Unwrap the holiday savings at Citadel Outlets. Shop the early access Black Friday sales for the best deals of the season. The all night shopping party starts Thanksgiving night at 8 p.m. Visit CitadelOutlets.com for more information. - Okay, okay, okay, fine, fine, fine, fine, fine. After dozens and dozens of requests, I'll do the show for you.

What is Joshua's advice for how to get into the financial planning field? That's today, I give you my thoughts. (upbeat music) Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast. My name is Joshua Sheets. Today is Thursday, January 22, 2015. This is the show where we talk about all things financial planning, both from a consumer perspective and also from a professional perspective.

No secrets here. Everything I know I'll give you from either side of the table. And today I answer probably one of the more asked questions that I get. How would I get into financial planning if I were interested? (upbeat music) I really have been asked this question at least a few dozen times.

And I've been meaning to do a show on it. And I've done some, I've skirted around the issue a little bit. But today I'm gonna tackle it straight on. And I'm gonna try to give you my perspective, my opinions, my advice on getting into this industry and getting into this field.

Now you need to recognize, however, that this is my opinion and my experience. And my experience is limited. But I'll do my best to give you some thoughts. And essentially this is the speech that I would give you if we were sitting down having a drink together and you wanted to get into the financial planning business and we're interested in how to approach it.

As we start, let me give you a brief view into some of the types of emails that I get. I've chosen four to read to you. And I've trimmed them a little bit for time and for content. But let me just give you an idea. The first two are interesting.

The first one comes from Jordan and the second one comes from Tim. These came in to my email inbox within 45 minutes of each other over the Christmas break. (laughing) And I was fascinated by these questions and just how similar they were and how close they were in time.

Question from Jordan. Hey, Joshua, I consider personal finance and financial planning a hobby and I dole out my amateur advice to friends, colleagues, and family. A little bit of background. I'm 25 years old and currently working as an auditor in the big four in my third year and I've just been early promoted to senior associate.

The thing is I don't see myself auditing forever and I really want to get into financial planning. My plan is to start taking the courses for the CFP in May and June of 2015 after my busy season is over. I feel secure in my job but I just don't love it.

Do you have any advice for a 20-something wanting to transition to a career in financial planning with zero experience? Next question, 45 minutes later. Hey, Joshua, I'm writing because I'd love to get your insight in a career as a financial advisor. A little background on myself. I'm a 28-year-old CPA who has worked as an auditor at a large CPA firm for the past four years.

I've been thinking about making a career change and given my interests, I've begun looking into possibly starting a career as a financial advisor. I really enjoy the technical side of financial planning, including the tax side of planning, but I'm also enjoying learning about the investing side as well. In talking with a few other people, I have heard that being a financial advisor is basically a sales job where you are asked to utilize your own contacts to push financial products on.

What I have heard is basically the only way to make money is to have rich friends or family to get established. I really like the fact that I could be helping people but the cold calling and pushing financial products on people does not sound appealing. Also, I don't believe I have the wealthy contacts needed to get established.

I would love to get your insight on this matter and to hear if the stories I hear about careers as a financial advisor are correct. Additionally, I'd love to hear any recommendations you would have for somebody looking to get into a career as a financial advisor. Thanks, Tim. I guess the auditing community is gonna be losing a couple of its good representatives.

Next email from Eric. Hi, Josh. In 2013, I became completely obsessed with all things finance. I first picked up books about stock picking because I thought that was the way to go. But within a month or two, I was recommended the Intelligent Investor and I've been going with the Boglehead strategy since then.

I've been very lucky in getting a job straight out of college that pays quite well in the software industry and since I started in July 2013, I've saved 70 to 80% of my take home income. I figure within 2015, I will become financially independent at age 25. I've been listening to your podcast daily since I discovered it last month and needless to say, it has quickly become my favorite podcast.

Keep up the awesome work. I listen to every new episode. I am interested in becoming a fee-only financial planner. Every time I get the opportunity to talk with someone who is also interested in finance, believe me, this is super rare, I get very excited. Nothing makes me happier, basically.

I have a bachelor's degree in computer engineering right now. I'm wondering, what is the shortest path that I could take to get to the place where I can hang out a shingle and start advising people for a small fee? I am not interested in charging for assets under management.

I simply want to share knowledge with people so they can make their own investments and financial decisions. I want to do the opposite of most advisors, basically. I'd be okay charging very little money for just a consultation because I will be financially independent. You mentioned in one episode that you got a master's degree in financial planning and I know you need the CFP certification.

With just my bachelor's degree, could I get this CFP and start taking on clients? Or would I need other certifications as well? Thanks, Eric. And those are representative of many emails that I get. And then I'll finish with a fourth one here, just a different life situation. I've gotten a few different ones from clients, or from prospective clients.

I've gotten one from men, from women. These are from three young men. And this one is from an older man, but I've gotten a couple from some ladies who are kind of mid-career and they've asked me this question. And so here would be another example of a different take on the question.

And this one wasn't a specific question, it was part of an email exchange that I was having with a listener. Listener says, Joshua, I've realized over time that I'm a poor candidate for the traditional early retirement. And instead, I would like to focus my next 15 to 17 years, roughly ages 52 to 67, on doing something that I like.

This person was actually a practicing physician. Be it as an administrator in a medical business that I believe in, being a health coach for middle-aged guys trying to get back into shape, or opening a gelato shop in my neighborhood. Actually, my dream job would probably be selling tickets in a booth at a ski resort, but maybe later on that one.

I've also thought about becoming a personal finance coach or advisor for doctors. I see them make stupid mistakes all the time. I could probably do a series of podcasts on stupid things my partners have done. Perhaps you could help me get that one off the ground. All the best.

And again, this was a man who is a physician. So, these are representative, and I should have included in my preparing for the show just a few of the ones from the ladies, and I get yelled at from you guys. It's not just a male, it is a male-dominated industry, but there are more and more ladies who are getting into it.

Some of the most effective financial advisors that I've ever worked with have been ladies. So, it's an interesting question, 'cause all of these come at it from a different angle. And so, I wanna talk about just some different, I'm gonna talk a little bit about the way the financial advice industry is currently.

And one of the things I'm most excited about is today, in 2015, there is no one model which is gonna be the most effective or the most important. There are many models that are emerging, and especially with some of the changes in technology, there are some new models being tested.

I'm excited about some of the new models that are being tested. And I think we need, frankly, I think we need more models. And I'm excited about seeing and helping those develop, profiling people who are trying new things and building new ways of working with clients. The key is to understand the different models and approaches to a financial planning practice that are available, and then figure out which one will be effective for you.

There are actually many historical models that are time-honored and still work, and then there are some brand new ones. One of the oldest models of giving financial advice is the model of a traditional life insurance agent. Years, I mean, back in the 1800s was when life insurance first started to be developed.

Life insurance companies were started, and at that time, there were life insurance agents riding around on horseback from farm to farm to farm, selling the farmers and their families life insurance policies. And as far as I'm concerned, that was an amazingly valuable service, and that was financial planning. Now, today, there are many fewer people doing that, but there's nothing, in my opinion, that has changed about the model that makes the idea and the model of being a life insurance agent less relevant.

I'm gonna talk in detail about some different ways that that can be approached even today. You also traditionally had a stockbroker, and so a stockbroker historically was one who helped handle the transaction in individual securities. Now, that changed, that model was destroyed over time, and so many stockbrokers moved on to managing some portfolios, choosing individual stocks.

That model, as far as I can tell, has pretty much been destroyed by the mutual fund industry. So many stockbrokers have moved on to selling mutual funds. That model is quickly disappearing, the sale of mutual funds for a commission. Charles Schwab, was it Schwab who destroyed that business with his mutual fund supermarket back in the day?

