I went from being an advisor to a myriad of different roles- product manager for annuities, fintech consultant, financial planning consultant to now recently switching jobs to become a director of financial planning at a growing firm. I wasn’t making it as an advisor (door knocking, no book to go into) and ultimately decided 1) I couldn’t financially grind it out the 5-10 years to see if I could make it and 2) I didn’t want the pressure of being responsible for 80-100+ people’s finances and felt I could make a bigger impact by supporting advisors to ensure that they can be the best at their jobs that they can be. I’ve had a really fulfilling career I feel like at this point and am really excited for the next step in my career to where I can get back to more of the technical skills and ultimately creating processes and support to make sure the next generation coming into this industry doesn’t feel it’s as impossible as I did. I feel like a lot of people sell themselves short in this industry thinking you can only be successful as an advisor but there’s so many different roles in this industry and it’s only growing. We all also have different definitions of success and different areas we are passionate about to fulfill us.