Welcome to the New Planner Podcast, where it's all about helping you successfully enter the financial planning profession and accelerate your financial planning career. This podcast will help you understand the profession, become familiar with the various career paths available to you, and avoid the mistakes that limit your success. Join your host, Caleb Brown, to explore the human side of creating a successful planning career through interviews, personal experience, and insights from the trenches. Let's get started.

Caleb Brown: Welcome to the 238th episode of the New Planner podcast. This is Caleb Brown, your host. My guest today is Wilson Liu, who's an associate advisor at Stone Steps Financial. Wilson joins the show today to share his transition from the tech industry to financial planning. He shares how he's always had an interest in personal finance and how a friend in the profession helped him learn about the various roles and channels in the profession, then what he did to start his transition and how he determined what he was looking for.  

Wilson goes on to share his job search process, including networking, interviewing, and how he handled rejection. He also shares his initial experience with client meetings and mentorship at his firm. Stay tuned to the end to hear how Wilson has worked to move up the career ladder and how he adds value and combats imposter syndrome. I hope you enjoy this episode with Wilson Liu. 

Before we get started, a quick thanks to our sponsor, Dalton Education.  

Earning a CFP is one of the most powerful ways to launch a career in financial planning. It builds your credibility, boosts your confidence, and shows clients you're ready to make an impact on day one. At Dalton, they believe the CFP earns you a seat at the client table, but what you learn in the education program is what keeps you there. Their CFP FastPass program gets you exam-ready in just six months through a comprehensive instructor-led course. 

Stay on track and you'll be on pace to pass the CFP exam in under nine months, start to finish. And to make it even more accessible, they're offering a $3,000 career changer scholarship or 15% off for listeners of this podcast. Check the show notes for the link and details.  

Caleb Brown: Hi Wilson, welcome to the New Planner podcast.  

Wilson Liu: Hey, how's it going?  

Caleb Brown: Going well, hey, thanks so much for making time for us late, kind of on a Friday, well, it's late for me, kind of late afternoon, Friday afternoon. 

So, I really appreciate it. And hey, you are out there. I mean, a lot of people know you, you're a career changer from the IT space, as we've already talked about. I’ve already mentioned on the intro. And you're just pumping out content and all sorts of stuff. So I'm glad to have you on here. And for the people that aren't familiar with you, just maybe walk us through how financial planning popped up on your radar. 

Wilson Liu: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me on the podcast. Well, long story short, burned out in tech, 20 years in tech. I was always interested in financial planning, reading Kiplinger and Money Magazine, and Yahoo Personal Finance and stuff like that. And my wife was like, “Why don't you go talk to your friend who has an RIA, is this your high school friend? See how you get into the industry.” So I talked to him, he was like, “There's three main paths,” and you've gone through this very succinctly in your past videos. “The three main paths are you sell products like insurance, annuities, or you work for somebody out of RIA, or you start a firm.” 

I was like, “I'm not gonna do number three because I'm not an entrepreneur.” I know our firm founder works a lot of hours and, you know, not for me. I burned out. I'm like, “I'd rather have more reasonable hours.” So I was like, “Okay, let me do the CFP path and work for somebody.” And I worked on the CFP education course part-time when I was working in tech, and then passed the exam in November of 2021, and after like 30 job applications, seven or eight interviews later, yeah, I landed this awesome role at Stone Steps Financial. 

And yeah, it's great. We're a life planning firm. We don't try to beat the market because it's really hard. We focus on behavioral finance, financial life planning, investment management, all the above. So yeah, just super happy to be working out at such a great firm. 

Caleb Brown: Yeah, it's amazing story. I'm glad to have you in the profession, and a lot of people, I started my career in California, and I just attract a lot of these IT Bay Area career changers, and it just seems to be a very popular path for them. A lot of them, because they had to figure out their own equity compensation, right? 

So like, why don't I do this for someone else? So, okay. Let's talk about the transition a little bit. I mean, you were clear on what you wanted to do, it sounds like. I wanna go back to something you said earlier, like, “I didn't wanna, I knew I didn't wanna be an entrepreneur.” Good job on having the confidence to say that. 

