It was 1984 and my new business partner and I were watching the ink dry on the employment agreement we'd just signed to launch a partnership that would last 14 years.

As partners, we would build the Metro-D.C. firm of Malgoire Drucker Inc., operating independently of any wirehouse, insurance company or independent broker-dealer. We would register with the SEC, hang out our shingle and figure it out as we went along.

There's a lot to be said for combining complementary skill sets when you have little experience. Malgoire says she learned about getting organized and creating internal systems from me. I learned about marketing from her. Together-somewhat slowly and painfully-we created a thriving business. Ten years after inception, I was finally earning the purchasing-power equivalent of my last "real job's" high-five-digit salary.

Why did it take us ten years of hard work just to earn enough to meet our personal financial needs?  And what's available to new planners today to cut this time-often by half or more?

Nowadays, an energetic planner can get up and running in three to five years, earning at least a low, six-digit income, and not all that much has changed to make this possible. The industry has simply built a body of knowledge around starting an independent advisory firm and, independent planners-being the sharing souls they are-have disseminated that knowledge freely over online forums and at conferences and study group meetings.

Sheryl Clark's case is illustrative. Clark owns Tucson, Ariz.-based Sunrise Financial and in 2001-her first full business year-she grossed $136,000, taking home $115,000. "For 2007, my gross was $184,000 and I will net $160,000," says Clark. What's more ... Clark does this in only three days a week, with eight to ten weeks of vacation each year. She works at home, outsources rather than hires and creates from her business the lifestyle she desires.

The proverbial "$64,000 question," then, is how did she do it?  And, in answering that, we see the various resources the industry has produced to help new entrants run-not walk-up the learning curve. Today, as compared to the 80s when our industry produced a "boom" of its own with baby boomers like me looking for a more rewarding profession, new planners find the help they need from advisor networks, professional associations, study groups, B2B companies and willing mentors.

Advisor Networks

No single planner's success is likely to be the result of just one influence, but Clark attributes her success primarily to "Cambridge," or the Alliance of Cambridge Advisors Inc. (www.cambridgeadvisors.com/web/pages/home/), the 1995 product of veteran advisor Bert Whitehead that trains fee-only advisor members across the country in the concepts and processes pioneered by Whitehead since 1972.

"Actually, I started in planning working directly for Bert in 1991," says Clark. "He sent me through the Cambridge Alliance's 'beta' training class in 1996," and by 2000, Clark was fully ensconced in the Cambridge experience. "Cambridge members don't have to recreate the wheel. We learn how to price our services, how to set up our files and handle appointments and are even given a proprietary software system."

Clark, now well beyond "newbie" status, retains her Cambridge membership for its other benefits like a client newsletter ("I hate to write") and its 'Directed Portfolio' guidance. "Two reasons I can handle 48 full retainer clients, work just three days a week and include tax return preparation in my service," says Clark, "is because of Cambridge."

Jenna Hung also sings the praises of Cambridge. After two decades as a CPA and Peat Marwick auditor, Hung wanted to start her own financial advisory firm but didn't know how. "When I heard about Cambridge, I thought, 'This is similar to how I would structure a firm on my own.'" With Cambridge's help, Hung opened the doors to her practice in April 2006. "I've learned how to manage clients' expectations and to add value," she says. In only two short years, Hung now works with 28 full retainer clients plus another 20 "short-term" clients.

Says Whitehead, "I think people who come [into the profession] now, especially through Cambridge Alliance or another structured program, achieve in one year what took me at least three years. We had no options; we had to blaze our own trail."  How long did it take Whitehead to earn a decent income?  About six to eight years, he says.

But his goal for Cambridge members is different. "I believe that an advisor with five years of experience should get paid what other professionals with similar experience are getting, namely around $200,000-$250,000. And, if you're running a company, you should get more." What's his actual experience been with Cambridge members? "Our members might be new CFPs, breakaway brokers or attorneys/accountants, but on average they're earning $100,000 in three years, $150,000-$200,000 in five years and, from there, it plateaus unless they bring on more people."

Another well-known advisor network-if the advisor agrees with its implied niche-is the Garrett Planning Network (http://www.discovergarrettplanningnetwork.com) for fee-only advisors wanting to serve clients on a one-time or as-needed, hourly basis. Some Garrett members also do investment management or take non-hourly planning engagements, and some work with wealthy clients who don't want asset management, but the "one-time, as-needed" philosophy is still the basis of their planning mission.

If the Cambridge and Garrett networks remind you of the benefits advisors receive from affiliating with an independent broker-dealer, that's not surprising. All of us whose expertise lies in planning-not business management-need help; how we get it is just a matter of how much autonomy we demand along the way.

