Financial advisor Mary Lyons is recognized as being part of the top 1 percent nationwide in her industry, and her popular podcast, The BIG Wealth Podcast, recently ranked in Apple’s top 100 charts. Mary’s success as a financial advisor led her to launch Benchmark Income Group™ in 2020. Despite opening during the height of the pandemic, the company has thrived, exceeding $1 million in revenue during the first seven months. Mary teaches her ideas and methods at national conferences, consults with the industry’s best, and trains advisors in top firms across the United States.

Can you tell our readers about your background?

I've been a financial advisor for over 16 years. I work in a predominantly male industry, where the average financial advisor is a 51-year-old white man. I am much younger than that and female! I started work in a traditional environment, where I was frequently the only woman, or one of two women, in the company that I was working for. About two years ago, I launched my own company. Our company is 94 percent women, so we look exactly the opposite of the rest of the industry.

What inspired you to start your business?

What inspired me to start my business, I think, like any entrepreneur, is that I saw the way things were being done was inefficient and ineffective, and I felt motivated to do it better. I think that most of the country is pursuing financial advice that's designed to keep them from being broke but isn't designed to make them truly wealthy. I want people to be truly wealthy. Because if you have capital, you have freedom to spend your time doing whatever you want, and that means that you have the ability to pursue your purpose, as opposed to just working a job that you don't really love. I really want people to have the freedom to live a life that they're excited about every day, as opposed to working a job they don't like, saving up money, knowing their lifestyle is going to be less than what they've been living, and retiring when they’re old enough that they may not really be able to enjoy it. To me, there's nothing exciting about that. What really inspired me to do this is that I think there are alternatives that allow people to retire earlier, with more predictability in terms of their income, and allow them to do more things that they truly enjoy along the way.

Where is your business based?

We’re based in Dallas, Texas, but we do business all over the country.

How did you start your business? What were the first steps you took?

I think this was a long time coming. I have been an advisor for a long time. I was in management with the company I worked with before and then moved into ownership, and then ended up selling that business and continuing to work in the industry. At some point, I just really wanted to have the freedom to build a company the way I felt that it should be built, to focus on putting people before profit and knowing that if we make sound choices with our clients, and really help them live a better life, that we get that back in certificates of appreciation. That's how we get paid. We make people happy. We help people have a better life. And then we all benefit from that. There is a Zig Ziglar quote I love: “You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want.” I just hit a point where I felt morally compelled to launch a company that did financial planning in a different way that was focused on giving people the freedom to live whatever life they want, as opposed to a conventional life.

A conventional life requires a conventional financial plan. But if you want a life that's unconventional, your finances need to be unconventional as well. You have to look at the world in a different way. Most entrepreneurs see a need then jump in to fill it, and I think that's exactly what we've done. We spent a couple of months really figuring out who our clients are, what they look like, and building a brand around that. Then we made sure that from a legal and tax perspective, we had all our T's crossed, and our I’s dotted, and then we jumped into it. Even though our company technically is a startup, the primary advisors in our company have been doing this for more than 30 years combined. There's a lot of experience both in mentorship, management, ownership, and financial practice.

In our first year, we brought in more than 100 clients, and we managed over 100 million in assets.

I think that the reason launched the company is because when you look at most financial plans, they're inefficient. On average, we find that simply by changing the distribution strategies for income, even if nothing changes about rate of return, with no changes to cash flow, we can potentially increase what our clients can spend. That ranges anywhere from 30 to 70 percent more income because we're taking a holistic approach to finances. We look at insurance and investments. When the insurance component is structured properly and in the correct ratios, it actually changes what people can spend when they retire because it either acts as a buffer for investment volatility or as a permission slip to spend the other assets more aggressively. First, we want to focus on giving our clients an easy button. Then for people who want to lean into the creation of income streams, we help them with the analysis and the structure of the acquisition of income-producing assets. This can frequently supercharge the whole plan and allows for people to retire at much earlier ages or with more income potential than they were going to have. We find that our clients are fanatical about the work that we're doing because they see it changing their lives in very dramatic ways.

What has been the most effective way of raising awareness for your business?

Right now, I think that the people who are the loudest are often perceived to be the most credible, so we have spent a lot of time focusing on helping people have the paradigm shift from doing things the conventional way to looking at different, better, newer ways that they can accomplish the same goals and then surpass them. Specifically, I think social media has been the best thing that we have done because it gives people the opportunity to get to know who we are at a human level, and it allows them to develop a sense of perceived intimacy before they ever have the first conversation with us. That creates a space of safety so that people feel comfortable reaching out to talk about their money, which sometimes is exciting, but sometimes is scary. When they feel like they can talk to us, it opens the conversation in a very different way. Social media has really allowed us to make that intimate connection with our potential clients.

