[quote=bornagainbankr][quote=brandnewadvisor]

My first year in the business was 2000.  I raised about 2.5 and had production of under 60k.  Was with MS at the time with a 24k salary and failed to hit bonuses.  My class of 206 was cut in half by the end of the first year.

Year two finished with a total of 6MM and had production of 90k - mostly fee-based.  I was canned for being in the bottom 25% of the remained 42 people in my class.  For those two years I had three roomates, a 15 year old car and never worked less than 70 hours a week.  Probably 5-10 of that original 206 are still with MS.

I still saved about 10k from those two years so I started my own firm with an indy b/d.  Did that until 2004 when I had about 25mm AUM all fee-based, at which point I started my own RIA.  In the first three years I never brought in over 5MM a year.

So...the reason most fail is they bitch about what it takes to make it in the business.  That 50k a year bank job will be paying 60k in five years.  Wirehouses aren't fair - they don't want people satisfied with 50k a year.  They want type A a-holes who want to make millions (they just don't tell you that when you get hired).  Good luck.

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Your first mistake was annuitizing a book before you built your business.  Had you sol a bunch of A shares, annuitties , bonds etc.  You would have succeeded you just bought into the hype the wirehouses pump build a recurring revenue for them.  That way when you fail they still make money.

[/quote] I took that leap of faith starting from scratch 30 months ago.  My first two years when I was doing around 225k in production it was a bit frustrating to watch my peers doing 300-500k because they were presenting more annuities and such.     I believe I'm making it thru the tough times and I think my strategy could pay off in spades going forward.   Time will tell.

Scrim

A good VL insurance policy can help you through the rough times as well.

A good VL insurance policy

I assume that you mean VUL since virtually no one sells VL.  Good VUL policy is an oxymoron.

I meant VL. Seems to me all of the Hartford people are still selling Variable Life.

Nope.  They sell VUL.  There is a big difference.