I mean, some of these models have just changed over time. The index fund has taken a serious bite out of the actively managed fund marketplace. The hedge fund industry has taken a lot of some business away from the mutual fund industry. So the idea of selling mutual funds for a commission, this has changed, although there are plenty of people still doing this, but that has certainly changed the model.

And now, the most popular model is to do fee-based or fee-only planning, where instead of being paid commissions off of the sale of investments, you are billing fees to the account. But all of these are some variation of financial planning, even accounting. Historically, you would have a time-honored model of working as an accountant, perhaps a tax planner where you are working and preparing individual tax returns, corporate tax returns, giving tax advice and accounting services.

And that's absolutely financial planning. In fact, today in 2015, the most trusted advisor for most people who are wealthy is generally their accountant. Many of us who came in from the product side, the life insurance side or the investment side, have often been jealous of accountants. And I know several friends who started as tax preparers and have added on financial products to their business.

Now, financial planning as its own discipline is still extremely young as a professional discipline, but it's emerging. And it started largely, if you're interested, to go back and listen to the episode with Michael Kitsis in the archives. And that episode number is episode 92. So you can find that at radicalpersonalfinance.com/92.

But Kitsis and I tried to talk a lot about the history of the financial planning industry. And we tried to be very, there were no curtain held there, just simply we talked about the history and the different models and different things that are there. And so financial planning, it originally kind of started to be developed largely as a way to sell more product.

It was added on as a benefit. But frankly, I think the best product salespeople have largely always been great financial planners. I think of two specific people that I have read a lot of their work. The more recent of the two was a man, he just died a year ago, a couple of years ago, named Al Granum.

Al is a legend in the life insurance business. He originally started with Northwestern Mutual as a young man. He built one of the most successful life insurance agencies while Northwestern Mutual history and Northwestern in industry history. And he perfected a sales system called the one card system, which is a subject for another day.

But it was actually the system that I was trained on as a new life insurance agent. And it was basically a system of measuring your daily activity, where you tracked how many phone calls you made, how many people you saw, what you did on a daily basis. And he probably has had a bigger impact on the life insurance industry than just about anybody else.

But if you go back and you read his books that he wrote, he has one that is, I would say, is a mandatory must read for anybody who's interested in building a financial services practice. That book is called "Building a Financial Services Clientele," I think is what it's entitled.

And he goes through the entire process of how to start from nothing to today. But he's had a bigger impact on just about anybody than, excuse me, he's had a bigger impact on the industry than just about anybody else. But he was absolutely a financial planner, just wasn't called that.

But the point was he was finding out what people's goals were, what they were trying to accomplish, and then helping to solve those goals. And the solutions involved financial products. That's how people often forget, and which I'm gonna get to in just a minute about the connection between selling.

We all have financial products, and I'm gonna talk about professional selling in a minute. But it's very difficult to, we can't solve our financial needs without some sort of financial product. That may be a savings account that's offered by your bank, a CD that's offered by your bank or by a brokerage firm.

It may be some gold coins that you buy from a local coin dealer, or some, I don't know, some silver bullion that you hold offshore with somebody that advertises over the internet. That might be a mutual fund that's run by a mutual fund company, a life insurance policy that's run by a life insurance company.

The financial products, we all consume them. And so Al Granum was, in his day, was a comprehensive financial planner, even though I doubt that he personally ever worked with investments. He was almost surely primarily working with insurance. The other person that I think of is a man named Ben Feldman.

And to the best of my knowledge, Ben still holds the, or he's dead now, he died 10 years ago, but he still holds the title as the world's greatest life insurance salesperson. He worked with New York Life, which is another amazing insurance company with a tremendous history. And he sold, let's see, he sold, I pulled up his Wikipedia page, he sold $1.8 billion worth of life insurance for New York Life from 1942 through 1993.

And he once held the world record for the most products sold by value by a salesperson in a career, in his total career. In a year, he sold $100 million of life insurance in a year, and in a single day, he sold $20 million of life insurance. And so now to put that into context, in Ben Feldman's day as an active producer, there's an organization in the life insurance industry called Million Dollar Roundtable.

And it's titled that because to sell a million dollars worth of insurance in a year was a massive achievement, a million dollars worth of total, what we call in the insurance business, face amount, total, if you sold $10,000 or a million dollars, that would count into that million dollar roundtable.

Today, I very rarely, when I was in life insurance, it was rare for me to sell a policy, I don't know, less than half a million. So you could hit a million bucks with just any normal family. I'd try to never leave anybody without at least a million bucks of life insurance.

But back in Ben Feldman's day, that would have been a year's accomplishment. So when you put his numbers into inflation adjusted terms, it was stunning. So I read a couple of his books and just understood what he did and how he sold. And the man was a financial planner.

He was a financial planner. Just wasn't called that at the time. Now in today's world, again, there's a greater need for financial planning as its own discipline than there's ever been. Simply because our financial lives are much more complex than they've ever been. There are some major trends that are dramatically pressing, frankly, the global population, but at least in the United States of America.

One of the biggest ones is the destruction of the defined benefit pension program. For many years, people never conceived of retiring. Then when they did conceive of retiring, then you could plan on a defined benefit pension from your company, and those are largely destroyed. People are living longer and being responsible for retiring.

There are more financial products that have been invented and marketed to individuals than ever before. And these financial products are more complex than anything in the history of mankind. I mean, you just sit down and try to read, try to sit down and read a prospectus for your average mutual fund, let alone your average variable annuity or something like an equity indexed annuity.

Just sit down and read the prospectus, and it's overwhelming. The tax code is more complex than it's ever been in the history of mankind. It's, how many pages is it? It's over 70,000 pages now, 70,320 pages long, and more than 3.7 million words. That's just the tax code, let alone insurance products.

And I could list off 30 different types of life insurance that exist today. I could list, I mean, there are dozens of investment products that have been created. I mean, we've got, I mean, everyone knows, okay, we've got open-end mutual funds, closed-end mutual funds, unit investment trusts, guaranteed investment contracts.

You've got annuity contracts. I mean, there's dozens of hedge funds. I mean, just these words, you know, the word hedge fund has no meaning other than a general classification, but there are dozens, you know, all these subtypes. So the investment marketplace has gotten more complex than ever, and the legal code has gotten more complex than ever, and family situations and planning has gotten more complex than ever.

In a world where the majority, you know, it seems, I think the majority of families are, where many families are blended families, and you've got, dad has his two kids from his first marriage, and mom has her two kids from her first marriage, and now there's two kids together, and we're trying to equalize, you know, planning and figure out who's gonna care for what, and who's gonna be this, and who's gonna do that, the needs for whether you're, just every aspect of planning has gotten more and more complex.

And so what, in many days, you know, if I go back and just paint a very simple picture, in many ways, all somebody needed in the past was a few simple products, you know, long-term care products didn't exist, disability products didn't exist, maybe a small life insurance policy for dad and an investment contract, and the kids were there, and maybe just some simple blue chip stocks.

The world was relatively simple, but now it's incredibly complex. So I scratch my head to understand how anybody can possibly get through effectively this current world without either in-depth financial knowledge, if you're a do-it-yourselfer, without a good, caring, trustworthy, trusted advisor. So financial planning as an independent discipline has really, really grown.

Now the key is, in the industry, there has always been specialization. There have always been boutique, specialist firms, and consultants, no matter what aspect of the industry that you look at. So if you were focused on, I'll use life insurance as an example, then life insurance had many different aspects.

There's what I call kitchen table selling, working with median income, American households sitting at the kitchen table on Tuesday night at seven o'clock, doing a needs analysis, and figuring out how much life insurance, and working with individual families to protect mom, to protect dad in case they die. There's a whole market of life insurance that's still very active today.