What have been your biggest challenges and how did you overcome them?

Time management, and I'm still working on it!

How do you stay focused?

The way I stay focused is attachment to purpose. What am I really trying to do? I'm trying to change the trajectory of my clients’ lives. I really want them to have better and more exciting lives, better relationships with their kids, with their family, with their spouses, and to be excited about the things they're doing. I want them to feel like they have a permission slip to live an exciting life. Staying tied into that purpose and knowing how we're impacting people's lives is what gets me up every day. The money's nice, but it's really the impact that drives me through the times where the work is hard.

How do you differentiate your business from the competition?

Most of the competition is just busy gathering assets and taking fees for the management of those assets. They just have conversations about “Here's a rate of return. Here's a better rate of return,” and people are making the decision to work with them out of the hope of a different outcome. We actually take the time to really get to know our clients, to understand what their dreams are, to understand what they really want from their lives, and then we help them understand that money is just a tool that is meant to help them build a life that they're excited about. We are changing the wealth paradigm. We are moving away from focusing on net worth and an eventual retirement toward having a better life today, knowing that we've got income taken care of for the future, and that makes a huge difference in the quality of life that people are living. The money is just the means to the end.

What has been your most effective marketing strategy to grow your business?

I would come back to social media — social media and client referrals. For me, it's been about making sure that we do our business so well that our clients tell all their friends and family about us. Then, we have a presence on social media so that when that happens, those referrals can validate us and get to know us before they ever come in.

What's your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?

Don't do it for the money. If you're doing it for the money, it's really hard to keep going. Do it for the purpose. Make sure that you are really bought into the purpose because it's a lot of work being an entrepreneur. Sometimes I think people believe it's going to be easier than working a nine-to-five job, and I would say it's not at all. It's actually harder because you don't have the same boundaries. If you are tied into the personal purpose of what you're doing, you'll be successful. If you're just doing it for the money, the likelihood of you actually achieving success is pretty low.

What's your favorite app, blog, and book? Why?

My favorite app is WHOOP. It analyzes everything from sleep to athletic performance and has completely changed my habits so that I have better recoveries overnight and more energy on a daily basis to devote to the things that are important to me.

My favorite book, hands down, is Resilience by Eric Greitens because every page has a life lesson on it that can make your life better.

What's your favorite business tool or resource? Why?

Other humans are 100 percent my favorite business resource. I have a limited skill set, as we all do, so leaning on other people and finding people that have skill sets that I don't is absolutely key.

Who is your business role model? Why?

I would say it's probably Oprah. That woman has overcome so much, and she has leaned into her power and managed to still be approachable to the common person. To be that powerful and to still feel approachable is huge. To overcome the things that she's overcome in her lifetime, between her experiences as a child, prejudices, and everything else, she is an amazing human to be able to do as much as she has.

How do you balance work and life?

I don't think there's such a thing as work-life balance. I think it's more about work-life fit. You just do what you need to do. If you love what you're doing at work, you lean into that. If you love what you're doing at home, you lean into that. You just find a way to make it all fit. If there are things that take you away from your work or your life that aren't productive, hire someone else to do those things. I work really hard and have a limited amount of time with my kids during evenings and weekends. I don't want to do chores during that time, so I’ve built my life in a way that someone else handles cooking, cleaning, and maintenance, so that my time with my kids is really about them, and my time with my spouse is really about him. Hiring out for the things that aren't productive makes it a lot easier to get everything sandwiched in there.

What’s your favorite way to decompress?

I like painting. It gets me into a state of flow and uses a totally different part of my brain. I also really like reading. It doesn't matter if it's fiction or nonfiction; just being able to escape for a little while and imagine the world differently is very helpful. I learn empathy from fiction and usable skills from nonfiction.

What do you have planned for the next six months?

I'm writing a book and building a mastermind group. I think Knowledge without action isn’t worth much. I am focused on building a space for people to learn, collaborate, and implement change.

How can our readers connect with you?

Instagram: @thewealthwoman | @benchmarkincome

Facebook: @thewealthwoman | @benchmarkincome

LinkedIn: @TheWealthWoman | @benchmarkincome

Website: www.wealthwoman.com | www.benchmarkincome.com

Podcast: The BIG Wealth Podcast (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-big-wealth-podcast/id1551046548)

Mary Lyons is a Registered Representative and Investment Advisor Representative of and offers securities through OneAmerica Securities, Inc., a Registered Investment Advisor, Member FINRA, SIPC. Benchmark Income Group and Wealth Woman, Inc. are not affiliates of OneAmerica Securities and are not broker-dealers or Registered Investment Advisors.

Provided content is for overview and informational purposes only and is not intended and should not be relied upon as individualized tax, legal, fiduciary, or investment advice. Investing involves risk which includes potential loss of principal.