Episode summary
The Healthy Advisor: Living Authentically After Transitioning with Max Kulyk
Summary
Max Kulyk traces his path from a small Northwestern Pennsylvania town to financial advice, theology, and eventually founding Chicory Wealth. He says he knew from an early age that his internal identity did not match how others saw him, came out as a lesbian in his teens, and later found that his family’s relative wealth and status likely provided some protection. A 1985 tornado destroyed much of his hometown and pushed him back into the family business before he eventually left for divinity school and then shifted into financial services after realizing he needed to address a distorted relationship with money.
He says he entered the industry through American Express Financial Advisors, later Ameriprise, and built his practice by talking with people about money at a time when the business was still paper-heavy and intensely demanding. The host notes the challenge of serving LGBTQ investors, and Max says his identity was less of a barrier than the sheer grind of building a business from scratch. He argues that his difference became a competitive advantage because Chicory Wealth was built for clients who want values alignment, spiritual depth, and a more progressive worldview.
Max also explains that he designed his firm to avoid the “eat-what-you-kill” model and instead support work-life balance, family leave, PTO, and B Corp values. He says his own transition, including starting testosterone, brought a profound sense of rightness, but also made misgendering and fears over access to gender-affirming care feel more urgent and painful.
Key takeaways
- Max Kulyk says the hardest part of his career was not being transgender, but the 80- to 90-hour grind of building a financial advisory business from scratch.
- He says Chicory Wealth was intentionally designed around human beings first, with family leave, PTO, health insurance, and a B Corp-minded culture.
- Kulyk argues that not fitting the typical advisor mold became a competitive advantage for serving progressive, values-driven, and LGBTQ clients.
- He says testosterone and transition brought “a profound sense of comfort and rightness,” but misgendering has been unexpectedly painful.
- Kulyk says access to gender-affirming care now feels politically urgent to him, and he is more activated around that issue than before.
Notable quotes
“I think I was very lucky, is what I want to say. I don't I didn't experience a lot of overt nastiness from people”
“The hard part about building the business was just the sheer enormity of the volume of work that you have to do to start a financial service business from the ground up”
“we were human beings first and worker bees second”
“I have never felt better or happier in my life”
How the episode opens
Welcome to the Healthy Advisor, a podcast from Wealth Management focused on advisors personal well-being and healing. I'm Diana Britton, executive editor of Wealth Management, and in this podcast we explore some of the struggles and personal development issues facing advisors and financial services professionals and how to get to a place of healing for mind, body, and spirit. Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Healthy Advisor podcast and thanks for joining us.
As you may know, this is the podcast focused on financial advisor health and well-being and today's guest certainly counts on that score. His name is Mac Max Kulick, CEO and founder of Chickery Wealth. Max, welcome and thank you for being on the podcast.
Thank you for having me, Diana.
Max has a very interesting and cool story. Max grew up as Maggie and started his career as a woman in this industry and as a long-time member of the LGBTQ plus community, Max has experienced first living with non-gendered pronouns before feeling feeling ready to fully transition. And about 8 months ago at the age of 64, you made the transition to being a man and Max is going to talk about his journey today and so can we go back to the beginning a little bit and I know you grew up in a very small town in Northwestern Pennsylvania.
Tell us what that was like growing up there.
It was a very small town, about 1600 people, one stoplight town, couple of streets. It was I would say in my early years, my very early years, a pretty healthy town. I think things got really difficult for the town post tornadic catastrophe, which I think I mentioned to you Diana when we were chatting before, but which didn't happen until my early 20s.
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- lgbtq identity
- gender transition
- financial planning purpose
- advisor wellbeing
- values-based leadership
Companies and tickers mentioned
- Chicory Wealth
Watch the episode
Watch “The Healthy Advisor: Living Authentically After Transitioning with Max Kulyk” on YouTube
Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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