It's called final expense insurance, and it's a sale of a life insurance product that is purely intended to provide a cash payment for any final expenses, and a burial policy. This is very active. There are many life insurance agents that this is what they do. It still exists today, believe it or not, but it used to be much more popular.

I've spoken with life insurance agents who started in this industry. There's something called a debit policy, or industrial life insurance, and this is essentially where the agent, a policy would be sold door to door, and the agent would go by and collect the premiums every month. And I've spoken with agents here where I live who started in this, and they would go every month, and collect the premium in working class neighborhoods for just a little bit of money.

And that has largely collapsed, but it still does exist in a measure. At the other end of the spectrum, there have always been firms in life insurance that specialize in deferred compensation programs, and defined benefit planning. If you listened to last week's Q&A shows, I went through just a rudimentary introduction to deferred compensation, and deferred compensation programs are often funded with life insurance contracts.

So there are specialist firms that work with large Fortune 500 companies, and do massive, multi-million dollar cash value life insurance policies for the purpose of funding deferred compensation. And that may be on an individual level, it may be in the corporate-owned life insurance market, the Coley market, there are various, it's a specialized market.

There's a market of life insurance planning called BOLI, bank-owned life insurance. And this today, I have one friend here in West, two friends that do this, and they are specialists, and they don't work with anybody locally, they don't ever work with individuals. They are exclusively working with bank boards of directors, and bank executive leadership teams to put in place large, bank-owned life insurance policies.

And the way these work, if you've never heard of this, is in essence, the cash values of the policies form a portion of the bank's cash reserves. So they get a little bit higher interest on it while still being able to keep their cash reserves on hand, and they do it through putting policies on their boards of directors, on their key employees.

It's kind of a unique market. Someday maybe I'll do a show on it. You have, to this day, estate planning firms, boutique estate planning firms that specialize in only estate planning life insurance. I have a couple friends, there are several firms here where I live in the Palm Beach market, but most of their business is done, frankly, on a national basis, and they're just as likely to fly out to see a large client in Chicago, or fly out to Kansas City, or to work with this sports team president, or fly out to California.

I mean, it's a large national market. So there is always a boutique firm in every industry. There are occupation-specific niches, so there are people who have built financial planning practices that are based upon, whether it's something as regular as physicians, or whether it's something like race car drivers. Doesn't, I mean, it doesn't matter.

There are people who specialize in this. There are firms that specialize exclusively in working with celebrity athletes, and they do comprehensive wealth management for celebrity assets, excuse me, celebrity athletes, or movie stars, or whatever their niche is that they've figured out how to work in. There are also firms that, instead of marketing to a specific client base, that have built their practice based upon a certain technical skill.

So perhaps their technical skill is a certain type of investment management, or portfolio management, and this would range every bit from a local $100 million firm working with local business people that manages a million-dollar fee-only accounts, to something like, I don't know, Peter Schiff, and his global strategies for managing, was it the Euro-Pacific, is that the name of his firm?

Yeah, it's Euro-Pacific Capital, and here he is working with people, trying to help US citizens practically, basically, divest themselves of the US dollar in exchange for that. There are certain geographic specialties, so if you go into many, you know, some town, and this specific financial advisor has all of the business in this local town.

My point in going through this list of specialties, or specialized approaches, is to point out that being a financial advisor can mean many, many things, and all of those are legitimate aspects of being a financial advisor. But what's changing more than ever is ways of marketing your services. So there are plenty of financial advisory firms that are old and established, maybe they're practically a family office at this point.

I mean, we have a gazillion family offices here in Palm Beach or multi-family offices, which is essentially a family office is if you are a wealthy family, you'll put together your own financial planning firm just purely to serve your family. At some point, I need to get some of these guys and gals that work here in Palm Beach on the show.

I gotta find someone to do it, and they won't tell who their families are, but I've talked with a few of them. But, you know, this famous rich family A, they've got $3 billion that they're managing. And so they might be doing everything from handling, well, they are, they're doing everything.

And there'll be an in-house accountant, there'll be an in-house investment person, there'll be an in-house coordinator, an in-house administrative staff, which is responsible for paying all the bills. It's a really interesting market. There's also the small multi-family office. So instead of, you know, hey, I don't have $4 billion, but I've got 400 million, maybe if you bring your 400 million and I bring my 400 million, and we get Joe to bring, you know, his 300 million, and we get Sally to bring her half a billion, we put enough together, enough money.

I mean, I'm making things up. There are a lot of those here as well. And so they don't accept clients, but they're a financial planner. They're working in a financial advisory space. Or there are just, like I said, a firm, you know, Smith Capital Management. And Smith has 100 different families that are all established here in the community.

And he works only by referral. So he doesn't market except by referral. Satisfied client sends a satisfied client. Some larger firms build a reputation in their marketing plan, is their reputation for a certain level of service, or for a certain type of service. So the best example here would be a bank trust department.

Some banks, example, there's one near my house called Comerica Bank. Comerica is well-known for their trust management services. And the trust services at banks is usually the most conservative aspect of financial planning that you'll ever find. But they hire and have financial advisors that work with their families for whom they provide trust services in a comprehensive manner.

Or if you had pure trust companies, standalone trust companies like Bessemer Trust or Northern Trust, these are long-established firms. You'll never hear them in the news. They're very conservative. But they don't market on the basis of picking up the phone and calling individual, median income net worth people. Everything is based upon referral within a very tight, high net worth community.

If that type of community is there for you, it's possible to set up your own firm and network your way in. It's gonna take time, but again, here in Palm Beach, I know several firms that exclusively work in the affluent Palm Beach marketplace, and they've just built it up over time.

Now, some firms are more mass market. So if you went and joined one of the large wire houses, that would be more mass market. Or that was how I got into the business was I was working in a mass market approach, and I started with the people that I knew and the people that they knew.

And I worked from friend to friend to friend, calling my friends, asking for introductions to their friends, asking for introductions to their friends, and doing that. Some people start with cold calling. I never did that. I thought it was, I didn't need to. I had a large, warm market of people with whom I could work.

But you could still start today with cold calling. It's tougher than ever. But one of the keys is that marketing is changing, even today. And by the way, I'm gonna share my experience 'cause that was what the second email was specifically asking about. And I'll explain what makes doing that well versus what makes doing that not well.

Like what makes that professional versus not professional. But marketing is changing today. And today, you've got the big people with the big media presence. So some, Rick Edelman, he's got his entire firm is all of the prospects are coming based upon his marketing brilliance and driving clients to his firm.

He's built the largest firm. It's just an amazing business. Or if you've got other radio people, Dave Ramsey, he's got his endorsed local provider. So the people that sign on for his endorsed local provider program, they pay him a fee, and in exchange, he sends clients their way. And so that's their marketing method.

You've got the marketing method now that's really being built with technological solutions. So an example here would be something like personal capital. Personal capital builds this beautiful interface for you to see all of your accounts in one place, to look at your fees, and an exchange on the backend that gives the advisors that they have backend service to review your portfolio and to have everything in one place.

And so it's a brilliant business model because instead of me as an individual going out and sitting down at a table with a legal pad writing down all your assets, you just load them all into the computer and you can see them. You see the marketing efforts with the so-called robo-advisors today.

So examples here would be Betterment. And you see Betterment building their marketplace. And what they're touting is their technological solution, that we are able to manage a portfolio more efficiently and at a lower cost, so therefore, bring us your portfolio and we will cover it for you. Or you have a firm like Wealthfront.

