Starner: Margaret Chow Stanner is one of the women who blazed a trail that others are now following.

    When Margaret Chow Starner entered the profession 25 years ago, she was armed with little more than curiosity and a fierce conviction that fee-based financial planning was the wave of the future. At that time the CFP designation was only a couple of years old, and fellow would-be planners met in ad hoc study groups, hastily planned conferences, in others' homes and over the phone. It was not unusual for Starner to find herself the only woman in a sea of 100 men.

    Today, Starner, a CFP licensee and a senior vice president of financial planning, is the top woman producer at Raymond James & Associates, with over $200 million in assets under management and four employees at her office in Coral Gables, Fla. "Two decades ago, I cut a deal with Raymond James that would be totally unheard of today, she says. "We agreed that I wouldn't have to make any money the first year. I was so naïve that I simply asked for what I wanted and got it."

    In retrospect it seems easy, says Judy Shine, of Shine Investment Advisory Services in Englewood, Colo., who manages $400 million When Margaret Chow Starner entered the profession 25 years ago, she was armed with little more than curiosity and a fierce conviction that fee-based financial planning was the wave of the future. At that time the CFP designation was only a couple of years old, and fellow would-be planners met in ad hoc study groups, hastily planned conferences, in others' homes and over the phone. It was not unusual for Starner to find herself the only woman in a sea of 100 men.
   
    Today, Starner, a CFP licensee and a senior vice president of financial planning, is the top woman producer at Raymond James Financial Services, with over $200 million in assets under management and four employees at her office in Coral Gables, Fla. "Two decades ago, I cut a deal with Raymond James that would be totally unheard of today, she says. "We agreed that I wouldn't have to make any money the first year. I was so naïve that I simply asked for what I wanted and got it."

    In retrospect it seems easy, says Judy Shine, of Shine Investment Advisory Services in Englewood, Colo., who manages $400 million in assets. But that was hardly the case. "Yes we had the first-mover advantage, but we also had to make the first move," she says. "When we started out, financial planning was not a profession. What we were doing was like the Wild, Wild West, making up things as we went along. For awhile, everyone around us was making six figures and we were lucky to bring in $20,000."

    Looking at young people, particularly women, struggling to enter the profession, Shine has empathy-to a point. It was a lot harder when there wasn't a profession, only a macho sales culture. "One of the big issues today is how to create jobs for financial planners, but back then we had no chance in hell of getting a job. We were ready for the profession, but it wasn't ready for us," she recalls.

    Shine also remembers being the sole woman in study groups and at conferences. "Back in those days, we knew every other woman and their phone numbers, practically," she says. But what made all of today's advisors successful, she says, had nothing to do with gender. "Those who succeeded just really believed in the profession."

    Two decades later, the profession has richly rewarded the pioneering women and men who stuck with it, often at great personal and financial cost. As more and more institutions offer financial consulting services, job opportunities are becoming more plentiful. Those who can stick out the first few years reap the rewards. According to the Financial Planning Association, median total compensation-base salary plus any bonus or commissions-for financial advisors was $91,984 in 2002, and practitioners who own all or part their own business can take home much more.

    Today women make up roughly 25% of CFP designees nationwide, according to the CFP Board of Standards. Currently 10,788 women hold the CFP designation, an increase of more than 80% since 1991. And 29% of the 1,170 NAPFA members are women. Those numbers represent a huge triumph, say women advisors.

    Compare that to Great Britain, where just 5% of the estimated 25,000 independent financial advisors are women, according to the Daily Mail of London. British women look to the United States as a model for how their profession might grow.

    With the fee-based financial planning paradigm replacing traditional models at many U.S. brokerage firms and banks, opportunities are growing for women-and men-who want to enter the field. These institutions are actively seeking to recruit women, not only to appear progressive, but also to test the notion that women make more suitable advisors for some clients. Some firms have established in-house women's councils that provide mentoring programs and arrange yearly conferences.  Last October the Raymond James & Associates Women's Symposium  attracted 200 women to Tampa, some from as far away as Washington State, Maine and Alaska.

    They were treated like royalty, with awards, prizes, and food galore, and even free salsa-dancing lessons provided by a sexy hunk dressed in black. The three-day conference is the highlight of the year for many attendees, who praised the inspiration they gathered from one another and the integrity of Raymond James & Associates as a woman-friendly company.

