Guest Feature: Diana Yáñez with All The Colors

Nikita: 0:00

Hey, third decade community. I’m your host, Nikita Wolff, and today I am joined by Diana Yanez, the founder of All the Colors, where she works as money coach to financially empower others. All the colors was founded with the mission of helping people own their power with money, and I feel so lucky to be recording with her today. Thank you for joining me, Deanna .

Diana: 0:19

It’s a pleasure to be here. Nikita,

Nikita: 0:40

I would love if you would start us off today by just sharing some about your background and what brought you here.

Diana: 0:46

So I am a certified financial planner, registered life planner, and I took Compassionate inquiry training. So that’s all of my background. For anyone who doesn’t know what A CFP is , um, to get that certification, you have to go through schooling about two years. You have to take an exam and you have to work under someone else for two to three years, depending on how you do it. You have to work into another CFP as an apprenticeship model. So it’s a really rigorous , um, certification. As of right now, there’s about 80,000 CFPs in the us . 20% are women, and one and a half percent are Latino. So I’m like one of 600. Oh wow. Latino CFPs. There’s not a lot of us. Wow.

Nikita: 1:31

Yeah,

Diana: 1:32

And while I was in that field, I also received training to be a registered life planner, which is , uh, it’s like the equivalent of a life coach for financial planners. And CFPs traditionally serve the top four to 6% of wealth holders, which is what led me to eventually decide to leave my previous firm. I was working with , um, high net worth individuals, and I love to start all the colors. All the colors is focused on money coaching as opposed to the more technical parts of CFP work, like estate planning and insurance. I cover that with my clients at all the colors, but the, the complexity of it is usually a lot lower, and I spend a lot of time focusing on cash flow .

Nikita: 2:16

Yeah. I absolutely understand the desire to be working with people who maybe are working to build up their net worth rather than those that are just looking to preserve really high networks. Um, I, I find myself at a similar crossroads where it’s like, where do I really wanna be? Who do I want to be serving? If I were to work in financial planning down the road? And I love the audience we work with at third decade, it sounds like we have quite a bit of overlap actually in who we’re aiming to serve. But yeah, I think it just, it brings a lot of meaning to your work if you know that you’re changing people’s lives, who would otherwise not maybe have access to that education or mentorship.

Diana: 2:55

That was a big part of that, increasing access to comprehensive financial planning. And there’s something also as for anyone who’s listening, who’s an entrepreneur, you have to know who you are. And the traditional CFP model, you serve maybe 50 to a hundred households your entire working life. Like that’s the goal. You serve a very few, a very select number of people. My personality is that I love working with a lot of people. I love variety. So even at some level, like very personally, it wasn’t a match a hundred percent. Now with all the colors, I usually work with people three to six sessions, which means that I could work with many, many, many people over my career. And I come in, I help them create foundations and have accountability as they’re creating those foundations. And then they, they go on and they’ve lived their lives. Sometimes they come back when they have other decisions that they’re making. It’s just, it’s a model that fits me better. So again, as an entrepreneur, it’s like you just have to figure out what works for you and lean into your strengths. Yeah,

Nikita: 4:04

Definitely. That actually, I think, segues nicely into the first question I had. I wanted to ask, what prompted your own decision to actually branch out into doing your own business entirely?

Diana: 4:15

It was a couple of different things. It , some of it was what I just mentioned , um, wanting to serve more people, just have a wider variety of, of problems that I was working on that I was supporting people with. Um, also I started all the colors as a side hustle, kind of like coaching friends and family during the pandemic. And I, it eventually came to a point where I was either going to stay in my previous career as a CFP to high net worth individuals, or I had to go and follow the stream that I have of all the colors. And initially the main motivation for me was group coaching, which is something I’ve done a couple of times and I will eventually get back to, but I’m not doing right now. The fastest way to change behaviors is to join a group of people who are doing the thing that you wanna do. This is backed by research. Like any habit research, you can find it in , uh, atomic Habits by James Clear or the Power of Habit by Charles de . And, and I wanted to, to create spaces where people could see, could be supported as they were creating these changes. And I knew I couldn’t do that at my last firm. I haven’t figured out how to do group coaching yet, but it’s been a really, I’m really glad that I came out and I started to do it. Another part of the motivation was , um, as I mentioned at the beginning, I’m one of 600 Latina CFPs , uh, the racial wealth gap, the racial disparity, it, it was becoming very, again, personally difficult to just be with the status quo. I remember I knew intellectually that the majority of my clients were gonna be white, but it wasn’t until I had been at my job for two weeks that I knew in my body Mm . That the majority of my clients were white. And that a lot of the way that I thought the way that I believed was gonna have to always stay at the door when I went into work. And you can call me a millennial or whatever, but like, I wanna have integrity. I wanna be able to live in my values and completely agree. And I also have the, sometimes I think it’s like the privilege of choice, but it’s also the responsibility of choice.