A lot of people think that's bad, think that they're a lesser person or a lesser financial planner if they don't say, “I want to be the entrepreneur. I want to be the firm owner.” And I just wanna highlight this. Kudos to you because I talk to people all day, every day, that say that, and they really don't. 

They just think that's what they need to say. It's just weird. One of those psychological things like, “Well, they're not gonna think I'm as good or I'm as confident if I don't say that.” It's like, “No. Like, look, we're trying to hire you in an employee role. You don't need to see, want your own firm.” So maybe just talk to us about you were working on a part-time. 

So, because I get this question a lot, “Hey, should I go cold Turkey? Or should I dip my toe in and kind of test it out and kind of dabble and just sprinkle some stuff?” What's your thought there?  

Wilson Liu: I mean, I have like a Friday, ask me anything, and I've talked to probably like over 120 career changers. 

And just like the joke in financial planning, the answer is always, it depends. So I can really just speak to my particular case, which was I was so burned out, I was just gonna go work in retail or something like that. I used to work at my dad's Chinese food restaurant as a waiter. So I'm just gonna do anything other than this. 

Like I'm just so burned outta tech. But you know, being an avid planner, I guess, my wife and I we're super savers. We're the stereotypical, I'm first generation immigrants, came when I was six. She was born in the States. We're both Chinese American and we're stereotypical super savers. So we had like two years of living expenses, even if we both lost our job. 

But she was still working, right? So I hopped onto her healthcare plan, which is super helpful. So my friend with the RIA, he was like, “Why don't you negotiate an exit package?” I'm like, “Well, I'm just gonna quit.” And they're like, “Well, why don't you ask for severance, 'cause what can they do? You're gonna quit anyway, so.” 

Caleb Brown: That's right.  

Wilson Liu: I’m like, “Sure, why not?” Right? So with that great advice, I got a great package. And so, that extended our runway from like a year and a half to like two years basically. And with my wife working, probably do another, six months to 12 months in addition, right? 

So I think being very fortunate to have worked in tech. But having burned out, right? That's the downside. So we're very privileged to have been able to save so much and be able to have a really long runway. The other thing that worked in my particular case was that my wife said I was the busiest unemployed person ever because I was like full-time job hunting after I left tech. 

That was my full-time job. And as I mentioned before, like 30-plus applications. I know people that have applied to like 3, 4, 500 jobs, or, I know it's not easy and it depends on what you're looking for and the time of the year and whether you get lucky or not, but luck favors the prepared, I think.  

So I think, for me, studying part-time for the CFP education course while working full-time, that was totally doable, right? Because all of these, as you well know, all of the education courses are meant for kind of part-time study. So it takes you like a year, year and a half, two years. 

That's how long it took me. And then I left tech, and then I took like, I dunno, it was like a 15-week course, and I don't do this at home. I did it in like eight weeks, which is a horrible idea in hindsight. So I did the review course in eight weeks, and luckily I passed and didn't get divorced. So I passed in November 2021, and then I was just like applying full time, just like I was looking on like XYPN Facebook group, LinkedIn, trying to network as best I could, and I was ready to, if I wasn't finding any leads, like I was looking for a fee only firm specifically, I was willing to wind the net.  

I was like, okay, sure, selling products, that's fine. I need a job at some point, right? 

Caleb Brown: Get your foot in the door. Need to get your foot in the door. 

Wilson Liu: Exactly. Yeah. So I think now that I've been in the industry just over three years, I think some advice I would give now if I could do it over was network, network, network. And I feel like I know a good number of people who found jobs networking. 

They're finding jobs that aren't even posted on LinkedIn or like, yeah. So, contacting folks like you, New Planner Recruiting and other recruiters and just attending like financial planning association, local events, Zoom events, just reaching out for informational interviews, because I was ready to just look out fee-only firms. 

I had like a list of fee-only firms. I was just gonna like cold call at some point, right? But luckily, I found a position before it got to that point. So I think there's tons of ways to do it, but looking at job posts on LinkedIn, there's like a hundred plus, 200 applications, right? It's so hard to compete. 

And some of these have their CFP marks already, and I didn't. So I think I really, lucked into this job, but I also took a lot of, preparation.  

