Financial security is more than just numbers; it’s about confidence, clarity, and taking control of your future. In this episode of Spark and Ignite Your Marketing, host Beverly Cornell sits down with Kimsey Hollifield, founder of Hollifield Financial Group, to uncover the journey from uncertainty to success. Kimsey shares how he built a financial business from the ground up, the power of storytelling in marketing, and why personal connections matter more than ever in business. Whether you’re an entrepreneur looking to scale or someone planning for financial freedom, this episode is packed with wisdom and actionable takeaways. Tune in and discover how to ignite your business and financial future!
Three Key Topics Discussed:
- Overcoming Fear and Embracing Growth: Kimsey shares his journey of starting in the insurance industry at just 20 years old, struggling to sell, and eventually building a thriving business. He reveals how pushing through fear and investing in personal growth helped him succeed.
- The Power of Storytelling in Marketing: From struggling with public speaking to mastering the art of storytelling, Kimsey explains how he transformed his marketing strategy by making financial planning relatable and personal—turning skeptical prospects into lifelong clients.
- Financial Confidence: Planning for Retirement with Peace of Mind: Many people approaching retirement are filled with uncertainty. Kimsey walks through how his team helps clients transition from saving to securely living off their wealth, ensuring they don’t outlive their money.
Follow Kimsey:
Kimsey Hollifield | LinkedIn
Check last week’s episode here!
Transcript:
Beverly:
Did you know that over 50 percent of Americans feel unprepared for retirement and many aren’t sure of how to secure their financial futures? That’s decades of hard work and dreams left hanging in uncertainty, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Welcome to Spark and Ingnite Marketing. I’m your host, Beverly Cornell. And today I’m excited to introduce you to someone who’s changing lives by helping individuals and families feel far more confident about their financial future Kimsey Holifield, founder of Holifield Financial Group. Kimsey started in the insurance industry at just 20 years old. He built his own business with one clear mission, to transform lives through sound, Financial planning and investment strategies, whether it’s helping people plan for retirement, protect their wealth or keep their money safe. Kimsey and his team treat every client like they’re part of their family. Kimsey, welcome to Spark And Ignite Your Marketing
Kimsey:
thanks for having me. That was a great intro. I like that.
Beverly:
Wonderful. You started so young and you built a company, really like a legitimate company by 25. That’s pretty amazing. Yeah. What was the spark that really started the whole journey for you?
Kimsey:
Yeah. Oh, that’s a good question. I knew that I wanted to, be in control Of my future, I knew that I wanted to own a business and have that control of whatever was going to happen, I didn’t know what the business was going to be and I didn’t want to sell insurance, but I got married when I was 20, I got married we were both in college at the time. And I had literally no good plan. My best friend’s dad actually ran an insurance agency and he said, Hey, I’ll hire you to sell insurance and you can make X amount of dollars. And I said, okay I’ll give it a shot, it’s better than whatever else I had going on at the time, and I tried it out and I was really bad. If you came to me and said, I want to buy life insurance, I probably would not have been able to sell it to you. I wasn’t very good at it. I didn’t really understand the how to go about meeting with clients, how to help people. I didn’t understand the products and understand anything about it. And I was scared to death to do any of it. If you put enough effort into anything, you’re going to get better. Then you get a little bit better and you get a little bit better. And then next thing, I was pretty good. I had a lot of clients and then, I left that company and started a a business at 25, I guess it was like having your back against the wall that just, you had to do it.
Beverly:
The pressure of necessity, like I have to do this or we won’t eat.
Kimsey:
Yeah. That’s a big motivator.
Beverly:
I remember a moment with my husband where we couldn’t pay the cable bill, and I was like, this is gonna change. That was a very inviting moment in our career paths, for sure. When I read your application your application and we were talking a little bit beforehand, it sounds like everyone you want to work with wants to feel like family to you. Why is that so important? How do you make that happen?
