Welcome back to Don’t Retire… Graduate! In today’s episode of our “Diary of a Financial Advisor” segment, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Hannah Dennis, who transitioned from teaching young children to becoming a client relations associate and our resident marketing guru at BFG Financial Advisors. Hannah’s journey is a compelling example of how diverse skills—like those honed in the classroom—can create an immediate impact in the financial services industry.
Hannah joined us after graduating from the University of Scranton and teaching for four years in the Baltimore area. Her background in education has been invaluable in shaping her communication style, her empathetic approach to clients, and her ability to keep all of us, especially me, in check! In addition to her client relations role, Hannah dove headfirst into the marketing aspect of our firm, helping to track and optimize our initiatives, including this very podcast.
In our discussion, Hannah and I explored her transition from education to finance, noting the shift from an “island” of classroom independence to a collaborative team environment. She explained how data-driven decision-making from her teaching days now influences our marketing strategies, emphasizing the importance of tracking what’s truly working—whether that’s a successful webinar or a standout podcast episode.
We also discussed the stressful yet rewarding reality of managing marketing in a busy firm and the value of slowing down to implement changes efficiently. Hannah shared what it’s like to be behind the scenes, wrangling not just the team, but also vendors, deadlines, and creative ideas. With the podcast and Diary segment both evolving—particularly with Diary moving to a webinar format through BFG University—Hannah’s skill set has never been more crucial.
For some lighter moments, we talked about our firm’s annual summit, our karaoke adventures (stay tuned for a possible duet reveal!), and what our listeners can look forward to as we launch new and improved educational content in the coming year. Hannah’s journey is not just about a career shift but about leveraging strengths, embracing change, and always striving for personal and professional growth.
5 Key Takeaways:
Embracing Career Change: Hannah’s journey from teaching to finance demonstrates that transferable skills, like collaboration and data-driven thinking, are invaluable—even across vastly different industries.
Data-Driven Marketing: By applying her experience as a teacher, Hannah transformed our marketing approach—utilizing data to determine which initiatives, webinars, and podcast episodes best engage our audience.
The Power of Collaboration: Moving from a solo teaching role to a team environment at BFG allowed Hannah to learn from colleagues, share new ideas, and innovate more effectively than ever before.
Adapting to Growth and Change: Hannah’s advice to “slow down, trust the process, and implement change gradually” is a lesson for anyone stepping into a new role or industry.
Looking Ahead—Interactivity and Fresh Content: With “Diary of a Financial Advisor” moving to a webinar format on BFG University, our content will become more timely, interactive, and driven by what you—our listeners—want to see.
Join us as we share, learn, and grow together on the path to financial independence and a fulfilling, purpose-driven future. Don’t forget to subscribe, leave a comment (especially if you want to see our karaoke duet!), and share this episode with friends and colleagues on the journey to “Don’t Retire… Graduate!”
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Transcripts
Eric Brotman [:
This is Eric Brotman, the host of Don't Retire Graduate, the podcast that asks you what you want to be when you grow up so you can graduate into retirement with passion and with purpose. Welcome to our Diary of A Financial Advisor segment where we interview financial advisors about their professional journeys and their passion for helping others succeed. Today, I'm pleased to be joined by Hannah Dennis. Hannah graduated from the University of Scranton in 2018 and joined BFG as a client relations associate in June of 2023. Before coming to BFG, she worked as a teacher for four years in the Baltimore area. With her background in education, she has interpersonal and communication skills and is great working with children like me. While Hannah joined BFG as a client relations associate, she's also become our marketing guru and spends her days keeping me in check. Hannah, welcome to Diary of a Financial Advisor.
Hannah Dennis [:
Thank you very much.
Eric Brotman [:
It's good to have you back. I just put together the fact that University of Scranton is home to the Dunder M and crew from the office.
Hannah Dennis [:
Yes.
Eric Brotman [:
How would you compare that particular office environment to ours?
Hannah Dennis [:
Similar in that there's chaos often, but it's a lot of fun. It's. It's. It's really fun working here.
Eric Brotman [:
So. So you, you left the. The world of. Of kindergarteners, children, and came to the world of financial advisors and various professionals and working with clients and working with money and working with heavy topics. Not that children sometimes don't have heavy stuff, but it's a. It's a different kind of thing. How has that transition been now that you're. Now that you're almost at BFG Financial Advisors for as long as you were in teaching? Not quite.
Hannah Dennis [:
Yeah.
Eric Brotman [:
How has that transition been? What's the huge difference there?
Hannah Dennis [:
I think the biggest difference is kind of. You kind of go on from an island by yourself to a team, and it's kind of different when you're working with a group of people and in collaborating with. With other people rather than when you're in the classroom, you kind of. You're doing what you're doing and you make every decision and, you know, your decisions drive how you do. And it's kind of very different than working in a collaborative approach where, you know, your team helps hold you accountable and they come up with new ideas and try this. And so, I mean, the past pretty much two years has been me just trying to soak everything in from everybody else and learn as much as I can. So it's been. Been really good.
