Mentors Help New Planners With Traumatized Clients

“Just telling them what to do is not helpful,” conceded Bragar. “What makes a good financial planner is someone who is intellectually curious and can put puzzles together. That is part of the magic of the residency program. It allows exposure to a group of peers and then offers great training.”

Debbie Grose, a managing member of Lighthouse Financial Planning in California, attended the residency program in 2008, the same year she became a CFP. She accepted Morris’s invitation to become a mentor, performing those duties in 2011, 2012 and 2013. Seeing the program from both ends, she is a chief cheerleader.

"I just felt the timing could not have been more perfect for me,” said Grose of establishing her career in 2008 and then going on to mentor other newcomers in the following years. “It was such a nice transition … It was a whole new way about how to get clarity about how to talk to people.”

Dorsainvil -- like others interviewed for this article  -- expressed admiration for the mentors, not only because they were available on a near 24-hour-basis but because when they pretended to be clients, they took their performances the whole way, to a point that seemed realistic.

“I will say the mentors and deans at the residency program, they care about the profession,” Dorsainvil said. “I think the key is authenticity. … “It is about teaching you the personal skills and the skills of an authentic financial advisor.”

Friends can help you make the decision about whether to open your own firm or when and if you should take a break and start a family, program participants said. “There are questions you have to find answers to and that is what the residency program did for me,” Dorsainvil said.

“What residency did was it opened a whole new world, about aspects of planning I didn’t even know existed,” Grose said.

One of the most demanding scenarios at the conference is one involving planning for a grieving widow who has lost her husband.” It is so not about the planning but being able to provide comfort to the widow,” Grose said. “Even though I am a CFP, I have to relate to the client as a person first."

“There is so much to learn” apart from estate planning and the federal tax code and other technical aspects related to financial planning, Grose said. “How do you make a difference in your client’s life?” The training “is a threshold into a whole world of possibilities.”