Please tell me if I’m wrong.
I started advising with no experience at the end of 2019 with a 6 month old practice within a huge partnership. No salary but was told there could be a book of clients for me. In the first three months I was really active though of course I was very scrappy as I was just learning the ropes. Obviously COVID hit and we’ve pretty much been in lockdown ever since (not US based). By Q3 the shock wore off and we all got back to it (my boss included). I decided to focus on

Agree with FA1 here. You are likely doing the wrong things.

OP mentions how everyone says that their business is a mess 3-5 years in, and you’re not wrong there. The problem is you have to take on every client in your first 5 years and do anything you can to get in front of people. That does create a problem 5 years later, but the advisors who don’t do that generally don’t make it.

If you’re not devoting the 60-70 hours now to strictly prospecting it’ll be tough. Having grown up in independent office that housed 30-40 advisors at a time, you could instantly see who wouldn’t be there and you devote less time to those people sadly. I would think you might get more attention and mentoring if you focus entirely on prospecting and begin adding more new clients at a faster pace.

While last year was a challenging year to do traditional prospecting, every person was worried about their investments and was looking for advice. There were ways to reach out to people and it was arguably one of the best times to do so.

That being said, there are junior roles and paraplanner roles if prospecting isn’t your thing.

1. Why in the world would you work for zero pay this long?

2. Don’t spend another minute doing admin work and putting systems in place. They aren’t paying you to do that.

3. Either commit to prospecting like a mad man all day every day or

4. Find a team that will pay you a salary to be an operational or admin.

Best wishes.

Hey my friend, first off let me offer you encouragement here. Pandemic or no, starting this biz is really hard. Everyone struggles in the first 3-5 years, EVERYONE. Every person I talk to these days looks at my situation with a sense of envy due to my copious amounts of free time and good income. Who wouldn’t want to be in control of their time while working only with people they like? The thing is, people didn’t see me stressed out and not sleeping trying to support a family for the first years. This is the greatest business in the world. You get to make REAL relationships and help people. The reason why everyone isn’t in the business though is because it is hard. So please don’t beat yourself up. We’ve all been there.

In my humble opinion you need to adopt the attitude that says, “I don’t care how long it takes, I will do this”. The Spanish Conquistador, Cortez, upon arriving in the new world was met with hostility from the land and the people. His men freaked out and wanted to go back to Spain. So one night he went out to the bay and burned the boats. I envision him saying to the men the next morning, “Now what? It’s move forward or die”. Think like that and you can make it.

Now to the straight tough talk. It has been my experience that everyone is looking for that silver bullet to bring in clients without doing the hard stuff. There is a real fear of picking up phone. There is a real fear to talk about money with your family or friends. There is a real fear of networking with groups and people you don’t know. Messing about with systems, marketing, product research, etc.. is simply a way to avoid the uncomfortable. I tell you this because I am guilty of this as well. I spent time on my website, building my brand, buying internet leads, etc... instead of joining networking groups or cold calling or reaching out to loved ones. I echo what several other folks have said here, prospecting is the only thing that matters in the beginning. You must get people in the door and deals closed, Regardless of account size. You need the little wins as they spur confidence and give you the much needed experience to handle the big accounts. If your internet system works then get it. But if it doesn’t go back to basics, go to good ole fashion networking. You have to find what works for you. I can tell you how I did it but we are different people. Whatever it takes get them in the door and closed - nothing else matters. Sales covers a multitude of sins. If you focus 100% of your time on getting in front of people you will succeed. The rest is pointless at the beginning.

I hope this helps. I wish you the best of luck and will leave you with this Avett Brothers song quote, “Decide what to be and go be it”

Sounds like you're in the wrong type of office...

Automation, efficient prospecting and basically using the ‘down time’ to create the foundations of a good business. I’ve only brought one client in but to be honest I haven’t been trying to bring in too many as I build out everything else (I do 60/70 hour weeks). My boss just had the chat with my about numbers as I’m ‘in year 2 now’ but I feel his comments are a little unfair for the following reasons:

- I only spent 2 months in the job before WFH from March2020 until now
- I took the gig for the hands on mentorship which I’m not getting (a mixture of wfh and my boss spending time building a new practice himself)
- My boss attends many workshops and courses on building businesses and brands and always tells me that I’m ahead of the curve as he knows I’m already doing the things he’s learning about
- Our team is small and the head of back office is constantly telling me not to bother with clients if the fee doesn’t offset the costs (which I understand, but it’s also so demotivating)
- I rarely get responses when I ask for day to day help and have to search / figure things on my own
- I never got the clients I thought I would
- I’m generally just trying to keep my mental health in check (huge extravert and really feeling it right now)

I agree that I could be doing more on the prospecting side (available hours permitting) but I have EVERY faith in the way I’ve approached this. My marketing, virtual assistants, automation machine, content I’ve created is -if I may say so myself- absolutely brilliant, and will help me build the business I want to much earlier on.

I also think all things considered the pressure a bit unfair; I signed the contract in December 19 but I definitely don’t consider myself having ‘been there’ for that long experience wise.

With all that said, there’s every chance I need to man up and get on with it. Being stuck at home I don’t have any sense of reality and what I should or shouldn’t be doing, particularly against a backdrop of a global pandemic.

If you were my boss what would you say? If I’ve got this all wrong please do say

When did you finish building the tools to automate systems that allow you “to reach out to 250/300 prospects a week with all of the follow up, data capture and CRM automated for me?”

The moment it was ready why didn’t you turn it on and start reaching out to 250/300 prospects a week? If that just happened this week then how well is it working? Are you already meeting with prospects? If so then lots of new clients should be coming on board quickly. If that doesn’t happen then maybe the system isn’t really what you needed to be focusing on and instead start networking hard, cold calling, reaching out to COIs you already know.

How have you been working for a year at 60-70 hours a week without getting paid? Have you spent 3000+ hours just developing this system? If you were doing any work for clients of others in the practice you absolutely should have been getting paid for that.

I feel there is info missing here. Are you getting paid now? What did he say that upset you? What ended up happening with that book of clients? With that said, it seems it may be time to look for other opps...

I would imagine what your looking for didn’t exist at the time, the World was in a global pandemic, not just your office, most didn’t know how to navigate.. the ‘promise of clients’, I wouldn’t out too much stock in, unless you were purchasing a practice, most places you go will give some lame attempt at a promos of clients to work...I would imagine that they are losing money on you AND they are asking to your face, how can they help, because they would rather make money on you then let you go and start over with another recruit....as far as your part, take any and every client you can and work that client like it’s a billion dollar account, (i.e, introduce me to your mom/dad, grandma, g-pa, employee, teacher, best friend, etc...)... making excuses and putting all your time into making some type of spreadsheet, kinda sounds (don’t take this the wrong way) like you weren’t working on what makes the money. We make money by helping people and you were only helping yourself...just my thoughts, they are worth what you paid for them. ;)

Welcome to finance. Everyone is looking out for themselves. You either keep fighting or go elsewhere but know that this biz is very hard for a reason.

Look out for yourself.

Yes you’re wrong

You need to start spending all your time on prospecting, or search for another career. You should be having 10-20 meaningful conversations daily with prospects trying to move them through your funnel. You need to start taking on clients even if they don’t seem profitable. Most new clients don’t give you all their money anyways when you are this new, so even if they write a check for $20,000 there is another $500,000 somewhere else. The fee offsetting the cost? What does it “cost” you to take on a client, besides time, and perhaps some small admin fees? As I said, start bringing in clients, or find another career.

Updates on your method and system? Did it work out? What are your numbers?