Kimsey:
I heard a survey the other day, that said It asked financial advisors are you good at customer service? Are you good at this? And everybody was great. And that’s probably not true. It occurred to me at a certain point, it wasn’t if you wore a suit and tie. It wasn’t if you used big words. People, first of all, they don’t want to feel threatened in this environment. They want to feel like you’re a friend or a family. And I think it came from, honestly, the first time I met with someone to try to open an account. And I felt so bad about myself. Like I was not doing the right things. You go to do your taxes and feel so uncomfortable here. You go to see the attorney like don’t want to be here, and I understand that most people don’t want to come see me for the first time because they don’t want to see anybody in my environment. Because it’s like a math class and a dental exam and like marriage counseling You want people to feel comfortable, for example our annual Christmas party, we have it at my house. I want to work with people that I enjoy hanging out with and enjoy being with.
Beverly:
The thing that I tell people all the time is that you get to define your own business. You can create your own business and work with whoever you want to. You can choose the people you want to work with. You don’t have to work with people that don’t respect you. And you want to help them and serve them and make sure that they’re okay. Do you have a story of how a client has transformed, like when working with you? What did that look like?
Kimsey:
Yeah. Most of my clients I would say are in their late fifties, 60 years old. They’re pretty close to retiring. They have a lot of things already set up. They have money saved up, but most of them don’t understand how to go from being a worker to being retired. I have a client who works for Boeing and has for a long time, and he’s going to retire in May. And I asked him, how does that make you feel, to retire? And he said I’m scared to death. I’ve worked my whole life. I don’t know what to do. You want to retire, but when you get there, it’s a totally different thing. And I think a lot of people, most of our clients, they have a lot of things set up and they’re savers they’re careful with money. A lot of times, some of them are not, some of them are, but they have this whole process where they’ve worked and now they have to retire and it’s tough because you don’t have a plan of that. It’s easy if you’re 20 or 30 years old and you say, I’m just going to put money into, a fund and it hopefully goes up and if it doesn’t, I’m 25 years old, who cares, but I think it’s the fear of that. So one of the things we do is, really go through a process of. How much social security can you get? How much income do you need? And saying like how can we replace the income that You need so that you can retire and not have to worry if the market goes up and down because there’s so many things that You can’t control in the world, but you can control your income in retirement.
Beverly:
My husband and I have divided out the financial side of it. I do the day to day budgeting and he does the future budgeting. And I think his is scarier because it is a lot more zeros, but it’s also, how long are we going to live? And what are we going to do? And how much money should we put aside for traveling? And what does that going to look like in 10, 20 years? Like how expensive will it be? And will we be able to travel? There’s just a lot to think about when you’re planning for your future.
Kimsey:
There’s so many unknowns and there’s so many things now that, can happen. And we really try to use like a foundation for what we do for planning, try to use things that are guaranteed, that are very safe for the money that has to come in every month because people are going to be retired a long time and people are living a long time now.
Beverly:
So every entrepreneur has, their journey is not a straight and narrow path. There’s ups and downs and sideways and forks in the roads and all the things. COVID 19 was a difficult time for so many businesses. How do you navigate those difficulties while keeping your business strong?
Kimsey:
When you’re a business owner you can’t be way up one day and way down because if you do that you’re probably going to go wild. Actually COVID was. Not bad for us at all. I wouldn’t say it was a good time, but that year we grew our business really well. But one of the things that I had to learn is that, a lot of the things we were doing to get clients at the time, we were doing dinner events in groups for people who are 55, 65 years old, and that all shut down. I had a conversation with my wife and she said, You’ve worked really hard for a long time and you’ve always said trust that God is going to take care of us. But now’s an interesting time because you actually can’t do your seminars and your events. You actually have to trust that, God’s going Take care of everything and you’re going to have to reach out to clients and you’re going to have to do things in a little bit of a different way. And I told my staff at the time, listen, I don’t know what this is going to look like, but we’re not going to lay anybody off. We’re going to work from home. Whatever that is. I don’t know what that means. But that was a time where we just had to pivot to, a different way of doing it. I figured zoom out. We did some zoom meetings and it was like, Get to the end of the zoom meeting. And now I do a lot of zooms. Because you have clients in north carolina, south carolina, georgia, florida, new york. But back to your question. You have to stay even keel. You have to have a long term goal of what you’re doing, but you can’t be emotional up and down. You have to be, a little robotic about it.
Beverly:
That’s how you have to be with your money too, I feel like. That’s actually a great analogy for what you do, for sure.
Kimsey:
That’s a good point. I didn’t think about that.
