's time for you to take over expenses. And that was a rude awakening. I And I had and I am a I disclose this fully. Like I had my car paid for, my home paid for, and my business school, my college paid for. So I was not even walking into debt, but I had expensive condo fees. I was used to shopping at 7 Eleven for groceries and realized, wow, they're charging way more than the Harvard grocery store. So I came in, I would say, into my 30s, entitled in the sense that. I had no context over what things cost and I was constantly running into the red and had really no understanding. ⁓ and I should just back up one second to say between college and business school, I ran a nonprofit. So my income for that was very low. I had started it out of college, and my parents said, you know, we'll fund the difference so you can lead a reasonable life, which was wonderful. ⁓ and it was a blessing to me. I loved that job and It didn't get me on a path to my own financial independence. So I would say I was late to the game into my thirties before I realized, ⁓ this is how much things cost. This is how you have to think about how many days a week you eat out. I just didn't even have that context until then.
speaker-0: So so interesting to hear that story that you were clearly a very responsible person, right? You were academically driven and ⁓ driven to start a nonprofit. ⁓ and yet in some ways, I guess I might say young for your age in terms of ⁓ financial knowledge.
speaker-1: Absolutely. And even post business school, I would say, you know, I think I know so many women who are similar to me. I went to Harvard Business School, very lucky to have that education. And sometimes we avoid the things we don't think we're gonna be good at and we try to just stay away from them. and make sometimes things that are fairly simple. You know, I'm not doing complex investing, but Now I'm much more like, okay, this is how much the expenses are gonna be. Let's just do a spreadsheet. This isn't that big of a deal. In my twenties, thirties, even into my forties, I would say that seemed like an impossible task.
speaker-0: Such an interesting point because I often find I could be working with couples where the wife is a primary breadwinner, she's a scientist, ⁓ an MBA works with numbers and just does not look at finances, not interested. I think there's some anxiety involved in it, like out of sight, out of mind, and Just the roles that we're comfortable with and the roles that we're not comfortable with. I'm curious, Orton, first of all, what was the non profit you started? And and I would think that requires ⁓ financial fluency, if you will.
speaker-1: It did in a different context. So the nonprofit I started was for kids in the
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foster care home. It was boys ⁓ sixteen to twenty one who were living independently, who had multiple foster care placements, had some behavioral issues. So everything from substance use to mental health challenges to even just basic defiance and opposition, they had been through multiple placements. So they were a tough population to serve. And I was actually very good at raising money. That was sort of my goal was to manage the organization and raise money. And I think I it did require some financial skills. You I had to look at how much money we brought in, what was our deficit. I had some folks who helped me better understand some of the parts of finance that I didn't understand. We had a partner organization at the time that helped us grow the organization and helped us with back office operations. So I had some support there. But I would say even there, my mentality was always, and it's similar to how I run my current businesses and it's similar to how I run my financial life. It's all sort of grounded in where you grew up, which is like I'm not gonna count every dollar, I'm gonna look at raising more dollars. And it doesn't mean in the nonprofit context, we were definitely more resource constrained. I had to really more seriously look at what can we afford this year and what can we not do. And I I run a for-profit business now, you know, it we're not raising money, so It's a lot about, you know, how do we make sure our the our branding is out there, our word is out there. But even our our team members would say to you, you know, this year is probably the first year in 14 years that I've run the company that I've said the focus is not to the exclusion of revenue, but way over revenue, we're gonna spend time talking about profitability. And it's n it's been something that we've always paid attention to. But not with this level of focus and really getting granular on every marketing expense, every, you know, every expense that the company is incurring, ⁓ incurring from a staffing perspective, all of those kind of things. So I do firmly believe that attitudes about money are shaped when you're children. And I would say that was sort of my how my parents approached it. Like, we'll we'll be successful. My father was, my mom was a stay-at-home mom, my dad worked, ⁓ And he was, you know, he was in real estate. And and there the money is also quite volatile. So you you get a you buy a building, you sell it, and then you keep some of that, and then there's another transaction that's not a stable salary. And so while he didn't preach that that he preached being an entrepreneur and the importance of that, he never preached real estate specifically. But I think I got used to some degree of ⁓ uncertainty around money and and At the time, I think I was comfortable with it. Now as a mother to small children and with a mortgage, it's a little bit different. I view it a little bit differently. So
speaker-0: And and before I go on to ask you ⁓ about your journey, it's just come up for me. What has changed, Ordin, that you're more focused on profitability rather than revenue? I mean, so much has changed in the nonprofit environment in general over the last months.