Professional Associations

Ken Weingarten transitioned into financial planning in late 2003 after a career in technology sales. "First, I attended local FPA meetings and NAPFA (www.napfa.org) study groups. I purchased Nancy Jones' book So You Want to be a Financial Planner? which helped me quickly decide on going fee-only. And going to NAPFA conferences, I met people like Bernie Kiely, who has served as a mentor to many."

In addition to getting help from NAPFA and the FPA, Weingarten attended the FPA Residency program in 2003 and met Rich Busillo of Philadelphia's RTD Advisors. "Rich has remained a mentor to me throughout the years, and my business model, compensation system and life-planning focus are very similar to his."

Weingarten, who says he also voraciously reads industry-related books and trade publications, is well into a six-figure planning income after four full years in business. "Do we do a lot of marketing? "Not really," he says, "but we built a Web site in 2004 and through the NAPFA online 'Find-a-Planner' system, we've obtained many clients, including some rather large ones."  Weingarten also responds to NAPFA "Press Requests," receiving exposure that's brought in new business.

Veteran advisor Peg Downey of Money Plans remembers having several of NAPFA's early-'80s formational meetings (at which this author was present) in the living room of the house where she began her Silver Spring, Md., practice. "I couldn't have grown my business without NAPFA," Downey proclaims. She admits to having netted nothing her first year in business. "It was about three years before I had any real income, five years before I replaced the income I'd made prior to financial planning, and 10 years before the income I was earning truly compensated me for the work I was doing."

Fortunately, adds Downey, financial planning was a new industry that people discovered at a really good time. If the systems didn't exist to help planners grow quickly, at least the demand existed to help them stay in business until they could figure it out. Professional organizations provided some of the blueprints they needed, and today, the level of help they offer has grown to meet new advisors' needs.

NAPFA, for example, now presents all manner of training opportunities for new members, including its acclaimed series of national, regional and advanced-planner conferences; its "Basic Training" mini-conferences, run in conjunction with its major conferences; "NAPFA University," a case study-based training curriculum for all professionals; its FOSTER curriculum of "distance-learning" courses for new advisors; and its Collaboration Corner with online sharing of checklists, templates and other documents donated by NAPFA members, not to mention periodic teleconferences and an active online discussion forum.

Study Groups

In geographical areas where it might be difficult to find more than a handful of other advisors already successful at what you hope to accomplish, association by study group will often propel a young advisor towards success.

Stephen Madeyski of Albuquerque, N.M., earned his CFP designation and started his firm in August 2004. "Working for the first few clients was scary, and doing the first few financial plans was difficult ... I found myself researching everything," he says. Fast forward four years and Madeyski now says, "I'm thrilled! At times I thought things were going too slowly, but now I have more work than I can deal with." In 2007, he earned what his former employer paid him, and Madeyski expects another 50% increase for 2008.

What played a big role in making his success possible, he says, was the local Albuquerque NAPFA study group where, with the city's relatively smaller size, both fee-only and fee-based planners are welcomed. "This group got me hooked on the profession and was living proof for me that I could build a successful practice." He says the study group has gone beyond information sharing. "It has become my main professional support group."

Business 2 Business

Study groups can help provide a blueprint for your business growth, and so can reports and publications.

Compared with the early 1980s, an abundance of research firms, trade magazine/book publishers and other third-party "B2B" (business to business) resources exist to give new advisors a boost. Milo Benningfield of Benningfield Financial Advisors in San Francisco says, "Your book [Virtual Office Tools for a High Margin Practice, Bloomberg Press 2002] allowed me to start from the beginning with a paperless office, saving enormous cost and aggravation. And Mark Tibergien and Rebecca Pomering's work [in putting together the Moss Adams/FPA profitability and compensation studies] helped me map out future business growth and a team-based approach to client service. All of these influences have, I think, made it exponentially easier to chart a course for my business than it would have been 'back in the day.'"

Madeyski says he's been able to ramp up his practice quickly using information resources like Virtual Office News, this author's monthly technology and practice management newsletter for independent advisors, Ed Slott's IRA Advisor newsletter (http://www.irahelp.com/newsletter.shtml), and by attending the Technology Tools for Today conferences (http://www.virtualofficenews.com).

And, of course, familiar research companies like Tiburon Strategic Advisors and Cerulli Associates, while developing their research reports for other businesses that serve our industry, get the message out to advisors via trade press articles. For example, Tiburon's research on baby boomers, alone, has filtered down to the advisor community to help them better assess that market as it evolves to dominate the planning scene.

Mentors

Despite all of the aforementioned means of turbo-charging practice growth, mentoring may be the single, most important step in picking up the pace. Look at it this way, all of those struggling advisors back in the early 1980s are now prime mentor material.