Beverly:
So this season we’re really focusing on how are our interviews or how are the companies that we work with on the podcast? How do you awaken your brand magic? Was there a moment where everything aligned and you saw how unique your magic was and what you bring to the table?
Kimsey:
When you ask that, I’m reminded of a time where I was probably in my early twenties and I was in a meeting with a client with someone who was an early mentor to me and I just had this moment where I looked at him and I was like, he wasn’t what you would maybe expect to, you Be like wild successful in this industry. And I thought he’s very unique, and I was like, maybe that’s it, we’re all unique, maybe that’s the thing. And from there on, I began to not try to come into a meeting and say, hello, Beverly, how are you doing this afternoon? And I just said, you know what? I’m just. going to try to actually just be myself and if people want to work with me, I’ll do it. And if they don’t want to work with me, fine, but I’m not going to be anybody different because if I met you and I tried to be like what you would think of as a financial advisor on TV
Beverly:
yeah,
Kimsey:
and I wasn’t myself and eventually I have to be myself. I think nowadays it’s all about personal brand. If you look at Gary Vaynerchuk. Oh, I love Gary.
Beverly:
Oh, he’s great
Kimsey:
But most people would be like, what does he do? Most people don’t even know what he does. It’s just the personal side of things. So that’s the biggest thing just be yourself
Beverly:
Being yourself is so much more than that. Like the reason why your passion, your why your vision, your core values, all of it defines your unique magic and everybody has it. I know one of my clients, they’re an accountant and they say, we’re not our, your father’s accountant. Yeah, that’s great.
Kimsey:
That’s wonderful.
Beverly:
It’s you get a whole different impression of who they are because they’re not your father’s accountant. They have tattoos and they have fun colored hair and like they want to work with companies and businesses that are more fun and sassy then that fits them because that’s who they are. So you can fully lean into your magic and own that in such a unique space. So I heard you say North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia. Where are you actually?
Kimsey:
Just outside Charleston in Somerville, but just about 15 minutes outside Charleston, South Carolina.
Beverly:
Charleston’s awesome. I am actually just outside of Fayetteville, North Carolina. So I am not too far from you five hours Yeah, five hours from you. But I was not born and raised here. I was born in Alabama, but raised in Michigan.
Kimsey:
I was born and raised in Asheville.
Beverly:
Beautiful. Yeah. And did you have family that was affected by the hurricane that came through?
Kimsey:
Yeah my parents and my sister they, had trees fall on their house. I think there was 20 trees fall on or around my parents property hit my sister’s car and my mother in law’s car, basically floated down a mile and a half down the road. And my cousin her house was, Badly damaged. And she had to, wade through water for miles to get out. But I didn’t, lose any of my family members or anything like that. So we were blessed with that.
Beverly:
Yeah. They’re only two and a half hours away from here. I’ve been to Asheville. It’s beautiful there. Like it, it is beautiful. The mountains, the air, everything, the city is. So wonderful. It’s really sad. The small business owners specifically, I’m my heart I feel really bad for them because they’ve lost everything.
Kimsey:
It’s basically gone.
Beverly:
Yeah. That’s what’s so shocking. We’ve been there. It’s really sad. We, our church put together like a Drive and send some stuff over and did some stuff for Christmas for some kids. And we did some stuff, but it’s devastating. I’m really sorry that your family had to go through that. I’m glad everybody was okay.
Kimsey:
I started reaching out to people down here and we’re going to take things up, supplies and things. And I thought there would be, a little bit of stuff to take out there. Should we take a carload or a few? And from then on, my front porch was covered. We had boxes all in my house. The office was full of stuff and we had to start loading up SUVs and then a neighbor of mine has a plane and we were able to get that, and she helped a lot and. But then it became that so many people were giving So much with it all.
Beverly:
Yeah.
Kimsey:
So I started actually going and saying we would reach out to people on Facebook and they would message and they’d say I have a daughter, a son, a baby that has a specific formula they need, or we need this oxygen, and so we were able to say, okay here, we’ll write all this stuff down. And then we would. To individuals because, the basic stuff was just handled and it was so great to see how much help came from the Charleston area to up there. It was really wonderful to see.
