Welcome to the New Planner Podcast, where it's all about helping you successfully enter the financial planning profession and accelerate your financial planning career. This podcast will help you understand the profession, become familiar with the various career paths available to you, and avoid the mistakes that limit your success. Join your host, Caleb Brown, to explore the human side of creating a successful planning career through interviews, personal experience, and insights from the trenches. Let's get started.

Caleb Brown: Hi Hannah, welcome back to The New Planner Podcast.

Hannah Moore: Thanks, Caleb. I'm so excited to be here.

Caleb Brown: I mean, this is amazing. I've lost track. How many times have we had you on to talk about the Externship and just your career? Do you remember how many times it is?

Hannah Moore: I don't know. I was gonna say this is our sixth year doing the Externship. So my guess is maybe six plus one, maybe. I don't know.

Caleb Brown: Let's call it a handful to be safer. Well, okay. We're going to link to all those. We'll have the production team. We're linked to all of them, but hey, thanks for making a few minutes for us. And I know you have the 2025 Externship you want to talk about.

So maybe just start there. So just as a refresher, why did you create it? What is the Externship? In the end, we'll go into sort of the logistics on the pricing and the timing and the registration.

Hannah Moore: Yeah, absolutely. So the Externship started in 2020. I think we've all tried to block that from our memory, but you know, a pandemic hit and at the time we were partnered with FPA.

And so we were really looking around and saying, “How can we help the financial planning community?” And my focus was really new and aspiring financial planners. How can we help them on board into this field? Like what are those things? And so we started hearing from students who were losing their internships.

And then professors who are like, “All of my students have lost their internships. What do we do?” And so we really started diving down into this. And so we did some focus groups of students. And said, “What are you looking for in your internship experience?” Now, when we forgot what the internship was and just wrote a list down of everything that they said, “We realized we'll never replace that one on one experience. Like we know we can't, that’s just off the table.” But everything else we heard them say, we had this crazy idea that maybe we could do it better and at scale. And so that's how the Externship was born. And so it really went viral that first year and people loved the program, which is why it's continued on for so many years.

So the Externship is really a deep dive into what financial planning is. So you think about an internship where you get to go into a firm and you get to see what does this career look like? We're doing that except it's all online, asynchronous, and we're not just talking about one firm. We bring in over 60 different experts around financial planning and really give an experience of what financial planning looks like.

So in practice, how we do this? It's eight weeks of the program. It's June and July and people do have August to catch up on their work. So don't worry. We understand life happens and trips and vacations and kids and all the things. But each week it's about 15 to 20 hours of work, really 20 hours is what we tell people.

And each week we focus on a different area of financial planning. So that's going to be cashflow planning, insurance planning, estate, tax. I've already forgot some of them, but all the big college and student loan, we can list them all out here. And we bring in three experts who do financial planning differently around these topics.

So that could be, they work with clients who are just starting out. It could be they work with ultra high net worth. It could be anywhere in the middle. But what's cool about this is they come in and you get to see how they do that area of financial planning, how that fits within the context of their firm and the clients that they serve.

And then they share a real deliverable with you. So you're getting to actually see what firms are using, but many different types of firms. All those folks come back for office hours. We also give you a full tech suite of what I use in my office of financial planning softwares. And so you're getting that training on them.

But one of the cool things that we added after the first year is you get to see real client meetings. So you're going to see real, for this year's 2025 Externship, it is Keith and Beth are our clients, and you're going to get to see them from beginning to end, the whole financial planning experience. Now, Caleb, I'm kind of letting you in on the inside here. And we haven't told anybody this yet, but they've actually agreed to keep—

Caleb Brown: I’ll keep it a secret.

Hannah Moore: Yeah, keep it a secret. Let's just between you and me. But they've actually agreed to come back at the last week of the Externship and do a live Q&A with all of the externs to talk about their experience of financial planning.

So you're going to get to see the actual financial planning process. And then the clients are going to come back. Y'all, we've done this with one other client and it was so good. And I'm just like, “I can't wait.” I was like giddy the day that they agreed to do that. But you get to see those client meetings.

