How I Finally Found My Dream Job As A Financial Planner

October 06, 2017

For the past decade plus, I have been helping people with their finances. It’s what I love to do. But getting to my dream job was a different journey than what I thought it would be. I started in the financial planning business to help people and scratch an entrepreneurial itch I’d had for some time.

The challenge of getting started as a financial advisor

At my first firm, I quickly learned that being an advisor meant selling life insurance and annuities. Success was measured by how many prospects I could get in front of and how much commission revenue I could generate through product sells. This wasn’t exactly what I wanted to be doing — I knew I was helping my clients, but also knew I needed to expand my training to be able to provide help in all aspects of their financial lives.

So I completed the gauntlet that is CFP® certification, and landed at a large wealth planning firm in a consulting role working with affluent clients. I was delivering financial planning for my clients and helping them manage their assets – my dream job (or so I thought).

Something’s missing

I was loving my work with clients and I was a good financial planner. I especially enjoyed building relationships and managing investment portfolios. I was making a nice living, working with a team of incredibly smart and honest professionals, and delivering on comprehensive wealth management for my clients. But it always felt like something was missing.

Measuring my impact

I started asking myself how much of an impact I was really having for my clients who were already in great financial shape before I ever met them? I was left unfulfilled by helping wealthy clients become marginally wealthier. To be honest, I knew they would be fine regardless if their portfolios had a good quarter or not. What about the people who don’t have a lot of assets for an advisor to manage? Who is helping them?

Following the money

In order for most advisors or financial planners to make a living, they have to sell a product or service. That means they have to find clients that:

Need/want that product or service; and
Can afford to pay for said product or service.

There is nothing wrong with an advisor expecting to be compensated — most are honest and hardworking and should expect to be paid for their services. But there is a disconnect. Those people struggling with debt or cash flow problems would benefit tremendously from working with a financial professional, but the compensation structure in the financial services industry essentially denies them access to the help they need.

Where financial wellness benefits come in

Luckily for me, I found Financial Finesse a couple of years ago, a company dedicated to unbiased financial planning guidance delivered by experienced, qualified professionals available to people in any financial situation. I had to bide my time to meet the 10 year experience requirement, but I am so glad I did.

Being with the company that pioneered the idea of employers providing financial wellness to their employees as part of their benefits is amazing. We help employers provide an important benefit to their employers that is shown to improve absenteeism, increase productivity, and save on health care costs as financial stress is reduced. We help employees find actionable solutions to their pressing financial issues through a coaching model with no hidden agendas.

Living my purpose

And I get to live my purpose by helping people make good financial choices and reach their financial goals — now that is my dream job.

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The Magic Power of Writing Down Your Goals

June 19, 2017

Can writing down your goals help you achieve them? For me, the answer is a definitive “yes.” I’m a prodigious maker of “to do” lists, “to be” lists and “to experience” lists. When I was single, I even made a list of what kind of a person I’d like for a spouse, so I’d recognize him when I met him. (I did!) For me, that process of setting intentions and figuring out how I’ll measure my success has been completely transformative, especially when it comes to a recent discovery in an old notebook.

You can predict your future by writing it down

Last week I was cleaning old files in my office and I discovered a list I’d made in a composition book from late 2000 titled, “Characteristics of My Dream Job.” I wrote it during a particularly difficult time in my career: the stock market tech bubble had burst, and the fee-based income I’d built in my new financial planning practice over the prior three years of a bull market fell by more than 50 percent. I needed a Plan B in case I couldn’t make it through a bear market financially.

The list

When I read the list (pictured below) I was floored. It’s as if seventeen years ago, I conjured up my role as a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ at Financial Finesse delivering life-changing workplace financial wellness programs.

DREAM JOB LIST: I was floored to read over this list I made 17 years ago, describing exactly what I’m doing today.

My kids tell me all the time they can’t read my handwriting, so I’ll give you the highlights: motivation and encouragement of others, relevant/meaningful/influential in people’s lives, teaching, public speaking, writing instructional materials and articles, flexibility in schedule to meet future childcare needs, deadlines, cheerful/can do environment, fast-paced with lots of formal and informal opportunities to learn. Wow.

Fast forward 14 years

As it turned out, I weathered the bear market and went on to build a successful team practice, eventually leaving after 8 ½ years to move with my family for my husband’s international job. Even though I had forgotten about the Dream Job list until the other day, my intentions were working behind the scenes. That’s why I had an immediate “that’s my tribe” reaction when I came across the Financial Finesse website in 2014. And that’s why it was so easy to choose to work here, instead of accepting offers for a wealth management position.

Writing down our goals is our company’s secret sauce

At Financial Finesse, we also like to write down our goals and intentions. That’s one of the things I absolutely love about working here. It’s also why I believe we’ve been able to have such outsized impact on the country by launching an entirely new industry, workplace financial wellness, which helps millions of American workers become more financially secure.

How we do it

We call them “MBOs” – Management by Objectives, and we all set them individually, by team as well as company-wide for each quarter, in addition to company-wide over the long term. We’re strategic about it – this isn’t just a list of things to do. Rather, the MBO process aligns employees’ actions and team goals with the broader objectives of the company and our social mission.

Employees draft their own MBOs based on company and team goals, propose how success will be measured, then receive direct, personal feedback from our CEO and the management team to let us know if they’re on target. At the close of each quarter, each employee – including our CEO and management team — reviews their MBOs and gets scored based on how well they have achieved them. It works – when I think of what we’ve accomplished as a small-sized company, I’m amazed, but I also know that a huge part of it is that we are mindful of our goals — we keep our eyes on the prize.

Try this goal-setting exercise

Have you been struggling with getting somewhere in your career or financial life? Consider accepting the idea that you become what you believe (or at least borrow it for use). Find some quiet time, grab a notebook and pen and answer these questions:

If everything worked out exactly the way I wanted it to in my life/career/finances, what would that look like?
How will I know when I’ve been successful?

Post them where you can see them, or set regular times to review them. Then maybe you won’t have to wait 17 years to figure out you’ve already achieved them!

If you’re willing to share your goals exercise, tweet a picture of your goals to me @cynthiameyer_FF with the hashtag #PowerOfGoals or email me at [email protected].

Here at Financial Finesse, we believe strongly in the importance of workplace culture and the power of doing well by doing good. This article is the first in our week-long series of posts where we highlight a specific part of our company culture that helps to make Financial Finesse one of America’s best places to work. This is just one part of our celebration of recent recognition by Inc., who listed us as one of the Best Workplaces in 2017 and Entrepreneur, who named us to the Small-Sized Companies: The Best Company Cultures in 2017 list.

Want more helpful financial guidance, delivered every day? Sign up to receive the Financial Finesse Tip of the Day, written by financial planners who work with people like you every day. No sales pitch EVER (being unbiased is the foundation of what we do), just the best our awesome planners have to offer. Click here to join.