Beverly:
Yeah it’s amazing. I think that’s gives me hope and humanity. God provides, he does take care of people. A really good friend of mine recently, I went to high school with her and her house burned down, not in California, but in Michigan of all places. I sent her a note and said, I know that this is like the hardest thing you’ve probably ever gone through. And I don’t want to, impose or anything, but I do want to help you. And I know some people will say whatever you need, I’m here for you. Give me your sizes of clothes and I will buy you each an outfit and I will send it tomorrow. And she’s that’s amazing. So she sent me sizes. I sent it, it got there the next day. I think sometimes you’d you need to be specific, but there is so much stress that goes into some of those, natural disaster or those kinds of situations. So however you can support them is really important.
Kimsey:
It was a lot. It was just so much worse than I had anything I’d ever seen. We never had anything like that growing up.
Beverly:
Yeah. It was devastating. And even to get into town was impossible. It was impassable. They were using donkeys and mules to get through.
Kimsey:
I didn’t get ahold of anybody in my family for maybe three days. We were really worried. We were thinking about driving up, Oh my gosh, what’s going on? And we’re seeing everything. Finally, my mom got everything cut and got out to where she had get some cell service and she went and checked on my papa, who’s 89. And I said how are you guys doing? And she said, oh, this is awful and I don’t know how long it probably gonna take a week or two to get all this cleaned up. And then it hit me like they had no internet or power anything I said, oh my gosh, mom, you haven’t really seen what’s going on out there. I think the news wasn’t putting it on as much because they didn’t want to create massive panic. It was wild.
Beverly:
So wild. I was here during Matthew years and years ago, and he had 23 inches of rain in two days or something wild. Thankfully we were fine. We didn’t even lose power for a majority of it. We had power, but we had a seven month old baby and every store in any kind of mile radius did not have formula or milk. And I was like, how are we going to feed this baby? Like literally, how are we going to feed this baby for two weeks? Thankfully, at church, a mom was breastfeeding and gave us some of her breast milk.
Kimsey:
Oh, wow.
Beverly:
Yeah, it’s very devastating. I’m glad that they’re okay. So what is the hardest thing about marketing for you?
Kimsey:
We do a lot of event marketing. When you first start spending money on marketing, the hardest thing is to not be scared of what’s going to happen. You spend this money, you put it out. Some of the events that we do are expensive. You think this might work and this might not work, and I think the biggest thing is just, having the faith in yourself. If you’re doing the right marketing it’s going to average out.
Beverly:
Yeah, like you say, you have to have the confidence and believe in what you have to offer and that you connect with the right people so that you can make the ROI on that. Are you doing trade shows?
Kimsey:
So we do a lot of dinner dinner similar. So we’ll have a nice restaurant, and we get a bunch of people there, 30 or 40 people there for each night, Tuesday and Thursday. And then I get up and I talk, my other advisors, I have three other advisors that work for me. And, we get up and we talk for an hour And then at the end, we have a response sheet, and if they want to come in for a one-on-one meeting then they mark that and they can come in. But after we’re done talking, they bring the food out, you have to pay for the food, and then you leave and you hope that people will will schedule with you. And normally they do, and normally it works very well. But sometimes they don’t, and you have a bad night and you think, Oh, my gosh, I barely got any appointments out of this. And then sometimes everybody wants to meet with you.
Beverly:
What marketing mistake have you made? And, but how did it help you actually grow?
Kimsey:
Oh going back to, public events, I was really bad at public speaking, but I knew that people were having success with public events and I started doing them, but I wasn’t having success with them and I couldn’t figure out really why. So I got a public speaking coach and trainer. He said let’s record, let’s video it. And I was just shocked. I was like, man I’m horrible.
Beverly:
What did I do with my eyeballs? What was that?
Kimsey:
I didn’t realize that I was really bad and really boring. I worked with A couple of people. I worked with Pat Quinn, pat Quinn is a public speaking coach. He works with Damon, John and Grant Cardone and Tony Robbins. And he talked all about storytelling. So I started changing my seminar where now I get up and I tell a story, and then I tell some content, then I tell another story and it’s very personal. I think it lets people connect. The other thing that I do now that I didn’t do is, I pray before the food comes out and I didn’t do that for a long time because I guess I didn’t feel comfortable with it. And I thought what if somebody doesn’t like it and all this stuff? Then one day I thought, I’m going to do a hundred of these events and there’s going to be 30 or 40 people, I’m not a preacher, I’m not, but I want to, take this opportunity, God has really blessed us and we have a really great life now. I want to pray for the food and thank God for, the things that he’s blessed us with. That’s who I am. And I’m not talking about church the whole time or anything like that, but just in the end, I just say, okay, they’re going to bring the food out. And so I’m going to pray for the food and then we’ll get you fed.