These are the more well-known ones right now, but Wealthfront, working with an individual advisor, but with this mass market virtual relationship. So whether that's, or you have, I mean, the insurance business, the best example would be the infinite banking concepts or Bank on Yourself. This is their marketing plan.

Write a book, infinite banking or Bank on Yourself. Write a book about the virtues of whole life insurance policies. And then this is the marketing plan. People find it, they read it, and then they call you up and you're able to work with them on life insurance perspective. Marketing is key to any business.

And that's why one of my actually most concerning statements in these emails is in Tim's email, because where Tim is concerned about, I don't want a cold call, I don't want to push financial products on people. And there's a right way and a wrong way to, in my opinion, to approach that, meaning that certainly the idea of cold calling and pushing products on people is, it doesn't sound, I mean, I don't know anyone that that would be attractive to.

If that's a general idea of I don't like sales, and I hear this a lot, I've heard this in other emails, which I didn't bring in to read at the beginning of the show, but people say, well, I don't like selling. As your financial advisor, at least your virtual advisor, let me commend to you that not liking selling or not being willing or able to sell is going to be pretty destructive to your wealth.

Sales is the key to every single business. And if you are interested in being wealthy, no matter what job you do, you better like sales. Because if you are working a job that you say, I don't have to be in sales, I've just been working this specific job and I just do my job and go home.

The reality is if you're an investor, you'd better have great sales forces in the companies into which you're investing. 'Cause businesses live or die based upon their sales. So you'd better like sales even if you don't view yourself as a salesperson. But as an individual or an entrepreneur, especially as an entrepreneur, you'd better be brilliant at selling.

Selling is one of the most valuable skills you can have, especially financially valuable skills, because there's always a direct connection between your sales skill and revenue. So that means that your compensation can be directly tied to revenue. That's what commissions are all about. I personally am and desire to be even better, but I'm a world-class salesperson and I'm very proud of that, because I set out to become a world-class salesperson.

Now, where does sales go wrong? Where do we get this perspective of sales not being something that we admire and not something that we wanna do? I commend to you that it goes wrong when it's not professional. And by professional, I mean it goes wrong when you try to sell something that's not a right fit for a client.

And this is a problem in the financial market. I believe that the majority of the bad reputation that the financial services industry has developed is due to a bad connection where simply a product is not a right fit for a customer. If you don't have a good fit between your product and your customer, you've got problems.

But if you've got a great fit between your product and your customer, no matter the product and no matter the customer, you're gonna be in great shape. One person says, "Hey, I need the most economical car "that I can find, and my biggest priorities "in buying a car are fuel efficiency, low price, "low upfront cost, and long-term quality." Now, if the car salesperson has three cars on their lot, one is a Honda Civic, one is a Chevy Corvette, and another is a Ford one-ton pickup truck, if they sell the person in that needs base a Honda Civic, is there a good chance that person is gonna be thrilled with their purchase and very happy if the salesperson treats them professionally and takes care of all of the details and makes it a smooth and excellent process?

Of course they're gonna be happy. Now, flip it around, guy comes in, he's wearing work boots, work pants, says, "I gotta tow a 20,000-pound trailer." If all of a sudden the salesperson says, "Hey, you gotta buy this Corvette," unhappy customer, bad reputation. But if the sales guy says, "I got a one-ton truck over here," now we've got a good situation, and you can make up the Corvette example.

Now, let's do it this way. How does the salesperson sell professionally if, take away, he doesn't have the one-ton truck on his lot, and the client comes in and says, "Listen, I'm wearing work boots and a flannel shirt, "and I gotta tow my backhoe or my bobcat, "and the thing is gonna weigh 20,000 pounds "by the time I load up the truck and I load up the trailer." If there's no dually on the lot, does the salesperson all of a sudden try to talk the guy into a fuel-efficient Honda Civic?

Or does he say, "Listen, you gotta go down the road "and see my buddy Bob. "Bob works at the Ford dealership, "and man, they've got a row of duallys out front "that's beautiful." That's professional selling. So in the insurance business, or in the investment business, or in the accounting business, or in any aspect of financial planning, you've gotta have a good fit between the capabilities of your firm, the products of your firm, and the goals, needs, and desires of your client.

If you don't have that, then an ethical professional salesperson will not consummate the sale, and will not push for it, but will make the recommendation and the referral that needs to be made. So if you're a salesperson, and you're working in a call center with inbound term life insurance leads, because your company is advertising on CNN every night and saying, "Buy term insurance," then all your customer wants from you is to help them square away and figure out how much insurance, and where can they get the best price if they've got high blood pressure.

That's professional selling. If you all of a sudden try to start pushing the high-end hedge funds onto this client, and you're talking about, "Well, let me explain to you the lockup period "and the two and 20 compensation model, "and we've got this really great manager," are you gonna have a satisfied customer with a good feeling in their heart?

No, you're gonna destroy that relationship. But if you're sitting down over a cup of coffee with a high-end multimillionaire, and this gal says to you, "Listen, I'm interested in hedge funds. "All my friends have been investing. "I'm thinking about putting a portion of my capital "into hedge funds. "Could you educate me on what the risks are, "what the advantages are, "and tell me what the different options would be, "and what the costs would be, "what those types of things are," if all of a sudden you say, "Listen, I got a great life insurance," even closer, "Listen, let me tell you about index funds," are you gonna have a satisfied customer?

Probably not. Now, if you perceive through that process that having a five-year lockup period for somebody, two-year lockup period is more appropriate, for somebody who's not, and you're working with somebody who's not an accredited investor, and they're just getting started, and they're talking about, "Hey, I gotta put money in the Roth IRA," chances are you're not gonna, I mean, you just immediately say, "Listen, this isn't a good fit.

"Hedge funds are not for you." Everything is about fit. Fit with the right product and the right person. That's the need. That's the key. Does the H&R Block accountant all of a sudden need to start talking to somebody who's coming in and getting a low-priced tax return prepared about some beautiful strategy of moving their company to Puerto Rico, and, you know, or moving all of their assets offshore to protect themselves from the US dollar, and the person says, "Listen, I just need a tax return done." There's a bad fit.

So the key is to connect what you can sell with the appropriate model, and be able to work through it with a proper, fully disclosed ethical compensation model. Professional selling is, if you're being sold to by a professional salesperson, it should be an absolutely wonderful experience. If you're being sold to by a non-professional salesperson, it is awful.

I love great salespeople, and I despise dealing with horrible ones, because, I don't know, I like to study sales, and I think it's important. And I'll give you one short anecdote. Recently was called on by somebody selling solar, basically solar systems, various types of solar, both photovoltaic electrical panels, and also solar-heated water systems.

Now, I've got an issue in my house right now that I've got to replace my water heater. It's super old, and my insurance company is requiring me to update it and improve it. So I am probably the most perfect prospect at this stage in my life for a water heater system.

I don't know as much as I need to know about water heaters. I don't know what I need. I'm very interested in energy efficiency. I'm very interested in maximum bang for my buck. And so this salesperson called on me, and I said, "Absolutely, I'm very interested." It was one of the worst sales presentations I've ever had in my life.

It was awful. It was absolutely awful. And I am a great person to sell to because I've been a professional salesperson. So I am, if you want information, man, I'll give you every bit of data that you need. That was always, when I was doing face-to-face sales, I always just, I need information.

I need it, like, and that's one of the great skills of being a salesperson, is being able to pull information out of somebody in a gentle and appropriate and professional way. So I'm willing to give all the information. I'm willing to go through electrical statements. I'm willing to go and look at all the things.

Well, 10 minutes into the presentation, the guy slaps a legal pad down, starts writing a pen and says, "Well, normally the system that we can do for you "is about $20,000, but today only, "we've got a special discount. "I give it to you at 50% off "and you get a tax rebate and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." And the dude hadn't once gotten up from my kitchen table to walk even over to my water heater and see how many BTUs I have or how big it is.

