Pathways with Amber Stitt

Alanah Philips: The Catalyst Launching Advisors & Advising When to Break Up With Broker-Dealers

• Amber Stitt • Season 4 • Episode 4

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🚀 Get ready to be inspired by Alanah Philips—advisor advocate, author, and creative entrepreneur—who left the safety of a corporate gig to build 3 thriving brands, including the game-changing Catalyst and Advisor Launch Lab, both of which she co-founded, and her personal brand and brand new book: "Breaking Up With Your Broker-Dealer". 📖

In this episode, Alanah reveals how she knew it was time to break up with her broker-dealer, the power of building an authentic personal brand, and why “make more money, have more fun” is her favorite mantra. 

From drawing doodles to writing a blueprint for real business pivots, her story is proof that you can chart your own path. 🛤️

If you’re craving more purpose, freedom, or just a nudge to trust your gut, this conversation with Amber Stitt is for you. 

Let’s talk breaking rules, building networks, and making bold moves—on your own terms. ✨

📽️ To watch this episode:  https://youtu.be/ofJpPZkTb0k 

đź”— To connect with Alanah, or to buy her book:

📲 "Breaking Up With Your Broker-Dealer" book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FNHDKXNM

📲 Catalyst website: https://startwithcatalyst.com/

📲 Alanah on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alanahphillips/

#pathwayswithamberstitt #amberstitt #makemoremoneyhavemorefun #alanahphilips #breakupwithyourbrokerdealer #naifae3 #advisorlaunchlab #startwithcatalyst

đź“» Thank you for tuning in to Pathways!

đź”— Connect with Amber on Social Media:

📲 Be sure to visit Amber's website:

www.AmberStitt.com

🎬 And remember, let's take action today!!!

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Alanah Philips [00:00:00]:
There's a term "intrapreneurial" which is when you are within the context of a company, or a group, where you're not taking the risk, you're able to flex that creative entrepreneurial muscle. And they let me do that, and that was so valuable to getting here.

Amber Stitt [00:00:15]:
Hello and welcome to Pathways e3, a special edition of Pathways with Amber Stitt. The Pathways e3 podcasts were recorded with special guests who were attending and collaborating at the NAIFA e3 conference in Newport Beach, California in September 2025. Let's join the conversation. We are live at e3, and I am so excited to have my friend Alanah on the show, so thanks for being here.

Alanah Philips [00:00:41]:
I'm so excited to be here with you and what a fun little setup.

Amber Stitt [00:00:43]:
Well, I'm glad it all worked out. And I have seen you now more than ever, most recently.

Alanah Philips [00:00:48]:
Yes.

Amber Stitt [00:00:48]:
Twice in 30 days.

Alanah Philips [00:00:49]:
Yes.

Amber Stitt [00:00:50]:
And we just celebrated something that we'll be talking about, if you can't tell already. But I was getting ready for our podcast and I was thinking about going back in time and I was also organizing some photos from WIFS since we're going to a national conference soon. And I was like, 2022 is when Phoenix had the conference, if I think I have those numbers right. And that it's only been, if I could do some math, which, you know I'm not that good at math: 3 years that we've known each other.

Alanah Philips [00:01:16]:
That seems crazy. It's only been 3 years. That's crazy.

Amber Stitt [00:01:20]:
To me, that's pretty wild. Because of your story. And that's why I thought with e3, "Empowerment" is one of the 3 that is a part of the NAIFA slogan, and the theme behind it all. You were able to shake things up. And I met you before you went out on your own, and created not 1, but really 2, and maybe kind of 3 different entities now. And I always like to share that there's really, besides compliance, really no rules in business. I really want to kind of tee that up.

Amber Stitt [00:01:48]:
And let's talk about how you went from working from an organization to really figuring out your move. How did you know when it was time to start your own business?

