After 30 years of successfully managing money for institutional investors including Citicorp and Para Advisors, Laura Rotter founded her own firm, True Abundance Advisors, a fiduciary, fee-only financial planning firm located in White Plains, NY with a satellite office in New York City.

Laura created a business that was in alignment with her own values and took advantage of her strengths.

Rock Robinson is an accomplished Sales Executive with 40 years of achievement growing revenue with the likes of McGraw-Hill, Sallie Mae, Stericycle & the Univ. of Phoenix.

Rock developed a framework for developing new relationships that can open up fabulous opportunities.

Learn more about them here:

Laura Rotter: https://trueabundanceadvisors.com/

Rock Robinson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rockrobinson9

from smashing the plateau.

I'm David Schreiner Kahn with going solo.

In today's episode, we hear from Laura Rotter and rock Robinson.

After 30 years of successfully managing money for institutional investors,

Laura Rotter founded her own firm, true abundance advisors, a fiduciary

You'll learn how Laura was able to create a business that was in

Brock Robinson is an accomplished sales executive with 40 years of achievement

Sallie Mae Stericycle and the university of Phoenix.

You'll learn how rock developed a framework for developing new relationships

Stay with us to hear all the details.

Do you struggle to take consistent action on building your business?

How do you feel about your business building products?

Would you like to be part of a structured, supportive process to help you implement

As a member of the smashing, the plateau community you'll have

You'll also be a member of a community that is built to be a

You'll find a range of tools and resources to support you as an

If you're committed to getting your consulting, coaching or small business

Learn more@smashingtheplateau.com.

We begin with Laura Rotter discussing her.

After 30 years of successfully managing money for institutional

True abundance advisors, a fiduciary fee, only financial planning firm

Laura, welcome to the show.

Thank you

so much, David.

It's great to have you on it to alert.

What caused you to start your own firm after.

A very successful 30 year career on wall.

First of all, I want your listeners or our listeners

So it's important piece of information.

I often talk about my time working as an institutional analyst and investor on

The first 10 years, I loved love, love what I did the second 10 years.

I was raising a family and just took it for granted as the primary

But by the end of my career, and again, it was close to 10 years.

I did not like what I did at all.

The work was not interesting.

I found that the investments didn't reward you for the risk and I didn't

So you can hear though that.

It was a long time till I actually left.

And the precipitating event, actually, there were two in 2008, clearly

I considered leaving and.

In 2013, when I was working for the hedge fund group of city bank, there

And so I never considered at that point going back.

And I thought about how do I use.

My gifts on understanding markets, understanding numbers, to understanding

And during that tenure feel like I have a run on sentence, but

I had started to practice yoga and learn to hear deep inside what I needed.

I took a meditation teacher training.

So when the time came to rethink my personal life journey, I felt like.

There was some mission for me to use the skills I had developed on wall street

And so that was my initial thought.

I wanted to work with women having.

Spend most of my career surrounded by men.

I wanted to work with women and help them with their finances.

And that was what I set out to do in when I left wall street, November, 2013.

And how soon after you got your notice that you are going

I'm now an entrepreneur

pretty immediately.

I was lucky enough both to have accumulated assets

The ability to take my time to move towards growing a firm, as

I started to informational interview and I, in the course of this informational

There's a lot of words used to describe what I do.

And so though my intention had been.

To go out on my own.

I quickly realized, especially once I had the offer that I wasn't exactly sure

So it would be helpful to work for another firm.

I learned a lot with that firm and at the same time, learned a lot about

And when you work for a broker dealer there, you're not always working.

In the client's best interest.

I never saw anything inappropriate done, but there's a different standards.

And so there are suitability standards and commissions generated

And I ultimately found that distasteful, even if, again, nothing blatant was

And that made me very uncomfortable.

Yeah.

Even though in theory, there, there isn't supposed to be a conflict of interest.

