Here’s the reality of the whole company and the day-in day-out for new advisor hires. Predatory, manipulative, unethical. Starting with the “sponsorship program”. There is no actual hiring criteria or requirements. They will give you the job as long as you can breathe air - was told this from an employee on the sponsorship team. They will only give you a week to accept the offer, giving a false perception of an extremely competitive position. You’ll be required to pass three license exams and this is where the unprecedented levels of gaslighting starts. (We have the mind of a capitalist, with the heart of a social worker) is what the woman who runs the Tampa office uses to describe the company culture. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Once you start in office you will do nothing finance related. You will be cold calling for 10-12 hours everyday for months. (This isn’t a financial advisor job, it’s a sales job) is what the woman who runs Tampa told a colleague the day they quit. For the first 3 hours everyday, you will be in internal meetings where you only learn how to “sell” annuities and indexed universal life insurance products. The company has quarterly and annual expectations which are quotas without them using that word. If you don’t meet them they will tell you how horrible, lazy, and undedicated your work performance is and constantly compare you to the “top performers”. At the end of the day, results are driven by luck. I watched hundreds of naive, first job out of college kids make 10s of thousands of cold calls with the same results and only 1-2% getting lucky enough to have one of the “managers” get a commission for them that will keep you afloat financially for a few months. They will tell you in the interviews that they have the best retention rates in the industry. The actual retention rate might be 5% after the first year of employment. I was asked by the woman who runs Tampa if I liked living in poverty with the level of income I was receiving after being there for 6 months. One of the worst aspects of the company is the push for every advisor to go into “management”. This is the structure of a classic pyramid scheme. Drinking the cool aid is the only way to make money with the company long-term. Even though they sub-contract all new advisors as 1099, which is a non-compensated employee, they demand you follow the model of cold calling and do nothing else to generate business for yourself. I’ve never felt more condescended or shamed for the job I was doing in my entire life, having worked a dozen of positions over the past 15 years. I was berated in front of other employees multiple times and even have current employees message me about the woman running Tampa making comments about me months after leaving the company. I’m grateful for opportunity I had, but my mental health was seriously declining after being apart of this company and it made me never want to be apart of an RIA ever again. I made $24,000 my first full year, which is the same level income I had when I was working at a pizza restaurant at 18 years old. The 5-star reviews are the “district managers” being forced to give false perception of the company. Be careful if you want to sell your book of business. They will cut you off from internal software and CRM if they have the slightest inclination that you are moving on. I could write a novel about my experience, especially with the “leadership” of the company, but for the sake of getting sued, I’ll leave it here.
