Building a Business in a Broken Industry

​October Blogpost 

By Liv Shin

Hey October! This blogpost’s ultimate credit goes to “time.” We live in a world where we desire success and happiness right here, right now. The caveat is—the world we live in holds us captive in this space called time. I’ve learned that I can either resist the captivity of it, or allow time to grow me, move me, and become me into the person I strive to be. Unfortunately, time takes time…and we all hate waiting, especially me.

In hindsight, I’m so glad I let “time” do its thing though. I could have posted something in August…or September…or somewhere in between. Instead, these words are a culmination of all the months up to now, so bare with me because a lot has happened since!

Prologue

“You don’t learn from experience. You learn from reflecting on experience.”

Writing is one of my favorite forms of communication because the author gets to learn and listen, too. As social creatures, us humans say things every day—whether it be intentional or accidental, rehearsed or on-the-spot, the author has his/her time to speak, and then it’s either conveyed to the recipient or not.

When we write, however, we allow our words to ink; to permeate. Words are powerful, and to be able to put thoughts into substance does a magical work in my posture when I reflect on where I’ve been, where I am, and where I want to go. Through this process, gratitude takes root because I put myself in a place where I think about the championing victories and painful failures that have together, pushed me to the present.

My previous blogpost was on saying yes to a job as an advisor at 49 Financial, a company headquartered in Austin, Texas. This piece I’ve worked on for the past couple months consists of my time in this profession since then. Here we go!
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Building a Business in a Broken Industry 

4 Things I’ve Done to Keep Myself From Breaking Away from what’s Broken
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​To tell you my job has been all sunshine and rainbows is absolutely foolish. I want these posts to be real, and do to be honest—there have been days I’ve gotten off work at 10:00pm, and have asked myself— is it worth it?

Building anything from nothing is hard, especially your own business. That’s why advocates are everything. As I built my practice, I reached out to people in my life, asking them to give me the opportunity to share what I’m up to now. One of the hardest parts, especially in the beginning of my profession, was hearing the hard “no’s”, ignored calls, texts left “read”, and internal struggle of racking my brain on how others perceived me as—a salesperson, a fraud, a person who just wants their money. I like to think that my reputation is in direct alignment with my character, and the past couple months consisted of watching my reputation tarnish one call at a time…well at least in my mind. Fun, huh?

1) Giving others the benefit of the doubt

One way I’ve been able to tackle this struggle is by giving others the benefit of the doubt. I learned quickly that stepping into this career is like walking into a broken home; the financial industry doesn’t get the most pristine reputation, and I had to acknowledge that there were people on the other side who may have had a bad experience with advisors in the past.

Finance is also a subject that people usually don’t like talking about with others. To me, this “hush-hush” mentality is useless because whether we believe it or not, money plays a huge role in our lives, and it can be quite daunting to try to manage on one’s own. I’ve met folks who believe money and relationships don’t mesh, and as I spend each day meeting people and hearing their stories, I would completely disagree. We all have different accounts in our lives, and finance is one of the bigger ones. When our financial accounts are low, or our feelings towards what we have aren’t aligning with our goals in life or ability to provide, it can be extremely overwhelming. These feelings lead people to build up walls among their finances, and I believe it’s our job as advisors to make our industry a little bit better by taking the time to peel back those layers. These layers of hurt, stress, and feeling like no one else can know about this part of their life takes investing in the person, getting to know their stories, and asking questions to hear more about what their picture looks like. It’s almost as if it takes relational, “level five” skills to do that (*I’m being sarcastic).

***A Brief Word on Sales Psychology and Being a Decent Human
While some people may also say that this is manipulation and sales psychology to win people over, okay fine—let’s work with this argument: what if the reason why you want to meet with someone is because you want to serve and make an impact on him/her if you can?. As decent human beings, it makes sense to treat others as, well— humans! We carry emotions, burdens, opinions, beliefs, hesitations, feelings..all of it. If I were to just tell someone to talk about their finances and be about everything in their life, um.… let’s just say that I wouldn’t want to be my own advisor, either. So in this case, I’d say that sales psychology is part of our role of being a caring advisor. The reality is, I made the decision to say yes to this profession, and it’s a career where my impact works in tandem with my income. While this may seem real messy, as I look back at the time when I was seeking a career, it makes absolute sense. I got to the point in my life where I needed to know that my job that would take up a good amount of my life was tapping into my conviction and purpose of loving and serving those around me. Unfortunately, there have been quite a few bad actors in this industry that have taken their income as the goal rather than the impact they can have on others. In other words, advisor integrity is not something that is talked about real highly.

2) Remembering My “Why”— Choosing Impact Over What’s Comfortable
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Ultimately, I can’t control others though. This is part of building a practice in a broken industry. While I could just break away from a position like this and choose something easier, I remember something a leader and mentor shared when he announced that he was picking up his family to build this impact of financial services in another location—this idea of not making a decision on what it comfortable, but what is going to grow you and serve others and God in this life that we only have limited time on.

People desire to know that they are being taken care of. People desire to be in community they can trust. People desire to grow, and a major factor of this is by the people they surround themselves with. Why does the word “finance” try to falsify these statements of doing life in community? Yes, as I mentioned, finance people have done a pretty bad job with this in the past, and so fixing the brokenness in the industry starts with taking the time to show people that financial peace and clarity is possible with a team that truly wants what’s best for them. It may even take putting yourself in uncomfortable situations to do that. Last week, my CEO said something that really stuck with me— “The things that don’t make you any money are often the things that make you the most money.” Proving to others that we are here to serve first and foremost, whether we get a cut of it at the end of the day or not, is what it takes to be successful because clients want to know that we don’t care for their money, but we care for them. Finance is simply one of the ways we get to build our ministry around loving people because of the need and treatment it requires, especially today.

3) Relying on my team for support and encouragement.

A major part of our firm is founded on this idea that “two are better than one.” Our teamwork model isn’t just something that we utilize to serve our clients, but also a way that we support each other internally as we build out our practices. While there are days where it seems like I am building my practice on what seems like nothing, I’m not building something out of nothing. I’m building something with my team. Having people at 49 who hold me accountable each and every day from the 7:30am wake up calls to the appointments and trainings embedded throughout the week to build my financial knowledge reminds me that I am never alone. I’ve been able to see leadership not only hold me up, but also encourage me to mentor others in the firm because of the way leaders took the time to invest in me.
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4) Being grateful for the people who believe in me

​Lastly, I’ve been able to stay in this practice because of the people who believed in me; getting to be part of the impact in the lives of people I deeply care about was only possible because they let me in. The clients I’ve been able to serve become stories to share, relationships to grow, new knowledge I learn, and conviction within my heart that I’m in the business of serving people. It makes the perception of being a salesperson in other’s minds worth it, the persistent calling to people in my circle make sense, and the long hours and extra miles all the worth-while. Again, while I recognize that I have stepped into a career that ties my income to my impact, I know I have a team always holding my accountable to make sure I am serving those around me, and I’m nothing but grateful.

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Big Recognition to these people/words who helped me write this piece and grow me in my process of becoming:
-ESV Bible: 1 Peter
-The Infinite Game By Simon Sinek
-The Well (Austin, TX) Sermon on Leadership
-Can I know God’s Will? God’s Will and your Job By R.C. Sproul
-Kaizen Team
​-49 Financial Firm