Eric Brotman [:
So. So what you're saying is you used to Be fully in charge. And now. Now it's collaborative.
Hannah Dennis [:
Well, now I'm fully in charge of you, but.
Eric Brotman [:
Oh, God.
Hannah Dennis [:
Soaking in everything I can for the.
Eric Brotman [:
Rest of the day. For anyone who knows me well enough to know that that is an impossible task. That is an impossible task. So. So you obviously have a long, storied background in marketing. Did lots of. Did lots of studying in that regard. You've been in marketing 25, 30 years.
Eric Brotman [:
No marketing for 20.
Hannah Dennis [:
No. Marketing was kind of dropped into my lap when I found this job, and Eric had the. He had just taken a year off the podcast, and we were gearing up to get ready for season six, and I was like, I want to help. And so I came from, you know, teaching, where data drives all your decision making. And, you know, you're. You're constantly collecting data and figuring out how to use that data to drive your decisions throughout your year. And so I kind of took that piece of teaching and brought it into the marketing space because I noticed as soon as I kind of started working with the marketing team and kind of learning what was going on, that there wasn't really tracking of data. Like, we didn't know what episodes were doing well, what.
Hannah Dennis [:
What marketing initiatives were doing really well. So that was the. The piece I kind of brought in from my teaching background was just like, let's figure out what's going on and lean into what's working.
Eric Brotman [:
Do we know what's working now?
Hannah Dennis [:
I do. I think we know what's working now. I think the webinars. The webinars work really well. People love them. I think there's some podcast episodes that are just gems that really. People have been really enjoying, and I think leaning into that has been really helping drive our marketing initiatives.
Eric Brotman [:
So there's no more difficult job here, I don't think, than yours. And I say that respectfully and not tongue in cheek at all. I mean, in the financial advisor space, there's 10 advisors who can all work together. There's four client relations people. There's. There's an investment committee. There's. There's people who work together, and marketing is sort of you and a lot of vendors, which means wrangling and herding cats as well.
Eric Brotman [:
It also means that every. Every matter, whether it's. Whether it's with media, whether it's traditional media, whether it's podcasting, whether it's recording, you have crazy amount of deadlines and. And things that have to happen exactly at the minute, and that's got to be stressful. Yeah. How are You. How are you managing that?
Hannah Dennis [:
So it's been a journey, I think. I mean, for anybody starting something new, I think the most important thing is to just relax and learn. I spent pretty much my first entire year just learning about what we were already doing and then kind of taking my time but, like, figuring out what exactly do we need for the best success. So I noticed that in my brain, kind of the way it works. When I was keeping all this data, it was in spreadsheets, and it was just a mess. Like, I. It was really hard to kind of figure out. And everyone was telling me, like, this is a mess.
Hannah Dennis [:
No one wants to look at it. And I was like, but this is the only way I know how. So just calming down and finding little areas where you can improve, that's really important. And so I. I kind of came up with a plan, and I adjusted as needed. And, I mean, I've. I've been really working with our operations manager, Coral. She's the most organized person in the world, and she has been helping me kind of learn how to be someone who can say, oh, this is something I'll need for the future.
Hannah Dennis [:
And it just becomes second nature. So the biggest challenge for me was just to just calm down and, you know, slowly implement things that will help in the future. Don't try to take on too much at once. Kind of taking on a little at a time. Because I was so ambitious at the beginning, I wanted to do everything, and I couldn't. Like, there's too much going on. I have to learn too much. There was a lot of things that needed to happen before I was ready to kind of take on more.
Hannah Dennis [:
I think I'm now at that point, but, yeah, I think just slowing down, you know, trusting the process and finding where you can become more efficient is the best place to start.
Eric Brotman [:
So when we. When we started doing Diary of a Financial Advisor, we started with our financial advisors, but then, you know, moved on to other folks who are within our. Our stratosphere and within our. Our ecosystem. Here at bfg, I imagine that doing diary episodes is so much fun that there's a line around the building. Everyone wants to be next. Is that a fair statement? Like, people can't wait to sit in that seat?
Hannah Dennis [:
I want to say yes so badly, but some are more enthusiastic than others at the office.
Eric Brotman [:
Okay.
Hannah Dennis [:
And I'm known as, like, the one that goes around saying, do you want to have an episode? And some advisors are ready to go, and they're so passionate and excited. And some it's like Pulling teeth. It's so, it's scary being up here. Like it's only my second time. It's, it's nerve wracking.
Eric Brotman [:
Well, and, and what did I tell you after the first time that I'm.
Hannah Dennis [:
Going to be doing it again?
Eric Brotman [:
I said, well, not only that, I said someday we're going to co host something because you're a natural at this. It is, it is a little bit nerve wracking to have cameras in your face and lights in your face and all those kinds of things. And, and don't worry to know that anything you say can and will be shared on YouTube for the rest of time. What, what, what could be wrong with that? So we're starting to innovate for 2026. We're making some pretty exciting changes. The podcast is getting a bit of a, of a refresher, which I'm excited to do Season seven. One of the things that, that we're looking forward to, I think, is that our guests are going to be even more relational and more story driven and maybe a little less on the expert front and on the information front, but more on the tell us your money story. Like what, what is your relationship with money? Excited about that.
