Advisor’s message to millennials: There is hope

From a financial perspective, millennials have had it rough. They came of age during the Great Recession and they’ve watched as house prices have climbed steadily until owning a home seems impossible for many. And that’s before factoring in COVID, runaway inflation, or crushing student debt. As a generational cohort, they could use some help.    

For Washington, D.C.-based Kevin Mahoney, the founder and CEO of Illumint – and fellow millennial – this realization came as he and his wife were preparing for their first child. Raising a new human costs a lot of money, for a long time, and Mahoney and his wife had some questions.    

“We were researching all of these new personal finance questions that had never been relevant to us before,” he recalls. “I remember thinking how much time I was spending on some of these questions, even though I had a background in finance.”   

Mahoney wasn’t a financial advisor back then, but he thought he knew about money. He had worked in finance, and he and his wife seemed to be adept at managing their household’s finances. But preparing for a newborn was altogether more complicated.      

“I realized that if I was in this position, then my friends who did not have the same background as me were likely feeling much more stress and running into even more questions,” Mahoney says. “I saw this opportunity to take my finance skills and apply it to the people I hung out with. That’s when I decided to launch my practice, specifically with a focus on young parents, who, as you might expect, historically have not been targeted within the financial planning industry.”   

His entrepreneurial spirit and desire to do meaningful work led him to create Illumint. Mahoney could reach his target demographic because he was in his target demographic. He knew, therefore, how rare it was for someone going through the same life phases to lend a hand to their peers. 

Mahoney emphasized that his journey wasn’t about hard selling or convincing young parents about his expertise. Instead, it was more about showing he understood.   

“Specifically, I knew what their pain points were, what their background with money was growing up, and how that kind of transfers into how they approach it today,” he says. 

The heart of his marketing and outreach was all about real-life interactions and mutual experiences. 

“The nice thing about working with your own demographic is that I’m at the playground with my kids or I’m taking my kids to school, and these are the people that I’m trying to help.”   

One can’t underestimate the importance of reaching the right audience in the right way. Because he wanted to work with his peers, Mahoney built a formidable online footprint.   

“From the outset, I wanted to make sure I had a strong online presence since I was targeting millennials,” he says. “I know how our generation relies on the internet. We’re very accustomed to finding things through Google or social media.”   

He worked diligently to ensure that a simple search, say, for a financial advisor in Washington, would lead potential clients straight to Illumint.   

“That has proven to be one of the biggest drivers of my growth over the years.”   

Mahoney believes that chasing algorithms – the codes that determine search rankings on platforms like Google or Twitter – isn’t always the best strategy. After all, algorithms change, and people do, too.    

His strategy? “Do what you’re interested in and what you think you can stick with for the long term. That has a much better chance of being sustainable and working over the long term, rather than chasing some of the shorter-term gains that so much online stuff can tease people with.”     

Mostly, for Mahoney, his business isn’t just about numbers; it’s about the message that while millennials haven’t inherited the best economic reality, there is hope, and Mahoney’s mission is to share that message.