It's still sounds like there is potentially an inherent

At the same time, back to what I said earlier of wanting

That being said, I wanted a firm where there was a process of asking

And I came to feel that I could only do that by going out on my own.

After a little, under two years, I left actually in February,

Cause I really did enjoy and respect the people I work with.

And I didn't want to be going behind their back, developing anything

So I left that firm in February of 2016 and started my own

And I guess I just want to say one of the things I did is I became

I had already been a certified financial analyst.

That's a designation that I used for many years again on wall street,

But one of the reasons I left is I wanted to pass the certified

I left my tech myself time to study in between starting my own firm and

Yeah.

So it's interesting that you had a particular idea in mind about running

And you made a pivot to go work for somebody else in a slightly, whether

A couple of.

Yes.

And one of the things that I've observed is, especially with entrepreneurs,

It's interesting David, because I think we

Whenever you start opening your heart and being a little more aware of what's

Exactly.

Said.

So with that in mind, what happened following spring of 2016, when you

I'm sure

you hear from many entrepreneurs, it's an ongoing journey.

The first thing that came to mind when you asked me that question is learning

I do remember that.

A friend is a sort of a cute story.

A friend of mine, Sherry Perlman is had a listserv of Jesus psychologist.

If other people in her field.

And immediately I had a couple of call me and I met with them and they were eager.

They became my clients then are still my clients.

And I asked them, how did you meet me?

And they said, oh, we were looking at.

Listserv and our good friend, Sherry Perlman, I see posted your name.

And I asked how they knew Sherry and the way they knew Sherry was clearly

She did not attend the institution.

They talked about.

I have jokingly said, they had written a check for my first fee payments.

I said, would you like your check back?

Because this is a different Sherry Perlman my name, but again, who

They're my they've been my clients longest, but so I feel like when

In a certain way.

It seemed easier.

When I first started my business to find clients, then now three years later, I

And.

Having never run my own business before.

These are all a mix, always of excitement as I continue to learn new things and

challenge.

Yeah.

So what does it feel like to work on some of these things that are

It's I guess the word that keeps coming to mind is

And I feel sometimes blessed that I am challenging my.

So much to grow, to explore new things, to explore new ways of communicating

So I feel like it's very exciting.

It's put me in place to meet a lot of new people, including yourself.

And of course the moments of frustration, but frankly, having been so unhappy for

I do pinch myself every day that I get to choose how I spend my

Yeah, that, that is definitely quite a

Yes, Laura, what have been some of the most helpful kinds of.

Resources as you've been going through this journey over the last, I guess

I

not quite, 2016, yes.

But it's been awhile.

Yeah.

I was

thinking about since you got laid off, but you've had

Yes, I guess it's interesting.

What comes to mind now?

And so a message I'd give to anyone going on this entrepreneurial journey.

It's very easy to fall into the rhythm of being an employee.

Again, an employee of your own.

And therefore, in some ways, a victim of the worst boss in the world, who's

And it's only been the last couple of years, perhaps the last year where I

I truly do believe that we all on this earth have a mission.

And that mission is to find what makes you come alive and then go do it.

And I would say the first couple of years, I clearly wanted stability.

And so I kept to the same routine of getting up and how I spent my day.

And I'm coming to realize that's not the gift I want to give myself.

And that's not the gift I want to give my client.

And as I look here, I see, I have a book called the Firestarter

Again, talking about.

Who do you want to be?

What do you want to feel during the day?

And I try every morning to journal to myself and write down what

day.

And Laura, what are some of the things that, that you've done or ways that

Clarifying what your mission is and then fulfilling it.

The one

thing that comes to mind is finding like-minded people.

I feel like I've been blessed in having both coaching groups in a coaching

So as someone who spent a lot of my previous career, basically in front

That's where I get a lot of my ideas from that's where I got, I get a lot

And I guess another thing I'd like to say, I'm in a group with other financial

And perhaps I take it for granted, cause I did have the wall street background,

I feel like that's something that it's not an easy activity.

