Clients who are keen to have Kim Gaxiola as their financial advisor better not have reservations about technology.
Gaxiola is the founder of San Jose, California-based TechGirl Financial, and serves as the network coordinator for Women in Technology International's Silicon Valley regional network.
Prospective clients should be quite fearless vis-a-vis technology and its use in financial planning because, as her firm's name clearly states, Gaxiola is all about technology. She moved to California from Illinois in 2004 with an eye to start a niche practice. Her husband suggested focusing her business on women in the tech industry — a market segment, Gaxiola said, that is small yet powerful.
TechGirl Financial's goal is to provide strong support for these women as they go through their lives and progress in their careers by empowering them financially.
"Not all my clients are women working in technology, but when I started in this area, I decided I was going to focus my time and effort on doing things in a tech-savvy and advanced way," she said. "That means I may happen to lose a couple of [prospects] along the way who are not up to that speed — and I understand that I may filter a lot of people out when they look at my website, when they learn how I do things — but I am willing to take that risk because I have a high lock-down rate for the ones who do filter in and like what they see on my website."
Gaxiola's clients are "confident, smart and educated women," she said; most importantly, "they're decisive."
They are the kind of women who have fully embraced technology, and who, like Gaxiola, prefer to operate electronically. Her firm uses Redtail's CRM portal, and all client information is filed electronically and in such a way that anyone in the firm can see it at any time. Clients can get what they need in the format of their choice: their laptops, their phones or their tablets.
Gaxiola's clients are the kind of people who like "to see things in one place," she said.