Nikita: 6:18

I love the way of putting that. What personal values did you feel like you had to leave at the door working in that type of environment?

Diana: 6:26

Any critique of the system Yeah. Was not welcome. Right. So definitely yes, charitable giving that we were not talking about , um, repairing. We were not talking about reparations. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> . Like that was never something that was gonna be allowed in. I remember one of the, at towards the end of my stint at my previous firm, there was a couple we were working with, and they had, they owned an apartment and it was a studio. The one of the partners , uh, was an artist. So it was their studio on the first floor. There was a parking spot for them. And then upstairs there was an apartment and they’d been renting out the apartment, but they were at a point where like a thousand dollars a month of income was not meaningful to them.

Nikita: 7:17

That’d be a nice spot to be in life. <laugh>.

Diana: 7:19

Yeah. It wasn’t meaningful. And they were just like, we don’t really need the money. It’s a hassle. Every time people come in and go, tenants always have questions. We’re just like, we don’t need the headache. And after the, I , I remember thinking like, there’s a housing shortage in that part of town. What about the responsibilities to the community? Is that part of the conversation at all? And I talked about it with my coworker afterwards, and my coworker just kind of skipped around it. And this was a coworker who was very progressive, who would like go out and get the vote, and they just skipped around it. And I just thought, like, I can’t, I can’t keep doing this. I don’t wanna work with people where I, where I’m not given permission to go this deeply into the subject.

Nikita: 8:07

Yeah. How do your personal beliefs now drive the work that you do today?

Diana: 8:13

I lead with them . It’s all over my website. I, when I started working , um, a lot of the people that came to me were women of color entrepreneurs. That’s not initially who I set out to serve. And yet, when you become an entrepreneur, all of your money questions are right there in front of you. Um, you have to do the billing, you have to set the pricing, you have to, you have to figure out how to pay yourself, like how to have savings and like how to , how to live with very , um, disparate income constraints. And, and for women we’re often not like invited into the conversation. Um, even just 50 years ago, women weren’t allowed to have credit in their own name. So there’s already that.

Nikita: 8:55

It’s wild to think how recently that was, because, you know, it extends beyond my lifetime. It’s, it’s hard to conceptualize. 50 years is really not that long ago.

Diana: 9:05

Mm-Hmm . No, no, no, no. My mom was around, my grandmother was around, like, they, they , the way that they could do their life was so much more limited without access to credit. And then as people of color , um, especially for the black community, there’s a book called The Color of Money by MRSA barda , and she talks about the very real systemic choices that created and maintain the racial wealth divide.

Nikita: 9:33

Oh wow. I have to look into that. Did you wanna talk at all? You’re welcome to, or you don’t have to, but I know you had mentioned your faith on this and if, if that’s something that you would enjoy, maybe sharing a little bit about how that plays into it as well. Yeah . Happy to do that.

Diana: 9:48

Yeah, I can do that. So I am , uh, when I moved to Philadelphia five years ago, I randomly went to a Quaker meeting and realized how much I missed. Community. And Quakers are very much about , um, faith in action. So, and they’re very focused on social justice. One of the things that I’m really proud about for Quakers is like their , in their involvement in Underground Railroad and like helping people from the south, enslaved people from the south come to the north and, and be and find freedom. And they’re always, they’re always taking action. And they have a very long sense of time. They let things season there . There’s like this patience in them . And that faith helped me , um, helped me become more of an activist because I think before, without, without the founding, without of them, without the foundation that they provide, it was hard for me to be an activist or to voice my values because I, i , it felt too, like it was a lost cause. Like there was nothing that could be done. And through their example and their patience, honestly , their perseverance, it had helped me be stronger and , and taking my faith into action.