Alanah Philips [00:01:56]:
It's funny because the book is "Breaking Up With Your Broker-Dealer", and I broke up with my broker dealer. And it was a really cute little announcement when I did it. But all of the same signs that it's time for an advisor to break up with their broker dealer are the same reasons that I knew it was time for me to do so, and I think for many people to realize they should leave a job, or leave a person that they're in a relationship with. I have always considered myself an advisor advocate. I think like financial advisors. I thought I was going to be one.

Alanah Philips [00:02:24]:
And I think what they do is very important. They're also a unique breed of humans. And the advisors being taken care of was very important to me. And I was with a leadership team where we were doing that and we would bend over backwards for the advisors that were our clients. And for a long time, I was really aligned with the company that I worked at and being able to do that. And I thought that we were doing right by advisors. I felt really good about the advisors I was recruiting to that company, that they were in a great place.

Alanah Philips [00:02:52]:
And then things started to happen where we weren't putting the advisors first. And that's when I started to have this sort of friction with the leadership team, with decisions that the company was making, or decisions that I was making that weren't aligned with their strategic ideas. And for me, the strategic idea was if you take care of the clients, which were advisors, for us, everything else sort of takes care of itself.

Alanah Philips [00:03:17]:
And so when that happened, I realized #1): I actually don't think that I'm supposed to be an employee. I think that there is so much creative freedom in being a business owner and entrepreneur. And I wanted that. I mean, I couldn't have written a book, and I did have a lot of freedom, to be clear. I was doing the "silly doodles" on LinkedIn and social media for a long time, but yeah, I think the misalignment was the biggest issue.

Amber Stitt [00:03:42]:
Okay. So you go out and you start your new thing. And it wasn't like, I mean, I feel like you just went out and then everything just started rocking and rolling. But I think part of it was you went out and you really did work with a lot of people in the network. And coming to events like this are super helpful to then figure out who are your liaisons, or your advocates for this new business. And so they really just, I think, took off, right?

Alanah Philips [00:04:03]:
Yeah, it did. And it's actually really wild when I look back at some of the moves along the path there, of again, starting to put content out and being a content creator, where you are giving valuable information to your potential clients for free. We know this is the best way to develop business. Its just giving that information. The people who want to work with you will find you. I was out in networking groups like WIFS, where we met, NAIFA, FPA. I mean, I did all of them.

Alanah Philips [00:04:31]:
And I was doing that as a corporate employee.

Amber Stitt [00:04:34]:
There's a freedom.

Alanah Philips [00:04:35]:
Yeah. And so it was nice because, they would pay for travel and stuff, or The American College, I hosted a podcast for them. It was part of their next gen advisory task force. And so I was really out in the industry. And it was so much easier when I did leave because I felt the strength and support of that network that I had built.

Alanah Philips [00:04:56]:
But because I had always been trying to be the authentic brand of Alanah, I was never drinking a company's Kool-Aid. And so people trusted me because I would tell them when they shouldn't come to Lincoln, which was the company I was at at the time. And I would say, "I think you should look at LPL, or I think you should look at Cambridge," or whatever. And I always just gave them the advice that I would want to give if I was an independent person. Even though there were times that that was hard because you want people to come and be successful and make money, all that stuff. But I think just operating that way out in the industry, I could not have scripted my leaving better. I didn't know exactly what I was building for...

Amber Stitt [00:05:36]:
Because that's your tagline. That was your handle on Instagram.

Alanah Philips [00:05:39]:
Yeah.

Amber Stitt [00:05:40]:
Is "Break up with your broker-dealer".

Alanah Philips [00:05:41]:
Yes.

Amber Stitt [00:05:42]:
I was about to say freedom to do your marketing, your own content, but I forgot you started doing that.

Alanah Philips [00:05:47]:
Yeah.

Amber Stitt [00:05:48]:
And making your own friends.

Alanah Philips [00:05:49]:
Yes. Yeah.

Amber Stitt [00:05:50]:
And that's huge. And I think it's becoming actually more popular now. Not now that I'm thinking about it, that people are doing more on their own, to be separate from...

Alanah Philips [00:05:59]:
Yep.

Amber Stitt [00:06:00]:
And whether it's not just financial services.

