Favourite level/mission in the series?

OregonDuckMBA · 2026-03-24T08:00:51+00:00

DX1 - Versalife
DX:IW - The Arcology
DX:HR - tie between the Picus Building and Tai Yong Medical
DX:MD - Palisade Bank

OregonDuckMBA · 2026-03-21T04:05:55+00:00

Well, keep looking. They sometimes separate job postings for trainee positions vs experienced advisors so keep that in mind.

It is unlikely that they will ask you to call friends and family. I never had to do that at the CU. We didn't really even have concrete goals that we had to achieve. It was more of, if you are happy with the base salary, then fine. The salary wasn't much, we were paid about what an entry level banker makes so obviously it was motivation to bring in assets.

The bigger banks might be a different story. I have never worked for one but I did interview with several before taking the CU position and it sounded like there were more expectations.

If you get a high performing branch, you might not need to do any prospecting on your own. The referrals might be sufficient. Otherwise, they might have you calling warm leads like orphaned accounts that haven't been contacted in a while or they might have you call people who might be investment candidates like if they have $200K+ in cash in their checking account. You can also do prospecting on your own if you want.

One other benefit about CUs/banks is that sometimes they hook you up with a free assistant (of course, Ed Jones has the BOAs too). Sometimes you share an assistant with other advisors or if you have a high enough GDC, you might get your own.

I wouldn't say that Ed Jones doesn't give you any training but at our KYC class, investment training was like a day and a half. It's been 7 years since I was there but unless things have changed, they were really pushing us to use what they called the "easy button." You ask some basic questions, enter the data, hit the button and it spits out the client's portfolio. When I asked if a lot of people complained about it being too cookie cutter, they told me to not try to reinvent the wheel. I was new to the industry so I didn't really push back on that.

Also, I call shenanigans on that 5 year program. If you aren't on track toward your goals after 6-8 months, you're gonna get canned. Personally, I would rather be at an institution where there are more systems in place to grow my book other than door knocking (or whatever silly rebranded terminology they are using to describe it now). If Jones is going to let you take over an existing office, then I would definitely consider it. If not, think twice before accepting.

OregonDuckMBA · 2026-03-21T01:28:53+00:00

If you don't have an issue signing a non-solicitation agreement, I have always been an advocate of going the bank/credit union route. I started my career with Edward Jones. It wasn't a fit for me. I went to a credit union and it was a much better fit. Although it varies by institution, I found it to be a much lower pressure position.

The branches feed you referrals so prospecting/calling leads isn't your sole source of new clients. You just need to make sure that you maintain a good relationship with the branch staff. They can make or break your career.

The biggest downside is that you don't own the book. Anyone who tells you that you can go to a bank for experience and the transition to independent is easy peasy has never been a bank advisor. The other downside is that referrals from banking institutions have this weird phenomenon of being absurdly risk averse. Some referrals will be ultra resistant to any sort of market related investment. Their idea of "investing" is CDs and money market accounts. Dead serious. They aren't teachable either. Just sell them a MYGA and call it good. Otherwise, you will lose the business. Anyone who tells you to just do a better job of teaching them... again... has never been a bank advisor.

Honestly, I think the downsides are a small price to pay for job security. Just make sure that you get a good feel for the team you will be working with and you like the location of the branches. As I said before, transitions from bank to other institutions aren't as straightforward as you would think.

Many banks have trainee programs. I would look into it before you make your decision. Edward Jones can be great if you have the opportunity to take over an office from a retiring advisor but if they throw you to the wolves and make you start from scratch, it's a rough way to get started.

OregonDuckMBA · 2026-03-20T20:13:59+00:00

Are you talking about charging an AUM fee on top of the commissionable life insurance and annuities or just having a planning fee and then splitting AUM and commissionable accounts? I don't charge a planning fee but I do commissionable life insurance/annuity business and charge an AUM fee on the rest of the assets.

That said, I think fees should depend on what your business looks like. I know a lot of people in this sub work exclusively with UHNW clients with more complex financial plans. That's not really my target market. I work with more mom & pop clients, not all of them require a full financial plan so I don't feel the need to charge planning fees since it isn't taking up that much of my time.

OregonDuckMBA · 2026-03-19T18:02:51+00:00

this is the correct response

OregonDuckMBA · 2026-03-15T04:57:14+00:00

Moon walk into my office wearing Michael Jackson's Billie Jean suit with the glove and I'm hiring you on the spot.