    Raymond James is not alone in recognizing and attempting to harness the untapped power of women advisors, nor is it alone in the problems it faces recruiting and retaining talent. While 12.5% of women in the top echelon of producers at Raymond James & Associates are women (a 20% increase over the past year), only 11% of the St. Petersburg firm's 860 brokers are women. The numbers are a little better for sister company Raymond James Financial Services, where women comprise 15% of the firm's 3,850 independent reps.

    These statistics are representative of brokerage firms across the country. At independent broker-dealers LPL Financial Services, (5,700 total reps) and Commonwealth Financial Network (1,140), roughly 16% of reps are women. The numbers suggest that women do better as independents, with more control over how they run their businesses.

    In many ways, women are ideally suited for the profession. They are praised for being excellent listeners, teachers, multitaskers, consensus-builders and realists when it comes to the challenges of everyday life.

    "It's easy to stereotype, but women do tend to focus a lot more on some of the intangibles, for example whether a client is happy or not, and to challenge them without being confrontational," Starner says. She has managed to carve out a niche for herself, with a fee-based practice that markets to clients, including many business owners, in the 45- to 55-year-old range. "Advisors in Florida often prospect to retirees in their sixties and seventies, but we start earlier, when issues of business succession, college planning, elder care and maintaining income for life are likely to come up." As part of her fee, children of clients are encouraged to call for financial advice at any time. Many eventually become clients themselves.

    Starner attributes her success to her passion for financial planning, her fierce advocacy on behalf of clients, and a touch of plain old naïveté. As a child of the only Chinese family in a small town of 2,500 people in Mississippi, Starner was used to being an outsider, and never flinched when men teased her or called her honey and dear. "I assumed that was normal everywhere," she says, "because in the South, these were friendly terms."

    Starner believes that financial planning calls for many of the skills that women have already developed in everyday life. "Women tend to plan naturally, to multitask, to be a little more inquisitive, you could say busybodies, and we're used to herding our kids and husbands around and being bossy," Starner says. "Now I get paid to do that.

    "But it wasn't always that way. Starner considers her naiveté to have been a plus in the early stages of her career in the early 1980's. For example, she thought that she had been invited to an employment interview at Raymond James, which was then a very small regional brokerage, but when she arrived at the home office in St. Petersburg, Fla., no one was expecting her. "Instead, they treated me like a special guest, and led me around to all the offices of the principals who would later become my sponsors and mentors," she recalls. 

    Starner was hired and given unprecedented independence within the company. "I made a deal whereby I would not be accountable for selling anything the first year," she says. "That would be unheard of today. I had no idea I was negotiating, I just asked for what I wanted and got it." 

    In strange ways, the small firm's informality worked to her advantage. Starner considered it a stroke of luck when she was asked to pick up chairman and founder Bob James at the airport and chauffeur him around town, a task that might prompt today's female-or male-MBAs to feel put out. "We were a small company and no one else had time. It was another great accident because he was a great teacher, and very kind. He offered two pieces of advice that have stayed with me to this day," she remembers. "First, he told me that I was too idealistic, and that I would first have to become very successful myself before anyone believed a word I said. Secondly, he told me that there were so many people who were going to seek out financial planning in the future that I should never feel bad about those that turned me down. That helped me not to suffer rejection."

    Stereotypes often die hard. Although it certainly doesn't apply to all women, many do tend to be good at several aspects of communication, starting with listening. "We communicate well with almost anybody, and tend to be comfortable asking questions about a client's purpose and meaning in life, which is a cornerstone of financial planning," says Susan K. Bradley, a CFP licensee, a veteran of the industry and founder of Women, Meaning, and Money in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. "Women clients in general ask a lot of questions. I've overheard conversations where a female client will ask a question twice, and the male advisor's tone might change, indicating annoyance, like 'Didn't we just go over this?' I think men in general don't like to explain as much, whereas women won't make a decision until they understand all the details."

