Personal Financial Advisor/Private Wealth ManagerOdds of Hanging On

Much of your time will be spent marketing yourself inside of your firm. In any big investment shop, there are likely internal competitors for your clients as well as the external ones. And if you are self-employed (as are roughly a third of all personal financial advisors), you don't have the brand equity on the big bank moniker working for you either so every day is a battle. The more time you spend networking at conferences, holding seminars and taking out ads on interstate billboards with giant pictures of your face, the larger your client base will be and the better your odds of hanging on. (BTW, you should make sure your name is also displayed on that billboard. People can’t look up your face in the Yellow Pages.*)

*An old, antiquated tool used to manually look up names, phone numbers and addresses, in the form of a big yellow book.**

**The old, antiquated predecessor to the Kindle.