I rewatch it. I teach from this. You guys are going to get to see what a financial planner is thinking about this. You're going to get all of their real client documents and y'all, they have a lot. And you're going to be entering all that into the software. You're going to be building the financial plan with me throughout this program.

And then we have technology training sessions. We have, we call level up sessions. So you're going to get to hear people who do financial planning one way or a niche down versions. For new planners coming in, the thing we want most is we want you to be successful. Like that's the bottom line for us.

So we're going to have people come in and talk about compensation studies. Caleb, you came in and you're talking about kind of the landscape of the job market right now. We're going to be talking about, if you want to start your own firm, what does that look like? We really are so focused on what is it that you need to be successful and how can we help support you?

And that is our number one goal in everything that we do with the Externship. And so that's really what you get. We kind of throw it, not throw it all at you, but we make it a really packed summer. It's 20 hours a week. I don't want to oversell that, I guess, but we really do just layer in so many things that we think would just be helpful for you.

And what we've heard from past externs have been really helpful for them in their career.

Caleb Brown: First of all, thank you for creating this. I mean, this has been a phenomenal program. And I mean, I've been on a few of them and I've learned some things and you've been gracious enough to have me come talk and I enjoy doing that.

And what a benefit to the new planners. I mean, this is like an intensive bootcamp on financial planning and internship on steroids. And the cool thing, I mean, you were sort of, tongue in cheek and talking about the summer thing. I mean, it's asynchronous. You can still go on a trip and you can still hang out with the family and do things and you're not tied to the desk. There's a lot of flexibility and that's kind of how you designed it.

Hannah Moore: It’s kind of the point. Yeah.

Caleb Brown: Yeah. I mean, it's like you can work a full time job, and do this in the evening or something. I mean, a lot of flexibility. You may have mentioned them already, but any changes that you've made since 2024 on–or maybe someone that's listening said, “Hey Hannah, I did the 2024. Why should I do the 2025 Externship?”

Hannah Moore: No, it's a great point. So why should you do it this year? We have all new guests. Y'all, they are so good. I'm recording them right now. Like literally, I just wish I could show you how good they are. So you're getting to hear all new experts. So remember how I talked about the 60 experts before? You're going to ge probably 50 to 55 new experts this year. So you're going to get to hear even more ways, dynamic ways that people are doing financial planning. And I think that is such a selling point of this because this is not just, you know, do finish planning Hannah's way. Our goal is to help you find your place in this field.

Our goal is to help you, like we want to shorten your runway to finding success in this field. We want you to know where you want to land and we want to help give you the tools to get there. And so that's, you know, when we think about why you should do it again, all new experts. Hopefully, you had fun last year.

You'll get more reps in too. One of the things we've heard, “You can get the e money certificate.” There's so many like layers of things that we offer. So you get the e money certificate. It's one of the only places outside of university programs where you can get the e money certificate.

So you get that training, but then you're also going through and building a plan with me. And so many people have said that that has helped them just hit the ground running. It's on the job training that can take months to get to. And frankly, so many of these planners are so busy. It's really hard for firms to get that.

And so we've had even firms say that they're only hiring people if they've done the Externship because there's a marked difference between if somebody has done the Externship versus if they haven't. And I think a lot of that is going down to they've seen the larger process. They've seen how client meetings go.

They've seen the work, they've actually built the plans. I'm teaching as we're going through it. It's like, I'm doing this assignments right next to you, and sharing like, “Hey, so I've had other clients and I would do it this way, but with this client, I'm gonna do it this way because of these things.”

Like you're going to get that nuanced perspective and training that really will help accelerate your career.

Caleb Brown: Fabulous. Absolutely great program. Okay. So you've talked a lot about the benefits, maybe the cost in the end. There's some CFP board stuff, talk about that and then when the registration opens.

Hannah Moore: Yeah, absolutely. And I also want to talk about who's joining this, because I think that's an interesting aspect of it as well. So the cost is $399. Registration opens April 1st and it closes May 23rd. So that's a Friday. Please don't miss this deadline. And y'all, it is like the biggest heartbreak every year for me when we have to turn people away.

Caleb Brown: Yeah. Two months to sign up. It's like, come on.

