Introduction:

Financial advisor career. All right y’all, sit down, get comfortable. I’m going to share some of my thoughts and insights about the career path and the idea of you being a financial advisor. You know, I feel like I have a very unique perspective to be making and sharing this Article because I was a financial advisor for over eight years. I had my series 6, 63, 65 and I had a fantastic run. 

I was a financial advisor from 2012 until 2020 and then sold my book and walked away. So, some of my insights that I’m going to be sharing with you today are from that eight-year run and a little bit of my opinions of financial advisors both before I was a financial advisor as a financial advisor. advisor myself, and then now that I’ve been away from the career for a few years, I’ve got some insights I want to share as well. So we’re just going to get into it. I’ve got some notes, but I’m probably going to go on some long rant here, so I hope you’re sitting down and comfortable. I’ve got a I’ve got I’ve got to read the notes otherwise I’ll go on too many long rants, right? 

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1. It’s Not Easy

So number one  it’s not easy. And I want you to know that it’s not easy because if you try anything in life, you’re going to scrape your knee. You’re going to fall. make mistakes You’re going to fumble a little bit. And I think if you understand going into this career path, it’s not going to be easy and if you know that, then I think you can judge how much you want to challenge yourself. You can judge how much you want to challenge yourself. How much you want to push yourself, but it’s not going to be easy. It’s going to be challenging. However, the longer you’re in the career, it does get easier. It’s never perfectly easy, it’s always going to have some challenges to it. Some of them might be staff related, client related, money related, economic related. A lot of it’s going to be out of your control. So you’re going to have to deal with some ambiguity and you’re going to have to really be willing to walk through a challenging time of your life, okay? So just be ready for that. 

Start Debt-Free

Um, I would also if it’s possible to do this debt free. That’s how I begin. Financial advisor, I was a career changer financial advisor. You know, and actually now that we’re talking about that, the folks that might be Reading this Article, I’m just going to assume for a moment, if you’re researching the career path of a financial advisor, you’re either a career changer like me, or you’re a younger person who’s maybe in an internship or you’re graduating college and you’re entertaining this as a career path for yourself. So, if that’s you, you know, let me know in the comments down below. I’d be curious to have your opinion as well, coming from your perspective compared to mine, right? So the reason why I say that it’s better to be debt free is because there’s a few different paths, a few different career paths, we’ll get into that in a minute. chunk of cash then if money gets tight for you personally, you got your own personal emergency fund to dip into so that you can continue to run your practice because you’re essentially starting a brand new business.

Imagine that you’re opening up a sandwich shop. That’s a really good analogy that a lot of sales trainers tell you when you first get started. Kind of what they say to get you to call your friends and family because that’s who you only really typically have a network with up until the time you start this career. That’s why they tell you to call friends and family. Anyway, we’ll get into that in a minute. Actually, no, we’ll get into it now. 

• Why They Tell You to Call Friends and Family

Why do they tell you to call your friends and family? Because it’s a sales job, y’all. I wanted to talk about attrition right now. The reason why there’s a lot of attrition is that there is a lot of attrition. In this financial advisor career path is because it’s sales. And people don’t realize that and they get into it and they’re like wow oh my gosh I got to make all these phone calls. I’ve got to really sing for my supper. I’ve got to really work hard. This isn’t for me. I don’t want to be a financial advisor. I’m going to go do something else. That happens. Because it’s a sales job and there’s a lot of attrition in sales jobs, right? Uh, I think a lot of financial advisors get nudged and coached to make a lot of phone calls, right? 30, 40, 50, 20, 45, 60 deals a day. That’s a lot. That’s a sales job.

So for me personally, I started with one of 12 candidates, 12 recruits, and then after about five months, there were I think we were about six or seven of us, and then after a year I was the only one left. That was the only one left. And I want to tell you about expectations from a minute ago. But because I told you that I had no debt going into this career, there were 11 people that left within a year. So most of these people did not do well financially as they were trying to be a financial advisor. And a lot of them went deeper into debt as a result. So that’s the other reason why I wanted to make this video is because if there’s 12 people watching this video right now, there is a potential that 11 of you in one year from now are not going to be a financial advisor and you’ll be deeper in debt than you are right now. So that’s why I say, you know, have the right expectations, have the right expectations. 

• Three Career Paths of a Financial Advisor

Okay, so let’s talk about the paths of a career financial advisor. So, I’m going to generalize this, I apologize, but I’m going to generalize into three paths. Path number one, that would be the most common, would be, well, I’m going to call it a salaried financial advisor. And then under a salaried financial advisor, we’re going to break that down into two different options.

1. Salaried Financial Advisor

And on top to the $32,000 or $36,000 or $40,000 salary, and then they’re going to get something on top. That’s not too bad because then you’re at least bringing a little bit of money in. But on that type of a salary, you’re not buying a fancy car, you’re not buying the fanciest of clothing. You are, you know, kind of struggling to get by.