Caleb Brown: And let's go back to something you said. I mean, some people applying to three and four or 500 jobs, or whatever. And that sounds like a lot. And usually the question I was like, “Okay, are you getting any interview?” 

Like, something's going on there. That doesn't seem right. I mean, we're in a talent crunch. I mean, so if you're having a lot of interviews and you're not getting in–or a lot of applications, you're not getting interviews, you're doing something wrong, potentially. How do you tell the career changers who are used to dealing with corporate America and the jobs are plentiful and like whatever it is. 

I mean, the lengthy, it might be a lengthy process, but hey, you may go months or I mean years to, I mean like how, the facing this rejection, how do you keep your hopes up and the confidence and the confide and persevere through all this? What do you tell people?  

Wilson Liu: It's really helpful to have a support group, a support system, and my wife is basically supporting me for the last few months because I was looking for a job, right? So, not everybody is in that situation, right? So, friends, family, there are a lot of great groups like Financial Planning Association. I help run like a mastermind group for, career changers. We're basically just a support group, right? You're just like complaining about how hard it is, which is real. 

This is true, right? It's hard finding a job depending on your situation, right? So having a support group. Just network, network, network. I mean, I did not know about networking when I was in tech. It was a little bit more kind of like a dog-eat-dog world, in my opinion, in tech. But financial planning is just polar opposite. It's everybody–I've only encountered maybe like one or two out of hundreds of people in terms of networking, only one or two that were like, “Oh man, I don't know if I really wanna, continue this relationship professionally.” But like 99% of the people I've encountered in financial applying just attending people’s Ask Me Anything, office hours, things like that. Just like reaching out to random people on LinkedIn. “Hey, I saw you at the whatever, XYPN, whatever Zoom session or something. I would love to connect. We wanna hear your story.” It's insane. The vast majority of people, like 99% plus, are just like, “Yeah, sure. Happy to chat.” So I think just reaching out to people that are ahead, a little ahead of you, or even folks that are in your current situation, trying to find a position, get a foot in the door, so to speak. I think that's really helpful because you're not in it alone. There's a lot of folks in this situation. 

Caleb Brown: So you show up the Stone Steps. I mean, you had a 20-year career in it. You had, college-educated, you had some life experience, and I think you said you had passed the CFP at that point, or close to, but you didn't know really what you were doing, right? So what was your first role and just walk us through that transition on what you were doing, how you were adding value, and just how you were spending most of your time. 

Wilson Liu: Yeah. I again, super fortunate that on week one, my boss Scott was already having me attend client meetings, like week one. I know people that have spent months at a position as an associate advisor and not have years. You should know. You would know, right? I'm sure, years and not even attending their first client meeting. 

So I think, so happy finding this position at this awesome firm. The first few weeks it was almost like daily meetings. Like, “Hey, what can I help you with, Wilson?” Like, what's the next step? It's like drinking from a fire hose of like here's a bazillion, the joke in financial planning, right? There's like a tech stack of a bazillion software, pieces of software, and none of them talk to each other. 

And I was, are you serious? And I was like, wow, this is real. What I brought to the table. Yes, I had zero professional experience. Like I didn't know what I was doing other than passing the CFP exam, right? So that's a great foundation. But what I brought to the table is like, I was experienced in tech, right? 

So like learning software, I'm very self-motivated. That would really help me. So I was just like applying to like, “Yeah, sure, I'll learn these. I'll go through like the webinars and recordings and knowledge base and stuff, trying to learn like all the different software.” And just also I have to pass on my series 65, right? 

Because passing CFP exam, as most of us know, doesn't mean that you're a certified financial planner professional yet, actually you need experience, which I had zero. So the first, I had like six months to pass, this series 65 exam, in order to work at a planning firm. So that was part of it. 

Sitting on meetings, attending basically like daily sessions, trying to like ask questions and our founder would train me and all different things. And so just learning how to be a planner basically, right? I didn't have to sell any products, nor did I want to at that point. And nor still I don't want to sell any products in my stage in my career. 

So just learning how to become a great planner where the rubber meets the road, so to speak. Because knowing all the technical stuff, that's great, strong technically, but the EQ side definitely could use a lot of work as my wife reminds me constantly. So as a new planner, I think the surprise to me was like, on our job description is the financial planning is EQ plus IQ, right? 

