How do you define success? Success can come from many aspects: life, career, family. Often I get asked how I became a financial advisor and what has led to my success. When someone views me as successful, I’m always flattered. While I do consider myself to be successful, I’m also very humble.
By industry standards, I’m just a pea. I’m not a rainmaker, not a million dollar producer, not one of Forbes Top 100 financial advisors. I don’t have hundreds of millions under management. Most big time producers would probably chuckle if they knew the size of my book of clients. So why do others and myself consider me to be successful? Because I love what I do (and it shows) and get paid very well to help people each and every day.
Being a financial advisor is not easy. Being naive and inexperienced, that’s something that I really didn’t know when I got started in the business– but very quickly found out. How hard is it to get started? When I began my career with A.G. Edwards & Sons in 2002, I had a training class of around 55 people. My class ranged from 23 year-olds, like myself, starting their careers to 50+ year-olds attempting a third career. After completing training and being “in production” (better know as licensed to sell) for a year, our class of 55 had been slashed to less than half. At my five year anniversary mark, there were only 5 of us left. If you’re a numbers geek and you use my class as an example of your odds of surviving, then you have a 91% chance that you are going to fail if you decide to become a financial advisor. How do you like your odds?
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