In this episode, we’re excited to welcome Reagan Miller, the newest member of our Fort Worth team. She shares her journey into wealth management, how her background in admin and marketing supports her role, and her passion for organization, bookkeeping, and learning new skills. Reagan also talks about her excitement for being part of the Fort Worth community and contributing to our team’s mission of providing trusted financial planning in the oil and gas industry.

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Disclosure: This information is for informational purposes only. Nothing discussed during this video should be interpreted as tax, legal, or investment advice. If you have questions pertaining to your specific situation, please consult the appropriate qualified professional.

Welcome to Financial Planning for Oil and Gas Professionals, hosted by certified financial planners Justin Brownlee and Jared Machen of Brownlee Wealth Management, the only podcast dedicated to those of you in the oil and gas profession to help you optimize investments, lower future taxes and grow your wealth.

Learn more and subscribe today @brownlee wealth management.com.

Welcome back to another episode of FP O N G Financial Planning for Oil and Gas Professionals.

This week on the podcast we're doing a Meet the team with our newest Fort Worth team member, Reagan Miller.

Reagan, thank you for joining us.

Thank you for having me.

Awesome.

Well, I'm excited to have this conversation, have the listeners, clients, prospects, friends get to know a little more about you and your journey.

But I'd love for you to just kind of start off and share, tell us a little more about you and how you ended up getting here.

Yeah, born and raised in the Fort Worth area, went to school at UT Arlington and got my degree in communications with an emphasis in public relations.

I really wanted to do social media and marketing and then I found a role in marketing for the last three years.

Really loved it and then found the admin side of things, office management and I really fell in love with that.

Love to just like check things off of a to do list.

So that part of it really excited me.

And then how I came here, I found this role on LinkedIn, thought it was really interesting.

I had never experienced anything in wealth management and so I was like, let me look into this and thought it was really cool and then interviewed with you guys and here we are.

Incredible.

Incredible.

So I'm curious, I should know the answer to this, but I don't.

A resident Fort Worth person, what do they call themselves?

Like a Fort Worthian or like what is the correct vernacular there?

I have no idea.

I don't call myself anything crazy.

Huh.

We'll go with Fort Worthian and if that's not trademarked, I, you know, I want all the royalties associated with that.

So you've been here your whole life.

What's your favorite thing about being in Fort Worth?

Well, I should say I've been in Burleson, which if you're not familiar with the Fort Worth area, Burleson is south of Fort Worth.

I grew up in Burleson and went to high school there and moved to Fort Worth straight outta high school at 18 and fell in love with a being outside of my parents house I guess.

Love my parents to death, love my family, but loved being able to just be independent and Fort Worth is great for that especially where I was was in the Westworth Village in Fort Worth.

And there's a lot of things to do over there for a young adult, I'd say.

And then what I love now about Fort Worth as an almost 30 year old, I'd say is the sense of community.

People are really nice here.

And then there's just something to do for everyone, like whether you like to go out to the bars in the countryside, which we were just talking about, the stockyards, whether you like that or you want to go down to 7th street if the countryside of Fort Worth is not your thing.

Or museums, places to just like walk around trails to ride your bike.

There's so much to do in Fort Worth and I just really love it.

It has the small town vibe, but also with everything to do.

Yeah.

And anytime you're hankering for a big city, you can go across the metroplex to Dallas, sit at some traffic and regret it.

Yes, exactly.

So you're a native Fort Worth Ian.

Or I guess Fort Worth Metro Ian.

Right.

Being, you know, the outer pockets of Fort Worth.

If you had to leave, where would you go?

I've thought about this.

The kicker is, if I had to leave, I would not leave.

If I was not forced to, because I really love my family.

Like I kind of alluded to earlier and having a two year old, it's super important for me to be near my family.

So two answers.

If you're forcing me to leave, I guess I'm gonna go to Colorado.

Don't know where in Colorado.

Probably somewhere up higher where the mountains are.

Really love the mountains.

I love the snow.

Being from Texas, I haven't got to experience a lot of snow.

So we have been to Colorado and it was super fun.

And where we were was a small town, very nice.

Going out into the mountains, going on a hike.

Super cool.

Love that.

Unrealistically, I would move to the UK in a heartbeat because I'm obsessed with the UK and I love history.

UK and just Europe has a lot of history.

So I would love, love, love to move there.

Awesome.

So Buckingham palace or Colorado?

It sounds like yes.

Okay.

Definitely Buckingham palace, if I had the choice.

Awesome.

So you were talking about this earlier, but you spent most of your career, kind of like advertising, social media, doing that for different companies.