Nikita: 11:06

Yeah. I’m sure that that’s really, really impactful. Having a community of people where you don’t feel like you’re alone in , you know, questioning the injustices in the world. Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> and kind of actively fighting against that. So that’s really cool. Thank you for sharing that. So how can those who work currently as financial educators and wealth planners better serve people of color and particularly women of color? If you were speaking to a another financial professional, what would your call to action be? I guess

Diana: 11:40

I would say it’s always whenever, I mean, whenever somebody talks to me about their money, regardless of who they are, we have to remember that talking about money is so taboo, right? People are much more open about anything but their income and their, their , so they’re like, well, standing. And for women, we often will just downplay our knowledge or we don’t know that we know, right? We think we should know a lot more. So if you’re working, when you’re working with women, remind them that they know. Like I’m always telling them like, you know how to do all of this. You did all of this, you did do it. That reminder that that like reflecting back their empowerment for people of color asks them about their family’s experiences. Because maybe if they’re , if they’re like as an adult right now, they may not say like, oh, that didn’t really happen to me. But ask them about their parents, their grandparents. I know my grandmother had a really bad experience with insurance where she just didn’t understand what she was buying and what she had understood. And what actually happened was very different. So then without meaning to the rest of us are afraid of insurance,

Nikita: 12:50

Was it a whole life insurance policy?

Diana: 12:53

It was a whole life policy. Yeah.

Nikita: 12:55

That’s the story. 99% of the time. That is so painful.

Diana: 12:58

Yeah .

Nikita: 12:58

Wow.

Diana: 12:59

And for her, it was like, the language was part of it, and it was a friend of a friend, so she didn’t wanna like, so she paid all this money and then when she was expecting to have a return for it, it was gone. And, and that happens for not just people of color, but it’s much more prevalent.

Nikita: 13:17

Oh yeah. Those policies are meant to, you know, be vague and kind of misleading. Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> . Yeah . They’re very, and they’re almost always sold to you by somebody who knows you. So you assume you can trust them and that , you know , they wouldn’t gimme something that wasn’t a good investment of my money. But I feel like every person I’ve run into who bought a whole life policy was sold it by a friend who was just trying to make a living. Mm-Hmm . <affirmative>

Diana: 13:41

When working with people of color, I would say for working with women, like remind them of how much they do know and slow things down so that they’re , they feel confident along the lines , uh, as they’re learning. Women are often much more focused on like, wanting to understand it before they decide anything. So just like help them along that route. And for people of color ask like, what are experiences that you’ve brought so that it’s not unconscious. The more conscious we are of our money patterns, of our money traumas, the easier it is to change them . Yeah,

Nikita: 14:15

Definitely. So could you kind of describe how the work that you do with your clients at all the colors looks?

Diana: 14:23

I do both private coaching and workshops for the private coaching. I meet with people three to six times because at least three sessions is what’s needed to really create a foundation. And sometimes we need more, we need more accountability. Sometimes it’ll be like we meet the every other week for the first three to create the cash flow or whatever changes are needed. And then we meet once a month as we’re seeing what’s happening. Yeah. Just to , to make sure that people are experimenting their way into a system that works. And I developed a, a workbook, it’s like a simple Google Sheets workbook that goes over cashflow. It talks about , um, one thing that I love talking about is the five vital signs of your money. Have you heard of that?

Nikita: 15:05

I think, was that one of the things that came through in one of your intro emails?

Diana: 15:09

It could have been. It could

Nikita: 15:10

Have been. I was reading through those and I would love if you elaborated on it for the audience.

Diana: 15:15

And that’s from Sarah Newcombs. She’s a , um, I think she’s a financial behaviorist. She’s like, she’s got her PhD in financial behavior changes and she the five vitals. And it’s just like when you go to the doctor and they ask like your weight, your blood pressure, those kind of things. The five vital signs are what’s your financial anxiety level like from one being no anxiety to 10 being unbearable, anxiety, what’s your net worth? Right? All your, the things that you have and the things that you owe, assets and liabilities. What is your months of safety? How much cash do you have compared to what your monthly expenses are? What’s your debt to income ratio? And then the last one is your financial independence quotient. And that one is how much of your expenses could be replaced with passive income? So this is, again, if you’re looking at retirement, it could be social security income. If you have a business, how much income is it producing? So these five vital signs for people to even do them the first time can be hard. It can be emotionally difficult to be like, oh wow, because of my student loans, this is where my net worth is. Yeah.

Nikita: 16:21

Or the debt to income ratio could be really rough in your twenties or thirties. Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> . Yeah.

Diana: 16:28

But knowing what those numbers are and what a goal is or how to start moving in that direction can be really helpful.

