You're already in the seat...

I started my career at a large brokerage firm. This was a multinational wall street firm with regional offices around the country. I started in the financial advisor training program. The general overview of the program goes like this; first, you start the application process; during that process, you have to take a timed assessment that tests basic math skills and financial calculations. After “passing” that assessment, you are extended an invitation to interview. This is typically a three-round interview process. After completing the interview, you are extended an offer of employment, with a pretty nice salary. The offer is conditioned on you successfully passing your Series 7 exam and your Series 66 exam. On both of those exams, you get 2 attempts, and they both must be completed within approx—10 weeks of employment. Needless to say, this creates a high-pressure situation after accepting a job offer; the good thing, though, is that for those 10 weeks, your job is literally “just” to study. After passing all your exams, then the real work begins.

To be a successful advisor, you need clients. You can have a world-class team of analysts, portfolio managers, research, product offerings the list goes on and on. All of that means nothing unless you have clients. Several of the successful advisors have been there for years and have significant practices built them over time. Time was not a luxury new trainees had in the program; you had to earn your seat by meeting production (revenue) targets to keep your job. To attract clients quickly, there are several paths; you can have connections (I didn’t have that many), you can make cold calls, host seminars, and or send out mailers. Any of those marketing approaches could work; they tend not to work quickly. It becomes a numbers game literally; you have to reach out to so many people to see so many appointments, eventually leading to clients. For example, the office's thinking was that cold calling (before the do not call lists) could be effective ways of building a client base quickly. To be successful at cold calling, all one had to do was dial at least 100 times a day, fully understanding that not everyone would pick up, so you would have to get a certain number of “contacts”- people who actually picked up. The point was to try to set a certain number of appointments; you would meet periodically with your manager to review your results. Needless to say, these 1 on 1 meeting with the branch manager were not something trainees looked forward to, and I was no exception.

While going through the grind of building a client base, I realized there seemed to be a formula to increase the likelihood of graduating from the training program. At the time, the failure rate of new trainees was very high. It was common knowledge, and everyone around the office knew that most people would be gone just as quickly as they were hired. However, some folks opted to work for an existing team and serve as a licensed administrative assistant. This person would answer phone calls, deal with client service issues and maybe even place trades. This was a different role and did not have the production demands of the advisor training program. The person in the administrative role would work in that capacity for a few years and hopefully be promoted to an advisor and work with an established client base (that they already knew as an admin person.)

After concluding that this was the best way to succeed in the business, I started to re-think a lot of my choices. During one of the many one-on-ones with my manager (Hi Dave!), I was noticeably frustrated with this one. I felt that previous times, I had explained all the things I was doing that I felt weren’t working and why I wasn’t hitting my target goals as expected. Of course, in light of my recent “revelation,” I basically explained why I should’ve picked the success path. He just listened; I explained the high failure rate of trainees, the number of people who don’t pick up the phone or even have landline phones anymore, the ridiculously high revenue targets set by the firm, etc. “If I had only just started in the administrative role, I would have much more success when I eventually became an advisor…” I don’t think he felt anything I was saying was necessarily untrue. Still, he did respond, saying something that stuck with me. He said, “Feraud, you’re already in the seat…” I just stared blankly; his point was I was looking at “all the people,” and the “success” of those that started as admins and would be promoted to a financial advisor and I was already a financial advisor. They were trying to get to where I was. I had the office, and I was directly responsible for client relationships; I had the autonomy of schedule; I would go to the seminars at the country club or nice restaurants. There were, of course, privileges that came with being an advisor, even in training.

During stressful times, I often think of “shoulda, woulda, coulda” or the easier and less painful route. It was no different in that scenario; of course, at the time, I didn’t realize it. I have the benefit of reflecting on those stressful times rather fondly now. There is no doubt in my mind that it prepared me to “be in the seat..” and when occupying the seat, you have to take everything that comes with it and if it’s stressful, you’ll make it out the other end and be that much better for it.