And I was great on the IQ side but needed a lot more work on the EQ side, so.  

Caleb Brown: And that's not uncommon, right? I mean, I think that's where a lot of people are. I mean, it's the touchy, I mean, getting these people, humans, us, to talk about their money and their feeling. I mean, their feelings and their li–I mean it's like one of my mentors said a long time ago, and it's overly used cliche now, but like managing money's easy, right? But managing these people and their emotions and their fear and greed and their wide swings of, you know, just that's the tough part, and that's where we need, especially people coming from tech. I don't remember exactly what your role was, but if you're a software engineer and you never talk to anybody, you're just putting in code. 

Like you need to probably work on talking to people and getting them to, influencing them and getting them to do what you want them to do and then making them think it was their idea to do that. So, alright. So you're just kind of drinking from fire hose and then just walk us through, 'cause it's only been a couple years, right? 

You've been in business, three? So what have you worked up to now, your role as an associate planner, what does that mean in your firm?  

Wilson Liu: So, I'm starting to participate more in meetings. Again, I sit in on all the meetings, take notes, send follow-ups. I'm starting to just respond to clients in areas that I'm more comfortable with, where I don't have to always check in with the team, like, “Oh, here's my draft email. What do you think of this?” So there's more of me kind of stepping into the role as becoming a future lead advisor where I will be leading these relationships as opposed to being currently second chair, so that's the transition that's ongoing. Yeah. I also handle trading. 

I've took over all the trading for the firm, so our founder doesn't have to worry about that. And just replying to client requests, emails, occasionally attending meeting by myself, to work on cash flow and answer questions, basic questions, and things like that. So I think just growing into a future lead planner.  

Caleb Brown: And just talk to us, I mean, like the confidence level. I mean, again, you were kind of a master, probably you had mastered the IT field and here you go starting from scratch at 40 years old or however old. I mean, like, that's a tough challenge. That's a tough change. And like, I'm low man on the totem pole. I don't really know what I'm doing. 

But I'm sort of middle age. Like how did you come to grips with that?  

Wilson Liu: Yeah, I think it's helpful that our founder and I are a similar age, right? And then imposter syndrome is real. I suffer from it still. It's starting to ease, I think just gaining confidence by talking to people, helping run a mastermind group, attending other mastermind groups that I'm a member of. 

Just trying to, do ask me anythings with other career changers, trying to, get 'em on the right, on a good path. I think that's really been helpful for my kind of public speaking skills. I mean, I still stutter in all that stuff. That's fine. But I think definitely makes it a lot easier. 

Like last week, I was helping with the CFP Pro Career studios, right? One of the headliners. And I was like, “Okay, don't worry about it.” I already, I've talked to like over a hundred career changers and it's basically the same thing, right? So I know what to talk about. Just like right now I know what to talk about. 

So I'm like not gonna stress over it. And it went totally great, right? I mean, we had some, another awesome co-headliner. We had a lot of great other guests from big firms on the third day. So I think just not worrying about it, just do it, right? I think, what is that saying? Like courage is being afraid, but doing the thing anyway, right? 

So I think you just gotta do the thing, whatever it is that freaks you out. You just gotta do it. You can be totally scared and hopefully, it eases over time, but imposter syndrome, still suffer from it, maybe a little less now.  

Caleb Brown: Here's what I told my UGA students when they were having to, they were getting a little freaked out about having to do this Shark Tank presentation pitch. 

And I told them, I said, “:ook, everybody in here, you're all a better presenter than you probably think you are. You just gotta go with it. You just gotta do it and get out there.” And then some of them were like, “Man, that was like really fun. I never did that before.” And like, just sort of sparked something, so it's, you just never know what someone's spark is. What's been your biggest surprise in the career change?  

Wilson Liu: How much people skills you need, which probably to you is no surprise, but to me it was like, yeah, I'm just gonna be, trying to beat the stock market, right? that's all we do here as financial planning. No, that's not what we do here, at least at our firm. 