Nikita: 16:36

Yeah. In the participants of our programs experience, they have to go through, like we call it their discovery meeting as their first financial mentor meeting. They go through a discovery meeting, preparatory process where they have to go through and like submit, you know , everything from their income and expenses to , um, connecting their account balance info to gather net worth and such. And every semester we have students <laugh> whose feedback at the end is one of the questions we ask is, what was your least favorite part of the program? What was your most favorite part of the program? A lot of them put that it was both their least and their favorite because it was so painful to go through and actually see the reality of the numbers. But it also was the thing they had been avoiding. And it was keeping them from having a clear picture of what their situation was and kind of how to manage it moving forward. And yeah, to your point, it’s, it’s um , not always a great feeling, but it is so important to know. So you kind of know where your baseline is when you start financial planning.

Diana: 17:39

It’s so important. And that’s, that’s why people don’t do it ’cause it’s so scary. And that’s why accountability either through a mentorship program, like what your program does or hiring a money coach. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>

Nikita: 17:53

Just having somebody else sometimes , uh, that extrinsic motivation can be helpful if you’re having a hard time with it.

Diana: 18:00

Yeah. And, and sometimes having like a money mentor, right? So you’re, you’re talking about a mentor. But one of the other things that I found in Sarah Newcombs research was when we compare ourselves financially with other people, we usually end up behind, right? We’re ing we’re like , oh , they’re doing because , ’cause we compare ourselves to people who are further ahead. And it could be like the 1% that we see on social media, it could be whoever it is that we’re what is most helpful . It is helpful though to compare yourself with people in who are further along the path that you wanna take,

Nikita: 18:33

But still like a realistic person to be comparing yourself to not the 1% of social media influencers <laugh>

Diana: 18:40

Yes, yes, yes, yes. And somebody who hopefully maybe you can talk to and ask them like, what steps did you take to get there? I remember I had a client who, her and her partner were in, in a lot of student loan debt and they were figuring out childcare ’cause they just had a new baby and , and things were like, their dad kept increasing is when they came to me. Right. And that’s like a really hard place to be. And I asked her who she knew that did money well and it was her mother-in-law.

Nikita: 19:12

Interesting.

Diana: 19:13

It was her mother-in-Law who had less education, whose income was lower, but who was really good at both managing it and not feeling deprived. So this client then started talking with her mother-in-Law about like, how did she do money? How did she figure it out? How did , what lessons did she learn ? And she had like , uh, so she, she had help as she was making changes.

Nikita: 19:36

That’s awesome. And

Diana: 19:38

He was also generous. Yeah . Like it was just like, how is she doing all of that? Yeah . Yeah .

Nikita: 19:43

That’s, I that’s such a good point. I I think that we have an idea in our minds of those that , um, know their financial stuff and knowing that there really is not just one type of person. Sometimes the people that you would expect have all of their finances and an order because maybe they have high income are some of the hottest messes of them all. <laugh>.

Diana: 20:04

Yes. Because that definitely happens where like your income increase increases and so do your expenses and sometimes your expenses increase faster than your income because there’s certain personal , like, now that I have this job, this is what I should look like. You know, those unquestioned assumptions.

Nikita: 20:19

Yeah.

Diana: 20:20

One of my favorite things to do is to bring workshops to existing communities. For example, any places that te that like are social justice motivated or that have a lot of entrepreneurs or people of color in their membership, I’ll come and teach the , the, I have a , a graphic called , um, your Money in Full Bloom . And you can see this on my website and it has on the , it’s like this big beautiful tree that’s in full bloom and on the bottom it has nourish soil. And what does that mean? It means understanding your own unconscious money stories, being able to have money, conversations. The branches themselves are the past, present and future of money. Past part is like what debt do you carry? What employment history do you have? Like what things have happened in the past that affect your current money situation. Your present is your, your income, how you’re earning money and your future will cover short-term, long-term , mid-term goals and also risk management, like worst case scenarios of would happen. So that’s insurance, that’s estate planning and those are very much like the technical parts of money. So I’ll cover what like what you need to have in place for those. And then the sun of it or what the tree is going towards, what your money in full bloom is, is also knowing that you have community around you as you’re making these changes. And sometimes because it’s, it can be very counter-cultural to, to steward our money or to to be vocal about it , um, or to also like bring it in line with our values. There’s sometimes people have very clear values but their investments don’t reflect it at all. Right. It’s bringing that all online and then also being clear on what it is that you’re working towards with money can make it much easier. It can create like motivation to stay on track to get to your goal.

Nikita: 22:15

Yeah. I couldn’t agree more. It’s a great point. I’m gonna go ahead and link your website in our show notes. So if any listeners are interested in connecting with you, they’ll have a way to reach you. And again, I really appreciate you being here with me today and I’ve enjoyed this conversation and um, thanks for sharing your time.

Diana: 22:35

Thank you Nikita.