Paranoid,
I hear you on the disincentive for new advisors to sell fee-based accounts. My first four years in the business, I sold no Advisory because: A.) I needed a paycheck, and B.) I had to hit production “expectations” - the EJ euphemism for quota, which I still find humorous. Jones has since recognized this and we are implementing new standards in October. Instead of just being T-4 production, now there are three additional components: new households, new assets and net new assets. The weighting a for each category is based on your production level and tenure with the firm. New advisors have greater emphasis on households, while level 8,9, and 10 FAs have greater emphasis on production. This makes sense as most level 8s are not looking to add new households, and are often trying to downsize. Production will only comprise 50 percent of my total standards. The idea is that a new FA opening a ton of accounts and putting a lot of money in AS will still be light on revenue, but the weightings in the other areas will allow him to be meeting or exceeding expectations.

In answer to your question about quality of life - I have only worked at Jones so I have no first hand basis for comparison. A good friend of mine (big producer) left EJ when he had a falling out with home office. Went to WFA. He has told me he has less freedom and flexibility when it comes to his schedule. Recently I had a conversation with a recruiter from a wirehouse. (I’m not looking to leave jones but will still listen to offers.) Of course he opened with the usual dangling carrot of big upfront money to jump ship. I told him quality of life is equally important to me as money. He then launched into a description of how awesome his firm is and how much people enjoy working there. I asked about flexibility with my schedule and he said “Oh, we are very flexible, we just ask you to submit a schedule a week in advance.” That was the end of our conversation. Jones hired me the end of 2008 when virtually every other firm had a hiring freeze or was laying people off. I was 25 years old with no industry experience. Jones told me if I ran a legal, ethical, and profitable business, my job would never be in jeopardy. This has proven to be true. I stay within the jones framework, and get no pushback from compliance or FSD. I never get calls from my regional leader or development leader in HO, but they will pick up the phone if I call them. I am free to do what I want. If I want to work out in the morning and come in at 10, I do it. If I want to leave at 1 and go play golf, I do it. If I want to take a 4-day weekend and go somewhere with my wife, I do it. I don’t have to ask anyone for permission, I just tell my BOA and leave. Today, I’m 31. I work 25 hours a week. I will net $130k-$150k this year in a part of the country where the median household income is $43k. I take two international vacations a year. I drive to a branch location I selected, walk into an office layout I helped design, say hello to the assistant I interviewed and hired, call the people I want to talk to, and recommend investments I want to sell. You can say I drank the koolaide, followed the recipe, am incapable of independent thought (insert mindless drone joke here), but Jones has kept every promise it made when I started. Everyone’s experience is different, but mine has been overwhelmingly positive.

I don’t know which wirehouse that is obviously, or even if that’s on a branch level…but I can tell you it’s not at ours. I know many many guys who’s days sound just like yours…minus the office they laid out(although I’m not going to lie…as nice as that was, I will take a skyscraper view any day). There’s a guy on my floor who hasn’t worked past 1PM in years. Ski’s every day during the winter. Built that by doing good by his clients. Know another guy that spends a week in Florida just about every month. Plenty stroll in at 10am, or take the day to golf, whether with a client or not. Myself included.

I’m not saying you’re incapable of independent thought or anything along those lines…not by any means. Jones is a great company and has some great people working there. I will say though…not everything they tell you about the evil wirehouses is true at all. Maybe it is over at Wells, where most of it all comes from a bank background, they don’t have a very large presence up here…but I’ve never heard of anyone having to report a schedule. That’s crazy.

I promise you though, EDJ isn’t the only place that provides work life balance like that and freedom to shape your day, mold your business, etc. I believed they were when I signed on, found out that it’s not all that bad out there. In the end, Edward Jones, ML, MS, UBS, RBS, RJ, etc…they care about 3 things. Assets, Households, Revenue. As long as you’ve got all three, you can basically do whatever you please.

Sounds like you’ve built a very respectable business though, I absolutely commend you for that. Like I said, I’m not trying to put you down in any way shape or form…it doesn’t matter which logo ends up on the business card, we’re all doing the exact same thing…so absolute nothing but respect your way.

Just wanted to kind of weigh in for someone is stuck choosing between the two paths. Went through training programs with both EDJ and a wire. I honestly felt the wire did much better, but I think that’s because of my location…EDJ was trying to bring the good ol’ south to the urban Northeast.

Oh and I don’t have to buy my own pens, trashcan, etc. anymore which is nice. That wasn’t easy when you’re living on that starting salary that isn’t adjusted for the cost of living for your area haha.