speaker-1: So if so our current company is a for-profit. and we have one individual investor who is very supportive and is not using our company as a vehicle for her own retirement. So we are blessed to be in a position with somebody who gave an initial investment and doesn't really need an intense amount of distribution. I think the reason we focused on profitability is I realized just how much. time we're spending doing various activities. And if we're not, you know, it's the, I think it's a consummate issue of an entrepreneur where part of what gets you a certain stage of growth is trying a lot of things. And that in incurs investment to a company. You're going to try this conference, you're going to pay for that sponsorship. You're going to travel to these places. Now having been in the business longer with a heart, with a you know, we have 40 full-time people in our company. So we're still small, but it's it's bigger than what it was. There's more responsibility that I take towards being able to provide livelihoods for those people and their families. I think also you start to learn, like, okay, we can keep driving on the revenue side, but if we're wasting money or if we're not really evaluating whether this was worth it or that was worth it, then we're just gonna be like hamsters spinning on a wheel going nowhere. And that's what I would like to avoid. I think there's been some of that in our company. And I think I've realized, you know, when we've thought, well, we can't do we had a podcast ourselves actually for a while. And this is a good example. We enjoyed doing it. ⁓ but it, you know, it took up some time and some bandwidth and it was a cost because we had a production company involved. And it's not to say we would never revisit it, but I was noticing so much of our time was being spent on how are we going to market the podcast. And I finally said, if this isn't bringing us a ton of joy and this isn't serving a real business purpose. You know, is this necessary for our company at this stage? And I I think as I've gotten older, I've gotten much more comfortable with the idea that it may not be forever, but there are seasons for certain types of activities. And then there's times that you can say, you know what, we are chock full with different priorities. ⁓ you know, one part of our business is really growing and we need to figure out how to manage that better. And we're gonna say, we're gonna put a pause on this other initiative, which is what we've done with our podcast. So long-winded way of saying, I think We had a few of these instances of things that I realized, ⁓ I never think we could do without this. And we've done away with it. And I'm like, ⁓ I didn't really notice it. So being gone. So it's helped me say, okay,
let's let's sort of apply that level of rigor across the board so that we can use whatever profits we have left at the end of the year to reinvest in the areas that we know are working.
speaker-0: Thank you for sharing that thought process. I know, you know, as an entrepreneur, that is an important one. Or just in general for all of us, we have limited time, we have limited resources. Where do we want to allocate those resources? And I love the question, is it giving is it giving you joy? ⁓ in addition to return on investment. So Arden, this is a podcast that's listened to by women who are in a life transition or have just come through one. ⁓ I'm excited to learn how you ended up building this business that you had so much enthusiasm for. ⁓ what changed in your life?
speaker-1: Course. So I I had been through multiple transitions in a small period of time. I graduated from business school in 2008. I had an interest in healthcare. I had three jobs in three years. And I was really hard on myself. I kept saying, W what is wrong with me? I can't be supervised. I'm such a difficult employee. And there was some truth to that. There was a little bit of I went to Harvard Business School, which I again was a great place, but There's a bit of an attitude that you get out and you think you're entitled to be the CEO and you know, day one. ⁓ so there was some of that. But some of it was I just some of the companies had been in various states that weren't the best match for where I was in my career. I I didn't really find a mentor in the first few jobs that I had. And I remember talking to a business school professor, and I said, I'm, you know, I'm ashamed that I've had this many jobs and I'm thinking about starting this new venture. But if it doesn't work, which most ventures don't. Then it's gonna be four jobs and four. Yeah, I was mortified at the idea that then it would be more discombobulation on the resume. And he said something that was really powerful. He said, most entrepreneurs take a while to figure out what they want to do. So maybe you shouldn't be asking yourself why you've had three jobs in three years. Maybe you should be asking yourself why you haven't had more than three jobs in three years. And I don't know if he was being kind or if that was his philosophy, but that really that freed me from. You know, and a lot of this I think in life is your own expectations, your own disappointment with yourself. I think we all struggle with our own attitudes around what we thought our lives were going to be. And that freed me from some of that shame and guilt. And so I did. I went out and started something with an investor who I'd known from my nonprofit days. And the motivation behind it really was I had a brother who had significant addiction issues. I kept saying, Gosh, there has to be a better way for a family like ours than to just throw good money after bad into this therapist or this treatment center or this resource. I think we really need to step back and think about how to create a comprehensive plan for families with addiction. And that's where our roots started. And now we serve