Alanah Philips [00:06:02]:
Yeah. Well. And I think again, this is kind of true of relationships, too.

Amber Stitt [00:06:05]:
Right.

Alanah Philips [00:06:05]:
It's like you have to have your own identity and friends and activities and things. Because then if you've built yourself to be attached to a company, a person, things that can change, then you're not set up for if that changes.

Alanah Philips [00:06:19]:
And it's more devastating. When your whole identity was tied to a company, or a person, or a job, or whatever, and it was always just me. And again, I'm so grateful. I had some amazing bosses, Heather Wills, Celeste Guerlay, who let me create and do these things in a very....There's a term "intrapreneurial."

Alanah Philips [00:06:39]:
Which is when you are within the context of a company, or a group where you're not taking the risk, you're able to flex that creative, entrepreneurial muscle. And they let me do that, and that was so valuable to getting here.

Amber Stitt [00:06:54]:
Thank you for joining us on this episode of Pathways. Please consider giving us a "Like" and subscribing to the channel. Your support goes a long way towards helping us bring you more compelling content. Remember, let's take action together! Now let's jump back into the conversation. The Catalyst brand that you have now, did that manifest itself because of what you were putting out there, or was, I mean, did you get lucky? I don't think I believe in luck. So how did this all transpire to have your company, but also an evolution of it?

Alanah Philips [00:07:27]:
I think I do believe in luck and I feel like I have been very lucky. But I also know, and this is the thing I especially like to say to younger people in our industry, women in our industry of like, I was lucky in so many ways. Again, I had these great bosses, but, I did also build proposals to ask them and show them, "Hey, I want to go do this thing. Here's going to be the return on it," or what I think is going to come out of it. I was asking for those things, I asked to be in the rooms. I asked for going to certain events, and so there was was a tremendous amount of luck, but I had great supportive bosses, and then I still had to do the work for it.

Alanah Philips [00:08:02]:
So I think both. But to get to your question on Catalyst, so "Break Up With Your Broker-Dealer" had been just my personal brand and tagline, which I'm trademarking. I've never created anything that I thought was novel, and this is the only thing that I'm like, that was a fun one. So, "Break Up With Your Broker-Dealer" was how I was branding originally. And then Advisor Launch Lab is our other product offering.

Amber Stitt [00:08:22]:
Oh, I forgot about that one.

Alanah Philips [00:08:23]:
Yeah, to hire and train new advisors for independent teams. So when you're bringing on a junior associate advisor, and then those two things are very different and they're very different messages. It's the same audience. It's financial advisors in both. We're advocating for financial advisors everywhere. And Iyana Harris and I had been introduced to each other and realized we had really good synergy. She has years of experience in the industry.

Alanah Philips [00:08:48]:
She's just a soulful and kind person. And we were very aligned in how we wanted to do business and advocating for advisors. And she was experiencing some of the same signs that it was time for her to break up with her firm. And I didn't think that anybody would want to be "Break Up With Your Broker-Dealer" necessarily. That was something that is...it's silly. I'm very silly.

Alanah Philips [00:09:10]:
And that is a part of my brand. And so Catalyst was to pull together a few advocates who support advisors.

Alanah Philips [00:09:17]:
Iyana Harris is one of them, Lindsey Lewis, and then we've added some other folks that support our team, as well. And it was just the right word. I had written it down, actually, maybe a month before launching. And I had put "Catalyst" and a bubble at the top, and then "Break Up With Your Broker-Dealer" and then "Advisor Launch Lab", underneath it.

Alanah Philips [00:09:35]:
Here's how we tie these things together. We're a catalyst for advisors making change. It's crazy. The word comes up all the time when we're talking to the folks that we work with. We are the ones who help them realize that they need to break up. We are the ones that help them realize they need to hire a junior associate. And there's a catalyst there that creates this tremendous change within their business and helps them to grow or expand, whatever that means.

Alanah Philips [00:10:02]:
Grow could mean you want to work less and buy a house in Spain. And grow could mean you want to double your revenue. Determining what those things are is what we are the catalyst for.

