Evolution in Your Financial Planning Career
Happy 2022! Are you excited about this new year? Like most of you, I like to take time this early in the year to sit down and think about my goals, both personal and professional. I reflect on what I want to accomplish, how I want to grow as a financial planner and business owner, and what new things I want to learn.
If you also like to use the new year to define some goals, I encourage you to do so! This isn’t quite the same as making resolutions, which most people tend to give up after a few weeks. When you set a goal, you should also figure out what you need to do to accomplish it.
Define your professional goals
If you want to spend some time reflecting on your career and setting new goals, here are some questions you might want to think about:
- What do you want to accomplish in your profession this year?
- Who do you need to be in 2022 to reach your goals?
- What do you need to change?
Once you’ve defined your goals, the next step is figuring out how you can achieve them. And that process usually involves identifying what you need to change.
Figure out how to achieve your goals
The thing about a successful career is that it requires change. You need to evolve to meet each new goal, challenge, and client. Career evolution is natural, and it’s essential to advancement — if you never change anything about yourself and your process, you can’t expect anything to truly change in your job.
I’ve evolved a lot as a financial planner. At each point in my career, I was a different version of myself. When I first started out, I was just an assistant. Most of what I did was behind-the-scenes support. And then things changed, and I moved into client-facing positions. To succeed, I needed to adapt and develop new skills to successfully communicate face-to-face with my clients.
From there, my career evolved, and I became a business owner. I established my own practice, and then I had to grow and change again to meet the new challenges of joining the FPA. Over the last year, I started Amplified Planning and honed my teaching and mentoring skills.
When you move into a new financial planning role, you’ll need to adapt as well. Maybe that means studying to get your CFP® license or switching up your workflow to accommodate a mix of telecommuting and days in the office. Or perhaps 2022 will be the year you decide to start your own practice or expand your business by hiring more employees.
Adapt to new challenges
I’m proud of the advancements I’ve made in my career, but every one of those changes was hard. It was challenging to learn new information, to develop interpersonal skills, and to put myself out there to start my own business. To move from just doing the behind-the-scenes paperwork to working with clients and managing employees.
But as challenging as it was, I had to make those changes to grow as a professional. I needed to evolve as a financial planner to get to where I am today.
Grow your career
No matter what your goals are for this year, chances are you’ll need to stretch a little bit to reach them. That’s how growth works. Even though career evolution can be uncomfortable and difficult at times, it can lead to new opportunities and more confidence.
How have you evolved in your career as a financial planner? What do you plan on changing in 2022? Tell me in the comments!
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