    Tom Zanecchia, a CPA and president of Wealth Management Consultants in Denver, whose average client is worth about $30 million, agrees. "A lot of male advisors don't know how to talk to women," he says. "Consequently, they'll talk down to women or over their heads." Zanecchia sees this condescension especially toward female spouses of corporate executives. "They might have gone through a divorce or received an inheritance and they want to understand what they have. They tend to get frustrated with old-guard male advisors."

    Bradley doesn't want to bash men, but she recalls a time when the old guard of investment advisors and attorneys couldn't fathom the notion of a woman with her own money. "There was no sense of a woman with paper-either they had bamboozled their husbands in a divorce or got an inheritance and were Daddy's little girls." Bradley notes that when she first put a "Bradley Financial" sign on her door, prospective clients looked at her nameplate and asked for her father.

    In Zanecchia's opinion, the cultural gap between male and female reflects another male stereotype: That men refuse to ask for directions on a road trip. "Oftentimes, men won't ask questions because they don't want to appear stupid, and in many ways that puts them at a disadvantage," he declares.

    Some women planners dispute the very idea that men and women are different when it comes to handling clients. "I resist the whole notion of financial planning as a 'soft' profession where counseling and life planning are elevated above analytics," Shine says. "Some clients prefer a counseling-type relationship, while others are more comfortable in a conversational setting, or in a very professional, analytic relationship. That has nothing to do with gender, but with personality. This is a profession, not a ministry, and I can guarantee you that successful planners, male or female, are both technically skilled and excellent communicators." Besides, she points out, the pioneers of life counseling-George Kinder, Roy Dilberto, and Dick Wagner-are all men.

    Shine has managed to excel in a male-dominated world ever since her days as a top salesperson at Xerox right after she graduated from college. She thinks men get a bad rap when people say women are more trustworthy. "Are we saying that 75% of the people in our profession are not trustworthy? I hope not."

    Ultimately, men and women require the same skills to succeed, and those skills are gender-blind, says Peggy Ruhlin, CPA, CFP, and principal with Budros, Ruhlin & Roe Inc., in Columbus, Ohio, whose clients average $3.2 million in net worth. "You absolutely must have the technical skills, and you have to be a really good communicator," she says. While women are often perceived as softer and more nurturing, Ruhlin frankly considers her partner Jim Budros to be more nurturing than she is.

    Regardless of actual skill, perceptions about gender roles can influence clients in their choice of an advisor. "Traditionally, our role has been to be caregivers, consensus-builders and information gatherers," says Judy Lau, CFP, of LauOlmstead LLC in Wilmington, Del., with about $350 million in assets under management. In some cases, she says, those roles play well into the relationship aspect of financial planning. "Money is a lightning rod in relationships, and it's important to build up a comfort level where you can talk about these issues and reach consensus."

    Furthermore, women are often perceived as less threatening, Ruhlin says. "Faced with a vitally important, scary topic, most clients don't want to discuss it with some hard-nosed, driven, know-it-all man." Whether it's fair or not, she says, women are perceived as more willing to discuss than command.

    Perception can be everything. "We get a lot referrals from estate planning attorneys," Ruhlin says. "I've been a pretty high-profile planner and investment advisor for 20 years, yet I don't think I've ever had an estate attorney refer a man."

    She finds that amusing, since the majority of her clients are men. "They tend to click with me," she says. And some of her male clients gain comfort knowing that their wives would be left in a woman's hands if something were to happen to them. That's all about perception, she says, because her office works as a team.

    "More often than not, being a woman opened doors for me-literally," says Laura Tarbox, of Tarbox Equity Inc. in Newport Beach, Calif. "Back when I first started out, I was cold calling and going door to door to different businesses in the area. Some of the men said they felt more comfortable letting a women know they didn't have a clue about money. In fact, it was tougher being young than being a woman."

    Some male advisors think that women make better clients.  "I always joke that testosterone is the worst hormone for investing," says Dale Yahnke of Dowling & Yahnke Inc. in San Diego, whose firm manages $800 million in assets. "Women clients are more patient and better listeners, and I think that goes over to the advisor side as well." Yahnke says that women clients tend to be more objective about their holdings, while men often resist selling a particular stock. Women are more concerned about the long term-will they have enough money to survive-than about short-term gains.

