For Jared Seyl Denver was always where he wanted to spend his life and career, specifically here in beautiful Greenwood Village, CO. Jared spent his career here in Denver working in the farmers insurance industry and up until mourned 10 years ago he was on course to enjoy the latter stages of his career and a retirement which he had in mind. New ownership of his firm changed things too much for Jared and so he left and embarked upon a new career in financial advice, the world in which we met. Many people often ask me about the challenges within this career, and I wanted to get Jared’s take on this question too.
Family and Friends
When you are a financial advisor, everyone wants to pick your brain about what they should do with their money, and they often believe that you have some kind of crystal ball which will help them to get rich. In fact there isn’t a dinner party or a family event that I go to where I am not asked whether or not a certain stock is worth investing in, or whether someone has the right mortgage deal. Doctors and nurses must get this all of the time too, and it isn’t pleasant.
Study Time
Jared spoke to me about an issue which I find very challenging and that is the work which you must put in to studying the financial markets. If you only have a couple of clients then this isn’t too challenging but when your client list grows, so too does the range of knowledge which you must have. There are days when you are crunching data, reports and information on mortgages, personal loans, stocks and savings accounts all on the same day and it can be very challenging indeed.
Selling
Many people fail to realize that sales is a key part of offering financial advice and if you want to succeed in this industry then you must be prepared to ramp up your sales game. When you first start out and you are looking for clients, you need to convince them that your advice can help them to reach their financial goals, it can be tough to promote yourself for something like this and as Jared says, this isn’t a skill which everyone has, nor a sales technique which everyone feels comfortable with, but it still has to be done.
Bad News
Thankfully giving out bad news about some advice which didn’t quite go the right way is few and far between but it can happen to even the best of us. When this happens you have nothing more to do than to go and see your clients and explain what happened and why. These situations certainly motivate you to never make the same mistake again. As I said however, these situations are incredibly rare but that doesn’t make them any less challenging when they do happen.
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