Amber Stitt [00:10:12]:
So let's talk about the origin story. There is a person that I think you talk about that was the original inspiration.

Alanah Philips [00:10:18]:
There's two pieces here, because you're a part of this. So there's the inspiration for the book was a woman named Sarah.

Alanah Philips [00:10:27]:
Her name is Carmen in the book because we changed all the advisors names.

Amber Stitt [00:10:29]:
And that's where I was like, I'm missing her name, but I heard a different name at your launch party. Or maybe you said the real one, I don't remember.

Alanah Philips [00:10:36]:
Yeah, it was Sarah, and Sarah was one of the first experienced advisors I helped through a breakup. And she had said to me that she was in an abusive relationship with her firm, which was a bit aggressive. And so I didn't want it to be, "Get out of your abusive relationship with your firm." Because that seems like there's other connotations, but we've all experienced being in a relationship where you realize there's not a future for one reason, or another. And she was experiencing that. They controlled her time.

Alanah Philips [00:11:00]:
They controlled her money. They didn't celebrate her. They weren't inviting her to events. And she was incredibly successful woman, CFP, an advocate for her company, a great support for her team. And she wasn't experiencing what I thought she should, as the successful, high producing, extremely experienced woman that she was. And so she inspired the breakup sign, all the signs that it's time to break up. And this concept of getting out of a relationship that doesn't have a future.

Alanah Philips [00:11:31]:
So, all of the other stories of advisors that I worked with after that come in and the reasons that they needed to break up, but the book itself, because I don't know when I came up with the signs and the breakup with your broker idea, I don't know that I knew I was writing a book about it at any point.

Amber Stitt [00:11:45]:
Because I think doodling and drawing is a way for you to get ideas out on the table and then you're going to decide, "Okay, what's the move?" I mean, I remember you doing presentations and doodling, kind of like part of that Advisor Launch Lab.

Alanah Philips [00:11:57]:
I do it for our advisor risk tolerance spectrum. I love to visually talk through things, but you were actually a part of me writing the book itself. Because you wrote a book and you had introduced me to the group that you used to help with that. And I had a conversation with them and then they were like, "Oh, you've mostly written this book. You have a concept, you have a target audience, you have the content." And so that person was like, "You don't actually need us, you need someone else. And introduced me to...

Amber Stitt [00:12:26]:
That's the connection.

Alanah Philips [00:12:27]:
Yeah, introduced me to the woman who I hired, who's my book coach, Katya, who is amazing. So you directly....

Amber Stitt [00:12:33]:
I cannot wait to tell Patricia and Wendi that.

Alanah Philips [00:12:36]:
Yeah, yeah.

Amber Stitt [00:12:37]:
Oh, so neat. So I'm not done talking about your book, though, but I'm so excited that that is part of this episode. So I jump into the book and of course you can't help but just be happy with the colorful...the energy behind it. And I broke up with my broker dealer, like over 8 years ago. I was licensed. And I'm one of those ones that let my licenses go by choice because I was going strictly into insurance. And so I don't meet a lot of people like me.

Amber Stitt [00:13:02]:
So I'm reading it from a different lens and as an entrepreneur and as a person that has a framework that just talks about pivoting. So I'm hearing that word a lot now, too, people doing a pivot. And I feel like this is the bones of the structure of really a blueprint for anybody. It could be not in the financial services industry. Are you okay with me saying that? That this could be for all businesses, or relationships?

Alanah Philips [00:13:23]:
Yeah, it is funny. And to get personal, because this is just who I am, two things - I did have a girlfriend who was like, "When are you writing the actual relationship breakup book?" Because I also went through a divorce last year and experienced that. And the same thing, there were those signs that we just weren't aligned for the future. And that's okay. Everybody ends up happier on the other side when we're out of alignment like that.