Beverly:
Yeah.
Kimsey:
And actually, that’s something I had so many clients now that say, I really appreciate that. I don’t do that to get results. I do that because that’s me personally. don’t do that expecting it to be received in a certain way. Just say, Hey, This is who I am. And if you don’t want to do that, don’t do it. So I think it just goes back to just being yourself and being open with people.
Beverly:
Yeah. If it doesn’t fit you, then don’t do it. If it’s not authentic to you, then don’t do it. Don’t be forced. And that’s you, Kimsey. That’s a challenge because we know what works for us But it doesn’t work for everybody because it’s not them.
Kimsey:
Everybody’s different.
Beverly:
I have my magic wand and I have my magic hat. I’m excited, but this is pretty cool.
Kimsey:
I’m excited you told me about this.
Beverly:
There are a lot of questions in here and I’m going to draw a few questions. And this is more of a lightning round. So when I draw the questions,
Kimsey:
Okay.
Beverly:
Look a little bit quicker of answers and then all kinds of things. And you can say pass if you’d like. Okay. I give you the option, but I encourage you not to. First question is, what has been the hardest part about being an entrepreneur?
Kimsey:
Starting with no money and having to be creative at first.
Beverly:
Oh, this is a fun one. If your business were a movie, who would be the hero? What would be the main conflict? And how would your brand guide the hero to victory?
Kimsey:
I never thought about that before. Ooh, that’s a tough one. The conflict would be Some expansion. We going to keep growing. Who would be the hero? Don’t know. I guess it’s gotta be me.
Beverly:
Who’s the actor?
Kimsey:
Brian Austin green.
Beverly:
And how do you use the hero guide to the victory? What’s the victory look like?
Kimsey:
The end of the movie has to be like we decided to grow and take whatever the next step was expand. We would have gotten through whatever the conflict was and we said, okay, we’re going to do this. Let’s go.
Beverly:
Nice. What’s a surprising way your personal values show up in your business?
Kimsey:
In our office, we don’t have a lot of artwork. We have on the walls if an article was written about me or a magazine or we sponsored a polo team. Pretty much everything else is personalized. I, when people come in here, they think it’s not just stock photos.
Beverly:
Yeah. Yeah. What’s one thing you wish more people understood about your business or industry?
Kimsey:
That, we want to help and you don’t have to be qualified. Before you can become a client, some people will say I don’t know if I have enough money or I don’t have my act together. We just want to help, and so whatever that looks like on the other side of the table, we just want to help people.
Beverly:
What was the moment you realized your business was successful?
Kimsey:
So I was in Ireland a couple of years ago with a friend. And it was an industry trip that you had to qualify for. You had to be doing a certain amount of business or revenue or whatnot. And I was sitting there and I told my buddy, I said, isn’t this cool? Like we get to be here and with all these people who are really successful and who are doing great. And we get to be here. Sometimes, you still have that like imposter syndrome, but, and he was like yeah, because you’re also doing well. That was a moment where I was like, okay, I guess so.
Beverly:
If you could collaborate with any brand or entrepreneur, who would it be? And why?
Kimsey:
I like Million dollar listing. Did you ever watch that show? Yes.
Beverly:
I’ve seen it.
Kimsey:
New York. I like Ryan Serhan. So he has a brokerage. That’s probably, I would probably say that.
Beverly:
Ooh, last question. What fear have you had to overcome to grow your business?
Kimsey:
The fear that most people have. The fear of money. My parents were very hardworking people, but we didn’t have a lot of money growing up, and, we all develop emotions about money, and you have to take that emotion out. Then it’s just math and logic and it’s not that difficult at that point. But I had to get that out of my mind to just look at it like a math problem, which I’m very good at math, but with the emotional side of it I wasn’t as good. So yeah.