families all across the country with addiction, mental health issues, dementia, eating disorders, autism, and infertility issues. All sort of Everyone says, well, what's I it's a lot of different things. And I always say the umbrella that unites them is ⁓ our tagline, which is focused care and life's most uncertain moments. So really things that people don't necessarily want to talk about at a cocktail party, but they need resources for. And in many circumstances, doctors, traditional medical doctors, aren't always the best people to get advice from, or they don't have many ideas beyond what the family is searching for. So I think for us it's been a it's been a great journey as a company. And it's really challenged me in my thinking in terms of, you know, being at one stage of a company. We've been through multiple transitions from a startup that had one case to then the next stage of growth. And now we're entering into a new phase where we're really trying to professionalize, you know, not have everybody wearing 600 hats and and and everybody doing all the things at the same time. ⁓ and on the personal level. That's why when you asked the question about the transitions, I'm sort of vehemently nodding in my head. You know, I went from being a single woman in her 40s running this company to now a mom of two kids married ⁓ in a year. And that all happened within a very short period of time. And so for me, that if there was a lifetime transition that was ⁓ more challenging than I expected in so many ways and more beautiful, it's it's probably been that becoming both a a wife and a mother in a short period of time. ⁓ I don't recommend doing it, but happened to be the way my life unfolded given my age and I was pursuing ⁓ having children on my own and then reconnected with someone I had dated years ago. But but it was a lot of transition at one time. And so I I fully am a supporter of meditating and journaling and all the things that kind of keep you emotionally grounded during times, which can be tough and beautiful at the same time.
speaker-0: Thank you for sharing that. And it's very clear, Arden, to the extent that this has happened when you're in your forties, that you've you sound like someone who's just been very driven by building this business. I'm curious, you've said very quickly the stages that the business has been through, as you first envisioned it, as you said with one case. What was it exactly that you were providing?
speaker-1: So I think in the beginning I thought about families similar to mine. So my brother was in his twenties, living in Boston, had been through in the end, he wound up going through 15 treatment centers. I think when I first started the business, he was probably at 10 treatment centers. And my parents were saying, Hey, it's great that he's stable in a place, but when he
gets out, you know, he's 26, he hasn't finished college, his friends are all working and drinking, and he doesn't know what it means to be sober at 26. And so we hired a life coach who had a specialty in autism to work with my brother. And so I envisioned and and I knew, okay, my parents need some help supporting him. They don't necessarily need traditional therapy, although I think everyone benefits from it, but they really need guidance on don't give him money in this circumstance, set this boundary, like more sort of directive coaching support, particularly my father in moments of crisis or or challenges with my brother. And then my brother needed help with like, how do you get a job? How do you think about getting back into school? What does a social look like life look like as a sober person? How do you date in a sober way? And that was, I assumed every case was gonna be just like, you know, just similar to my own, because that's the the world you know. And then you get a case with somebody who has mental health issues with no substance use, and they're like, Well, can you translate these services into this area? And you go from having, you know, at the time it was myself, a part-time assistant, and one subcontracted employee who was a 1099. And then you get more than and I remember when I went to take my first case, I called my investor and I said, I don't know if we're ready. Maybe I should do this for free. And she said, Take it. You'll learn a lot. And I did. And I learned a lot about okay, what are the limitations to having subcontracted employees who have multiple jobs who are lovely humans, but also, you know, they're beholden to a lot of different folks. You know, if you combine that with our clients who tend to be, you know, higher network worth, well resourced families who are saying, gosh, I'm paying for this service. I need you to be available at this hour and I've got somebody who only works other days. You know, all the all the operational challenges that come with running a small business. And so I think You know, for us, I always I and I've listened to a lot of entrepreneurs about this. Getting your first case or your first substantial amount of revenue, you know, getting to a million dollars is it feels like a real slog. And then we we had a couple of years of massive growth, but then for me, what was very hard to tolerate, and we're a services-based business. So we're not a company that went from one million to a billion within the three years. We're not a unicorn, never aspire to be what I admire those entrepreneurs. That's not the business I run. ⁓ but growing twenty to twenty-five percent is a big deal for a company like ours. And going, you know, during COVID, we actually doubled in size, and that was a big transition. And so ⁓ you know, I think going from a company that's even if you don't explicitly say we're a family, you operate more like a family and everybody gets along and you trust each other and and we're gonna