The story I like to tell is that, my take on the surprise was like, EQ, right? How much EQ you need. So my take on when I was applying for jobs or on my resume, I used to be a part-time ski instructor for kids, right? Four to seven-year-olds in ski school up in our local resort in Big Bear Lake, California. 

And my take on it, in job interviews was potentially that, Hey, look, if you got people paying for all-day private lessons for the kids and you're working, like you work with high network individuals, right?” I'm like, yeah, that's how I'm gonna think about it, right? But after I got the job, our founder told me that, “You know what, one of the reasons why we hired you was that, hey, if they're gonna hire Wilson year after year at this, working with kids, dealing with their emotional needs for like, eight seasons in a row, you must be doing something right. If you can take care of the emotional needs of kids, you can probably do it for adults too, right?” So there's a glimmer of hope for me.  

Caleb Brown: Look, I've been not a client of yours, but a client at other resort, like the patience. I mean, the resiliency, the organization, the calm under pressure. I'm like, yeah, you would not have made it five minutes if you didn't have those characteristics, which, guess what? To your point, that carries over into financial planning. And I feel like I'm like a broken record whenever these career changers from the military or IT, or teaching, I mean, we just sit there and walk through like, these are the transferable skills. Sometimes the firm owners that are interviewing you don't know what they're doing, and they don't recognize that. So it's up to you to articulate those and make them see how they can add, you can add value to their firm. 

And it's, and everybody's story's a little different, right? So the positioning's a little bit different, but this is awesome. So tell us a little bit more about your firm. So if I'm a client, I want to come aboard, do I work with Wilson or somebody else, or the entire team, or who handles my situation?  

Wilson Liu: Yeah. Yeah. So, Scott will do a 15-minute intro call and he's the lead advisor here at our firm. So the other senior associate works with him for about half our clients, and I work with him for the other half of the clients. So there's always, the goal is we always have two people on all emails and all calls, right? 

In case somebody's on a vacation or sick or something. So he's a lead advisor and as I mentioned before, we're a life planning firm. Scott's a registered life planner from the Kinder Institute. So it's a very goal-based lead. It's not, we don't head into the meetings like, “Hey, what's your asset allocation? What's your risk tolerance? And we'll set…” We go investments, investments, investments, which is the more traditional, investment management type planning firm, right? So we always start with what brings you here, right? What are your goals? What are the obstacles? So the whole, EVOKE kind of onboarding process from the Kind Institute, which is like exploration, vision, obstacles, knowledge, and execution, right? 

So that seems to work really well because, I have a quick story is that in the last I think two or three client meetings, we would go, we would like, we've been working with these, well, not me personally, but Scott's been working with these clients for like five, six years. And we've been for annual meetings, we do at least one large annual meeting and quarterly meetings as needed or whatever meetings are needed. 

And we review their goals for life, which is an exercise from the Kinder Institute, ROP process, right? And these clients will be like looking at their goals for life, like, wow. And then compare it to the ones from like five, six years ago. It's like, it's amazing. 'cause some of these things we've accomplished years in advance where it's like, okay, in 10 years I will be, I will get a new job as potential CEO or whatever, right? 

Whatever the situation is. Wow. We've really accomplished this years in advance and it's just amazing to remind them that they've come a long way. And we're just their coaches, we're just their guides. We're not their superheroes in the story. We're helping educate them. We're helping them figure out their own obstacles and work around them. 

'Cause they know the answers. It's just some something's blocking them. So I feel like that is, it's amazing to be working at this type of firm as you could tell from my enthusiasm when I speak about life planning. Yeah.  

Caleb Brown: I think it's Donald Miller, right? I mean, the story branding, it's you can't be the superhero. You've gotta be the guide, so they can be the superhero. And it's really interesting for people that maybe wanna look into that further. Yeah. We had George Kinder on, we've had a lot of life planners. And you touched on it a little bit, but unfortunately, we have different definitions. I mean, what does that mean? 

You said goals-based, but people that use Money Guide Pro say they're goals-based planners. What does that mean you're a life planning firm. You're life planners.  

Wilson Liu: Yeah, my take on it, I'm not the expert. I've gone through two of the three trainings at Kinder Institute, but it's basically like, what are your goals? 