Beverly:
So you survived the magic hat round now. I’m gonna wave my wand. And it’s a very sparkly and fun wand.
Kimsey:
I have a four year old daughter. I have a wand all over my house.
Beverly:
I feel like every person should have a wand, just so it’s over clear, because sometimes you just need to wave the wand and make things better in your life. And I can’t hold the wand and not be happy, so I don’t know what it is about the wand, but I get very excited when I’m holding the wand. Okay. So when we have the wand up, we’re going to go back in time. We’re going to talk to that 20 year old Kimsey who didn’t know what he was going to do. He got married. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do. He had to figure it out. We’re going to give him a piece of advice. What advice would we give that Kimsey?
Kimsey:
To take the simplest path and not overcomplicate things. Man. I feel so old with that now But I would say probably, yeah, to just simplify and take the easy, easiest path. Mark Cuban has this phrase, win the battle you’re in before you start a new battle.
Beverly:
It’s so hard as an entrepreneur. We get so distracted cause we love building things like it’s hard to really focus. So I also want to ask the 20 year old Kimsey, what would 20 year old Kimsey say about your life now and your business?
Kimsey:
I think he would be very surprised, pleasantly surprised. My life is very good. Now. I didn’t have aspirations for this. I had aspirations for, not being worried and stressed out all the time and, and I had aspirations for being okay. I didn’t understand what it is to be. To really be where I am now. So I think I would be very happy with it.
Beverly:
That’s cool though.
Kimsey:
This is like therapy now. We’ve gone into a therapy round.
Beverly:
So I’m going to wave my wand. We’re going to leave young Kimsey where he is to live his life, make all the mistakes, and do all the cool things he’s going to do. We’re going to go loads and loads and loads and loads into the future.
Kimsey:
Okay.
Beverly:
And we are going to hear your eulogy.. And what do you think is your most significant legacy or impact that everyone’s going to talk about for your eulogy?
Kimsey:
Wow. That’s good. I thought when you said we’re going to go way into the future, I thought you were going to take it like. 10 years. So eulogy the biggest thing is my wife, my daughter, my family. The business is to provide for, clients, but to provide for us and provide for the families of the people that work for me. I want to be a good husband and a good father. And aside from that, I want to be able to give back and help people. So husband, father. Philanthropy, that would be it. That sounds lovely.
Beverly:
I’m going to wave my wand and we’re going to go back into present time.
Kimsey:
Okay.
Beverly:
So you’re back in 2025, but I want you to give. A magical tip. So this is about awakening your brand magic this season. For those tuning in, those small business owners or aspiring entrepreneurs or people who’ve been doing the grind for years and years, what is one thing that you would say they could put into action right now to fully step into their brand magic?
Kimsey:
Yeah. Stop doing all the cookie cutter stuff and doing some, do something individual because. The superpower that we all have is we are all ourselves. I can’t be you and you can’t be me. I would say whatever marketing you’re doing. Be personal, be storytelling, let people in and they’ll connect with you. And then they’ll want to do business with you just because they like you and they connect with you.
Beverly:
People are waiting to hear about you. They want to connect with you and what story you have. They’re waiting. Such good advice. I love you for being here and to like sharing with our listeners, but I would love for you to share like where people can learn more about you and organization and how they can connect with you.
Kimsey:
Yeah. Everything lives on our website, which is hollifieldfinancial. com that has everything that you would expect from, how to. Plan for finances to do an appointment to, analyze your own investment. That has all the good stuff on there I am most active on LinkedIn and Instagram under my personal name, just Kimsey Hollifield. And then on our, on Facebook, we put a lot of stuff out for the business. So Kimsey Holifield LinkedIn and Instagram. And our website, hollifieldfinancial. com is, as the name suggests. Is just redone and now the new website is alive last week. So it’s really good. And I think it’s really interactive.
Beverly:
Nice. That’s exciting. Thank you so much for joining me today, Kimsey. It’s been really fun to get to know you, learn about your journey and hearing all your stories. And to all our listeners, I really hope you found today’s conversation as inspiring as I did. Stay tuned for more. Fun conversations like today and actionable tips on future episodes of the Spark and Ignite Your Marketing Podcast. And until next time, keep sparking and igniting.
