I had a similar event.  My RL was jumping up and down about the current bonus bracket at the time, and telling us newbies to keep up the good work so his bonus would be high.  He also told us we needed to recruit new people so we would be in the same position 10-15 years in.  I felt like I was at an Amway meeting!!

I agree with you about the door knocking.  I recently left because they fill you with so much BS that you finally get your eyes opened to reality.

It was a gradual redemption:

1) Being told by another broker about the "Law of American Funds"...as in they are "Guaranteed" to grow at 12% a year.

2) When a certain Nebraska Jones Legend's ( as in "the toolkit" , for the Jones insiders) Son in Law said to me..."You have an MBA...WTF would you do that for, an absolute waste of time and completely unneccesary in this business".  It is..hmm, I thought when I read the financials of a company, or look at an efficient frontier, or discuss the current capital market line assumptions I was supposed to understand them...I just didnt realize I wasnt supposed to know this stuff, silly me. 

3) When they hired a former beer truck driver

4) When I sold $50,000 of a C share to a client worth 9 million...and compliance took me through the wringer.  The compliance officer had to call the client and discuss it with him.  Needless to say...the client was not impressed by this.  This guy wasnt going to pay a load...period...but I got his business...and now we are discussing a 3 million portfolio that never would have been possible at Jones.

This is going to be a fun thread.

I love not being there!

Endless door knocking quotas and the constant breathing down the neck by reps in the region to do more…more…more and the endless line of “what’s best for the customer” and in reality - sell, sell, sell. Bottom line - was a sales job first. Financial advisor second. Worried about hurting clients while begging for trust.

When I left Jones I was making a whole $6000 gross in trails/ yr. Today I make about 160k gross in fees and trails. It took me only 2 years after Jones to acheive this, not 13 years. what a dumbass!

repwork: ...Worried about hurting clients while begging for trust.

----------------------------------

Wow. That line succinctly describes my first few years at Dean Witter.

Looking back on it, my eyes started to open when staying at that crappy Westport hotel (with a roomate) being served the equivalent of hospital cafeteria food the whole time in St Louis..............

However it took me another 18 months or so of hearing regional leaders and GPs tell me how Jones was the only logical place to work in the whole industry and everyone else who didn't work for Jones must be either crazy or dishonest....

Lied to by multiple GP’s to protect the financial interests of a GP. No lubricant or nothing. Unpleasant.

Pretty gradual progression here too.  One moment that stands out is when the tech rep for our region was given his token 10min to sell us all the tech pipe dreams Jones was getting ready to roll out.

Of course, someone asked where the email that has been talked about for 5 years.  His response was priceless.  He said we could not have email right now because it would require the firm to add an additional BOA to every branch to handle the massive volume of correspondence.  At that point the BS reached a terminal level and I knew I was done.

Everything I heard or saw at Jones after that had a whole new context.

ctlatinger wrote:

It was a gradual redemption:

1) Being told by another broker about the “Law of American Funds”…as in they are “Guaranteed” to grow at 12% a year.

2) When a certain Nebraska Jones Legend’s ( as in “the toolkit” , for the Jones insiders) Son in Law said to me…“You have an MBA…WTF would you do that for, an absolute waste of time and completely unneccesary in this business”. It is…hmm, I thought when I read the financials of a company, or look at an efficient frontier, or discuss the current capital market line assumptions I was supposed to understand them…I just didnt realize I wasnt supposed to know this stuff, silly me.

3) When they hired a former beer truck driver

4) When I sold $50,000 of a C share to a client worth 9 million…and compliance took me through the wringer. The compliance officer had to call the client and discuss it with him. Needless to say…the client was not impressed by this. This guy wasnt going to pay a load…period…but I got his business…and now we are discussing a 3 million portfolio that never would have been possible at Jones.