He didn't go out and look at my air conditioner and figure out how big of a unit it is. Didn't ask if I had one air conditioning unit or two. Didn't ask if I was interested in energy. It was awful. And yet people do that in financial sales all the time.

And that's the problem. Trot in off the street, say, "Listen, I gotta tell you "about my great whole life insurance policy "and the realities." You didn't ask a single question. "Let me tell you about the tax benefits." What a bunch of bunk. Now, find out the details. And if you have a client who needs a whole life insurance policy, man, work it out and do it in the right situation.

But don't trot in when the person needs a term life policy and sell a whole life policy, and that's the problem. Don't come in and start talking about long-term care insurance when the person doesn't have any money. But on the flip side, don't come in and talk about portfolio management and the ability to get an extra 13 basis points or alpha when the person's biggest risk is, "I need long-term care insurance." Do your job, in other words.

Professional selling is a job and it's important to do it right. And if every single financial advisor and financial planner would work very hard at being a professional salesperson, then our industry would have a wonderful reputation and people would love working with a great financial advisor. So why doesn't it happen?

Well, a bunch of reasons. But usually, it's due to one of these things or multiple. You could simply have an ignorant advisor, a well-meaning but ignorant person. And I've been that way. I have been ignorant and still am ignorant on certain aspects of financial planning. I'm ignorant of many of the most complex aspects of portfolio management, for example.

I'm ignorant of how to hedge my currency risk when managing a multi-billion dollar portfolio. I don't have a clue what I'm talking about when it comes to that. So if I get into a situation where I'm asked for my opinion on that, I'm gonna immediately say, "I don't know anything about that.

"I'm sorry, I can't help you." But some people don't and that's a problem. So somebody could be very well-meaning and very ignorant. They could just simply be unethical. Ethics is a big deal. And one of the things that is most difficult is ethical systems are very much based upon somebody's worldview, but what they think is right to do and what they think is wrong to do.

And this is a tough one for you as a consumer to figure out. How do you judge somebody's ethics? What do ethics do different worldviews permit? I mean, it's a whole challenging philosophical conversation. But ethics are not the same for every person. It's very much dependent on what someone's worldview is.

There could just be simply a bad fit for capabilities and there could be a reason why an advisor is trying to push something. So maybe there's a bad compensation model or the advisors feeling a shortfall and they're like, "I gotta make this deal." And so they start pushing. This happens a lot because of the different compensation models in the financial planning industry.

Or it could just be a bad service or a poorly run firm or a poorly designed product. I mean, there could be many, many reasons. So what do you do? As somebody who's interested in getting into the financial planning industry in an intelligent way, I'd say, what are your skills?

What do you actually bring to the table? The most difficult skill to find is not technical financial planning knowledge. There are many people out there who have an interest in personal finance, an interest in financial knowledge, an expertise in some level of technical planning. That's actually incredibly easy to find.

There's a lot of people on the market that have that. What's difficult to find is marketing skill. That's the most difficult thing. And that's what many people who are interested in finance and who pursue don't have, the ability to market their services effectively. Whether that's face-to-face, person-to-person, phone call after phone call, verbally, audibly, in writing, on a blog, in video, on a podcast, that's the toughest skill to find.

And you gotta start with that. If you don't have marketing skills, you need to recognize that and not go into a position which is going to require marketing skills. So as an example, the third email that I read, Eric, if you're interested in going in and working with people, you better have a marketing plan.

Now I recognize that you might be financially independent, which by the way, be careful when you declare yourself financially independent at 25 with a few $200,000 of assets 'cause you can live on $1,500 a month. I'm not saying you can't do it. I think it's awesome that if you did, but life has a habit of changing and your goals might evolve over time.

Mine have, and they might still. So I have my own numbers, but your goals might develop over time. So make sure you're just aware of that mentally. But if, for example, if you don't have a marketing plan, it doesn't matter how interested you are in finance or how great you are at having a discussion, you're not gonna have a client because the reality is most of your friends don't wanna hear about you with money.

I have a rule, I don't give free financial advice. Either somebody asked for it, and if it's somebody that I care about, I'm willing to help, but I don't offer financial advice anymore. I made that mistake for a long time. That's why I do a podcast. It's here for you if you want it, but you have to seek it out.

But you need a marketing plan for your services. If you don't have one, again, you gotta go somewhere where you don't need one. And so now instead of setting up your own firm or working in a position where you're gonna be outbound, which is what many of the positions that are the easiest to get are, you're gonna have to build some other unique skill.

So perhaps your skill is you are a tax attorney, and you are an expert at tax planning, or estate tax planning, perhaps, or income tax planning. Well, now you trot down to Northern Trust and you apply for one of their positions, or Bessemer, and there's no sales requirements there, but you're not setting up an independent firm.

You're gonna die if you don't have marketing skills. You need to go find a job that's gonna fit that. Whatever market you're pursuing, you need to make sure there's a good fit for your ability to serve that market. So Eric, someone like you, if you're interested in financial independence, then I would suggest to you that, and if you consider yourself financially independent, then maybe you need to set up a boutique practice where you exclusively work with people who are interested in becoming financially independent at an early age.

But you gotta figure out your marketing plan. Same thing with our physician friend who wrote me the email. That would be a really great fit, it may be working with physicians, but you gotta build up then the technical expertise. So I'll give you my story of how I started in the industry and why.

And I've mentioned this before on the show, but I'll try to give a little bit of detail that will be helpful. When I started in the industry, I'd been laid off from my previous job. And I knew that I wanted to be an entrepreneur, but I didn't have a great idea, or necessarily the background of a specific business that I really wanted to pursue.

I had a few ideas, and they ranged from some blue collar businesses to some product ideas, but I didn't know how to go out and figure out how to get my product designed and prototyped and ship it in from China and set that up. And I knew that I wasn't quite ready for that.

So I wanted something where I could be paid, not for the hours that I worked, but for what I produced. I wanted something that was my own business, but that I built up ongoing income. I didn't wanna go and sell houses as an example, where you only get income if you sell a house.

I wanted something that built up residual income and residual value, equity in a business that I could sell. I wanted something that I wasn't tied to one location, either during the day, 'cause I got sick and tired of sitting in an office under a fluorescent light all day. That was for me.

I wanted to be out and about, and/or geographically with regard to where I lived. And so I was trying to build, you know, I was very interested in travel and independence of location independence. And so I was trying to build that. And I wanted something that I enjoyed and that I could do well at and feel good about.

So I was interested in finance, and then I got the referral to, it was Northwestern Mutual was where I got referred to. But I had very strong feelings about finance. And I didn't like certain ways of approaches. Because I had the good fortune to be introduced to somebody who was a comprehensive financial planner, I actually had a good personality fit with this specific office of that company.

And I liked the fact that we didn't push product in the sense of, you know, hey, listen, Joshua, we gotta move 20,000 shares of XYZ stock, or we gotta move 50,000 ABC bonds. And the person with whom I interviewed was extremely low key and was extremely down to earth.

And I liked that. I've never been attracted to the flashy personality. So I started with insurance planning. And the reality with insurance planning is that the vast majority of people in the United States of America are underinsured. And if you're willing to do the work, you can build an amazing business by doing excellent, ethical, important, and valued insurance planning only for individual clients.

Many people would greatly value an insurance expert doing a review of their situation. And you can reasonably quickly become an expert at insurance. Or at least on general market, mainstream employees type of insurance. I focused on life insurance, disability insurance, long-term care insurance, and I did a very small amount of health insurance in very select cases, actually, until the Affordable Care Act was passed and it destroyed the individual health insurance market.

