Do New Financial Planners Focus Too Much on a Partnership Career Track? Part 2

Accordingly, this suggests that the real key for many firms is not crafting a career track to ownership for their younger planners, but instead crafting a career track to earning a significant income commensurate with the value the planner brings to the table regardless of ownership. 

After all, it’s difficult to even determine who really has the drive and motivation for the risks and responsibilities of ownership and who simply feels undervalued for the services they provide in the business, until there’s a path for both options! As long as the only track to a higher income is partnership, there’s just no way to tell who’s actually going to be a good partner.

And in point of fact, my experience in working with NexGen and our New Planner Recruiting business, and talking to hundreds of young planners over the years, is that in truth most people actually do not really want the risks and responsibilities of business ownership. In reality, that’s not different from how it’s always been; the distinction is that in the past, financial planners who weren’t inclined toward entrepreneurship often didn’t survive in the business at all. In today’s world, though, there are an increasing number of financial planning job opportunities that do not require an entrepreneurial drive or taking on the risks and responsibilities of business ownership, yet provide substantial value to the business and are well deserving of a substantial employee income.

But the bottom line is that at the end of the day, notwithstanding all the clamoring from so many young planners about partnership, I don’t really think most of them actually want to be partners, nor am I convinced that many of them are inclined towards ownership anyway. Most simply want an opportunity to be well compensated, as a professional, for a job well done, and have driven towards partnership because it often appears to be the only track available. In other words, most young planners want partnership not because they want to build businesses, but because the firm’s employee and compensation structure implies it’s the only path to higher earnings!

Thus, if firms can do a better job of articulating a career track that leads to a healthy income outside of partnership, it appears that many young planners will happily eschew ownership and follow that path. And for the few who really want something more and have the drive to push towards it—THOSE are the ones who I’d actually like to have as one of my partners!

So what do you think? Is partnership and ownership really all it’s cut out to be? Should partnership really be the standard for a career track? Or is the real issue simply that most people want to be well compensated for a job well done, and that partnership is for the few who really want to own and build a business?