take cases and we're all gonna sit around the table and brainstorm about every case. To then serving, you know, dozens and hundreds of clients over a a year span to and having big professional partners. We now serve employers as well. And and that comes with a whole other level of expectation around HIPAA and data security and and process. And so I think really what it's required is for us to take a more professionalized approach. And be able, and I run a company run by clinicians. You know, all of most of my team members either have a personal story as to why they're interested in this area, and or they're a therapist of some sort. There's a couple of exceptions. And that is so wonderful and such a supportive environment to be into. And it's also incredibly challenging in the sense that it it provides a lot of lot of people who are looking to to give others a second, a third, a 50th chance, maybe a little less focused on the business development side and on the what's good for the business as opposed to what's good for this individual employee side. So it's meant as a leader, I think for me, stepping back and saying objectively, does this make sense for the business? How do I support the team? How do I empower others rather than being the type A controlling person that I am at every moment and dictating? ⁓ because now, especially at the stage we're in now, I think I'm looking to continue to set the vision, figure out ways to execute at a high level, but also how to I'm really interested in finding ways to make sure that I'm not the only one, you know, leading every project and I'm not putting my hands into areas that are that that don't need me because I have a tendency to do that.
speaker-0: Yeah. I mean, it's often said in Ordin, I I know this is not going to be a surprise to you that the person who starts a business is not necessarily the person who takes it on once it's gotten to a critical mass. And I'm wondering there are two things like what you enjoy the most of Being in the business and then what you think your best skill set is.
speaker-1: Yeah. The good news is there's some overlap. I think I love stuff like this. I love public speaking. I and I I'll say I I still get nervous about it, but I'm probably one of the few people on the planet who does not dread it at all and likes educating people about the types of issues that we work with. ⁓ I also enjoy forming relationships. So when I look at like business development, to me it's I feel a big honor that I get to represent what we do in the world that I think is important work. I like that I've had a family story so I can really relate when someone comes up and describes the scenario. I I may not understand their particular situation, but I understand the context in which a family is experiencing pain. and I like that that fuels my desire to be able to go out and share more information with people who might have clients. friends, family members, whatever it might be, that might be potential clients to our firm. So I'm lucky that those two overlap. ⁓ I will say I'm I am terrible at things that require lots of operational diligence and details. I have a sense of what things should look like. I'm blessed, like business school taught me a good a way to think about problems and how do you break things into smaller pieces, but actually following through and getting protocols written, like you can see, like that's just not Anything I enjoy. And I've I realized later in life I I like leading. I don't love managing. I you know, I like having a few people who report into me. I like providing guidance. I I never like to say I'm a mentor to someone. I really believe that's for the person to say whether or not I've mentored them. But I like saying, here's my suggestion or here's how I I think about it. ⁓ but I don't, I'm not as great with the day-to-day holding someone accountable to specific metrics. That's that's not what I enjoy. ⁓ but but I do think my skill set is really saying, hey, I think this is the next frontier of issues that our clients are seeing, or I mentioned this issue to a referral source and they said, Could you develop a service? And I can be tremendously creative about thinking, you know, nobody comes to us and says, This is the problem the family is having. And I say, ⁓ yeah, absolutely not. We can't do anything unless they're asking us to do something, you know, that's clinically ridiculous. And that that has happened multiple times. But otherwise, if it's just, hey, we need to be creative, this is what they're looking for, I like to be able to use my brain in that way. And I'm I feel very lucky that my job asks me to do that every day.
speaker-0: Dude You are not the sum of your earnings. You are the sum of your yearnings. If you're ready to use wealth to create more freedom and flexibility, let's align your finances with what matters most. Together, we'll build a plan that balances your scarce resources of energy, time, and money so you move forward with clarity, confidence, and less stress towards a life of true abundance. Learn more at www.truabundanceadvisors.com and schedule a short conversation. Could you share an example of a way that you've thought creatively? ⁓ you know. Sure.
speaker-1: So we had a family just recently, and I don't actually think this became a case, but I had met with a psychiatrist in New York and who works with a lot of high profile individuals, and he had a family that had two members of the same family with the same diagnosis. I believe it was autism in this case. And the parents said, We need some kind of wellness, almost like a private camp like experience that encourages discussion of family dynamics. That can address some of the clinical issues and help us as parents parent better based on our children's diagnosis, but also include some experiential outdoor activities. And I listened and I thought, okay, how many days? You know, I had the very basic like, do they have a budget?
