Early in their careers, some advisors say, they learned lessons that might save colleagues a few wasted years. Dan Moisand, for instance, feels advisors shouldn't wait too long to make a move to practicing independently, as he did. Moisand left American Express in 1997, but says that he should have made the move at least two years earlier. Holding him back were fears about building up a new clientele, income and the financial security of his family.
"Looking back, most of my anxieties were a bit overblown," says Moisand, of Optimum Financial Group in Melbourne, Fla. "Eventually it dawns on you: The longer you wait, the harder it will be."
Shashin Shah, of Financial Design Group in Dallas, feels he wasted a few years of his career by not trusting his instincts upon landing his first job with a regional brokerage firm. Among the things he found suspicious was that all nine people who also were interviewed at the time got a job. There was no formal training program. And in his first year at the 30-person firm, 51 people came and went in various positions.
"I should have researched the company harder," he says. "It became increasingly difficult to compete with advisors working with reputable firms."
Partnership Blunders
Business partnerships are a blooper breeding ground for memorable mistakes, some advisors have learned.
E.W. "Woody" Young, a CFP licensee in Dallas, got into the financial planning profession in the early 1980s, after a career in strategic planning with IBM and other companies. Young's specialty was developing strategic plans for small businesses, but after devising such a plan for a financial planning firm, he became enchanted with the financial planning profession.
"I got fascinated with it because they were planning for people what I had been planning for companies," he says. "I discovered I was more of a people person than a boxes and hardware guy." He was so much of a people person, in fact, that he decided the best way to launch a career in financial planning would be to partner with someone.
So, as Young puts it, he started "looking around for someone to partner with." In hindsight, however, he feels he was just looking for an "easy answer."
He eventually hooked up with the first local planner he could find who was interested in a partnership. A year-and-a-half later, however, it was clear to Young that the partnership was a failure. Young, for example, wanted to build a comprehensive financial planning firm, while his partner didn't hold the slightest interest in branching out. Young, it turns out, ended up feeling his partner wasn't even a good financial planner. "I couldn't let him work with my clients when I wasn't there," he says.
The partnership, and the eventual breakup, stunted Young's financial planning career by a couple of years. Afterward, Young was so soured on partnerships that he tried going solo. But he eventually found this was impossible, considering his hopes to grow a comprehensive planning firm.