“Weekend Content for New Financial Planners” is a collection of podcasts, articles, videos, etc. that I’ve been consuming regarding breaking into financial planning, industry trends, career development, and more.
***
With the start of a new year (and decade!), it’s a good time to rebrand the “Financial Planning Articles” series. With many of my links featuring podcast episodes and videos, “Weekend Content for New Financial Planners” better describes the content that I share in this series.
This edition appropriately kicks off with two podcast episodes geared towards transitioning into the industry. From FPA Activate, the first is an interview between Hannah Moore and XY Planning Network’s Financial Planning and Process Coach Emily Purdon. Purdon talks about the importance of keeping an open mind to various roles within the industry to be able to play to your strengths, a trend towards XYPN’s solo-minded advisors shifting towards a boutique or enterprise mindset (and hiring virtual paraplanners and interns earlier!), as well as a general trend of XYPN’s advisors beginning to hire support around the 30-client mark and before they reach the capacity wall (of around 70-75 clients).
Continuing the XYPN theme, our second podcast is an interview between co-founder Alan Moore and Miguel Gomez. Gomez recounts his transition from a career in marketing, the process he went through to begin taking on on business development responsibilities, how he settled on a niche, and general advice for those switching careers to become an advisor.
One of the ways Gomez began getting his name out early was by writing a personal finance column for a friend’s newspaper. For those considering doing the same, Morgan Housel of the Collaborative Fund (and former columnist at The Motley Fool and The Wall Street Journal) joined Shane Parrish of Farnam Street this week to discuss a number of topics. Housel details his writing process, how he defines a successful piece of writing, three approaches to financial writing, why you may want to take feedback on your writing with a grain of salt, and what tempting technique new financial writers should avoid.
We cap this edition with two productivity articles. The first comes from Tim Ferriss who recommends categorizing a long to-do list of decisions to potentially pinpoint a “higher-level” decision that would eliminate many other smaller decisions. Finally, if you’ve ever found yourself awake at night with work on your mind, Rebecca Zucker with the Harvard Business Review reminds us of the levers we can pull to prime ourselves for a peaceful night of sleep.
I hope you enjoy.
Determine Your Own Career Path with Emily Purdon (Hannah Moore, FPA Activate)
“I’ve seen a lot of what we call ‘solopreneurs.’ People that went out there with the purpose of building a lifestyle practice where they can maybe replace or duplicate a previous salary, live a fun, fulfilled life spending time with family. I’m actually seeing them shift into hiring virtual paraplanners, interns from various CFP® programs, and actually starting to staff out a little bit, which wasn’t really their initial goal.”
From Marketing Expert to Financial Advisor for Hispanic Clients – The Career of Miguel Gomez (Alan Moore, XY Planning Network)
“It was in the interest of being more involved with clients. Part of market research. I’m going to understand what we do for clients so that we can position the firm better. So that was the initial motivation. To talk with clients, work with them, and be more involved with them and so on. And then it just grew from there.”
Reading, Writing, and Lifelong Learning: A Conversation With Morgan Housel (Shane Parrish, Farnam Street)
“Everyone knows the best writers over time, whether it was Mark Twain or Ernest Hemmingway, use small words in small sentences. Short phrases. Quick, seven-word sentences with simple words that a ten-year-old can understand. That’s what makes the best writing. It’s so hard to wrap your head around that concept as a writer. And it’s so easy to pretend or convince yourself that you’re going to gain more credibility by trying to sound smart.”
Finding the One Decision That Removes 100 Decisions (Tim Ferriss, Tim.blog)
“This was one of the most important lessons Jim learned from legendary management theorist Peter Drucker. As Jim recounted on the podcast, ‘Don’t make a hundred decisions when one will do. . . . Peter believed that you tend to think that you’re making a lot of different decisions. But then, actually, if you kind of strip it away, you can begin to realize that a whole lot of decisions that look like different decisions are really part of the same category of a decision.'”
How to Stop Thinking About Work at 3 am (Rebecca Zucker, Harvard Business Review)
“Research by Baylor University and Emory University shows that making a to-do list for the following day before bed helps you to fall asleep faster — by virtually as much as taking a sleep aid — as well as helps you to wake up fewer times during the night. Unfinished tasks cycling through your mind stay at a ‘heightened level of cognitive activation,’ explains Michael Scullin, the lead author of the study.”
***