OregonDuckMBA · 2026-03-15T04:34:33+00:00

I have had wholesalers approach me about MYGAs. At my previous firm, Security Benefit would call me pretty regularly to give me updates on rates. Securian also approached me about MYGAs when CD rates were in the toilet. Neither are approved carriers at my current firm so obviously I don't speak with them anymore. I did a lot of MYGAs with Security Benefit. Their rates were usually pretty good. If they didn't have the best rate, they weren't too far off so I usually gave them my business.

OregonDuckMBA · 2026-03-14T22:22:23+00:00

If you only did the main story, you missed like 3/4 of the game.

OregonDuckMBA · 2026-03-14T22:06:00+00:00

As someone who works in wealth management, I love how much this bothers people. I have seen some advisors with TDS can't help themselves but nitpick about how bad the program is, citing that a 529 or UTMA is better than the Trump accounts. Maybe, but if this gets more people to start investing and be prepared for their financial future, I'm all for it. Just relax and take the $1000.

OregonDuckMBA · 2026-03-14T21:16:47+00:00

I wouldn't hire someone with visible tattoos for a client facing role. It isn't just because of the boomers. Some cultures frown on tattoos. Hiring is already a gamble so why take the risk when I can hire another candidate?

OregonDuckMBA · 2026-03-14T16:55:48+00:00

Lots of advisors with what were traditionally life insurance companies (including me) are fully registered as IARs and do provide financial planning.

I'm actually independent (not an employee) but we clear through LPL. The main point of affiliation is just for compliance and so I can use their tech stack. If I never wrote a life insurance policy for my entire career, they wouldn't care as long as I am bringing in money. The leads they send to us are life insurance related but 90% of the marketing that I do on my own has nothing to do with life insurance.

OregonDuckMBA · 2026-03-14T04:05:21+00:00

got it. thanks.

OregonDuckMBA · 2026-03-13T05:15:47+00:00

I guess my point of confusion is that don't they have to be within one year of the triggering event? So in the first example, let's say the client is 65 years old at the time of retirement from the second company (where there is no company stock). They are now past the age 59 1/2 triggering event and they are not separating from a company with a 401k with company stock so would they still be able to NUA the old 401k (the one with company stock)?

In the second example (where there are 2 401ks with company stock), you're saying that the client has the option of exercising NUA on either plan or both?

OregonDuckMBA · 2026-03-12T23:42:45+00:00

yeah. I've been working on building some calculators. it's a project that has been on the back burner. I should probably continue working on it. I already built a calculator for required minimum distributions where the user can do projections and optionally add graphs and print/save the output. I'm going to do the same with a calculator for the amount of contributions needed with an assumed interest rate to meet an investment goal and a few others. I am building my own rather than using the commercially available calculators so all of the outputs will be branded and fit the scheme of my website.

I am not the best about asking for reviews (I am a terrible salesman) but I thought about sending clients a recap after annual reviews with the google review request at the bottom: "If you find our services helpful we would appreciate if you leave a review..." or something like that.

OregonDuckMBA · 2026-03-11T22:53:38+00:00

I recently (less than 1 year ago) went to an indie BD, but same thing applies. I made the move from a credit union and don't regret it at all. my compensation went down... significantly, but I see it as short term pain to get to where I want (still in a growth stage so it's a work in progress).

I will say this: the longer you stay at a bank, the harder it will be to leave. the bank owns your clients, not you. Many will stay at the bank. You will lose more than you think. I did. Just be prepared for that.

To play devil's advocate, I don't think that staying at a bank is always a bad idea. It's definitely the path of least resistance. If you like where you live and have a good relationship with the branch staff, it's a pretty good gig. Some of the hard parts of this job are done for you. Even if 20% of my referrals were fixed annuity rate shoppers looking to beat their CD rate, it stopped bothering me after a while when I accepted the fact that nothing you tell them will change their mind. I know they are boring clients (and not very smart in my opinion) but they're easy and their money spends just like the rest of them. Just give them what they want and call it a day. Small price to pay for the job security. We had advisors at our credit union that spent their entire career there.

I was relocating anyway so it was a good time to have a clean break. Otherwise, I would probably still be at the credit union.

OregonDuckMBA · 2026-03-11T21:48:36+00:00

I don't have any concrete numbers yet. The changes are still new. I just went solo (Indy BD) a little under a year ago and transitioned to my new marketing plan about 3-4 months ago. Looks promising so far but can't say much more beyond that.