Like, the kinder, three questions, “If you're financially secure, what would you do?” And then, “Sorry, you only have a year to live. How would that change?” And then, “We're really sorry, your doctor says you only have a day to live. What would you wish you had done differently?” 

Or not necessarily what do you regret, but the type of person you are, so some of those questions, those are the type of questions that really hone in on what is important to you, as a person, in life and it's, most of the time finances are secondary to that. The folks maybe, they wish they'd spent more time with their family, less time working because most people, they're passing, they're not thinking like, “I wish I worked more hours in my tech firm and I wish I got more RSUs.” Like, most people are not thinking that, right? So I think that– 

Caleb Brown: One more line of code, right?  

Wilson Liu: Yeah. “I wish I wrote another line of code before. The end.” But I feel like that is super important to figure out what are their, what are their aspirations, what are their goals? What do they wish, the type of person they want to become, right? 

So I think there are multiple philosophies in life finding. There's no one right answer. That's just the one that our firm follows.  

Caleb Brown: Do you ever have any, or have you seen any clients push back on this? Like, “This is weird, you guys are weird. This is bizarre.”  

Wilson Liu: I haven't seen that myself, but I heard stories where they're like curmudgeonly, it's fine. 

And then like, “I just wanna do this one thing.” They're like, “Okay, sure. Absolutely do that.” And then they're like, “Fine.” Right? So there's always something. Maybe they're, maybe it's too touchy-feely for them, and that's totally fine, right? It's not for everybody, but I feel like just seeing the experience with clients, it really works and it helps them reach their goals much more quickly than they expected. 

Caleb Brown: Yeah. One of the most powerful things I can remember earlier in my career, I was working with someone who was in the life planning sort of circle, and we were doing this data gathering meeting. I was kind of running it and I was doing some things and we were, I was focused on getting all the data and the taxes and the retention and stuff, and the client said something and I remember the person I was working with, like just sort of called time out, push the client's documents, like aside, and then just like pause for a minute and said like, “Tell me more about that. I think there's something else there.” And we did not talk about one other financial document the entire next hour. And I just, I was kind of sold at that point. I'm like, “Ooh, this is interesting. This is different.” Client didn't expect this. I didn't expect, like, so I get what you're saying. And we use the money quotient, financial satisfaction survey, and all these tools that are just phenomenal tools to help sort of do what you're talking about. So I cut you off. So I have a call with, and you guys are both in the, or somebody's in the meeting. You're splitting it up. 15-minute call. Then what happens if I want to become a client?  

Wilson Liu: Yeah. So our founder leaves the meeting. 15 minutes just to see, if we're good fit for them, if they're a good fit for us. If not, like if they have some, like maybe they're an expat or something. 

We don't specialize on that. We're happy to set referrals to like, oh, a firm that works with specifically with expats, things like that. And then they get set up a 90-minute exploration meeting. Really, our founder, all he is asking is what brings you here? And pause. And eventually the client, “Well, oh yeah, there's this and that.” 

Yeah. Like, “Oh great. Anything else?” And client, maybe a longer pause, like, “Yeah, well there's this one thing,” I don't, here it comes, “I wanna climb to Everest,” but that's impossible, right? “I have insane hours. I work in a tech firm. I'm a CEO,” whatever. “I'm a doctor. I'm on call all the time.” 

Now, there's no way. We wanna make sure that's part of your plan, definitely. “Anything else?” Maybe a long awkward pause, but inevitably stuff comes out, right? Stuff comes out, and I think the analogy that we use is that everyone has like 10 marbles. These are the things that are, they're little treasures that they don't wanna tell anybody. 

And some are even sewn into their pocket and they're like, “I'm never gonna tell anybody this, 'cause this is like, people are gonna think I'm crazy, right? Climb to Everest. That's crazy.” If you are a good listener, and that's what I've been working on, through the Kinder training, if you're a good listener, they eventually take out their little marble of like, yeah, I wanna, whatever. 

I wanna start my own company. I wanna like start a hang gliding company. I wanna start a bungee jumping company, whatever it is, right? And those are the things that really matter to our clients and that's what we work on. We work on those things first and then money is just in service to all those goals. 

