It’s a great time to be starting out in the financial advisor industry. The silent generation and baby boomers have begun transferring trillions of dollars to their heirs, and the graying financial advice industry needs more advisors to help those heirs. But that doesn’t mean the career is easy. So for this week’s Barron’s Advisor Big Q, we asked five veteran financial advisors to weigh in on how their younger colleagues can have successful careers.
Timothy Smith, founder, CEO, Aurora Private Wealth: In any position where you’re trying to build a practice, there’s going to be a lot of rejection. People are going to say no to you. So you need to find a way to deal with that rejection so it doesn’t prevent you from being successful. I, for example, found a way to take every “no” that I got, to quantify how frequently I got a “no” versus a “yes,” and figured out with each “no” how much closer I was to a “yes.” Part and parcel of all of this is that you need to have perseverance, determination, and discipline. Finally, you need an attitude of gratitude, because people who are happy attract people who are happy.
And it’s critical to have a genuine and sincere desire to help people. Because at the heart of it, that’s what we do. We say it’s about financial planning or investment planning or insurance or whatever, but at the end of the day, we help people feel more comfortable and in control of their financial lives. So you should be a person who just really likes helping people by nature, because the work is hard, and helping is the most fulfilling part of the work.
Tammy Haygood, private wealth advisor, RBC Wealth Management: I tell young people procrastination is the kryptonite to your superpower. In this business a lot of things can creep into your psyche if you allow them to, but you need to just act, pick up the telephone, call someone about whatever you’re wanting to discuss with…
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