The key is to know who you actually help. So let me give you an example with health insurance. I only did a very small amount of health insurance for a few specific individuals because I didn't have the capacity to deliver on any promise that I could make on a larger basis.

I wasn't staffed up to walk into a company with 300 employees and say, "Listen, I'm an expert on group health insurance." I wasn't. So I never pursued that. When people asked me about that, I always referred it out. And to make sure that clients were satisfied, I always told people, "I don't do much insurance, "but I did become an expert at a couple of companies "that in my area had good networks, "and those couple of companies "did individual health insurance." If I had a larger case, I had a few small companies that I worked with, but I always worked with a partner who was an expert.

And we split the commissions. My partner serviced that case, and those actually, one of them didn't go well. And it was because I was working in a market where I wasn't an expert and I wasn't close enough to it. And looking back now, I shouldn't have done it. Now, I didn't do anything ethically wrong.

It just wasn't a great fit for my ability to deliver. And eventually the client left and found someone that was better able to fit their needs. So the key was I did a very small amount of health insurance, but when it comes to something like life insurance, I was an expert.

I didn't try to position myself as an expert on 401(k) plans. I don't have any ability to go in and service a 401(k) for 200 employees. I focused on life insurance, disability insurance planning, long-term care insurance planning, and that was it. And then because I had chosen a market where I had multiple insurance options, I didn't try to force massive whole life insurance policies on young broke couples.

I sold them disability insurance, which is what they actually needed. I get so angry when I come across bad insurance planning because if you'll just care for a client and provide good planning over time, you'll build a lifelong client. And if you've got those three to four product sets in your back pocket, you've got life insurance, disability insurance, and long-term care insurance, you could do a great job with many, many people.

There are enough commissions that you can earn with term insurance and disability insurance with young families of median income that you're able to do an effective job over time and able to eat while you're building up your knowledge. And it's important that you understand who do I have to work with and what market do I need and how can I service effectively?

When I started, I was 23 years old. I didn't have a marketplace of million dollar accounts and I wouldn't have known what to do with a million dollar account if I'd come across it. There wouldn't have been a chance in the world I could have won the business. And I shouldn't have because I didn't have any skill.

And that's how it should be, so recognize that. So I started with something that I could become an expert at. That's the key, what can you become an expert at? What capabilities do you have? Who can you actually serve? And make sure you're in a product set where you could actually serve somebody.

I'll give you an example. There's a company that, I guess it doesn't matter. There's a company called, it's Art Williams' old company called Primerica. Well, it's Primerica now, he sold it. It was the A.L. Williams Life Insurance Company for a long time. But Primerica is a company, I interviewed with them.

I've been recruited multiple times to work with them. And when I looked at their product set, I came to the conclusion that practically the only product that I could represent under their contract was term life insurance. And the term life insurance didn't have any competitive, didn't have any competitive advantage in the marketplace.

It wasn't the cheapest, it wasn't necessarily the best. It was just that there was a marketing force behind that specific product. Now, what I came to the conclusion of was how could I make enough money only having term life insurance in my back pocket? Now, anybody who's worked with Primerica knows they do have other products, but I couldn't see how it could work with only having term life insurance.

There's not enough money, enough compensation when you've got, let's see, you've got $20 a month times two, you got $40 a month. So you've got $480 of annual premium. And I don't remember what their commission rate is, but average is somewhere between 50 to 100%. Let's just say it's 100% of the first year commission.

So it's $480 of commissions on a case. And if you actually know the numbers in the life insurance business, the numbers of people that you have to call on, that you have to see, that you have to build a plan for and to actually have a client, there was no way to make enough money to where I'd be making any kind of reasonable wage.

And so this is what you find is people always wonder if you go online and you start looking around, it's like why are people pushing the business opportunity? Well, if the products that you have in your back pocket as a financial advisor are life insurance and a business opportunity, and the business opportunity makes you more money, is it any surprise that you're gonna start pushing the business opportunity on people who probably aren't a good fit for it?

Now, they do have other products. They have investment products and other things as well. So I'm not mad at Primeirica, but a little bit mad 'cause of one experience with one friend that I was able to rescue from it. But there's nothing unethical necessarily about it. But if you look at what are the interests for the person who's involved?

And so you need a certain product set that's gonna work for you. So as I started off in that, I was able to make enough money to live. And one of the things that's important is I did not wanna start with a firm that paid a salary. I wanted to start with a firm where it was commissioned.

I didn't want a boss. I didn't want somebody that said, "You have to be here at this certain time." I've always pried it, praised, preferred, not the wrong word. I've always wanted my own personal lifestyle independence. And if I have a salary and I'm expected to be in the office at 7.30 in the morning in order for me to get my salary while I'm in training, I didn't want that.

I'd rather work and just be responsible for myself. And when I started, I had savings. I had at least six months of cash. So I could get through that initial period until I could get my client base started to be set up. And that's an important consideration. So along the way, me personally, I studied and I tried to learn what I needed to know in order to work my way into new markets.

I learned that I enjoy complex planning. So I started to move into the retirement market and away from the kitchen table market. Nothing wrong with kitchen table market. I just didn't particularly enjoy it. I like complex scenarios. I like sitting down and looking at a client that has an inheritance here and a piece of real estate there and a rental property here and some land here and a house here and kids here and a college fund.

I like that complexity 'cause it interests me. It engages that part of my personality. I don't like doing the same thing over and over again. There are financial people that I have known that love doing the same thing over again. They're a better fit for the kitchen table market.

So I learned what I needed to learn so that I could switch over. And so the key is knowing what you want to do, but that comes with time. Now, over time I got to the point where I could set up a firm on my own. Today, I could set up my own firm and run my own firm.

There is not a chance in the world I could have done that at 23 years old. I needed training. I needed somebody to show me how to have a financial conversation, how to ask somebody how much money they make. If you've never done that, that is a very difficult thing to ask your first time.

You're used to not talking about money and you ask someone, "How much do you make?" You need a little training on that. And so I needed to work somewhere where I could be trained. I can't conceive of how most people could start on their own, setting up an independent firm from the beginning, and make it a success.

I really can't. So I needed a training company. That was one of the things that attracted me to the firm that I joined is I needed the training. And they were well known for having excellent training. Now, you also need for whatever your firm is, you need a marketing plan that's gonna allow you to connect with an appropriate audience.

So here would be a good example. Let's say that you have a real passion for helping people with their individual personal finances, their budget coaching, and helping people get out of debt. How are you going to connect with people who need to get out of debt, who are willing to actually do the work, and who are willing to pay you for your advice on getting out of debt?

Frankly, I don't know how anybody can make this business model work. I've spoken with a couple of people who are working at it. I haven't, and I had a couple of people that I've interacted with that tried it. Dave Ramsey has a whole organization of debt coaches. I'm sure he has some people that are successful with that.

I haven't met them yet. I don't know how you can charge someone who's not financially responsible to help get out of debt and have that work on a long-term basis and find enough of those people. If you have a massive marketing plan, for example, i.e. the Dave Ramsey show, I think you can do it, but I don't see how an individual person without that large of a marketing audience behind them can actually set that up and do it.

But if that's the case, though, you need to figure out who's my marketing plan. Okay, I need people to get out of debt. That means I'm not working on Palm Beach. I'm not working on Jupiter Island. I'm not working in San Francisco with tech billionaires. I'm working with people who get out of debt.

So that would be a great approach to set up a get out of debt blog, set up a get out of debt podcast, and build that up. But if you want to do portfolio management and you have a unique investment strategy that you think has value, you've got to figure out what's my marketing plan in that direction.

