Podcast Context + Pushes vs Pulls

Corey: so so Seth you know obviously Edward Jones is is a great firm and they’ve had you know tremendous success you know throughout the years but I tell financial advisors all the time just because a firm is a good is a great firm it doesn’t mean it’s necessarily you know the best fit for everybody and I’ve talked about this many times before but you know in the recruiting World We Tell recruits you know there’s pushes that you know make a financial advisor potentially you know want to leave a firm and then there’s also pulls from the outside you know industry where financial advisors find things that are potentially really attractive specifically in this example you know about about the independent side so you know what were some of the things that were going on at Edward Jones that were kind of a misalignment with your business and where you wanted to take it

Misalignment as a W-2 Employee

Seth: yeah so Edward Jones is really really great at a lot of things and I like their culture but at the end of the day when you’re a W-2 employee um you are not the you are not the client um of of of whatever firm you’re clearing through you know when you’re an independent advisor you are the client and they have to focus on you you know what’s in everybody’s best interest I just think that there’s some of these misalignments um so you know I

Outside Business Activities + Real Estate

Seth: I bought my first rental property when I was 23 and I bought another one when I was 28. um and I realized early on in a low interest rate environment that through leverage you know I could create some lessly correlated assets and you know use financial leverage to help build net worth because I didn’t know that was going to be a level 10 advisor when I was 23 years old I was just out you know pounding the pavement knocking on doors and they were really really against kind of those outside business activities so that was one thing that was kind of a hard situation for me is that outside real estate even though I was a quick you know whether quickly growing advisors and I had absolutely no compliance issues ever um you know just the outside business activities really really they gave me a hard time about

Community Visibility + Solar Project

Seth: and then you know it’s other little things like I was the first commercial historic building in the entire Valley to put solar on top of my building I got myself in the newspaper I got myself on TV you know uh I mean I I really kind of put it out there and I wanted my clients to do it because just you know financially it made a lot of sense and I came to loggerheads with Edward Jones you know about that I mean that that was a big argument between us

CFP + “Planning” Language Restrictions

Seth: and then it got all the way down to even cfp um I have no idea what their stance is on it now but when I was a cfp they got to the point where they were you know there was this whole fiduciary uh argument going on in our industry and I was raising my hand I’m a cfp I want to be a fiduciary I want to be held to that standard um but Edward Jones did not want to be held to that standard so they had paid for me to get my cfp so they let me put comma cfp behind my name but I was not allowed to use the word planner or planning in an email because they said that that implied a fiduciary standard and they didn’t want to be held to that standard and all every email you sent is scrubbed for all these words so because I was you know I had this real estate and they were always on me about that they were scanning all my emails and every time I used the word planner or planning I had a you know an internal finding uh and I was like guys this this is ridiculous like the word planning is just a natural term that you use in the course of speech I cannot believe that y’all are getting on me about this

Regret + Leadership Roles

Seth: so those were some of the pushes and I really you know from the harassment I received from that I really should have left at least four or five years before I I regret not leaving sooner but you know I I’ve held almost every leadership position there I’ve been the new fa leader you know my brother works there my second cousin works there I encourage them to work there it’s really a great firm for a lot of people but um if you are a W-2 employee you don’t really control your own destiny and you’re always going to have some of these issues of things that really shouldn’t be issues at all