Alanah Philips [00:13:49]:
And sometimes you can get back in alignment with someone. There's a section in the book about when the juice isn't worth the squeeze - when you shouldn't break up. I know everybody thinks that's usually my advice is break up with him. But sometimes you should stay and work through the things. But, yeah, I think there are a number of messages. One of my girlfriends was reading it on a plane and said she realized, she's not an advisor, but that she has all the signs that it's time to break up with her job.

Alanah Philips [00:14:13]:
And so, yeah, I think there are some underlying tones that sort of apply to, again, the idea of being a catalyst. Sometimes you need somebody who nudges you, or inspires that action, and you don't realize what's normal until you're talking to a friend about it and realize, "Oh no, I'm actually out of alignment, or this isn't working, or I'm not happy, or I want something different." And so I hope that the book does that for advisors. But it sounds like there are some larger implications here, too.

Amber Stitt [00:14:41]:
Yeah. It's like, "How does this work to apply to me?" And I was reading through and I'm like, "Oh, my gosh. I would give this to another person that's really trying to find their path." And that's the premise of the Pathways podcast is really, we're all going to have our own path.

Amber Stitt [00:14:53]:
Okay. So kind of wrapping up here. You talk about money. I think all of us girls in our little mastermind group for anyone who wants to join pushing revenue goals. But you also have this tagline that you say, and can you share that?

Alanah Philips [00:15:05]:
"Make more money, have more fun"?

Amber Stitt [00:15:06]:
Yes.

Alanah Philips [00:15:07]:
Yeah.

Amber Stitt [00:15:08]:
So what does that mean to you?

Alanah Philips [00:15:12]:
So I grew up, I feel like, not talking about money at all. And because of some religious beliefs, too, I think there was some understanding that humility was important, or not having more, or not wanting more than what you need.

Amber Stitt [00:15:26]:
Sure.

Alanah Philips [00:15:26]:
And I think I still have that in perspective, but I also realize how powerful it is to have money and not just the accumulation of it for accumulating it. And there needs to be a point where enough is enough, I think. That you're satisfied and you've reached that equilibrium of, "I have the money I need to do the things I want my life to be. To take care of my family, to travel." I tell my friends part of why I make money is to spoil my friends. I don't have kids, and I want to spoil my friends.

Alanah Philips [00:16:01]:
And so I want us to go to lunch at Nobu, and I want us to valet the car, because then we have more time to spend with each other, whatever this place is. I want to go to the vacations, and I want ease. And so I think understanding what those things were that were important, I classify all of that as more fun. And if you have more money, then you get to have more fun.

Amber Stitt [00:16:21]:
I love that. So then I have a trick question for you, "Would you choose more time, or more money?" I think I know the answer to that, though.

Alanah Philips [00:16:27]:
Yeah, I think more time is the answer.

Amber Stitt [00:16:30]:
You just said it, I had that written down before you said all of that.

Alanah Philips [00:16:33]:
I was literally saying this yesterday, and I'm trying to remember why. But the money always comes back, right? You can always make more money. That's a thing I've learned. But the time doesn't come back. And so that's also where it's important, the "make more money, have more fun". If you're not doing both, if you're just making the money and you're in that grind and you're not doing the other part, I don't want that. We have to be able to make the money to have the control of our time.

Amber Stitt [00:16:58]:
And that's part of the podcast series at e3 is there's a foundational element there. There's a little bit of legacy. And if all we're doing is working and we're not truly having an identity on our own terms, having fun time with family, whatever, friends too, then it's not worth it.

Alanah Philips [00:17:15]:
Yeah, I agree.

Amber Stitt [00:17:16]:
So I think that's a perfect place to stop for today. Thank you so much for being here, and I'm so excited to be your friend and can't wait for more to come.

Alanah Philips [00:17:23]:
More to come. Thank you for your role in making this book happen and this conversation.

Amber Stitt [00:17:26]:
Love you, girl. Love you, too. Thank you. Thank you for joining us for this special edition of Pathways e3 recorded at the NAIFA e3 conference in Newport Beach, California. Join us for more insightful conversations with the experts and leaders of their industries. Until next time, keep taking action on your unique path!