Intentional Life Design with CFP Lillian Turner

Day Briceño
Sep 5
9 min read

When I first connected with Lillian Turner, founder of Daring Greatly Wealth, I was immediately struck by her authenticity and passion for transforming how we think about money. As a Certified Financial Professional (CFP) and Registered Life Planner (RLP), Lillian has taken an unconventional path in the financial services industry—one that prioritizes life design over portfolio management and genuine transformation over traditional wealth accumulation.

Her story is one of courage, intentionality, and the power of aligning your work with your deepest values. From growing up in a household where money was a source of stress and scarcity to building a thriving business that helps others live more intentionally, Lillian's journey offers valuable insights for anyone seeking to create meaningful change in their own life.

How did you get started in financial coaching, and what led you to evolve into life design?

My business is called Daring Greatly Wealth, and I'm a CFP—certified financial professional—and also an RLP, or registered life planner.

Starting from the very beginning, growing up, money was a really negative thing in my household. It was something that my parents would scream at each other about. They'd argue constantly. One of my first money memories was finding a doll in a toy store that I loved and asking my mom to buy it, and she said, "No, we can't afford that." I was maybe five and had no idea how money worked, but I grew up with just this scarcity mindset around money—there's never enough money. I saw my parents work so hard, but there was never enough money. We were always living lower middle class. Obviously we had food on the table, but it was stressful. My dad lost his job and was laid off a few times after that.

Growing up, I was very avoidant of money because it was just scary. But I always loved to work and loved to teach people. I went into college in 2015 as an accounting major, quickly switched to finance because I didn't want to sit behind a desk and do taxes. I wanted something more people-oriented, more of a helping profession.

My senior year, I did this independent Honors College project on behavioral finance, where I studied the psychology of money. I was like, "Okay, this actually feels really exciting to me and really meaningful." So I brought that into the next few years of my life.

I started working at a large wealth management firm in 2017, and I really enjoyed the people aspect of it. But it wasn't quite it—it was still very much about profit over people and money versus helping people with their money. I'd look around and I didn't see anyone that looked like me. It's very "pale, male and stale," I call it, in the investment management field. So it was hard to think that I could be someone that I didn't see.

What was the turning point that led you to entrepreneurship?

I moved to Scottsdale from Wisconsin in 2019 and switched branches within the same company. It was a very different culture here. I was working with a financial advisor team where there was a lot of verbal abuse and sexual harassment. I would cry myself to sleep every night—it was just a really traumatic situation. All the women were assistants, and I knew at that point that I wanted to be a financial planner.

I ended up taking and passing the CFP exam. I remember going to the branch manager and asking him, "Hey, can I move up? I want to be an associate financial advisor." He was like, "No, you have to be an assistant for another 10-15 years." Meanwhile, they'd bring in 22-year-old men who knew nothing but had a dad in the business or something, and they'd be promoted immediately.

For a second, I debated almost leaving the industry. I was like, "There's no way I can succeed here." But I ended up networking my way into a new firm around 2021, which had a much better culture. In this new role, I was in charge of helping build a new division working with more of the mass affluent—normal people, not ultra-high net worth people. I loved working with younger folks in their 20s and 30s, teaching them how to build wealth and empowering them to do it on their own.

But again, it wasn't quite it. I couldn't bring in that psychology of money. I ended up getting some graduate certificates at Golden Gate University in life planning and financial therapy. I moved one more time to another firm—a small firm—and I loved the entrepreneurial energy. We could help whoever we wanted to help, and we were bringing in the life planning aspect.

How did you make the final leap to start your own business?

Actually, back in high school, I was part of a business club called DECA. My senior year, I competed with this 30-page business plan for a financial planning company. I have no idea where that idea even came from—it was really like an immaculate conception because I didn't know any financial advisors. My parents never had financial guidance. But I made it to an international competition, and I was like, "Okay, there's something here."

In 2022, I was at a Financial Planning Association conference, and I was in my Vegas hotel room at the Pink Flamingo. I just felt like writing a business plan that day, so I did. But it was for a traditional investment management firm, which is what everyone else in the industry is doing.

When things ended sporadically at my last firm, I was like, "Okay, this is my sign. I'm just going to go off on my own." I had the choice to register as an RIA—a registered investment advisory firm—but I was like, "No, I don't want to do investment management. That's just not where the value is in financial planning to me. It's really in the coaching and the life planning."

I realized we think we're so safe in corporate America because we have that stable paycheck coming in every two weeks, but someone can pull the rug out from under you at any moment. In entrepreneurship, I control everything that I can control. My income isn't always the same every single month, but I still feel a sense of security I've never felt before.

How has faith played a role in your entrepreneurial journey?