Where do they want to be for this? Do they want to be in a, you know, a setting where it's literally like a campground or are they looking Do glamp or are they looking for us to have sort of a canyon ranch type experience with these activities included? And so once I had some basic ideas, I worked with one of my colleagues, Diana, who is a joy on these particular topics. She's a joy in life anyway, but she's a real joy on these, because she'll say to me, Yeah, I think I have some ideas and we brainstormed and we actually put a proposal together and came back. And those are the areas that I feel like, gosh. You know, for all the mental health solutions that are out there, and there's some great ones, there's Lyra and Ginger Health and all these tech based apps. And I'm glad that access is made, you know, more available to so many people. That said, they're not gonna solve sort of niche issues that our clientele have. And even though the family, I don't think, took us up on our offer. The fact that we could put something together within 48 hours and say, yes, we can do this. Here's how much it costs. Here's the profiles of the people who'd be involved. I felt really proud. And so that's a silly example, but one that is, you know, we've had we've been asked to do things that are, you know, this person is gonna return to a life of travel on a boat and we need you to help come up with a suite of addiction services that could serve him and we'll well, we think it would be better if they stay in this. Nope, we don't care that you think it would be better. This is how it's gonna happen. And you know, that's been an adjustment, I think, for our team to understand that the clients we serve often have their own particular preferences about the ways in which they want to receive care. And as long as it fits within a reasonable clinical boundary, we're willing to be flexible. And if it's not working, we're gonna go back to those families and say, you know what, we had mentioned that we think this would be the better solution. We've tried it in this format that you preferred. We really think it's time now to to go back. So long with a way, that's a that's one example.
speaker-0: Thank you. And and what I'm hearing, Arden, is you do tend to work with high net worth families. It's a relatively niche service. So I'm curious how that how that has morphed because you did describe that now you're also working with corporations and so
speaker-1: Of course. So we had some corporations approach us in the beginning to provide services to one or two employees. And I looked at them almost like larger family clients. You know, they would be the payer. And the issues are different. If I'm a father with an addicted son, I'm gonna be worried just about his health and well-being, most likely. If I'm an employer, I might be very worried about my employees' health, but I also have a business to run and there may be some risk issues you have to consider. So there were some nuances. But largely the way we approached it was here's the suite of services we would suggest this individual has, and the the employer was the payer. That shifted during COVID. We did one mental health webinar and then got in touch with a large-scale financial company. And they really wanted a more holistic solution for all of their employees. So everything from one-on-one wellness coaching, we have an embedded psychologist in their practice, but they really saw it. I think on two levels. One, as a recruiting technique for this younger generation of employees who are prioritizing mental health and are much more open and ready to accept therapy, not in a time of necessarily crisis, but when they need it. ⁓ ⁓ just because the jobs are stressful and they're long hours and you're dealing with clients. And so I think this firm saw our services as a way to sort of fill in some of those gaps that a traditional employee assistance program may not be able to fill. ⁓ we have another firm that's in the financial arena that has us vetting therapists on behalf of their employees. And I think they're seeing it as a another form of a wellness benefit. ⁓ that allows people to remain productive, hopefully remain in their jobs, because we know that the cost of turnover is high and low productivity is high. And some firms are going so far as to even offer services to dependents because they know that if you know you are the chief rainmaker at a law firm or if you are the senior executive at a big tech firm and you're concerned about your son's mental health diagnosis or your wife's. Alcoholism, you're likely going to be distracted and is and less productive at work, which is going to have meaningful impact on the business. So we've again, it's been not so dissimilar to how we deal with families. We've adjusted our services. Some folks want a very scoped-out set. We want one-on-one wellness coaching, one webinar a month, and we have a contract for just that and it's done on an annual basis. Other employers will say we want a creative suite of solutions for all different levels of the workforce and and we want to scope them out differently depending on the situation. And then we get a cadre of folks who call us in as you know, I a recent colleague mentioned he said something like, You're the Navy SEAL team when a mental health issue arises. And and that's not ⁓ that's not untrue. I think that when there is a death in a company, when there is a ⁓ you know, a suicide or an overdose or there is a major layoff or there is some sort of critical incident within that workforce, you know, ⁓ we are able to come in with a variety of ways to be supportive to the employees ⁓ and their dependents. And that I think the fact again that we can customize, have people show up on site at a moment's notice with the right expertise and do it in a way that really hand holds differentiates us in the market.