    "Women are very good researchers and will go to the library if they have to," says Kathleen Miller, MBA, CFP and president of Miller Advisors Inc. in Kirkland, Wash. Miller, who manages about $100 million in assets and specializes in divorce, believes the Internet has been a great equalizer for the sexes. "Women like to know and understand why, and they can do that research from home. It makes a big difference in a relationship if you're the one leaving or being left, and you need to understand the business aspects of the separation."
   
    Still, Ruhlin says, once clients have checked off the initial screens-that an advisor has the appropriate education and experience, that they're ethical and committed to keeping up their skills-the choice becomes purely about personality and relationship, regardless of gender.

    Yahnke agrees that clients choose advisors mainly on the basis of competence and personality. "Some older clients prefer to work with a man because it's a generational thing, where younger women might prefer a woman. But the bias cuts both ways."

    Succeeding in financial planning is difficult for both men and women, especially at wirehouses and brokerages, where newbies are typically given three years to turn a profit before being shown the door. Recently, Raymond James changed its barometer of success to a point system, which includes not only product sales but also assets under management, fees and professional designations earned. That's a big step forward for women, who tend to resist the "smile-and-dial" approach to selling products. As the model shifts from selling products to gathering fees, the biggest winners, insiders say, are clients.

    Bradley admits that times have changed, but that breaking in still holds unique challenges for women. "I don't think women have any trouble getting the facts and passing exams," she says. "But women advisors want to process those facts and understand them, and are often more fearful of making a mistake. In most industries where women excel in sales, they have a slower start time. Women want to be careful. They don't want to be wrong, and they want to be sure they know what they're talking about. Women are less inclined to 'fake it 'til you make it.' If they fail, they don't want it to be because they were reckless or silly or didn't know enough."

    Some women inadvertently broadcast signals about their lack of self-confidence, Starner says. "Women tend to use phrases like 'I'm sorry,' too easily. Men are insecure too, but they camouflage it."

    According to Miller, some women invest too much. "There's a delicate balance between being a helper and a decision-maker, and you need to draw the line," she says.

    Each generation of women faces its own crisis of confidence, Starner believes. In the old days, it was about making it in a man's world. Today, she says, it's about the guilt and pressure of doing it all, of being able to juggle a family and a career and excel at both. The fact is women starting out may work 80 to 100 hours a week, leaving little time for family. Successful women planners often enter the profession as a second career once their children are in school, or wait to have children until they are self-supporting. The lucky ones, like Lau and Starner, entered the profession when their children were in junior high school, and were able to rely on their husbands to support the family during the lean years of their practices. "Sure, no one gives you a quota when you're on your own, but if you're the sole breadwinner, putting food on the table is a quota too," says Lau, who expresses deep admiration for women who have gone it alone. In many cases, these women have opted to start a family after they become successful.

    At a certain level, the profession becomes more family-friendly, as women are able to work less, make their own hours and take off for a school play or pick up a sick child from school. Tarbox stayed home one day a week for the first five years of her daughter's life, and encourages her employees, male and female, to do the same. By the time she had her daughter, she was well established, with an average client net worth of $5 million. Still, as Miller points out with a grin, "You'll make up for your flexibility on evenings and weekends." 

    Many women who have achieved success attribute it to mastering the technical skills, working hard, having the first-adapter advantage that put them in the right place at the right time, and support from mentors, colleagues, family and friends. Above all, they say, they believed in the profession at a time when its future was uncertain.

    Asked for tips for young women entering the field, they all agreed it was important to enhance your skills, gain experience, network, join professional organizations, volunteer on projects for the FPA and other organizations, persevere and work hard. Most of all, believe in what you're doing. Lau remarks that not everyone can master financial panning and the skills it takes to run a small business. Consider working in larger firms, she says, since a sobering 85% of small businesses fail.

    "You also have to learn to just be yourself," says Tarbox, who said it took her years to realize it was OK drop the business suits, paint her office purple and put laughter in her mission statement. "Everybody has a unique style, and there are right clients out there for all of us."

    But the No. 1 recommendation of these pioneering women is at once the simplest and most challenging. "You absolutely must have the technical skills," Ruhlin says. "You can't assume that just because you're a woman you'll attract other women. You have to be a top professional and a superb communicator, whether you're a woman or a man."

    Starner agrees. "In the end," she says, "it's all about results."