I am in complete agreement about the Jones business model not being the best fit for urban markets. I absolutely would not want to door knock in urban Newark, Hartford, Boston, etc. The entire single-FA branch model, and face-to-face value proposition really is better suited to small-town Kansas in my opinion. I live in a city (I say that tongue in cheek) of 60k. Most of my clients live in the tiny ag communities within a 50-mile radius. Many of my clients have this inherent distrust of large financial institutions “from back east”, and a personal relationship with a local broker is their preference for money management. I do occasionally run across a ML, or UBS statement, but their closest offices are a 6 hour drive from me. DA Davidson, Waddell and Reed, and the local banks are our biggest competition. But as our business model and geography give us an advantage in our region, they become detriments in urban markets. We simply don’t possess the name recognition or have the processes in place to enter an urban area and grab market share from the wirehouses. I have no doubt the wirehouse provided much more useful training for building a business in the urban northeast than Jones provided. We are trying the whole location rich market experiment in a couple select urban markets, and there is a huge firm wide push to leverage technology to better compete with wirehouses in urban areas, but I’m not entirely convinced it will work. Our previous attempts to expand -UK, Canada - have largely been failures. We sold the UK operation, and Canada is marginally profitable. But despite that, the firm is growing in FAs, households, assets, revenues and profits. I haven’t seem the numbers but I would venture a guess the majority of this growth has come from our rural branches. Regardless, it’s always nice to get a perspective from the other side of the fence. This is a great industry and a great profession. Best of luck to you and good luck on the course. “Work like few people are willing to the first few years, so you can live like few people can, the rest of your career.”

I’ve experienced the wire and EdJ model. IMO the wire did a better job of training on investments. EdJ’s investment training is more simplistic. The wire had more investment options available and did more advanced training.

IMO EdJ has far superior training on building a practice. I’ve also found that EdJ is far more collegial. I can pick up the phone any time and speak with any producer of any level in our region and get to ask them questions. At the wire the big producers kept to themselves and the lower and mid-level producers were waiting for noobs to fail so they could get some of the assets. Needless to say they weren’t focused on helping you make it.

As to EdJ in large metro areas, the door knocking thing has had some success but it is spotty. I know of people in large areas who are building the book with cold calling.

As to freedom: EdJ had way more freedom from the get go than the wire. At the wire you had to ask for permission to take time off and were generally given a hard time. At EdJ literally no one knew where you were during the day and you could take time off whenever. At the wire even good sized producers had to let the branch manager know their vacation schedule. I have an office now with EdJ and all I do is tell my BOA when I’m going to be gone and that’s it.

Maybe my firm or even branch is a complete outlier in the wire world? I’ve seen no one ever have to ask permission to leave the office, whether it be for an afternoon or a week. Trainee or top producer.

Glass Half Full wrote:

In answer to your question about quality of life - I have only worked at Jones so I have no first hand basis for comparison. A good friend of mine (big producer) left EJ when he had a falling out with home office. Went to WFA. He has told me he has less freedom and flexibility when it comes to his schedule. Recently I had a conversation with a recruiter from a wirehouse. (I'm not looking to leave jones but will still listen to offers.) Of course he opened with the usual dangling carrot of big upfront money to jump ship. I told him quality of life is equally important to me as money. He then launched into a description of how awesome his firm is and how much people enjoy working there. I asked about flexibility with my schedule and he said "Oh, we are very flexible, we just ask you to submit a schedule a week in advance." That was the end of our conversation. Jones hired me the end of 2008 when virtually every other firm had a hiring freeze or was laying people off. I was 25 years old with no industry experience. Jones told me if I ran a legal, ethical, and profitable business, my job would never be in jeopardy. This has proven to be true. I stay within the jones framework, and get no pushback from compliance or FSD. I never get calls from my regional leader or development leader in HO, but they will pick up the phone if I call them. I am free to do what I want. If I want to work out in the morning and come in at 10, I do it. If I want to leave at 1 and go play golf, I do it. If I want to take a 4-day weekend and go somewhere with my wife, I do it. I don't have to ask anyone for permission, I just tell my BOA and leave. Today, I'm 31. I work 25 hours a week. I will net $130k-$150k this year in a part of the country where the median household income is $43k. I take two international vacations a year. I drive to a branch location I selected, walk into an office layout I helped design, say hello to the assistant I interviewed and hired, call the people I want to talk to, and recommend investments I want to sell. You can say I drank the koolaide, followed the recipe, am incapable of independent thought (insert mindless drone joke here), but Jones has kept every promise it made when I started. Everyone's experience is different, but mine has been overwhelmingly positive.

Glass Half Full -

After reading throug this thread, it seems you have been in a similar position to mine, and I'm looking for a little guidance. I am in my mid 20's and have no industry experience. I was approached by a local EDJ FA in the rural Midwest who is retiring, and offered me what seems to be an attractive GK plan. I am considering whether this is a good opportunity to take. The GK plan will start with 35M in assets year one and phase into 50-60M in assets by the end of year two. Looking at the income potentional that has been drawn out for me, this seems to be very attractive. What questions or concerns should I have?