speaker-0: Thanks for describing that. So given that, is there a specific
geographic location that you work in?
speaker-1: So we are national. We have cases running right now in all f in I was gonna say in all 40 states, which tells you how great I am at a geography in forty states, not in not not in not in the totality of 40 states. ⁓ boy, all that education to waste. And we do a little bit of international work. Our employers have offices in other places. in some circumstances, we have people right in the location where We have forty full time people and about four hundred part-time people on our roster. So in some locations we have someone right in a space that's local to wherever the the client is. In other cases, we're flying people in from different areas depending on the circumstance.
speaker-0: An another question that comes up for me, Orton, is in general, I know every case is different, how long are you working with a family?
speaker-1: Great question. Say our average length of stay, so to speak, is somewhere between six months and a year and a half. And and that that's even a wide swath. And then there's we have, you know, on that standard curve of deviation, we have folks all the way to the left who hire us on a one-time basis. Can you pick my son up in Boston and take him to a treatment center in Florida? And then we have folks who have been with us for multiple, multiple years, particularly as we're dealing with issues like dementia. Fertility is another one, unfortunately. These issues don't tend to r dementia certainly doesn't resolve itself or autism as examples. Even infertility tends to be a longer term process. So some of those clients will be with us multiple years.
speaker-0: So speak quickly about infertility as someone who had my own infertility issues. I wouldn't have thought that that would fall under
speaker-1: Yeah. No, no nobody does. And in total disclosure, someone wanted me saying I started the business because my brother's issue with addiction, the infertility area was an area of my interest. I ha I had cancer when I was in my twenties, so I knew I was going to have a unusual road to motherhood. And that's a whole other podcast. But the ⁓ the quick upshot is I had two children born of sperm donor, egg donor, and surrogates. ⁓ I had cancer in my ⁓ like I said, a cancer. So I knew I wasn't gonna be able to carry children. And at the time I wasn't ⁓ partnered with anybody. So having unfertilized eggs get frozen, they had told me the result the chances that I would be able to have a child using those were pretty slim. And so I wound up on this journey to try and figure it out. And this is this is the road I took. ⁓ and I found even as a hyper overly educated person. Figuring out which clinic to go to, how to choose an egg donor, how to choose a sperm donor, not only was exhausting, it was unclear where to start. ⁓ financially, it was a a pretty big lift ⁓ out of pocket. ⁓ it was overwhelming emotionally to me. You know, you're you're depending on, especially on the surrogacy side, you're depending on other people to carry the most precious life that you're ever going to know. And as a ⁓ as a controlling self-admitted controlling person, the idea that yeah, I in the beginning I started out, I remember I asked, you know, are we gonna drug test the surrogate, you know, every week just to make sure? And they said, well, it's gonna be kind of an insult to them. And now I look back and I laugh at that idea. But at the time, it seemed like a reasonable question to me because I was, you know, how how are you just going to assume that everything's going to be okay? ⁓ so I Our firm really is focused on two areas. One is helping people navigate the process, recommend partners, help them map out, you know, here's a timeline, here's a cost estimate. So it's less of, hey, you gotta just give us another fifty thousand dollars as a surprise, which is what happened to me at times, versus like this is what you can expect over the long term. The second part of the services is really around emotional support. I had a moment with one of my surrogates who was resistant to taking a COVID booster and I got really, really dysregulated myself. And I think having someone with expertise in the area to help you think about it and put things into context, it would have been helpful for me. And so I hope that we can provide that to others.
speaker-0: Thank you. So as we're getting towards the end of our conversation, ⁓ might feel a little bit like a question out of left field, but has your definition of success shifted? I mean, clear building a robust business, but I'm I'm curious, we we all go through different stages in our lives, how that might have shifted for you, Arn.