Hannah Moore: You sound like my team truly at the end of the day, like we really do care about people being successful. So that's a registration window. That’s the cost of it. And then, to your point, if you are on the path for CFP—and we get a lot of people who don't know. In fact, the largest group of people is, “I don't know if I’ll get a CFP or not.”

If you decide to go down that pathway and you complete all of the assignments, meaning building up a financial plan, all those pieces, you get 500 experience hours towards the 6,000 hours that you need in order to get your CFP designation. So we're really going to set you ahead on that front as well.

Caleb Brown: There's just so many benefits. I mean, I highly encourage people to look at this. And you mentioned it earlier. I mean, a lot of my clients’ like, “Hey, I want to try to get somebody from the extern program or someone that's done that.” Okay. So we talked on costs, benefits, process. Anything else that you want to share that you're thinking about, or maybe other like frequently asked questions that you get that maybe you want to address here?

Hannah Moore: One of the coolest things that we've seen with the Externship, so we created this because of COVID, right? That was, we had to go with the assumption that people couldn't go into the office. And what was so eye opening to us is how many people that open the door for. This is such a confusing field to get into as there's so many nuances with it.

Like what are the designations? What are the licenses? What are like, wait, what type of firms do I go work? I don't even know the questions I should be asking in the interview. Like there’s so much there, but what was really cool when we did this Externship, what we realized was how many people we attracted that were curious about this career.

So thinking about career changers, career changes are actually our number one demographic in the Externship. And so many of them are working their day jobs and doing this in the evenings and on top of their extra work. And so if you think about that, before, if you're a career changer, you kind of have to do your own research independently, maybe listen to some podcasts, read some articles, and then you have to make the jump. We're giving you this in between step where you can really dive in and say, “Hey, is this for me? Is this what I want to be doing?” Start working towards your experience hours.

It's really neat. Every year we have a cohort of stay at home parents who are looking at getting back in the workforce. Every year we have college students who have a different internship, who are doing this on top of it. Caleb, you’ll laugh. I was talking to a student group just a couple of weeks ago. There was somebody on the call.

He turned down an internship because he wanted to do the Externship. And I was like, whoa, okay, we've hit a new level here. And so it really is yes, we are going to give you best in class training and interviews with people and just bring you such a wide variety of experts, and you're also going to get to connect with other people.

And I know in my CFP journey, it was really lonely, especially the early years. You are going to see so many other people who you can connect with. I can't tell you how many study groups have formed out of this. Our forums are the most active forums I've ever seen in this field ever. So you are going to find other people who are like you, who share similar passions, and that alone, I think, is worth the price of admission.

Caleb Brown: I've gotten on some of the alumni calls and there are a lot of people, a lot of energy in there where people are very engaged and I'm with you. Okay. So the website again, so AmplifiedPlanning.com/Externship

Hannah Moore: AmplifiedPlanning.com/Externship.

Caleb Brown: Got it. Okay. And we'll link to that in the show notes. Hannah, thanks for coming on. I mean, this is just a fabulous program and love trying to help you move the industry forward. I mean, what you created has been phenomenal. I certainly, again, would just echo everything you've said. And for the job seekers out there, even if you've done one, even you did last year, keep checking it out, keep taking away the CFP hours and learn from the new guests.

So Hannah, I'll give you the last word. Anything else before we close it out for this year?

Hannah Moore: No, just that this is such an amazing career. If you are curious in the least about what financial planning is or you're like, “Hey, I want to know more.” Check this out. The work we do is so important. The work we do with clients is so impactful and you're going to get to see that.

You're going to get to see how your work can really impact people's lives. And I know for so many people, this is why they get into this field. And so if you're at all curious, join us. If the 399 price point is too high, we already have scholarships in place. We already have that scholarship process.

Check that out. You don't want to miss this. I promise you we'll have a good time this summer.

Caleb Brown: Thanks for coming on, Hannah.

Hannah Moore: Appreciate it, Caleb.

Thanks for joining us for this episode of the New Planner Podcast. If you are ready to discover the top career paths for financial planners and see which track is best for you, we created a free guide to help you. Grab your copy of the Financial Planner Career Roadmap at newplannerrecruiting.com/roadmap. There, you'll also find more tools and resources all created to help you build a successful financial planning career. Tune back in next week for another episode, and until then, we are here to help you succeed.