Says Benningfield, "I was fortunate to work with NAPFA planner Gary Smith when first beginning to immerse myself in the advisory business. As a former nuclear physicist, he convinced me I wasn't crazy to close down a successful appellate law practice in order to make a career transition. Gary also introduced me to a 20-year-old Bay Area study group whose members offered generous time and support as I was getting started."

The primary role of some mentors (e.g., Smith) is to simply convince the new advisor he or she can succeed. Other mentors play a longer-term role. After hearing speaker Ronald Bushwell, a top MDRT producer, Bradley Bofford of Financial Principles LLC in Fairfield, N.J., knew he had to follow in Bushwell's steps. "Early on, he imparted his insight on the business of working with clients. He stressed some of the basics we often forget, like promising a lot and delivering even more, and working with enthusiasm."

Bofford recalls one particularly-insightful Bushwell recommendation: "He said to me, 'When you feel you may be in a slump, instead of tightening your belt, go out and buy something, like a new TV or an Italian suit-treat yourself!  It will force you to get motivated.' I had complete faith in everything Ron was telling me so, within one week and at age 22, I went out and bought a brand new, $35,000 Acura TL. When I drove up to his office, his jaw dropped, followed shortly by a huge belly laugh. He said he was proud of my actions, but didn't think I would take it to such an extreme.        Needless to say, the lesson was learned; I persevered and began to succeed at an even faster pace."

Mentoring comes in many forms. Mike Dubis of Michael A. Dubis Financial Planning, LLC in Madison, Wis., partly attributes his success to forming his first advisory board consisting of an attorney, another business owner and three other advisors with whom he met quarterly.

    Dubis still benefits from an advisory board, but the members change, as needed. "Today, my board consists of colleagues who want to share time because I have a contribution to make."  Dubis credits his advisory boards with helping him surpass his first-year revenues of $30,000. "In just my second year, I made as much revenue as I was making in salary at the commercial real estate firm I'd last worked at.

And by the third full year, I was making 'real' money."  Dubis happily reports that his current income is more than he needs.

Janet Briaud, in business more than 20 years as head of Briaud Financial Planning Inc. in Bryan, Texas, started in late 1986 and was one of Dubis' mentors. She says, "My husband drew an exponential curve showing when I'd make $100,000 in gross revenues and he was pretty close. It occurred in 1992, or after six years in business."

Now, 15 years later, Briaud has an exemplary firm and plenty of income. But does she believe new planners are reaching these goals more quickly? "Yes, but not just because they can get help from others. Planners today are coached to charge higher fees and hire support staff sooner than I did-things I didn't have the courage to do."

Joining An Existing Firm

Jennifer Cray, with Investor's Capital Management LLC in Menlo Park, Calif., says, "I started as a fee-only financial planner and investment manager in October 2004. My practice is now so busy that I've had to temporarily stop taking new clients."

Cray accomplished this by joining an existing firm (another form of mentoring). "Advisor Julie Schatz joined Rich Chambers at Investor's Capital Management in 2002 and I joined them soon thereafter."  Chambers has not only mentored both Cray and Schatz, but also arranged for them to build their own practices in the midst of his own. "We split revenue with Rich as follows: it's 60%/40% if we brought the client in ourselves, and the reverse if he gave the client or prospect to us. This helped us build our practices quickly, as he had an overflow of prospects at the time."

After three years on the job, Cray says, "I hit my 2007 year-end goals of $85,000 net income and $20 million under management, working 45-50 hours a week with five-plus weeks of vacation. My [ultimate] goal is to net $150,000 working 32 hours a week by the end of 2009."

Tradeskill

In 1974, author Michael Phillips wrote The Seven Laws of Money in which he coined the term "Tradeskill," meaning those attributes needed to run a successful business that come almost naturally to a person who grows up amidst a family business.

Which maybe explains how Patrick Collins was able to successfully transition from brokering at Merrill Lynch (not exactly a breeding ground for entrepreneurs) to starting Greenspring Wealth Management Inc. in Towson, Md., which, now in its fourth year, supports four full-time employees and 90 clients representing $40 million under management. While Collins says he got started by talking to many independent planners and reading up on the business, his father's CPA firm back in Pennsylvania may have been the real key. "I was always attracted to numbers and finances, and I worked in my dad's office during the summers."  Now, Collins' father is part of Greenspring's advisory board.

These advisors and their experiences should convince you that, if you're starting out today, you've got more than a few resources to help. Perhaps Briaud describes the opportunities most succinctly when she says, "Go wherever you can to pick peoples' brains, be clear about your vision for the next five years and, above all, keep it simple."

    An independent financial advisor since 1981, David J. Drucker, MBA, CFP, has also been a familiar journalistic voice since 1993. Drucker's entire body of work can now be purchased at http://www.DavidDrucker.com in 14 compendiums, by topic.