I've always been a hard worker. Even in high school, I'd work two jobs, work 50 hours a week during the summer. So for me, hard work is easy, but having faith—trusting God, trusting the universe—is really hard.

I worked so hard my first year of entrepreneurship, but things weren't happening as fast as I wanted them to. It's so hard not to want to give up as an entrepreneur when you're comparing your income to your previous salary. I definitely remember crying a few times about money and just being stressed financially.

The biggest hurdle was the income roller coaster—the income instability. Especially as a planner, someone who's always mapping out spending plans, not having that solid income coming in and racking up business debt was really scary. But I held the faith because I knew I was doing what I was meant to be doing, and I could see the transformations in my clients.

I shifted my thinking to impact over income. I started tracking my success by how many people I was helping and how big their transformations were, versus how much money I was bringing in. I think we're taught that income and title determine our self-worth—our net worth is our self-worth. But you could have all the money in the world, and it's not going to guarantee that you're happy.

I knew I would regret on my deathbed having never tried to launch a business and create change in the industry. So to me, it was worth it.

What does living intentionally mean to you?

Money isn't just this piece of paper with a dead guy's face on it. Money is a tool to help us live our most meaningful, fulfilling, and joyful lives. We can always make more money, but we can't always have more time.

A lot of it for me is being really intentional with my money and my time, aligning both of those with my values. Living for the now while also balancing saving for the future, because you want to be intentional with your future life too. But also really living a fulfilling life now and not waiting till that arbitrary retirement date.

We're always waiting—till we get married, till we graduate college, till we have a baby—but what about right now? What are we doing right now to make sure we're adding fulfillment and joy to our life? We're working so hard for our money, so how can we be intentional with spending it in ways that bring us the max return on life that we can get?

Return on life over return on investment—ROL, return on love. That's everything.

Why is financial intentionality so important for people in their 20s and 30s?

People don't realize the power of investing as soon as you can. I'm talking about investing $50-100 a month consistently starting at 25—it gives you so much more freedom and optionality and choice down the line. We think, "Oh, I'm going to leave investing for a later version of me. Me in my 40s can figure out investing." But by then, your options are so much more limited.

If you just start early and are really intentional for not only your present self but also future self, you have so much more choice and autonomy and agency over the rest of your life. It changes absolutely everything.

There's a severe lack of knowledge and know-how, and there's overwhelming shame around money and fear of asking for support around money. But if you are really intentional with your finances now, it changes everything.

How are you being intentional in your own life right now?

I'm really paying attention to my energy management this year. I've noticed how much my energy management affects my time management. Last year, I traveled a lot, which was amazing—I got to work from Hawaii and all these amazing places—but it was also exhausting.

This year, I've built out specific months that I'm traveling and months that I'm just home and focused on work. I have a lot of things I'm trying to accomplish this year—planning a wedding, writing a book—so I'm being really intentional with my energy management and time management.

I'm also running really lean this year business-wise. Last year, I invested a lot in business coaches and marketing and branding support because I felt like I needed that in year one. This year, I'm being more intentional about my business spending so I can hit some other financial goals.

Year one of entrepreneurship was a lot of "f*ck around and find out"—I had no idea what I was doing. I tried courses, group programs, one-on-one, events, everything. But I was really intentional about paying attention to what I liked and what I was most excited about, and paying attention to my marketing efforts and what brings me the most joy.

What advice would you give to someone feeling overwhelmed with their finances?

Number one: give yourself some grace. It's not your fault that we weren't taught this stuff at home or in school growing up. That's okay, but it is your responsibility now to learn. I truly believe money is a 21st-century survival skill.

Even if you don't have loads of money to start investing right now, that's okay. Still do the work to learn how to do it. And a man is not a plan—for all my women out there. Read personal finance books, listen to podcasts, go to free events. There are so many really cool financial webinars out there.

I'm really big on investing in support. People sometimes are hesitant to pay someone else to help them learn how to optimize or manage their money, but the cost of inaction—the cost of waiting—is so much more when it comes to investing, because time is that secret ingredient to wealth. Don't be afraid to ask for support.

Also, talk about it with your friends. Normalize talking about money. It doesn't have to be shameful or scary or fear-based. It gets to be a community, and the more we talk about it, the better it gets. Make sure you're having those hard conversations around money with your partner too.

Money gets to be fun and empowering and easy, but it does take work to get there. Just because it feels scary and overwhelming now doesn't mean it's always going to feel that way. The sooner you face it—open up your bank account, open up your 401k—the sooner it's going to feel better. You'll be shocked by how much more secure you feel in your life when you understand how your money is working and you know that it's being optimized and working for you.

We want our money to work harder than we work so we can sit on the couch and watch Love Island while our investments are working while we sleep. And the sooner you start investing, the more you get to do what you love.