Why not just cut to the chase and start with him?  Barring that, I’d ask him for advice on where to start.  Jones training may or may not be good preparation for joining his practice.

You beat me to the punch, indy.  If your f-i-l has been successful, talk with him about it.  My guess if he’s indy, he has a significant fee-based practice which Jones does not have.  Seems like a disconnect to me and there could be better routes to prepare yourself for the inheritance.

well he said I could come work for him now and he could drop me some of
his clients right off the bat to help me get goin. He said he could
drop me about 20k a year worth of clients if I came to work for him
without getting my own clients.  the bad side is that I wouldn’t
have any training.  I could do some independant training, but how
good is that compared to EJ training that is supposedly worth
100k. 



How does a 25 year old college grad build up his own client base with
limited training?  I suppose I could study all of the products
myself and read some sales literature. 



From your experience what is the best way to learn the business? training, getting your feet wet?



EJ also has slipped up and told me areas around where I live that they
don’t have anyone prospecting in. I have thought about going indy and
prospecting that area from the get go.

[quote=BrokerRecruit]You beat me to the punch, indy.  If your
f-i-l has been successful, talk with him about it.  My guess if
he’s indy, he has a significant fee-based practice which Jones does not
have.  Seems like a disconnect to me and there could be better
routes to prepare yourself for the inheritance.[/quote]





Actually he doesn’t do hardy any fee based advising.  He currently
makes about 300-350k a year and it is all from commissions.  He
has been in the business for about 20 years and only has his series
6.  He has also run into a few clients that he couldn’t do
business for because his series 6 has limited him. 

oh yeah and he only works about 15-20 hrs a week. all his clients come
from word of mouth. If he worked at all he could be doing really well
probably.

I would jump in with him, personally.  If you get your series 7, there is a ton of new revenue that you can generate because of his limited exposure.  There will be a huge learning curve, of course.

Jones will say that their training is worth $100k, and it may very well be.  But if you are ultimately going to take over the biz, you may as well do it now.  If he is dropping a handful of clients in your lap, you may have time on the side to do the additional training.  More of an OJT situation vs. door-knocking.

I’d join up with the F-I-L too, but when you say “no training” do you mean no formalized training?  If he’s willing to bring you on board I doubt he’d just throw you to the wolves!  Shadow him for a while and you should do alright.

The training offered by Jones is just enough for you to get by. Minimal information on how to sell a stock, bond or mutual fund.  You won’t be missing that much if you didn’t get the Jones training.  I must admit though that the training to get you to pass the series 7 is pretty good.  They have a very high pass rate.

I think you ought to go into the family business, get your Series 7, 63 and 65 or 66 (so you can offer fee for advisory business) and life insurance licensce.   If you take the CFP courses, even if you don't actually get the designation, you will get a great leg up on becoming a full fledged advisor.  Wholesalers are always willing to give you ideas (of course hoping you will sell their products) that can help you understand certain aspects of the investment markets.  Your broker dealer that your father goes through may have a good department that can help you get more comfortable with securities. 

Assuming that your family business has a good reputation and people are already comfortable with your father in law, you should be able to overcome the "young pup" negativity.   Nothing wrong with riding on someone's coat tails, as long as you are building your own rep at the same time.  

Starting out with a book of ready made "warm" business is a great thing that you probably wouldn't get from the PASS program where you might be taking over an office from a failed broker with a bunch of disgruntled clients.

Hey there,

I am also a UT grad, and I'm close to your age as a matter of fact.  I've been doing this since before I graduated (internship).

Are you in Knoxville?  If you have any questions on my experiences (being young in the business) I'm glad to help.

Good luck.

Well, I meant to send that as a PM...  lol

PM me if you don't want it on the big board.

Jones does have nice training, (how to sell, how to talk to people etc) But a lot of the other training might impede your progress as an independent. (i.e. annuities bad - a share mutual funds good, fee based bad - a share mutual funds good)

Once you leave and go independent, it might take a while to retrain your brain with investment theory you learned at Jones.

UTenn,

  I agree much w/ what the other cat's have said in here.  If my old man had a book, I would just get licensed and work your way in the bus.  If you want some good training, take that damn PASS offer, serious.  Everyone in here says it's basic, and to point they are all right.  You learn how to sell stocks, bonds, MF etc...  But what they are mainly referring to is the IR job w/o the PASS. 

Very quickly, you asked what the PASS entails:

18 month program, move to STL or Tempe, should be your choice.

6 months in Branch Services, learn how to assist brokers and Boa's w/ operational questions, the last 3 months of those 6 months, you study for 7 and 63, you'll pass easy, I am a moron and got 88 on both of them, good training.  When your Pass it, you then...

4 months Order Services, you place trades and call clients to verify trades all day, obviously the clients brokers are out, so your the man for the job, get's kinda boring, but you get exceptionally efficient placing orders and minimizing any errors which can cause MARKET LOSS, a term all brokers hate.

4 months on the 1-800 line, now servicing only incoming calls from Clients.  It's the 800 number on the statement, lot's of old ladies calling in saying they didn't think Cd's could lose money b/c the mkt value is down on the 1st statement, it's fun, get's old but fun.

4 months in Cust Retention, you make calls to current EJ Ir's that qualify and offer to call on their "Inactive Accounts", pretty sweet b/c you get to learn sales skills by practiceing on current clients.  You do get exceptionally good training and call reviews every week in this position, contrary to popular belief, it's much more hands on training than going straight to an IR, where you get very little.

3-8 Months (Final Rotation) in Offices in Transtion.  You can make some bank here, you could be managing anywhere, depending on turnover of IR"s, which seems like it's going to be alot based on this forum, by the time you get there, from 40-150M in assets.   You will be putting in 10-14 hour days here, which is good, b/c you will be managing offices w/o IR"s from Hawhaii to NY, and your their temp rep.  Your finally eligable to leave @ 18 months, if a small office opens you might get it, if not, welcome to what's called NEW NEW, a very nice Jones laptop, ha, and your shi**y apartment for an office.  good luck.

I think you should go w/ Dad, but if you don't, take the PASS.  I was never a good salesman, never was, but I can sell now, still have much to learn, but b/c of PASS I am 100X better. 

Best of luck w/ your decision.  If you want more details, yes, believe it or not fellas, I have more (sorry about the length, just trying to really give him an idea of what it consists of), PM me.  One thing I wont' do is tell you what I think is right for you, it depends on you.  But i will give you the facts about the Program and answer any questions, either way, best of luck.

thanks for the replies guys. I have a serious decision to make I suppose. Ill be messaging a few of you in PM’s on specific questions. I appreciate everyone who has responded thus far.  This decision is even harder since I am married and have a 1 yr old.