Is A Career As A Financial Advisor Right For You?

Becoming a financial advisor is not just a career path that you try out.

For this reason, doing your due diligence, like you are now, is a necessary step in your decision making process.

Here at Consolidated Planning, we strive to provide an environment that prioritizes learning and development for new and experienced advisors. Through our time-tested processes, we have grown to over 100 advisors, all focused on building their practice by delivering advice and guidance that leads with strategy, not products.

Even with learning and development opportunities, your success as a financial advisor is dependent upon you and the effort you’re willing to put in. If all you want to do is make money, there are easier ways to do so. Before deciding if this is the right path for you, or not, it’s necessary to assess your interests, skills, personality, and long-term goals and how they align with four factors that you will undoubtedly come across throughout a career in financial advising.

 

4 Factors To Consider In Becoming A Financial Advisor

 

#1 Relationship Building

Relationship building is a cornerstone for two reasons when it comes to a career in financial advising:

1. Part of your unique abilities as a financial advisor is relationship building.
2. Revenue-generating activities are anything involving your prospects and clients and should be 80% of your career, while the other 20% is made up of non-revenue generating activities.

But, maybe you’re thinking that you can make a good first impression and the rest will be history.

Wrong.

Maintaining client relationships is even more essential and time consuming than acquiring those same clients.

Achieving financial balance is an ongoing journey for even the most polished client. This means you will continually need to understand your client’s financial concerns, needs, and goals. 

Because most consumers want one trusted advisor for their financial planning needs, you will need to foster long-term relationships that span over the years, and even decades.

Financial advisors who excel at relationship building tend to feel a sense of fulfillment in their career leading to:

• Higher client retention rates
• Increased referrals
• Positive reputation in the industry

So, what will a career look like if you don’t enjoy building relationships?

• Struggling to feel motivated to perform
• Ineffective communication
• Limited career growth

 

#2 Practice Building Mindset

Building a financial planning practice requires building a client base. In order to build that client base, you need to have an entrepreneurial mindset. 

Being a financial advisor means you work for yourself and depending on the best firm for you, you might own your practice as well.

This means no one is going to hold you more accountable for building your practice than yourself.

That can be both an exciting and daunting feeling.

Financial advisors with a practice building mindset feel the desire to continually be more and do more leading to:

• More success in your practice
• Becoming a leader in your market
• Establishing a strong reputation

So, what would your career look like if you lack a practice building mindset?

• Becoming easily complacent
• Inability to scale your practice
• Finding clients will be even tougher

 

#3 Learning & Growth

You’ve likely heard this before, but the learning curve in the financial industry is steep. And that curve doesn’t stop once you’ve been in it for 6 months.

Being a successful financial advisor involves the desire to continually learn and grow for the benefit of yourself and your clients. Besides the obvious market trends and fluctuations to keep up on, there are always new solutions, new products, new tools, and new scenarios you will come across.

With such an unpredictable day-in-the-life, you will need to do all you can to make your days a little more structured.

At Consolidated Planning, advisors follow the 1-3-1 workweek which actually allots time for learning and growth opportunities.

Financial advisors who prioritize their learning and continuing education opportunities will see that come to fruition in a few ways:

• Become an expert in the industry
• Lay the groundwork for relationships built on trust
• Work towards achieving above and beyond in their career goals

So, what would your career look like if you neglect personal learning and growth:

• Falling behind with industry offerings
• Failing to provide the best and most appropriate solutions to clients
• Lower retention rates and practice building

Even the most successful experienced advisors are continually striving to learn and grow for the sake of themselves, their practice and the clients they serve.

 

#4 Managing Stress Levels

Between the considerable effort to build a client base, market changes and trends, and managing client expectations, being a financial advisor is deemed to be a stressful job. 

In fact, according to the Financial Planning Association, 71% of financial advisors admit to facing moderate to high levels of stress in their careers.

71% of advisors, but maybe more.

With processes in place, high stress situations don’t have to be make or break for financial advisors. Financial advisors who can acknowledge and manage stress levels with a proactive approach can:

• Remain level headed and calm regardless of the situation
• Adequately reassure clients
• Continue to grow their practice

So, what would your career look like if you can’t manage stress?

• Less fulfillment in your career
• Unable to navigate stress client situations
• Issues with time management

Stressors will vary in your career, from where you are in your practice to what the financial landscape is, however what matters is how you handle that stress.

If you cringe at the thought of performing under stress, this might not be the right career for you.

 

Is Consolidated Planning The Right Fit For Your Financial Advising Career?

Relationship building. Check.

Entrepreneurial mindset. Check.

Desire to learn. Check.

The ability to manage stress. Check.

Regardless of these factors being innate or learned for you, becoming a successful financial advisor requires alignment between you and your chosen firm in terms of planning philosophy and values.

If you feel confident you can build a thriving practice and want support to get there, Consolidated Planning might be the right fit for you. Now, you just have to decide if the reward of a career in financial advising outweighs the risk.

Reach out to our team of recruiters to learn more about practice building with us.

 

2023-154680 Exp. 4/2025