Advisor Spotlight: Lindsay Brock, Stearns Financial Group

November 6, 2025

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

The Advisor Spotlight series showcases advisors from teams who work with Flourish to learn about their journey to wealth management, their work with clients, and their vision for the future of financial planning. We recently sat down with Lindsay Brock, CFP® and Wealth Advisor at Stearns Financial Group in North Carolina who began using Flourish in 2019. We’re excited to share Lindsay’s story and the approach she brings to working with her clients. 

Flourish: To get started, please tell us about your career path and what led you to wealth management. 

Lindsay Brock: In 2009, I took a job at a hedge fund as an administrative assistant and spent a few years in New York learning the ropes before I went to AllianceBernstein and learned what it meant to work with private clients and be a fiduciary. Then I spent a few years establishing a private client group at a large, institutionally-focused RIA in Connecticut, which was highly educational. When my husband finished medical residency, we made our way to North Carolina where I have been with Stearns Financial Group for almost eight years. I love my clients and my colleagues, and I’m always learning something new.

Flourish: Tell us about the clients you work with at Stearns Financial Group. How do you aim to serve them and what is the ethos that you bring to the work that you do? 
Lindsay: At Stearns, we say that we work with the millionaire next door: the unassuming person or family that has accumulated $1 million or more of investable net worth. It typically happens unintentionally, by saving up over time, having reasonable spending, or even just doing well in your career. We have seen a fair amount of growth with those clients and the majority are now between $2-10M, but they all are pretty low-key delegators with no interest in micromanaging the details of their portfolios. 

Over the last 6-10 years, the practice has taken a more active role in wealth management beyond just managing portfolios. We want to make sure we incorporate financial planning into all aspects of the work we do for our clients and give them advice about everything that affects their financial life. 

I have found a lot of joy working with my clients around intergenerational wealth transfer. Helping people who have made money, whether by accident or on purpose, determine how they want that wealth to transfer when they are gone. That often means transferring to other generations, but it could also mean transferring to charities or other legacy positions. I love talking with clients about what else they want to accomplish with their money.

Flourish: What do you think has surprised you the most along the way in your work as a financial advisor? 
Lindsay: My father was a police officer and my mom was a nurse. My parents never had to learn about 401Ks or saving into a portfolio because they had pensions. Learning to work with high net worth individuals or people who have to save for retirement was new for me when I came into the business 16 years ago. The most surprising thing has been that people who are in a higher net worth bracket are just like everybody else. Everyone wants to find happiness for their family, security for themselves, and enjoy a hobby or two along the way. We have so much in common, but have different ways of getting there and different challenges along the way. 

Flourish: Can you talk about the growth of financial planning at Stearns? How is the day-to-day different to what it was 10 years ago?
Lindsay: As a whole, the industry has moved away from investment management, where we were stockbrokers selling pieces of portfolios to clients. Now, advisors have to stand out and show their value. You have to provide more than offering products that might not even beat the benchmarks. We have to pick and choose whether we're going to have active management or both passive and active. One way to add value is to focus on the reasons why we do what we do.

A lot of that has to do with numbers: cash-flow planning, at what age it makes the most sense to take social security, etc. But it’s also about things you can't quite calculate. For example, how long am I going to live versus my spouse and is it important for me to take care of them by setting them up with a higher social security benefit? None of us know the future, but we want to pick what's going to help us sleep at night. Financial confidence is about much more than just having a 60-40 portfolio that can perform. Making sure those smaller parts of the financial plan are in place can help clients feel more confident, together with portfolio returns. Stearns figured that out early. 

Flourish: Tell us about your approach to held-away cash with clients, cash that clients have that's outside the portfolio. 
Lindsay: I was one of those advisors that ignored the cash on the side. If I didn't see it, it didn't matter to me. Everyone has their own buffer of where they feel comfortable. My opinion used to be that, if my client doesn't feel comfortable showing that cash to me or letting me invest that, it's not my business. But as I've grown in my career and taken a wealth-management approach of knowing every part of a client's financial life, I want to make them aware of the best opportunities for that cash. Now, I'm bringing cash up in every meeting with clients and prospects, at multiple points in the year.

Flourish: How specifically do you bring cash into the conversation with clients and make sure it's on their radar?
Lindsay: I ask clients who they bank with, what kind of yield they’re getting, and what the interest rate is. When they tell me that they’re getting nothing or 0.2%, we discuss options. I never had those conversations five years ago. Now it's the difference between a couple hundred dollars a year or a couple of thousand dollars a year – or much more.

Flourish: What do you think are the main differences between Flourish Cash^† and other common cash instruments, such as money market funds?
Lindsay: The difference from a client perspective, first of all, is that Flourish Cash is FDIC insured through Program Banks^Ω and a money market fund is not. We saw some challenges in the great financial crisis where there were issues with money market units lining up to be a dollar. Even if clients aren’t thinking about that right now, I make sure they are aware of the differences before keeping a large sum in a money market fund.