Eric Brotman [:
And Diary is getting a complete overhaul. Where our Diary segments are going to be moving to the BFG University site and they will be run as webinars so that there's the possibility of interaction, so there's the possibility of having these released much sooner so they can be timely. And, and so what we're hoping is that it'll wind up being a little bit more like a current event. Here's what's going on and I'm excited about that because, because a lot of times when you record podcasts, you record them so far in advance that it's difficult to. You don't know what's going to happen in the markets, in the economy, in the world, in your hometown, in any of those things over the next couple of weeks. And so I think we're about to do something really edgy and exciting.
Hannah Dennis [:
Yeah. And I'm excited for, I think since they're going to be a little bit more timely and they're going to be recorded, you know, the week they're going to come, going to come out. I think it's going to be exciting for our audience to be a little bit more interactive and talk to us about what they want to see and, you know, comment on what they're thinking about the video and what they'd like to see in the future. So I think that's a good opportunity for that as well.
Eric Brotman [:
So we definitely want people to contact you. Yes. When there are ideas. If you all have ideas about guests we could host or about. Or about topics we could tackle or just about whether Hannah should wear her hair in the front or in the back, which was an issue when we first got started today. Figuring out the hair. I, I wore mine this way because I thought this was the right thing to do and I really don't have a lot of choice. So.
Eric Brotman [:
So you've got now not only the podcast and the webinars and some of the webinars. My gosh. Hannah went from being, she went from being brand new at this to being able to put together these extraordinary PowerPoints and, and which are, which have been fun. The one we just did recently was on. Was Halloween time and it was on estate planning doesn't have to be scary. And we told some horror stories with an attorney down in D.C. area. It was so much fun and we had so many people signed up and interested in it and got a wonderful feedback afterwards.
Eric Brotman [:
So I would say you're just getting started.
Hannah Dennis [:
I think so too.
Eric Brotman [:
Now, a couple things that I think we should share with our audience. One is that BFG holds an annual summit and the annual planning summit that we hold for Our team started 23 years ago when I had launched the company. It started as a lunch meeting at a macaroni grill and now it's basically a multi day conference that we have and people look forward to that. And the closing event always involves renting out a karaoke bar. Now at this karaoke bar, which we do have to ourselves, fortunately, we, we sort of have a no video rule because, you know, people who are going to sing sometimes get very uncomfortable. Hannah's the exception to the rule because you can actually sing. I mean really sing.
Hannah Dennis [:
I, I do like to sing.
Eric Brotman [:
So I'm gonna put you on the spot since not singing. No, no, no, you don't have to sing on the podcast. But. But I'm going to put you on the spot because one of the things we talked about was a lot of people like to do a duet with me, which I always have a good time with, you know, and it, and it. You and I are actually going to rehearse, right? This is going to happen.
Hannah Dennis [:
We got the song picks, we got the plan, we're rehearsing.
Eric Brotman [:
So once that happens, I would like to share that with our audience. I think it's the right thing to do. I can't promise it'll be good. No one's going to discover us. We're not going to get a recording contract. But I think that would be fun. I think.
Hannah Dennis [:
All right. If I get 5 to post the video of us singing together, I will, I will post it. I need five comments, though.
Eric Brotman [:
You're, you heard it here first. If you're watching this on YouTube, we need 5 comments to Hannah and she will post us doing a duet at the summit. The summit takes place in early December.
Hannah Dennis [:
We're not messing around either. We're taking it seriously. So it's gonna be good.
Eric Brotman [:
I mean, I, we are, we are not exactly Sunny and Cher or Garth and Trisha or anything like that, but we're gonna do our best. So anything else that you want to share with, with our audience about what's coming in the, in the new year?
Hannah Dennis [:
Well, I think, I just think that we're really kind of honing in on what we want to put out as a company and we're really refining and elevating our content. And I think you should really look out for what we put out because it's going to be really good.
Eric Brotman [:
So you heard it here first. Thank you for doing this. Thank you. I love when you're on the show, we are going to co host something at some point. All right. I'd like to thank everybody for listening and watching today. If you enjoy our show, please subscribe so we can continue to be a part of your journey to financial freedom. We'll be back next week with another engaging guest on Don't Retire, Graduate.
Eric Brotman [:
And in two weeks with our next entry in the Diary of a Financial Advisor. And Remember, starting in January 2026, Diary of a Financial Advisor will be joining BFG University. We'll be bringing new episodes every other Thursday with current events in the economy and markets in the world world. All designed to be timely, entertaining and maybe a little informative. You can go to bfguniversity.com for more information. And for now, this is your host, Eric Brotman reminding you don't retire graduate securities offered through Kestra Investment Services llc. Kestra is member finra, SIPC Investment advisory services offered through Kestra Advisory Services Services, llc. Kestra as an affiliate of Kestra is Kestra is or Kestra as are not affiliated with Brotman Financial or any other entity discussed.