And to be clear, you know, with only six people on board, we all do a little bit of everything.

So you get some admin, get some marketing.

Why pivot to wealth management?

Yeah, that's a good question.

It's something I've asked myself too.

I can't say there's a exact answer to why wealth management.

I think it was put in front of me, this position and then learning about it.

I looked into wealth management, obviously, like researched your website and saw how cool it is and just interesting.

And I think now after being here for however long, I'm even more interested in wealth management and the financial side of things.

Coming from my background in social media.

I have done social media for so many different kinds of companies and so it didn't scare me to jump into a new industry.

It was very enticing.

And now learning more about it, I'm very excited and I think it would be beneficial for me to be here as well for like my personal finances.

Yeah, yeah.

It's funny because, you know, you know the most of social media marketing out of any of us, but it's also what we're selling as a service.

And the conversion cycle, if you will, of getting someone to trust handing over their life savings to somebody is probably very different than getting them to hire you for HR recruiting or something different.

So it's funny because you have that set of skills.

But also interesting thinking about the application being different, taking a step back, thinking about, hey, wealth management wasn't really on your radar.

Now it's something you're doing and kind of helping us with as a firm is kind of building out this wealth management brand.

What's your money story?

What was kind of your first memory.

Of money as a child?

I'm sure I had money somewhere along the line.

Like, I got money.

I babysat a lot as a kid, so I'm sure I got some money then.

But my first, like, real memory of money, I would say on my 16th birthday, my mom drugged me up to Applebee's to get a job, which is where my older brother and older sister worked.

I was kicking and screaming to go find this job at 16.

I did not want to.

None of my friends had a job.

I was older, one of all of my friends.

So I was the first one at 16, didn't want to work.

I remember I wore ripped jeans so I would not get the job because I was like, they're not gonna like me.

They did.

And I got hired on right then to be a hostess.

And when I got my first paycheck and at Applebee's, when you were a hostess, you got percentage of the tips that all the servers made because we bust tables and stuff for them.

And I remember being like, oh, my God, this is so cool to have money.

For myself to be able to go do things rather than having to ask my mom for money.

I said kicking and screaming, I did not want a job.

But I will say now, like, I'm so glad I had a job at an early age.

It really instilled just some character traits about me today, like work ethic and things of that manner.

So I'm very grateful I did it.

And then just getting money and being able to have something for yourself and go buy, like, I think I bought, like, some jeans with my first paycheck.

I was super excited about it.

So, yeah, I guess that would be my first memory of money would be not wanting to make it.

And then as soon as I did, being like, okay, whole new world.

If you had to distill down, you know, your parents, hey, 16, you gotta get a job.

What do you think their motivation was?

What brought them to say, hey, you have to do this?

Well, I'm one of five.

And I said, I have an older brother and older sister that were there.

And I think seeing them work, my mom and dad were probably like, look at what good character traits they're already having.

You know, it obviously creates some sort of responsibility in a teenager to have to have a job, to get there on time every day, to not call out, then to get up and go to school the next day.

So I'd say it was more of just to build that work ethic at a young age.

And we didn't have a ton of money growing up.

I say that, but, like, had a wonderful childhood.

I don't feel like I missed out on anything.

But they, I think, just really trying to instill, like, you're gonna need to make money, you know?

So just go ahead and start now at a job that's not very high stakes.

Being a hostess at Applebee's, and my mom and dad really loved Applebee's, so having almost all of their kids there was really awesome for them.

Oh, yeah, the employee discount was probably worth it.

This is amazing, if anything, thinking about kind of like your journey with money, it sounds like work ethic was valuable and you learned that.

But also, like, the idea of having money was like, just kind of like, fun.

And one of the things I love about, like, being a kid is all of your money is discretionary, right?

When you're an adult, like, you get in it, like car wrecks, insurance premiums, like food, like groceries, like all these.

You have all these doctors visits, co pays, like, there's so many things you spend money on that aren't fun but, like, when you're a kid, like, a lot of times the money is all discretionary, which is just super fun.

Maybe then, and even today, and maybe those answers are the same.

What things do you spend money on that, like, you really enjoy and, like, love having be a part of your life?

I don't want to sound cliche, but food.

We really love food.

Like, we are, I'd say, a foodie.

My husband is very picky, so we like to go out to eat and to try new things, and this is a really great area for that.

There's so many great restaurants and things around here, so definitely food.

Clothes has always been a thing for me.

I love to buy some new clothes.

Like I was saying, my birthday's coming up this weekend, and I bought a new outfit that's been my M.O.

like, since I moved out.