Caleb Brown: And I think, I mean there's obviously a lot of tools out there. I was just thinking as a think-to-perform group has these value cards or something, you can kind of work with them with the client and it just sets the relationship off to a completely different than a traditional financial planner's. 

Like, lemme look at your income, lemme look at your taxes. Like, “Why are you spending so much?” Like, “What’s your net worth?” I mean, it's just a completely different engagement and I've just seen the clients react really well to it. Well, what else? Well, I mean, like, why are you, so this, let's go back to your career development stuff. 

I mean, I understand paying it forward, but here you are, you're a full-time, associate planner. You're trying to become a lead planner. You're helping the folks at Stone Steps be like why are you doing all this? Ask me anything and all these other things, and we got all these great resources on, and you put some of our stuff on there, which I appreciate, but why are you doing all this?  

Wilson Liu: To be honest, 15 minutes of fame, that's part of it because, it's like, hey, the, I’m kind of a show off as my wife reminds me, but in all seriousness, I think it's just really, it's a really good feeling. Do we do anything that's really altruistic? 

Probably, some portion of altruism, and it makes me feel good inside. I feel like here's one story, right? Like I actually talked to somebody else before my RIA friend to get into the industry. I talked to a friend of a friend from my tech job, right? And I was like, “Oh, yo.” This person I've never met before and I was like, “Hey, can you tell me more about the industry?” And their take, which is fair, like this is probably how they got in the industry. And they're like, “Okay, how many hours you work?” Like 60-hour weeks, how much money you make? Okay, X number of dollars. Like, well, imagine your first three years in the industry, you're still working those 60 hours, but you take a two-thirds pay cut and that's how you get in the industry.” 

I was like, “Wow, that stinks.” They're like, “Yeah, well, it's totally doable. I'm just being honest with you.” And I was like, “Well, thank you for your honesty.” And I got super discouraged, right? And then, and I burned out anyway, a few months ago I burned out again. So I was like, “I need to quit. I'm just gonna go work retail, just like I used to do when I was a kid at my dad's restaurant.” Like, whatever, right? So my wife's like, “You should have just talked to your friend, your high school friend who has their own RIA because he's got your best interest at heart.” I'm like, all right, fine. I begrudgingly listen to my wife. Always listen to your spouse or partner 'cause they know what they're doing. 

And I was so thankful, and that was like a 180, right? So I feel like I wanna help people skip that first step of meeting that first person that discourages them, because that's all they knew, right? I don't think, it was not malicious. I know it was not malicious. That's all they knew, right? If you talk to the right people, and hopefully you know these resources and this podcast, everything can help get folks in the industry and bypass that whole like, “Oh, this sucks. This industry is not for me.” You just get right to it. You just take off running. You're not walking. You're running toward your career, your awesome career in financial planning. I just wanna help people avoid that regret. 

Caleb Brown: That's great. It's really good.  

Caleb Brown: Wilson, this has been awesome and you've given us a lot already, but any final comments or anything that final parting thoughts you wanna leave the audience with? 

Wilson Liu: Whatever, there's so many, like we were talking before, right? There's so many entry points into the industry. You wanna sell products? Great. You wanna sell annuities? Great. You wanna just do fee-only planning? Great. Just you wanna do like advice only planning you, you don't manage assets. Great. There's so many ways to get your foot in the door, right? 

My 2 cents, my advice would be go for the goal. Whatever your ultimate goal is, try for that, but to like me, like be open to expanding your net casting a wider net, like, oh, fee only. That's what I wanna do. Well, not working out. Let me, I'm fine, getting my foot in the door at a broker-dealer or at a fee-based RIA selling products. 

You gotta do what you gotta do, right? But aim for the goal, aim for the moon, and hopefully, you'll get there much sooner than you expected.  

Caleb Brown: Wilson, thanks so much for coming on the show.  

Wilson Liu: Awesome. Thanks so much for having me. 

Thanks for joining us for this episode of the New Planner Podcast. If you are ready to discover the top career paths for financial planners and see which track is best for you, we created a free guide to help you. Grab your copy of the Financial Planner Career Roadmap at newplannerrecruiting.com/roadmap. There, you'll also find more tools and resources all created to help you build a successful financial planning career. Tune back in next week for another episode, and until then, we are here to help you succeed.