Q: What did you do prior to Edward Jones?
A: I’ve always been in the industry in one form or another, but I started off more in financial analysis, and I’d spent some years in fee-only. I then worked a number of years with a brokerage firm, more as an internal type of product person and so on. And I decided I really wanted to get into production and ended up working as a junior broker with a top producer at the firm. Q: What made you choose Edward Jones?
A: There was an office in the town next to me, and I had a lot of respect for the Edward Jones Financial Advisor there. And I talked with him, and that’s why I came to Edward Jones. I liked the idea of having resources and a structure behind me. I didn’t want to have to re-create the wheel. I wanted to go in there, have some base of structure, someone helping me sort through the products out there and different types of investments, and then let me just really spend my time communicating things to clients and prospects. Q: Talk a little about the support you get from the home office.
A: The relationship between the field and the home office is not at all adversarial. I was used to almost an adversarial situation before. You call looking for service from the home office here, and it seems as though people at Edward Jones are encouraging you and can’t do enough to help you in your business. So I find that very helpful, and you even get a lot of help from the field. People are eager to share ideas with you and help you out, so that struck me in talking with the folks before I came on-board. Q: What does it mean to you that the firm is a partnership?
A: I think it sends a different message from being a shareholder. We’re a very flat organization. We’ve got a managing partner, and we’ve got department heads and so on, and we’ve got the field, but it’s very flat. We don’t have this long chain of command. And I think when you allow good people to make decisions, they do some very good things. We’re the shareholders. We answer to ourselves. We’re not answering to a distant shareholder out there who, quite frankly, cares only about this next quarter’s profit and what we have to do to generate a quarterly profit. You know, we’re able to take a long-term perspective and make investments in our future versus just trying to drive next quarter’s earnings. Q: Why did you choose Edward Jones?
A: There were many reasons I chose Edward Jones. First, it was that support from the home office, having a structure that I can then put my imprint on, that I thought was very helpful in allowing to build the business probably faster than if I was doing it all myself. The second thing is that the support in my branch has been tremendous. I have a Branch Office Administrator that I’d have to hire and be responsible for, and it’s a different ballgame at Edward Jones. Q: What’s the biggest misperception out there about Edward Jones?
A: I think sometimes people have the perception that maybe our accounts are a little bit smaller or we’re rural America. I’m on the East Coast; I’m in a metropolitan market. You get together at a picnic in the neighborhood and you look left, look right, and one of you is a broker. So there’s a lot of competition where I am. My average account size is no different from the average account size of other major firms around me. So I think that’s just a misperception. It might be one propagated by other firms, but I think it’s just a function of what market you’re in. Most of my clients are really more in corporate America, executive types, pre-retirees, some younger folks with very high income levels. But I think it just goes to show you, you can be successful at Edward Jones in all types of markets. Q: Talk a little about the technology available to you.
A: The technology at Edward Jones really has been leapfrogging in the last few years. And quite frankly, when I came to Edward Jones, I was at a firm that had just spent tens of millions of dollars in upgrading their technology, and with the exception of one small area, when I got to Edward Jones, they were actually already there. And yet, sometimes when you’re home-grown at a company, you don’t know what it’s like on the other side, where the grass looks greener. But having been where the grass looked greener, I realized that the technology at Edward Jones was, quite frankly, every bit as good. Q: What is your relationship like with your Branch Office Administrator?
A: I have a full-time BOA and a part-time BOA. And they have been instrumental in helping me build my business. In fact, my full-time BOA has been with me close to four years, and I actually think of her more as a business partner today than a BOA. And having people there whom I can delegate to and leverage off of allows me to spend my time where I get paid, which is talking to people. Q: What advice would you give to someone considering Edward Jones?
A: I think the most important message I can get across to someone about working here is that if you want an opportunity to help people, change your life, both from a qualitative standpoint and certainly from a monetary standpoint, you really need to take a long, hard look at becoming an Financial Advisor at Edward Jones. It’s a simple business that requires hard work, you need to be industrious, and I think if you’re compassionate, it certainly helps. But this is just a tremendous opportunity, and I think you need to look long and hard at it.
|