How are you going to build that firm? And you need a financially viable path to make the transition. How are you actually going to fund yourself as you start? So when I started with Northwestern Mutual, I knew that I couldn't go down and figure out I don't have a million dollar people in my pocket.

Somehow that I can pick up the phone and get a bunch of appointments and bring in million dollar portfolios. I was 23 years old. I had a baby face. I've always been – I had a baby face and I looked 12 until I stood up and then people thought I was 30.

But the point is that I needed to work on somewhere where I could actually do it and I had the funds to get started in straight commission insurance sales. Now if I didn't, I would have needed to do something else. I would have needed to work as a staff planner if I had a CFP.

I would have needed to work as an administrative assistant. I would have needed to work someplace where they would pay me a salary to be in a supporting role on a team while I learned what I needed to know. You got to figure out what's the planning time. So for example, I think the certified financial planning designation is quickly going to become not a nice to have in the financial industry but an entry level you must have this in many ways in the way that the CPA designation has become for accountants.

For many accounting majors who have an interest in accounting and working, it's become – I mean the CPA is expected more than it ever was in the past. I'll put it that way. Although I did just read something that made me question that that I realized I needed to research and make sure that's still the case.

But if you don't have – the point is the CFP, you're going to need three years of experience. So if you're going to hold yourself out as a fee only financial planner, how are you going to get the experience that you need in order to launch your own firm?

That would be a question. I think you need to clearly identify what you want to do. So when you're building a firm, who do you want to work with? What kind of practice do you want? Do you want a local office or do you want a virtual office? At this stage, my backup plan if this radical personal finance business venture fails, my backup plan is I'll start another financial planning firm but I will do it virtually.

I don't have any desire to have a physical office space. I would do it virtually. And who knows? I don't think at this stage that I'll do that but maybe someday I will. You never know. When you figure out what kind of client do you want, do you want a mainstream professional?

Are you a really detailed oriented person that you like working with engineers? Do you like working with doctors? Do you like working with attorneys? Those are three professions that I would prefer. I only had one or two engineers that I was able to effectively work with and many physicians and attorneys I've not worked well with as an individual.

Not that there's necessarily anything wrong but sometimes the personality, there can be certain personality conflicts. I like blue collar business owners. That's who I have enjoyed working with, more down to earth, less flashy. That's kind of my personality. But do you want to work with mainstream clients? Were you doing mainstream planning?

Are you, the dollar's going to crash and let me figure out how to get you into precious metals. Well, go do that then. Are you into international expatriation? So you're going to launch a consulting financial planning firm, helping people to get out of the United States and move to Singapore or wherever.

Or do you like taxes? So therefore you're going to be a tax consultant. Well, are you going to do tax returns? Or are you going to just simply be a consultant? Are you going to do life insurance, general planning or whatever? So you got to figure out what kind of practice you want, what kind of client you want.

Then you need to know, is it financially viable? How long does it take to actually build a client base? It takes a while. You've got to talk to a lot of people and you got to find people in any business, especially in financial planning, you got to find people who are at an appropriate stage where they're ready to make a transition and you're on their radar screen.

The financial planning business is very much about timing. The timing has to be right for there to be a good fit. Clients working to get out of debt, timing is not so great for investments. They might like you, they might love you, but they're working on getting out of debt and that's what they should be doing.

So you've got to, in financial planning, a lot of it is just being on the radar screen of somebody at the appropriate timing. And so you got to know, can I afford to actually do this? Or do I need to go and get a corporate job working so I can save some money till I can't afford to do it?

What skills do you actually have? And what skills don't you have that you need to develop? Personal finance knowledge may qualify you to help as a budget coach. It may qualify you to help somebody with building out a goal plan. Hey, listen, you can put some money aside. It does not qualify you to give in-depth financial advice.

That's why I do this show, 'cause I get sick and tired of people who are not qualified to give in-depth financial advice giving in-depth financial advice. 529 or ESA is not just a slam dunk where you give a rule. It's very much about an individual. And I said, somebody needs to do this better.

But I tell you, I could not have done this show when I was 23. I thought I was arrogant enough to think I could. 'Cause after all, I know everything I know about personal finance. I was typical 23-year-old, I guess. But I thought I could, but I could not have done it.

Some years of reading personal finance books and some years of trolling around forums and reading blogs did not prepare me, would not have prepared me to do what I do on this show. And that's okay. It's okay to take time to learn something. I'll tell you what I couldn't have done is I had everything, and for one or two of the authors writing to me, who knows, maybe for you, this is supposed to have a general audience, but I'll tell you, if I had tried to start doing this show at 23, I'll tell you where I would have gone wrong.

I didn't have at that time any personal empathy for the challenges of real people. At that time, I had everything worked out in my brain of how everything should ideally be. But having not walked with clients through difficult situations and having not grown up a little bit, I don't think I would have had any of the perspective that it takes to actually be able to appeal to a larger audience.

I hadn't worked with going through with a grandfather who had dementia and then knowing what that was like, so now I can understand people who are working as caregivers for their grandparents. Hadn't gone through what it's like to get married, so I wouldn't have been qualified to give advice on here's what you need to do to go through being married.

Hadn't gone through the challenges of finding people with radically different perspectives, with radically different goals, and understanding that there are different people who love different fee structures, different approaches, different perspectives. How do you work with someone who doesn't trust the stock market and give good financial advice? How do you work with someone who only wants to invest in the stock market and give financial advice?

I couldn't have done that without those six years of working with clients. I learned a lot. And I guess, I think we short circuit this sometimes. I tend to, we have a culture today that seems to prize and praise the quick starter, the quick success story. I'm a millionaire by 25, that's awesome, but you know what?

That's tough for many people to repeat. Hopefully I can lay out a, sketch out a plan to help my son do that, but what does that say to the people who aren't millionaires at 25 or millionaires at 55? It takes a little time to build some compassion to work with people.

And so you might recognize that I need to get started at something. I might need to work something. It's like, who is qualified to be an executive chef when they just got out of culinary school at 20 years old? You're not, you're simply not. And in our culture, we seem to have forgotten that a lot, especially in the internet world.

My advice to young people, be careful what advice you get in the internet world because there may be ways to become a quick success story, but I tell you, the more success stories I look at, just doesn't happen. It's a lot of hard work that's not been seen. I read an article last night by Gary Vaynerchuk and he was talking about, it was an article that he published on Medium.

He entitled it, "Stop asking me about your personal brand "and start doing some work." He talked about the people, he's known as this branding guy. People say, "How do I set up my brand?" And he says, "I spent 10 years working like a crazy man "to build up my knowledge and to build up, "to become somebody that knew something." And in many ways, we've inserted this idea of credentialization as knowledge, or have this degree or have this certification and that's knowledge, and we've discarded the value of experience, but experience has value.

At some point, who am I to tell you when you're experienced enough? But you have to ask yourself, am I experienced enough? Telling you, go work as a staff planner somewhere for a few years before you try to open your own business and you'll learn a little bit in person.

Anybody who's done something that, I hesitate to use myself, but, gaffing a CFP credential is really not that big of a deal. I mean, it is a big deal. Let me diminish other people's achievements, but it's not a big deal as it is if you think about all the other work that's involved.

I spent a lot of mornings of my life getting up very early and studying a lot of really boring textbooks to be able to do what I do now. So you've got to put that time in. It's not just a matter of, oh, I've got some personal finance knowledge, now I'm gonna be a brilliant advisor.

