Teresa J.W. Bailey

In the creative hothouse that is Nashville, Teresa Bailey, 39, has crafted a practice that helps women grasp financial power that they didn’t know was within reach.

“Creative people use a different language,” she said. And creative couples often delegate the metrics of personal finance to the entrepreneurial partner, while the other partner — often, the wife — focuses on family-centric priorities.

“Entrepreneurs see the potential of a business, while the wives are worrying about paying for the kids’ college,” Bailey said. It’s the responsibility of advisors, she adds, to interpret the relevance of financial plans into the clients’ worlds, instead of expecting clients to get schooled on investing terminology and strategy.

Her own father’s financial stresses impressed upon a teenaged Bailey the urgency of knowing enough about money management to build personal security. That same family trauma reverberated through her early career years. “I struggled with imposter syndrome to a crippling degree,” she said, recalling tearful moments in her first role as an operations manager for an advisory firm.

Her turnaround came as she worked with women clients and saw how they responded to her approach of leading with listening.

Grounded in those insights, she now builds educational content that is being adopted regionally.

“I am in one of the largest entrepreneurial communities in the U.S., filled with clients who are out-of-the-box thinkers, and there’s no better sandbox to create advisor educational content and service offerings,” Bailey said. “I’m in the right place at the right time with the right people.”

—Joanne Cleaver