It doesn't come easily to people of learning just to perhaps sit

So that's also resources I've reached out.

Yeah.

And Laura, at this point, given everything you've done over the

Closer than I ever been.

As I said earlier, I had started my firm believing that my most

I turns out at this point, most of my clients are couples.

And yet I'm still drawn to work with women and specifically women in a

We teach what we continuously need to learn.

I still identify, I still self identify as someone in a career transition.

I let go of a Eben identity that I they'll perhaps towards the end.

I didn't like the work.

I certainly liked the identity and I want to help others.

Explore, others who feel dead inside from having to keep doing the same thing

So both help with the exploration of.

As helping with the financial aspect of the change.

And that's certainly in my case, a big thing, understanding, what my

How do I invest appropriately?

How do I make sure I have enough insurance, all these kinds

The life goal.

You can't have one without the

other.

Yeah, they're very much intertwined.

So Laura, for anyone who may want to go deeper with anything we've

First of all, to learn about me, please go to my

And please feel free to reach out to me.

My email address is Laura L a U R a at true abundance advisors dot.

Great.

Laura, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to join us today.

I'm going solo and sharing your insights, sharing your

My guest today has been the owner of true abundance advisors.

Laura Rotter.

Thank you again, Laura, for joining us.

Thank you so much, David, for inviting me.

Now we shift to rock Robinson, sharing his career.

Rock is an accomplished sales executive with 40 years of achievement growing

For the last seven years, he has provided services as a fractional sales

Cincinnati has been his home for the last 30 years.

Rock.

Welcome to the show,

David, thanks for having me.

So you've had a long career and clearly from.

Sat in the introduction, a couple or more unexpected bumps in the road,

Tell me a little bit about your career and how these incidents

Oh, thanks.

The majority of my career David has been with fortune 500 companies.

And really at the end, some midsize companies that were positioned for sale.

And that was what I was brought in to do as a sales leader, I was on

That was just gone all the time.

I'm traveling three out of the four weeks.

I'm in hotels, I'm in airports.

Way too much food.

I can tell you that.

And I'm away from my family.

And at some point in time, I think that was a huge contributor to say, really

So for those that are listening, that.

Lost their job or in transition, I've been there.

I've understood it.

I've tried to figure some things to do for the next time that came around.

So I call them God winks.

They're not coincidences or God winks that all of these things happen

I wouldn't be where I'm at.

If those things didn't happen.

So I want to encourage others.

That those things didn't feel very good when they happen, but you'll be

What did you learn each time that helped you deal with them?

The next time something

happened?

I would tell people, I talked to a lot of people in transition because they

You've been through some of these things.

And I say, you always have to be building your brand.

It sounds too easy.

It's when we lose our job, we go out and say, man, I got to meet some folks.

I got to figure out how I'm going to get my next gig, but you have

And it's easier said than done, but you'll hear a lot of reference in our talks

And please network, when you have a job, this is my strongest suggestion.

Yeah.

You know what that reminds me of, I have a friend who's a

Time to apply for credit is when you don't need it.

Cause that's when you get it.

If you wait until you need it, you're not going to get it.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

So

what were some of the techniques that.

Employed to build your brand.

You know what?

First and foremost I think networking itself is easy to say, I got to

I knew nobody really, when you think about it, it's a big city,

I didn't want to know the people that I did, but when I met people,

Connection leads to like likely leads to trust and trust leads to an

And what I found along the way, my experience told me I was doing this

Because I'm from Michigan.

And there was a basketball team that was the fab five.

So I said there was a fab five questions that you always asked during networking.

And when I'd meet with people, I'd share that.

And it's just not the questions themselves, but how you ask the

And I think helped a lot of people and it helped me lot.

Alright.

So I

have to ask you why, what are the five questions?

Let's see, I tease ya.

