Andrea Thompson

I call myself a career financial planner.

I've dilly-dallied in this and that across all the different disciplines from estate and insurance planning to being a corporate financial planner to working in the AUM model, as you said.

And about, I don't know, 2010 or so,

I was really interested in getting away from the sales-focused mentality that I found myself in the industry.

I really didn't like the feeling of having to sell products and make money.

And that was what I was being pushed towards doing.

And it just didn't really resonate with me.

I felt really uncomfortable.

It really struck a note in me that the corporation that I was working for at the time, which, by the way, wasn't Raymond James, wanted me to push products.

whole life, universal life products onto the clients of the advisors of that firm because it made the advisors more money.

And I was doing needs-based insurance, which I really strongly believe in still to this day.

So that didn't align and I became really disillusioned with that sales mentality.

And I looked into what was called fee-for-service planning at that time.

Now, advice only is this new term we use.

And nobody was really doing it.

I tried to find other professionals in 2011 doing it, and I found one lady.

I'll never forget.

She was running her fee-for-service practice, but she said, you need to have a tax practice at the same time in order to make any money doing this.

Nobody's going to hire you.

And I thought, I don't want to run a tax practice.