So hey, fun tip, do what I did. Buy a suit off the rack and then take it to a tailor and spend the right money on a tailor. All my suits are off the rack, but I had them tailored and they look sharp. Also, non-iron wrinkle free. Link in the description, y’all, get these magnets. My goodness, come on, stop looking like John. Revolting, start looking a whole more sharp, right? All right. So, I’m rambling, I apologize. All right.

So, the salaried financial advisor. So, one that would work for a bank. Low salary and get paid maybe some sales commissions on top of that. The other type of salaried financial advisor would be one that’s working for a larger broker dealer traditionally, maybe a small boutique shop maybe. But you’re working for a larger broker dealer, maybe you’re making a salary of $57k to $65k, maybe $60 to $72,000. I don’t know, it’s been a few years y’all, I’ve been out of the game.

I don’t know what’s inflation, what these things are at right now. harder salary, but that’s it. You don’t get any fees and this is like your rookie time. This is like your hunting season, right? You’ve got 12 months, or you’ve got 18 months, or you’ve got two years to get 20 million of assets under management, or 24 million or 30 million of assets under management.

And if you don’t get 30 million or 25 million or whatever the number is that they put in front of you as your goal, you’re gone. Fire. And then you have to worry if your clients will follow you to the next broker dealer or not? So I know first hand a few handful of guys that literally just hop from one broker dealer to the next, earning 50 grand here, 60 grand there. Ah. Some of your clients go with me. So by the time you make your final hop and you finally get to gather and accumulate, you know, 20 million or 30 million of assets under management, it’s helpful to do that when you’re on your third or fourth hop and more and more clients keep coming with. So, I don’t know. That would be the salary financial advisor. 

2. Non-Salaried Financial Advisor

The other financial advisor, we’ll put them in the middle here, will say that they are the non salary. That is the path that I walked down. This path is one that traditionally has a lot more insurance products sold into it, right? A lot of the folks that are salaried, they typically will care a lot about your investments and then insurance will sometimes be an afterthought.

Non-salaried group of advisors, your thought will be insurance and planning and then investments for the good ones, the smart ones, they will start to gather investments as soon as possible. Um, but there’s a lot of folks out there that are financial representatives that are financial advisors, right? That kind of coincides with this one as well. But at the end of the day, uh, you know, it’s sink or swim. It’s sink or swim. And if you get a few thousand bucks for the first month or for the first six weeks, that’s cool, but that goes real quick. And you’ve got to call your friends, your family, they encourage you to make a list of people that you can call and you literally have to call them. We don’t have to call them. do. But if you want to succeed in the career and have a shot, will, and then from there it’s just your sales skills. It’s your ability to walk into an establishment and meet someone and then turn that into a meeting, and then turn that meeting into a potential client. It is sales, right? 

3. Flat-Fee / Fee-Only Financial Advisor

So the third career path, I would say is the least salesy one, and I would say it’s the one where it’s a little bit more where I personally think the trend of the industry is going. You can blame Schwab for $0 trades, they started that a long time ago, and then Robinhood came in as well. So this trend of the financial advisor making and getting paid less money, it’s a trend that will continue. And the trend that is now being shifted is I would say the flat fee financial advisor, or the only financial advisor. To me, this is a little bit more realistic of what I think people should expect for a financial advisor. Why? When I need HVAC work done in my house, I pay my HVAC technician a fee for servicing my unit, and then that’s it. There’s no ongoing fee, even though my air conditioning unit continues to keep me and my family cool here in Florida.

The Future of the Industry

a long-term duration holding period for that to be more of a flat fee type of money into advisor client relationship, right? Because if you are 25 years old right now and you’re going to be investing for 35 years into a retirement account, a Roth IRA or 401k or rollover, you know, I think that the retail investor shouldn’t have to pay a fee for 25 or 35 years to get the retirement. You know, what do you really need? A lot of people really just need a little bit of direction up front, a little bit of how to, and they could watch their own YouTube videos and they could figure it out by Googling things online. It’s not 1970 anymore, y’all. It is the 2020s, 2026 right now. So there’s information everywhere. That’s also kind of why I feel this way because you’re probably watching this on your phone probably, but this is a YouTube video about money management and finances. And I think that the trend of financial advisors making less money will continue and I think that the trend of the DIY investor will grow and I think technology is supporting that. 

Final

So listen, if you disagree with anything I said, let me know in the comments down below. I had a fantastic eight-year run, y’all. I do not regret anything. Yes, it is sales. I made a ton of relationships, made a ton of great friends and I still talk with many of them today. And a lot of you guys still visit my Website. So I’m very grateful and very appreciative of you that still follow me. And I hope that from these Articles, you are still getting a little bit of a nugget of some sort of a degree in flavor for me. So I appreciate your time. I will see you.