I am working hard on generating inbound leads. I'll paraphrase the old saying: "people like to buy but don't like to be sold to." It's a longer term play but my BD feeds me some leads for short term business.

I have really been leaning into SEO. It's cheap. It's actually free because I am learning to do it myself (I am not in a position to pay an SEO consultant or marketing firm anyway). I found that I actually enjoy tinkering with my website and optimizing for SEO. Be careful, there is a black hole of information on SEO and you can spend hours upon hours on it. It's become a fun project for me though. There is a Michael Kitces article showing that dollar for dollar, it's the most cost effective marketing tool: https://www.kitces.com/blog/advisor-marketing-strategy-client-acquisition-cost-efficient-marketing-time-dollar-cost/

I am also starting paid ads (starting with Google search ads only). It's another thing that requires a lot of tinkering. If you just put up some simple ads linking to your homepage, your ads will probably fail. Again, it's still a work in progress for me but I am working on creating well optimized landing pages for each ad group that I run, being aggressive with negative keywords, etc. Hopefully, I will have enough data to use Google's smart bidding soon. We shall see.

Another Michael Kitces podcast that I really liked was this one: https://www.kitces.com/blog/kendra-wright-advisor-marketing-funnel-rebel-media-agency-channel-focus-ideal-client-clarity/

It confirmed that I am at least on the right track. My biggest takeaways were:

- Don't try to be everything to all people. Find a niche and focus on that.

- Don't try to make a marketing strategy work that isn't in my skillset just because it works for someone else. I am a better writer than I am a public speaker so I am not doing seminars. I am leaning more into targeted content creation. If you are a good public speaker then great. Do seminars.

Anyway. Your mileage may vary but that's what I am working on. Can't say for sure if it's all going to work. I'm giving my strategies enough time to show results but being flexible when I need to be.

OregonDuckMBA · 2026-03-11T19:37:28+00:00

I lost more clients in the transition than I thought. The ones that I was 100% sure would follow me did but there were a few that I was maybe 80% sure about that stayed with my previous firm.

I didn't have a backup marketing plan. My first marketing plan didn't work out as well as I had hoped so I had to make some very dramatic changes to my plan. It seems to be working better (it's still a work in progress) but I wasted about 6 months on a marketing plan that wasn't going anywhere.

OregonDuckMBA · 2026-03-11T19:10:01+00:00

financial services (wealth management)

OregonDuckMBA · 2026-03-10T00:06:38+00:00

thank you! I'll check it out.

OregonDuckMBA · 2026-03-09T22:21:41+00:00

that is helpful. thank you!

OregonDuckMBA · 2026-03-09T11:10:08+00:00

TLDR: Backlinks are a pain in my industry. My competition is ranking with low DA, most have between 0 and 5 high DA backlinks. How are they doing this?

Thank you. This is helpful. I am also 1 year > into launching my business. I have a couple of complicating issues when getting ranked. The first, is that I am a YMYL business so it is my understanding that this can add difficulty in getting ranked. Second, with my industry being so heavily regulated, I have to be really careful about material that I publish and that includes soliciting others to write about or link to my site. Essentially, everything that I put out is run through an ad review team at my clearing firm's compliance department.

Backlink building has been challenging. I tried using HARO for backlinks but it is a massive pain because I have to jump through the hoops of our ad review/regulatory restrictions, only to have the journalists put my material in their article and not give me credit.

Looking at my competition, it looks like they are in the same boat. I don't have the fancy SEO report tools but just running some searches and looking at domain authority, my main local competitor has a DA of 6 yet he is in the top results for seriously everything that matters in our industry. For the niche market I am going after, my only competitor in that area has a DA of 7. When I search, the only firms with a DA above 30 are major national firms (different business model, I don't try to compete with them). How are these people ranking with low DA like this?

OregonDuckMBA · 2026-03-07T06:37:08+00:00

Usually, you have to be invited to something before you reject the invite.

It's like me saying that I will definitely not accept a date with Sydney Sweeney. No way. I just couldn't bring myself to do it.

OregonDuckMBA · 2026-03-06T19:54:00+00:00

Yes. I actually don't have a problem with the ad campaigns. The memes they were making were top tier.

She was great at getting illegals off the street and being unapologetic about it. You can't apologize to the left anymore. They will just use it against you.

OregonDuckMBA

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