Meet Caroline Tanis CDFA® MBA | Financial Advisor, Srategist, & Speaker

We had the good fortune of connecting with Caroline Tanis CDFA® MBA and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Caroline, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
Prior to starting my own financial planning practice I was under the umbrella of Merrill Lynch. However, after half of a decade there I was tired of seeing highly-ambitious women wanting to work a financial planner but being scared away by the predominantly male industry. I wanted to create a space where women felt comfortable learning about their finances and were empowered to build their dream life through financial planning. Tanis Financial Group now works primarily with women and their families to do just that. Almost every conversation with a perspective client they thank me for creating a company where women finally have another female advisor they cant work with and a place where they feel comfortable to ask all of their questions.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
One of the most incredible parts of my business is being able to watch my clients achieve those big milestones. I work with them 1:1 to help them determine what their dream life is and then create a plan that financially makes those dreams become a reality. Nothing is more rewarding than seeing them live out the life we have worked together to help them create. A few months ago I had a client and her husband purchase a larger home for their expanding family. It was something we had built into their financial plan and they had been work towards for several years. Seeing the photos of their new home and the smiles on their faces is what makes all of the hard work worth it.
However, from the outside it always easy looking at someone’s business and assuming that it was so easy for them to be successful. What I think many people, including my own friends and family, don’t realize is that building this business took hours of endlessly work. From creating financial plans, to networking to meet new clients, and everything in between it was not an easy job. Women are easily cast aside in the world of financial planning so to be successful in this industry it often takes double to amount of time and work. To build Tanis Financial Group into what it is today I worked incredibly late hours, missed family events, and worked through more vacations than I care to count.
In the end I always know that it was worth it to build this business and to work with the incredible clients that I have.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
As a proud New Jersey resident I love to bring people to the Jersey Shore and more specifically Spring Lake. We begin our trip with a stop at Rook Coffee where they make some of the best iced coffee you will ever have. After that we drive five minutes over to park on the streets of Spring Lake. We have a cooler full of Wawa Sandwiches and chips that we’ll eat later that day at the boardwalk picnic tables. The day is spent on the beach swimming in and walking along the incredibly blue ocean waters with the backdrop of some stunning beach homes behind us. After a full day at the beach we drive over to the Warfside in Point Pleasant where we have an incredible seafood dinner on the water while watching the sun set.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
My journey to creating Tanis Financial Group is the culmination of so many people- who taught me both what to do and what not to do. However, I want to personally thank Jessica Weaver for always cheering me on and being an incredible mentor. She and I became friends early on in 2021 and during the Fall of that year she reached out to me to see if I would be interested in leaving Merrill and joining her in creating an all-female financial firm. After months of talking, planning, and prepping it became clear to me that this was exactly where I wanted to be to change the face of the financial planning world. Jessica continues to be an incredible mentor and now close friend. I know that she is their to support me and my practice through both the peaks and valleys. Without her constant guidance and leadership my business wouldn’t be where it is today.

Website: www.tanisfingroup.com

Instagram: @tanisfingroup

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/caroline-tanis/

Image Credits
Images by Clara Wang of Clara Wang Photogprahy