My first wakeup came in the spring of '87 when rates spiked and the
govie funds that everyone sold were tanking.  Jones had just
started putting mutual fund values on their statements and our
conservative clients weren’t happy losing $$ on their "safe"
investments.  Plus there was alot of bad press about a big Jones
IR in northern Indiana, Rick Seaman, that had sold a ton of van kamp
& putnam govie/mortg funds as “no load, government gaarunteeed, get
all your money back anytime investment”-well, that worked ok for him
until the fund values started showing up on the statements.  Lots
of bad press later and Jones paid out zillions to settle up. So our
regional GP called a meeting to calm all the newbies down.  He
writes 10 names on the board: Baldwin bonds, Petro Lewis, etc. He
finishes writing, jokes, saying he’s sold all 10 of these bricks to his
clients(bonds, underwritings, sydications of EDJ), they’ve all gone
belly-up & his clients have lost all or most of their money…"but
he’s still in business and his clients still think he’s ok.  
Don’t worry, we’ll get tru this because our clients STILL THINK we’re
the conservative, safe investment company."



I’m somewhat thick and it took me a few more hits before I finally
understood the disconnect between the Jones reality and their false
advertising as a conservative, client oriented investment company.



The recent  75mil NASD fine and CA proceedings prove that things haven’t changed much at Jones since the mid 80’s.

I never bought into all the BS ie "we are the only ones who do it right " etc but my real eye opener was my first “10k gross” month and I only took home around  $2500.  

The light went on for me when this “family” organization decreed that my significant other couldn’t attend summer regionals, and my son had to spend his time alone while I was in meetings.  And then, since I was getting a production award, I thought I might take him with me to the Sat nite dinner, and was told NO… that wasn’t allowed.  Family… yeah, right.

EWO,

I'm not sure how old your son is but there are several programs for all aged children at the EJ summer regional meetings, which I believe you are referring to. The last place my children want to be is at a meeting with me. My kids love to meet new friends at the summer regional meetings. Maybe you should teach your son how to make friends.

So you think Jones should pay for a room for you and your "significant other" to stay in? Is that what you are saying?

Oracle: Does buy and hold work for WCOM,LU,MIR and MANY others the jones gang have pushed? 

hey big O

love your "signature"

Guess you weren't around for Baldwin United,  "whoops", NT, WCOM, Enron, K

When I finally was able to decipher the so called P&L report and figured out that it was a shell game.

When a newbie Goodnight (given 30M on a silver platter) who could find his d$%k in the dark was held up as a shinning star and was standing up and lecturing us all on his success.

When I broke my ankle in 3 places and Jones put a TR in my office for 8 weeks and still paid me all the commission. (over 15k net a month) Took care of my clients while I was out for 2 months.

[quote=Oracle]

EWO,

I'm not sure how old your son is but there are several programs for all aged children at the EJ summer regional meetings, which I believe you are referring to. The last place my children want to be is at a meeting with me. My kids love to meet new friends at the summer regional meetings. Maybe you should teach your son how to make friends.

So you think Jones should pay for a room for you and your "significant other" to stay in? Is that what you are saying?

[/quote]

How about buy and hold for KM and ENE?  CSCO?

This is a funny board how the Jones reps punch in occasionally. 
When I graduated college I thought Jones was the cats meow.  I
didn’t go with them only because they didn’t want to place any office
in my area at the time (this was a LONG time ago). 



When I did the CFP classes a Jones rep was in there and he was so sold
on Jones I asked him questions.  His blind devotion was very
interesting to me until he told me stories of the gung ho motivational
meetings he had and with management and how much money he potentially
could make and the door knocking.  I learned in college that if
meetings revolve around how much money you “could” be making, it
probably wasn’t YOU that was going to be making it, it was the people
giving the speech.



A family friend went to work for Jones in a small rather poor rural
town.  He told me how wonderful it was and in his third year he
made $30k!  Seemed odd to be so devoted when that was the money
being made but I figured what the heck.  Then in the 5th year they
stuck a second office in his town and his income took a 20% hit. 
He quickly lost devotion but felt stuck with the company because he’d
been selling Jones greatness instead of himself to his clients.