In addition, when clients are buying a money market fund, it's typically in investment accounts that I can see through Schwab or Fidelity. Some clients may not want me to have visibility of it, or they may not want to ask me in order to access those funds. With Flourish, clients can manage their cash on their own.

On the advisor side, the difference is that I don't have direct responsibility for it in Flourish. I am not the one moving it around or using it to invest. I'm just using it as a talking point and planning tool. Another difference is that the platform makes it simpler for the client to manage and easier for the advisor to bring up in conversation. I can just log in to my Flourish account and see the client’s balance and related information.

Flourish: As you've had these conversations about cash, have you ever been surprised by how much cash a client has?
Lindsay: All the time! Less now that cash is part of every conversation, but a year or two ago, it was once a week. There have been so many times where I ask how much cash a client has and they have to actually sit and write out each bank account and how much cash they're keeping everywhere. "Well, in Wells Fargo, I'm keeping $55,000. In Chase, I'm keeping another $120,000. I have this CD over here that's another $200,000." They list everything out and discover they have almost $1 million in cash. It blows my mind, but it's happened so frequently that I feel like it shouldn't surprise me anymore.

Flourish: Broadly speaking, how do advisor attitudes about cash differ from your perspective? Do you see most advisors embracing it like you do or are there some that wonder why they should talk about cash after so many years of not thinking about it in their career? 
Lindsay: Human nature is that some people are excited for change and some are not. When it comes to advisors, you're going to find that same range of people – some advisors embrace the chance to talk about cash while some are more hesitant. We've definitely seen advisors who are more hesitant to embrace a new technology or a new solution such as an online-only savings product. If it's somebody who's been in the industry for 20, 30 years, they're used to advising clients to go to a brick and mortar bank and find a CD that will help them get a return. There definitely is that hesitation. Similar to our clients, some will embrace it and others will not.

With that said, if an advisor is ignoring cash entirely, I think that's a red flag. 

Flourish: Is there anything else you’d like to say about your journey in wealth management?
Lindsay: It’s not news when I say that our industry is too old, too white, and too male. I think that's something that really needs to change. The industry is taking baby steps already, but I would like to see giant leaps in that area. I think we need to take responsibility to engage the next generation of advisors from all different types of backgrounds.

Flourish: You previously mentioned you're 9.5 out of 10 on the career satisfaction scale. What is it about the job you love so much?
Lindsay: Our job comes with the happiest of the happy and the saddest of the sad. I get updates from clients on children or grandchildren being born, new houses, retirement, and travels. Those are the happy things that we get to experience with our clients, but there's sadness too. We have clients that pass away, get sick, deal with divorce or separation, or have struggles with children. It’s satisfying to help clients feel confident that they don’t have to worry about their finances. That's probably the best part of my job, knowing that I'm a support system for someone through the hard times. 

Stearns Financial Group and Flourish are separate and unaffiliated firms. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. This material is provided for informational purposes only and should not be construed as personalized investment advice. The views and opinions expressed in this interview are those of the individual being interviewed and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the Firm. The inclusion of any external party in this interview does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation by the Firm. This feedback may not be representative of the experience of other customers, and is not a guarantee of future performance or success. 

About Flourish

Flourish builds technology that empowers financial advisors, improves financial lives and retirement outcomes, and delivers new and innovative investment options to advisors. Today, the Flourish platform is used by more than 1,000 wealth management firms representing more than $2.6 trillion in assets under management. Flourish is wholly-owned by MassMutual. For more information, visit www.flourish.com. 

About Stearns Financial Group

Stearns Financial Group is a group comprised of investment professionals registered with Hightower Advisors, LLC, an SEC registered investment adviser. Registration as an investment advisor does not imply a certain level of skill or training. Some investment professionals may also be registered with Hightower Securities, LLC, member FINRA and SIPC. Advisory services are offered through Hightower Advisors, LLC. Securities are offered through Hightower Securities, LLC. All information referenced herein is from sources believed to be reliable. Stearns Financial Group and Hightower Advisors, LLC have not independently verified the accuracy or completeness of the information contained in this document. Stearns Financial Group and Hightower Advisors, LLC or any of its affiliates make no representations or warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy or completeness of the information or for statements or errors or omissions, or results obtained from the use of this information. Stearns Financial Group and Hightower Advisors, LLC or any of its affiliates assume no liability for any action made or taken in reliance on or relating in any way to the information. This document and the materials contained herein were created for informational purposes only; the opinions expressed are solely those of the author(s), and do not represent those of Hightower Advisors, LLC or any of its affiliates. Stearns Financial Group and Hightower Advisors, LLC or any of its affiliates do not provide tax or legal advice. This material was not intended or written to be used or presented to any entity as tax or legal advice. Clients are urged to consult their tax and/or legal advisor for related questions.