Mana’s 5th Birthday!
Wow! We almost can’t believe that Mana turned 5 years old this month. What a monumental journey it has been with our team, our clients - this amazing family that we have built.
Earlier this week, we recorded a video where we reflected on all that we’ve learned over the past five years. In today’s blog, we’re excited to have another chance to celebrate and reflect on everything that has contributed to our business success. Today’s post is another annual share out of those thoughts and lessons.
Communication is key in partnerships
Running any business comes with major challenges and obstacles. Running a business with your best friend can add or detract from those difficulties. Here at Mana, we’re so proud of the fact that we face our disagreements and interpersonal debates head on, always leaning on external support when necessary. Of course, our deep friendship, trust and openness also helps us navigate unknowns smoothly and take advice. Mana is so much more to us than a contractual obligation or professional/monetary vehicle - it’s a manifestation of our partnership and shared goals to make personal finance a better industry, and we’re staying true and aligned to that mission.
We also have strong partnerships outside of Mana, with our husbands, children, friends and family. Stephanie and Cristina both feel lucky to have husbands who have chosen steady W2 jobs (in spite of both of their own creative, entrepreneurial spirits!), allowing us to grow Mana more confidently.
Rely on experts to make the business better
Although Stephanie’s natural intuition is to learn and know everything, Cristina is more naturally inclined to arrange and organize tasks so that they fall into the best hands at the right time. This balance has paid off big time for Mana. We have an incredible network of talented professionals to lean on in a variety of domains - and we love to lean on them! It makes us better planners when we can recognize our own limitations, as well as the strengths of others.
We are growing with intention
As we have matured as a company, one of the key strengths we’ve developed has been our ability to recognize which clients we can best serve. Of course, in our earlier years, we were necessarily less selective (our criteria was not well defined yet). But now, 5 years down the road, we have a keen sense of the situations we specialize in helping, and we can choose our clients as much as they can choose us. We know both what brings us joy, and also how we can add the most value. Overall, this makes planning with Mana a better experience for everyone.
We wrote about this last year too, but for real - when starting a business, take the amount of money you think you’ll need…and double it!
When we first launched Mana, a mentor told us that her advice for anyone starting a business was to take the amount we forecasted we needed in the first years of the business and to double it. We were young, naive, and overconfident. We scoffed at the prospect of needing double.
As the months wore on, we began wrapping our heads around just how much it would cost to keep a business running. We were a remote business and we saved a lot of money by not renting office space, but there were plenty of other things that we underestimated, including: our tech stack, costs of greater checks and balances (like compliance and bookkeeping as our business grew), and the cost of hiring full time employees.
Something we’ve further reflected on about this is that having limited cash flow early on really helped us learn how to say “no” to things that don’t serve us. Money is an amazing tool to help add things to your life, but remembering that it can also be used/saved to remove stress and bring simplicity is equally important.
If it’s not fun anymore, you have to make a change
Our final lesson to share is about keeping things interesting. Like any relationship, job, or pursuit in life, if you are not feeling fulfilled or happy, you have to recognize that quickly and make the necessary changes to improve your situation. Mana has, of course, not been an endless fountain of joy and laughs. But critically, each time that something was lacking, we have stepped up, named it, done the work and grown into a better place. We’re so proud of these tough reflection periods and the consistent development that comes out of them.
We hope that this post has shined a bit more light on the inner workings of Mana, and some of the things that brought us this far. We also hope that all of our readers and clients know how much we appreciate you. Our community is the heart of our business, and we’re so grateful to embark on another year in this journey together!
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Stephanie Bucko and Cristina Livadary are fee-only financial planners based in Los Angeles, California. Stephanie is the Chief Investment Officer and Cristina is the Chief Executive Officer at Mana Financial Life Design (FLD). Mana FLD provides comprehensive financial planning and investment management services to help clients grow and protect their wealth throughout life’s journey. Mana FLD specializes in advising ambitious professionals who seek financial knowledge and want to implement creative budgeting, savings, proactive planning and powerful investment strategies. As fee-only fiduciaries and independent financial advisors, Stephanie and Cristina never receive commission of any kind. Stephanie and Cristina are legally bound by their certifications to provide unbiased and trustworthy financial advice.