Becoming a really great financial advisor, I think, is one of the most difficult things in the world. 'Cause you gotta take all the technical knowledge that actually doesn't matter to most people. 'Cause most people cannot distinguish the technical knowledge. And you gotta combine that with an ability to work with people relationally, and to recognize when you're being too aggressive and to recognize when you're not being aggressive enough, to recognize when you need to make someone uncomfortable, to recognize when you need to make someone comfortable, to recognize the scale at which you're dealing when you need to, it's, and I'm not sure that I'm even great at it, but I recognize the challenge of it.

And so I commend it to you to really take it seriously. And you can do that. Just set out an education plan for yourself. And if you wanna transition from being an auditor, and you wanna get your CFP or your CPA/PFS or whatever you wanna do, set out the educational plan.

And then start working with people. Start talking to a financial advisor. Start looking for opportunities. Start networking around and asking people, how do I develop this knowledge? Maybe do some tax planning on the side if you're a CPA. Do a little bit of, build up a side business of tax work.

And let that be your entryway. If you don't have a marketing plan, start one today. Start your blog, start your podcast. Start, if you need to build up a network, build one. Start getting networked in the community. Go to Rotary, go to Kiwanis, go to Toastmasters, go to your Chamber of Commerce meetings.

Build that plan. One of the reasons why I did well in my first couple years is when I sat down my first day as a financial advisor, I was 23, but I had 2,000 people sitting in my cell phone that had some connection with me that I could go to and talk to.

That was a lot easier to get started there than to move on and start cold calling out of the phone book. So I had an asset, and I knew I had an asset because I'd been paying attention over the years. May not have been 2,000, may have been 1,000.

I'm not sure the exact number. It was a lot. I never actually got through all of my initial phoning list. And by the way, if you're getting started in the financial planning business, don't expect anybody that you know to buy from you, period. Because they don't. Because they know you.

And they're sick and tired of you telling them what to do with your money. Or what to do with their money. That's how it is. It takes years for the people that are closest to you to become your clients. It takes years. It really does. If you have a background, and I don't know what fit is right for you, it's not that tough today to go out and set up an independent firm.

So for example, the listener who wrote me the email and is a physician and is in his 50s, with two or three years of focused study to build up the technical knowledge and all of that background in the medical business, if you had any interest in working in the medical marketplace, I would say that somebody in that perspective with business experience and customer experience and patient experience and all of the medical experience, I would say somebody in that market could set up an independent firm.

And for basically today, 10 to 15,000 bucks out of pocket, you know, depending on your skill level, depending on how much you're willing to do yourself, for 10 grand, you can set up an independent firm. You can establish a registered investment advisory firm. You can go and get the appropriate licensing that you need.

You need your 65, your series 65. Get your CFP designation. File your paperwork. You can have the money that you need to set up the compliance. You can set up the funds and reserve. I would say 10 to 15 grand is doable. And so that one could, you know, that listener could probably do this.

If you're just interested in getting into the business and you don't have 10 or 15 grand or you don't have years of experience as someone like a physician who you're used to working with clients and asking difficult questions, that experience is very transferable. I'm not sure that the experience of being an auditor is transferable.

Maybe it is, I've never been an auditor. But you would need to learn a little bit. And so I would just go and try to get into, you know, many accounting firms will have a financial services arm. Make friends there, see if you can transition over. When you're not in a busy season with corporate returns or individual returns or auditing work, I guess auditors, you're not necessarily gonna have that same season.

But then maybe you can start working and make friends with the person in your firm who's doing financial services and go on some appointments, shadow, and see if it's something that you think would work. But you've gotta build out a transition plan. You need to be very honest with yourself about your actual skills.

Don't dismiss just the need to go and work for a firm. I believe that at many firms, not all, I've got a few locally big names that I just, I'm not so sure about, but at many firms, you can find a way to work with clients in a really beautiful way.

And you can do it ethically, you can do it and feel good about the work that you're doing. 'Cause I'll tell you this, there is so much of a demand for great financial advisors and I believe it's never been easier in life than to market to a niche audience.

I really do think that the wire houses are gonna have to change in the coming years. The restriction, the reason I ultimately left Northwestern, I couldn't do this show. That's gotta change because with the number of emails that I get now from people saying, "Joshua, will you do planning work for me?" I mean, this is a powerful, powerful marketing tool.

And the transition has gotta happen because the corporatized, I think people are sick and tired of the corporate sanitized professional image. And it's like, and the trust level is so low. So I don't know how it's gonna happen 'cause the rules are pretty strict for a broker dealer, but I think it is gonna happen.

So I'm rambling a little bit here at the end, I'm off my outline, so I'm gonna wrap up. But I hope these thoughts are helpful for you. I'm not going through the technical details purposely of how do I set up an RIA and how do I write my form 80V and how do I do this, spend a little time online.

It's pretty easy if you wanna go that route, but I just would hate to see somebody, I mean, it's not easy, but it's doable. Check out what Alan Moore is doing at XY Planning Network. They're basically building a turnkey business model where they can help you with coaches and with materials to set up an independent firm.

If you've got some industry background, I think that can work for you. If you haven't, if you don't, maybe I just don't have enough confidence, but I can't imagine somebody who doesn't have a little bit of industry background or who hasn't been under somebody's wing in financial planning making that transition.

If you're an accountant, get over and work in somebody's office as a support staff in financial planning and get that experience so that you can figure out if it's right for you. Hope this is helpful to some of you. It's a question I get a lot, and hopefully this provides a little bit of insight.

I would say this. We need great financial advisors now, and the demand for great financial advisors is there, and the ability now in 2015 to cut this channel. Before, if you were gonna advertise, there wasn't any possibility that an individual could advertise. I couldn't afford to take out an ad in a newspaper and pay those fees for some stupid branding ad that didn't mean anything, but in today's world, when you can connect content to individual, I think we're gonna see a massive growth, and my hope is that we can help this.

We in the financial services industry can rescue our ratings and our trust by making sure that we're not working with people who are not a good fit for us as a client and making sure that, just by making sure that. That's the key, is making sure that you're a good fit.

There's a need for everything, but don't put someone who doesn't trust the stock market into the stock market, and don't try to sell the wrong products to the wrong people. Find the right people and make the right referrals, and that's what changes it over time. There are a lot of products I love.

Probably the most contentious one is things like insurance, life insurance. This is the contentious one that everyone argues about. Biggest life insurance I made was my final year of my time at Northwestern. It was $50,000 of annual premium, and it was a perfect sale. The perfect set of needs, the perfect goals, the perfect client perspective, exactly the right design of the policy.

It was 50,000 bucks of commission, excuse me, not commission, of premium. But the key was, you don't try to do that when you're three days in the industry and you don't have a clue what you're doing and you're just gonna go out and do that. I've done a lot of, anyway, I'm done.

I hope this is helpful to you guys. Thank you guys so much for listening. Yeah, kind of an inside look at the financial planning business. I'll be back with you tomorrow for Q&A show and some exciting stuff next week on some more in-depth topics. Didn't mean to be so introspective here at the end.

Have a great day, everybody. Thank you for listening to today's show. If you'd like to contact me personally, my email address is joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com. You can also connect with the show on Twitter, @radicalpf, and at facebook.com/radicalpersonalfinance. This show is intended to provide entertainment, education, and financial enlightenment. But your situation is unique and I cannot deliver any actionable advice without knowing anything about you.

Please, develop a team of professional advisors who you find to be caring, competent, and trustworthy, and consult them because they are the ones who can understand your specific needs, your specific goals, and provide specific answers to your questions. I've done my absolute best to be clear and accurate in today's show, but I'm one person and I make mistakes.

If you spot a mistake in something I've said, please help me by coming to the show page and commenting so we can all learn together. Until tomorrow, thanks for being here. - With Kroger Brand products from Ralphs, you can make all your favorite things this holiday season because Kroger Brand's proven quality products come at exceptionally low prices.

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