Financial Advisor Turned Exit Planner Pam Hopman Shares Valuable Lessons Learned in Business

After 20 years as a successful financial advisor with companies in Illinois, Wisconsin, and now Tucson, Pam Hopmanof The Hopman Group, LLC is branching out into exit planning. With her latest venture, B.I.C. Consulting, Hopman is helping other entrepreneurs grow their businesses and then exit them in the best way possible. 

In order to transition into her new role, Hopman earned the designation of Certified Exit Planning Advisor from the Exit Planning Institute. The “B.I.C.” in the company’s name stands for “Best in Class,” as she seeks to make each client the best in its class, thus earning a higher valuation and price paid upon exit.

In addition to her hands-on work with clients each day, Hopman is also an Amazon best-selling author and has created an online video course. Hopman is well-known for her efforts in educating both women and men on how to manage their money and invest wisely to achieve their future goals. 

Humble in spite of her decades of success, Hopman is not afraid to talk about mistakes she has made along the way. From failing to scale to hiring coworkers she couldn’t align with and more, Hopman is willing to share the missteps she’s made – as an entrepreneur looking out for other entrepreneurs, she’s hoping others can learn from her errors and avoid the same pitfalls.

Burnout

“I had a thriving financial services practice in Illinois, and I had an office in Wisconsin as well,” Hopman recalls. “I was just trying to do it all. I wasn’t scaling the business well at all. It was too much. My hands were in too many different pots and I was trying to split my time between the two offices. I didn’t have anybody that could be in the other office full-time. It took too much out of me. And then I was like, well, you know, maybe I just don’t want to do this.”

Ultimately, doing too much led Hopman to take a position with an insurance marketing organization out of Tampa, Florida. For the first year, she enjoyed traveling the country and training people; but in the second year, things changed, leading to another mistake.

Not Aligning with Coworkers

“The second year really became a nightmare,” Hopman explains. “Working with that company, things changed. They brought on some people that I didn’t get along with for professional reasons, and I found myself looking at leaving that company and I did. That job taught me a lot about using personality assessments to not just pick people for the job, but to actually work with people within the job, based on the way they process information.”

This realization eventually helped Hopman create her proprietary financial behavior analysis called The Money Profile. 

Prioritizing Gross Sales Over Net Sales

“The first time I had a business, I spent a lot of money on marketing,” Hopman says. “I made a lot of money but I didn’t keep very much of it. I was focused on sales but not on costs. Once I switched that mindset, I was able to be more profitable. Let’s face it, net income is more important than gross income.”

This lesson has followed Hopman to her current businesses, where she continues to apply it today.

Learn From Your Mistakes

Mistakes that can be learned from aren’t such terrible experiences in the long run. As Hopman has said of her own blunders, “Nobody goes out to make a mistake. Although mistakes often teach us so much more than we ever thought they could.”

In the case of failing to scale her business, she has now learned and applied scaling to The Hopman Group. “I have scaled my business. Now, I have an assistant that’s been with me for almost 11 years. We also have another person that works in the office, and then I have two associates that I’ve trained. I’d like to bring on a third. So I’ve actually gone from being a solopreneur all the way into somewhat of an enterprise at this point.”

Looking forward, Hopman is planning to diversify herself even further, applying her knowledge in as many ways as possible. In addition to working with clients directly through B.I.C. Consulting, she is also designing an exit planning mastermind and mentoring program. 

With so much learned along the way, Pam Hopman is a force to be reckoned with. With plans for B.I.C. Consulting to succeed on par with The Hopman Group, we can count on big things ahead for our favorite financial advisor.