You're coming at it and they're so simple, but they're how you asked the question.

The first one's a geographic question.

I'd say, David, where are you originally born and raised?

I'm looking for connections.

I don't ask where you live today.

I want multiples.

So myself, I'm from Detroit.

Then I moved to Chattanooga and then I lived to live in Cincinnati.

I have three potential connections or something about geography.

When we talk and ask, I could be in Florida and I see somebody

And where are you from in Cincinnati?

There's a geography.

So easy, simple, soft number one.

Number two is family.

And I say it that way.

I'd say David family, because in today's environment, I'm not asking somebody.

If they're married, I'm not asking if they have kids.

Now I'm more of a senior player.

People come to me and they'll say rock, do you have grandkids?

You know why they're asking me?

Why do I have.

Because they want to tell me about their grandkids.

Okay.

So I figured out that based on the questions it's so open-ended right.

Yeah.

I want them to tell me what family is.

I've had people tell me their family.

Is there two German shepherds?

Oh, they're awesome.

I go, you got dogs.

I got dogs.

They tell me about their parents.

They tell me about their siblings.

They'll tell me about a wife.

If they had one.

How about if I asked him if he was married a gentleman.

And he's going through a nasty divorce.

I think we've really not connected right there.

I've just brought up something I didn't want to bring up.

And so it's, open-ended question that's two family three is tell me school.

Same thing with school.

Open-ended David, I'm not asking you where to cut, where you went to college.

How about if you didn't go to college, how does that make you feel?

I want to not be threatening in my questions and I want to hear feedback.

I went to a high school.

70% of my graduating high school class went to work for three companies.

Guess who they were general motors, Ford or Chrysler.

Okay.

And they're all retired.

And they've told me they may have went in the service.

I go, awesome.

Tell me what service you were in.

If I was a service guy and you were in the army and I'm in the army, we've connected.

Or I went to work.

I had to provide for my family right away.

I had a young family.

So my school is number three for is.

Tell me about your career journey.

You've done that a little here.

I want people to tell me, I want to see if I can connect with the types of jobs

And then the very last one is David, tell me what your passionate.

When I can learn what you're passionate about, it's a little

I could be passionate about giving to the church and I just, but that's not a hobby.

So when I could find out those five things, I've got opportunities to

And now I have the ability with all that intelligence to do unique.

Follow-up.

If you can imagine that.

And one of my favorite stories, I was, I did this on a client,

He gave me the answers.

He tells me he's from Cincinnati.

He's played baseball at the university of Cincinnati.

He's got four daughters, the whole nine yards.

I gather all this intelligent, he's a wine kind of sewer.

He's a big red machine fan.

And it was true that I was able to uniquely follow with.

Nobody else has ever done with him.

He was a big red machine baseball fan and his favorite player.

He told me it was Tony Perez.

So I sent him a hand note and follow up.

I said, Hey, thanks for getting to know you personally and professionally, it's

That's 50 years old.

I think he didn't it.

And I put a Tony Perez baseball card in an envelope and send it to him.

I, would've never been able to do that.

Create a connection if I never asked the questions.

So fed five, there you go.

And is there a particular order that you asked them in?

I like

them that way, born and raised family school,

I see a lot of, and I do this with salespeople too.

When I coach them, a lot of people start with the passion first and they

And what did they do it, they may have just watched the Cincinnati reds.

They go, Hey, what'd you think about the reds game?

I go, how do you even know I'm a baseball fan?

So again, they're asking because what they like it.

So you gotta make it open-ended rock.

What are you passionate about?

And if I told them, then they know, and they can see if we can connect on that.

But that order.

Yeah.

I find that when people ask me about what I'm passionate about first, or if

Yeah.

Yeah.

I found in my experience has told me that, that geography question associate.

As long as I, I'm not like a stalker telling me where you live right

I had a guy tell me he's from Jersey and I go, wow, why can't you pump your own gas?