I realized and, like, started going out, and I'd be like, okay, I need a new outfit for every new event.

And then since having my baby, stuff for him.

I really like to buy clothes for him.

And toys.

He probably has way too much because you can't wear that much clothes as a toddler and you're, you know, you're not going out and doing a bunch of crazy things.

So I'd say clothes.

Really?

Honestly.

Well, you know, I think that's, like, a big part of financial planning is, like, everybody's fixated on, like, hey, where do I cut expenses?

But, like, hey, also, what are the things in my life that, like, I spend money on that I enjoy and that make it fun and make it worth it.

Right.

And like it.

There's just something so empowering about spending in ways that are congruent with who you are as a person.

I'm curious, kind of pivoting to you touched on it a little bit.

But how exactly are you going to be helping us?

We're.

I don't know, what, about a month in at this point?

So how are you helping us?

And, like, when.

When might clients interact with you?

How I'm helping so far, I'd say organizationally helping and just trying to, like, take things off of people's plates.

That should definitely be an office manager and admin kind of thing.

Like you said, it's a small company, so we all wear a lot of hats.

I really like that.

I like to dabble into new things.

Like, I said in the job interview that there was accounting and bookkeeping tasks, and I'm super excited about that because I've never done it.

So just learning something new is really enticing to me and then also helping with the marketing side.

Like I said, I've definitely leaned more into office management admin, but marketing still excites me and I do still have my degree in experience in marketing, so I'm very excited to delve into that.

And just being the warm, friendly face that you see whenever you walk into our office or you call and you hear my voice, I love that.

I love being able to talk to people and I love hearing the clients on the other end.

They're like, Carrie.

Oh, Reagan.

And then we kind of have like a little brief conversation about that.

So that's super fun.

And I'm excited to, like, be introduced to the clients officially, whenever that happens, just so they know who to call.

And when they're calling, they know it's not going to be Josh, Jared, Carrie answering the phone.

It's going to be me.

And I'm going to be the person that they get to talk to today that's warm to them.

Yeah, yeah.

The front lines.

That's the funny thing about being a growing business is like, you're employee number six.

I want to drill down and just, like, repeat something you said.

This is one of the things that stood out about you during the interview process was I asked you what piece of the role you were most excited for, and you said admin and bookkeeping.

And I was like, why?

And you were like, because I have no experience and it's fun to learn.

Right.

And I think, like, one of our cultural values as a firm is, like, this idea of, like, excellence, which means, like, continuous improvement.

And like, the fact that you, like, leaned in and were most excited about the thing that you had less familiarity with really starkly demonstrated that.

That answer caught me off guard, but in a good way.

I guess the final thing, you know, you have a bio on the website.

We have this podcast now.

But what's like, one thing people might not know about you that is kind of, like, interesting or fun or unique that makes you you?

I think I alluded to it earlier and how much I love history, and it was a huge obsession in my life.

Like, one thing about me is I like to hyper fixate on things.

And so history and English history became my hyper fixation for years.

I wanted to write and kind of started to write blog articles for this podcaster.

She would create podcasts about English history, and I was going to write for her and just doing the research for that.

And you just learn so much about what's happened in our lifetime.

And not only just English history and like kings and queens and stuff, but really obsessed with the Galveston Hurricane.

Huge love true crime, which isn't so individual.

A lot of people love true crime these days.

I like to hyper fixate on something and I love a good debate.

I love to argue with people in a good way.

You know, my husband is not the biggest fan of my debating, but I just really love and I'll be wrong and I'll say it, I'm wrong.

But it's going to take me a long time to admit that I'm wrong and I'm going to research as much as I can to prove my point.

So I guess you would not know that about me that I really love to debate.

And then other than that, I think I would call myself really funny.

Awesome.

Cool.

Well, Reagan, I appreciate you taking the time to join us.

I'm glad you're on the journey.

And you know, you've only been here a month, but you've already made my life easier.

So I'm looking forward to you continuing being on the team for a while and clients getting to learn more about you and your humor and your fixation with English history.

Because I'm not going to lie.

Like Brownlee, as a firm, we don't have much expertise there.

So.

Okay, well, here I am.

Awesome.

Well, that's all we got for this episode.

As always, love to hear ideas for future episodes, feedback of anything, or ideas for how we might change the format.

Again, we're always looking for listener feedback like subscribe and Share podcast @brownlee wealth management.com.

thanks.

We'll see you next time.

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This podcast is for informational purposes only.

Nothing discussed during this show or episode should be viewed as investment, legal and tax advice.

If you have questions pertaining to your specific situation, please consult the appropriate qualified professional.