speaker-1: Of course. It absolutely has. I think like any business school graduate, you know, I'm looking at what is our revenue, how much is it growing each year? And again, you hear these stories of unicorns and people growing really fast. And I'm as competitive as the next person. So it's when you don't when you don't do that, you yeah, you know, it's like, well, what's wrong with us? What did I not do right? It's like what well who can I, you know, how can I blame myself more? I think age. I'd like to think some wisdom, some very smart female mentors mostly. and frankly, having children, I think for me, success has been about what is the sort of trifecta of my home life and what that looks like, being able to spend time with my husband and my children and my dogs who are children to me in a different format. I am a big dog lover. You know, how do I feel like I'm doing meaningful work? And then what you know, what is the rest of my health leisure time look like? And and I think I always say when I talk to colleagues, friends who went to business school with me, I most of them say that their job either provides a good living andor a good life work balance andor it it provides some meaningful service to the world. I know very few who get three. I usually see one or two out of the three.
And I really feel like I got all three. And the fact that my job challenges me intellectually, there's definitely days that I'm ready to throw everybody out the window, ⁓ including myself sometimes. ⁓ so it's not all puppies and roses, but I would say in general, to feel like I have control over my schedule, I can take on projects. I can say we're gonna go into fertility navigation and we're gonna do it. And I don't have to run it through 17 bosses and get executive approval. It's really exciting. And that makes it hard. We get approached quite frequently by private equity and other types of investors about potentially selling a company or or looking at some type of acquisition. And it's been not a very compelling case for me. And it's not to say it's something I would never consider, but for now, it provides me with a great setup for my own personal life and a lot of flexibility and a lot of intellectual stimulation. You know, like any entrepreneur, my personal and my business lives are intertwined. If I if I'm at play group with the kids or at a play date, you know, and somebody says something, I'm often bringing it back to business and vice versa. So I feel very lucky I can live that way. And I realize it's a gift and it's a luxury most people don't have. And so that for me is success. ⁓ it'll probably change again and as my kids get into school, I'll probably be back on that same hamster bowl worried about how much growth we have. And I still do have a lot of aspirations for what that looks like. But for now, it's been nice to take a breath and say, you know what, we've done a pretty good job and we've got a good team and I'm enjoying the ride and it's bringing me joy. And I think that was another piece of the puzzle I didn't think about much in my thirties.
speaker-0: Yes, I love that that you're enjoying the ride and it's bringing you joy. So Orton, is there anything you want to make sure you mention to our listeners? Some may very well have challenging circumstances with their family.
speaker-1: I mean, it's such a cliched thing to say, but I think there's always hope. I think our family having exhausted a lot of resources and and we had a a terrible outcome. My my youngest brother died of of a fentanyl overdose. And that said, and my family's and I'm happy to share it with anybody who's interested, did a little f film, like a thirty minute addiction and affluence film on our family story and we included stories of other psychiatrists. We know we had a bunch of different people contribute to it. And the purpose of it was really to share, like, one, I think if you you're if you're in a situation where you feel like, gosh, our family's been through the ringer with this, there is always something on the other side. And you can see, even in our situation, we see so many of my brother's peers who have done amazing things. And while we wish my brother was among those peers, It doesn't make me think that just because you have an addictive disorder and we had a bad outcome, that means everybody's going to. And so I think if you're going through any one of these issues, infertility or a mental health challenge, you know, knowing that there's a new a new resource to try, a new attitude you can embrace, a new way to think about it. I truly believe that. And sometimes it may just be that you you get to a better place of acceptance and that. That's I think just as important for families with people going through these issues as as getting to a resolution is.
speaker-0: Thank you. So Arn, I will be sure to have your contact information and the, you know, contact information for your company in the show notes. And ⁓ you are an inspiration to talk to.
speaker-1: Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
speaker-0: Thanks for listening to Making Change with Your Money. Certified financial planner, Laura Rodder specializes in helping people just like you organize, clarify, and invest their money in order to support a life of purpose and meaning. Go to www.truAbundanceadvisors.com forward slash workbook for a free resource to help you on your journey. Disclaimer. Please remember that the information shared by this podcast does not constitute accounting, legal, tax, investment, or financial advice. It's for information purposes only. You should seek appropriate professional advice for your specific information.