I just know some stats about the state and I could create a conversation.

Cadet.

That's all I'm trying to do

now.

If you're really doing a lot of networking, and you're

How do you track the information?

Because it's, there's a lot of details buried in this.

I don't know about you.

Once I get past about 10 people, I would probably forget most of it.

Yeah.

In that crazy too, because I think, this is my sales background.

We used to write stuff on the back of a business card, or then we got

Then we put them in folders.

I print off their LinkedIn profile and make notes on their LinkedIn profile.

Then I'd make an Excel spreadsheet.

And finally I wised up and it came up with something that.

Sales CRM software.

And I've got a software that I use and I tell the audience I've

And I was a power Salesforce user way, too big for people like me now, what

I use one today called pipe drive and I've actually incorporated.

I have fields for my fab five about that.

So after we talked.

I take my notes.

I automatically put them in my CRM and I throw my notes away.

I'm trying to be so good paperless and it's got an app.

So I'm out and about.

And I bumped into David and then I see some facts about

And now all of a sudden I'm intelligent connecting when I've talked to

I can't remember everything, but when I could store it.

So when you get good intelligence, you have to store it.

And save it.

And that's how I do it.

I use a software.

Yeah.

Are

there other CRMs that you like.

Particularly for solo consultants,

you know what?

I just resonated on a bike drive.

I've rolled it out for probably seven of the companies I've worked for.

I'm not a programmer and it's that easy.

So I'm a sales guy.

So if I can, I get my way around a tech stuff, pipe drive for me go to that easy.

I'm not jumping off them.

I've seen the more complex ones.

And for me, it's been intuitive.

And let it drag and drop and stuff like that.

I just love that.

But fields that some of the softwares that's out there, they have names

I can call it whatever I want.

I can call it the fab five.

It works.

So I love it.

I

love it.

One thing that, that struggle.

As you were describing your transition from working inside organizations,

And I would think that as somebody who is involved in sales, As a profession would

in a lot of cases, this is the one thing,

It's a consulting business, right?

And I'm a fractional sales leader and I'm a sales coach.

But what I was doing prior to this, I was a sales leader for 30 years.

I wasn't carrying a bag.

I wasn't the frontline guy out having a coffee.

So I had all the team doing.

And they did that work.

So it was almost reversed.

I became a frontline contributor again, where I had to do those

And I did it, but it'd been a long time.

And I think where I've seen some of my peers and associates that

And I think I see it in consulting too, because there's peaks and valleys.

You always have to be.

Networking.

You always have to be prospecting because when you get the business, then

Then all of a sudden you're out of business, you got to go find it again.

So it's usually a peaks and valleys and some folks don't have the

So they tap out and they go back and get that job in corporate America and

I think that's part of it too.

You really have to stay on top of that.

Yeah,

no, that makes a lot of sense.

Rock.

When you went out on your own, how did you figure out what your

I was blessed at the time because that third time of that

They were awesome.

People had 200 plus frontline contributors and salespeople.

I They were spreading education through corporate America.

And I was just so pleased with what they were doing.

And just as it happens in corporate America, a new person comes

And they suffer my boss, who was an awesome architect of what we were doing.

And they go rock a little time later.

I need you to get those 200 plus salespeople on a con call.

Cause I want to talk to them like, oh, sure.

And about 120 seconds later, the entire team and me.

They were going to go in a different direction and that was step one.

I go, wow.

The band broke up.

That's really what it was a little do they know they're destined for

And then 45 days.

My youngest son, Ty at the age of 25 suddenly died.

So now you have a sever job and the loss of a child all within 45 days, and you're

I think there was a sign for me that says, I think there's

And somebody tapped me on the shoulder and told me about this business and with

Wow.

So had you heard about this niche before that?

I really hadn't.

Somebody tapped me on the shoulder and said, rock you're

That's out there for this for we're looking for sales leaders that look just

It sounds like it's in my wheelhouse.

