I became a financial advisor to make a difference in the world and change people’s lives for the better. Over three years, my book and client base grew, but I didn’t enjoy it as much as I thought I would. I felt powerless as markets and accounts fell and my clients fretted. I discovered I was not cut out to be an advisor, but I could make a difference another way — helping other advisors to succeed.
I’ve seen in so many ways how a successful practice can be run and I put that knowledge to good use as my firm’s Office of Supervisory Jurisdiction designee.
In January 2019 when I started in the industry with an insurance company, I figured I’d be a good fit. I was smart, educated, outgoing and really wanted to help people.
But during my six months with the company, all I did was cold call. I didn’t learn how to be a financial planner or manage someone’s money. All I learned was how to follow a script.
Learning the Ropes
Luckily, I had a friend in the independent space, and in October 2019 his firm brought me on as an associate advisor. I did advising, client service work and paraplanning work — ideal for learning the business.
I liked financial planning because I had control over various aspects of my clients’ finances: budget, retirement accounts, estate planning documents. However, I could not control the markets. When account values changed, they were just numbers on the dashboard to me. But to my clients, those numbers were their life savings.
I had severely underestimated the magnitude and responsibility of my role in these people’s lives. I failed to realize how much of the role was dealing with the emotions and psychology of a client. And I could not communicate in a way that calmed them down during market turbulence.
Some clients were fine, but I needed to constantly calm others down by recapping our financial plan and investment strategy, assuring them that everything would be OK. In reality, I didn’t know that with absolute certainty. I had no control over the stock market and could only make an educated guess. I struggled to articulate investment psychology and calm clients down when the market was in the red. Additionally, I was exhausted and getting burned out.
A Better Role for Me
By January 2023, when it came time to step into a lead advisor role, I had to be honest with myself. I did not have much passion for this and was not as fit for it as I had thought. I liked the role; I just couldn’t do it. But at that time, I learned about our Office of Supervisory Jurisdiction that operated within my firm. The goal of our OSJ is to build a turn-key-style platform for advisors in our group, providing value-added services in-house to give the advisors everything they need to run their ideal practice.
With my experience as an advisor, a client service associate and a paraplanner, I had the ideal skillset to grow our OSJ department and support our advisors. I did not realize it, but during my three years as an advisor, I had been training for this role. So, I earned my Series 24 General Securities Principal Qualification Exam certification and traded in my book of business of clients for a book of business of advisors. I started operating as our OSJ designee in August 2023.
In my OSJ role, I keep our existing advisors out of trouble, I recruit new advisors to join our firm, and I help our existing advisors grow their business. Despite my youth, I am well qualified to do this valuable work.
From Coaching to Pinch-hitting
The biggest hurdle that advisors struggle to clear is time. Every advisor has an idea of how they want to spend their day between client meetings, client service work, portfolio management, financial plan design and marketing for new clients.
I help advisors get their time back, sometimes by helping them myself or by outsourcing a task to someone else, so that at the end of the day, the advisor can do what they want to do knowing everything else is handled.
For the younger, newer advisors, it is more coaching and development. With my experience in their shoes, I educate them on the financial planning process and teach them how to service clients so they can be effective advisors within our OSJ.
For the experienced, established advisors, my role is usually more on the support side. They are already successful, so I merely help them maintain that. Most of the time they need help “cutting through the red tape.” They get frustrated by industry regulations and roadblocks. Rather than spend their time calling the back office to get answers, they can ask me. I’ll either provide the answers myself or contact the back office and navigate the different departments to get the answers.
Nagging one-off questions can take days to resolve. Instead of taking the time and headache to do it themselves, advisors can give it to me and go back to meeting with clients and generating business.
Always Learning — and Learning Patience
When not working directly with the advisors, I spend my time staying up to date on industry regulations and learning what other advisors are doing to stay successful. Throughout the year, I meet with wholesalers regarding products and services available to our advisors. I also routinely attend due diligence meetings and industry conferences, where I put myself in front of the thought leaders in our industry who are discussing best practices in marketing, portfolio development, regulatory oversight, time management and other areas.
While I enjoy the role I am in now, this move was not the easiest decision. I was aware it has its downsides. It is a much longer sales cycle to recruit an advisor to join our firm than it is to recruit a client to work for an advisor, so the pace at which I can grow my “book of business” is slower. As a result, my revenue to grow as a supervisor is more likely to happen via existing advisors growing their businesses rather than recruiting a new advisor to bring their business over.
However, this role is still entrepreneurial. I have a salary for assisting my firm with growing the departments and value-add services that we offer to advisors. I also receive an override — a percentage of an advisor’s revenue that is paid to the OSJ and broker-dealer for supervising and supporting that advisor. For example, if an advisor’s payout is 80%, the advisor receives 80% of the money earned and the other 20% goes to the B/D and OSJ.
On the company side, as our company grows, my salary grows, and I receive bonuses based on company profitability. On the OSJ side, as the advisors’ businesses grows, my income from the override grows. In both cases, I have a vested interest in our company and our advisors growing.
I am passionate about helping advisors. This career path better aligned with my skills in the industry as well as my lifestyle out of the office. I can still help people, but instead of being an advisor for client households, I support the advisors in our group with their client households. In the end, I am helping a wider range of people.
Colt Miles is the business development and supervisory principal at Athlon Advisors in Columbia, Md. He runs Athlon’s Office of Supervisory Jurisdiction and was formerly a financial advisor at the firm. Contact him at at cmiles@athlonadvisors.com or 443-347-4830.