I went through my wife.

I said, it sounds exactly.

She goes, it's exactly what you've been doing all your life.

She says, I'm good with it.

As long as you don't go into a business and involves golf

So she didn't want me in the golf business, but the, as long

Tell me a little bit about who your ideal client is

Yeah, sure.

And what I do with the bandwidth and I'm a sole proprietor, so rock

So you're dealing with.

The creator, the biller, the implementer, the executer, all in

So I'll deal in Cincinnati Dayton or some of the major cities Northern

And I'm looking for mid to small size companies and I've targeted.

It has a, at least it has a minimum, a max of about six sales.

So we're really dealing with a different dynamic than I was used to because what

I want to work with multiple companies.

What I do, it's people in process that come on in, I said,

And are they doing the right stuff?

And I help implement change.

I put in processes.

And then I.

This is what nobody's doing.

And this is why I think there's a huge need.

That's out there.

Somebody that wants to coach, I want to help them.

I don't say, make 10 more phone calls.

I'll show you how to make the first phone call and help you make the next one.

And then let's go, right?

I gotta figure out where you need help and I want to help you.

And in today, nobody wants to coach anybody.

He just said, here's the number.

If you don't hit the number you got 30 days.

We'll see you putting on a performance plan.

I don't want to do that.

So that's my niche market and where I'm operating at.

And I've just been passionate about coaching though.

I just there's something that's I, it resonates with me.

That's missing out there.

Tell me a little bit about the characteristics of a company

Yeah.

You know what, there's something about being a lifelong learner.

I look at owners and presidents of companies that are open to change.

People that are open to consultants, open people that are open to

It is radically different.

At one point last year I was vice president of sales for

Okay.

You have to be open to that.

It's radical.

They, some folks want you in the office, 60 hours a week.

That's not going to happen, so there's gotta be a fit with that.

And the ones that I've seen that have been served very successful with

They want to grow and they're willing to change.

Do I gather

David Shriner-Cahn:

it's industry agnostic.

Yeah.

I've predominantly been always in B2B, so I've never been in retail.

I got family that are in the party store business.

They wait for people to come to their store.

I just couldn't do that.

So always going out, but yeah.

Yeah.

If usually a lot of the companies I dealt with have sold, I'll call it

And I always I'm intrigued by that because now I'm selling

It's just not a, I found if you've got the cheapest products, sometimes

We'll put it on a website and you can pick the lowest price.

And there's people that do that now.

But I love selling value and helping my sales team sell value.

Can you share a story of a situation that you've walked

Yeah.

There, there was a great situation.

It's in the manufacturing industry and they didn't have a lot of process.

They didn't have a CRM family business and they just needed help

And being an outsider coming in.

I literally, because they were a quality company they'd

I just needed to build that trust and let them be able to see that an

And we had one of the sales team members that would be an error

And to see that person be open to growing and me coaching that person

I literally, I wouldn't say it's turning the keys over, cause it's not

And I'm so excited to see where he's going to take it from me.

But those are the situations when that can be involved and feel, I made a

And I don't want to do that.

Rock, this has been a really great conversation about your

And a little bit about the kinds of clients where you solve their problems.

If someone wants to.

Learn more about anything we've discussed or access any resources

for them to go?

The best way to find me is on a LinkedIn rock Robinson, you type that in there and

I'm coming up first.

Okay.

Come see me.

We'll have to have a conversation.

You did all my contact information.

Is there.

Great.

And we will, of course include your LinkedIn profile link in the show notes.

Anyone who's listening can go there if whatever platform you're listening on or

You can find the link in the show notes.

So rock, I want to thank you so much for joining us today and going

Based on many years of experience, my guest today has been the president

Rock Robinson.

Thank you again for joining.

Yeah.

Awesome.

Dave,

both Laura and rock experienced major transitions.

When they left their positions as employees and started their own

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