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 239th episode of the New Planner podcast. This is Caleb Brown, your host. My guest today is Matthew Gray, who is a certified financial planner at Schrock Financial. Matthew joins the show today to share the difficult process of how he got started in financial planning and found the right fit.

He shares how a math professor led him to financial planning and what hooked him. He shared the struggle of finding his first opportunity, then how getting some licenses helped him get his foot in the door, then went on to share what went into the decision to leave the firm he thought he would be at long term, and how he transitioned his clients to the new firm.

Stay tuned to the end to hear some tips for new planners, especially on approaching your boss for compensation discussions. I hope you enjoy this episode with Matthew Gray.

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

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Caleb Brown: Hey, Matthew, welcome to the New Planner podcast.

Matthew Gray: Hey Caleb, thanks for having me. Really looking forward to this conversation.

Caleb Brown: Oh yeah. It's gonna be so fun. It always is, or it's always fun for me. I don't know. Sometimes my guest, they may not think it's so fun, but no, we have a good time here. Well, thanks again for being on, and I mean, I just wanna start with how financial planning even popped up. How did you even become familiar with it? And then we'll take it from there.

Matthew Gray: Sure. So I didn't start out looking for this career. I was in college studying sport management. I was really into sports in high school, thought, hey, sports and business, that sounds like the perfect marriage. Sounds like a fun career with meaning, and that's why people tell you to go work in a career field before you actually commit yourself to it, 'cause I was about a year and a half in doing a lot of sporting events for NFL teams, NASCAR, and absolutely hated it.

So, realized pretty quickly it wasn't for me, 'cause it was really like more event management, and it was boring to me, so not what I wanted. Also you're working nights and weekends and so I went to all my college professors and said, “Hey. You guys know me, you guys know what I'm good at, what career opportunities are out there.” And it was a math professor actually that said, “Hey, you should go talk to the finance department.” So I went, met with Dr. Schwartz, if you're listening, Dr. Schwartz, and she really convinced me that finance was something that I'd be interested in.

And then I remember sitting in a class, and they did one little session about like the series 7, series 66 licenses and financial advising, and from that moment I was hooked, even though I didn't know much about it, and they didn't have a CFP program at the school I went to. So I just took general finance and graduated with a degree in that and started looking for opportunities to make my way into that career, which was really difficult at first, which is why I'm glad that you guys are doing what you're doing.

Caleb Brown: So, oh, gotcha. Okay. So when did you come outta school?

Matthew Gray: So, I came outta school 2019, I guess that's six years ago now. And I knew what city I wanted to be in 'cause my fiancé lived here in Harrisonburg, which is where I still am. And I just called, emailed, sent hard copy letters to every financial advisor in town.

There's probably like three dozen, and like three responded, I think, but none of those actually panned out. And I actually ended up doing an internship with an advisor who was a family friend of my fiancé's at the time. He was a solo shop doing his own thing with an independent broker-dealer. And he is like, “Hey, you come intern with me over the summer, no pay, but I'll teach you, and you can shadow me, and then I'll sponsor you to get your licenses if you wanna go that route.”

Caleb Brown: Way to leverage the family contacts there. Why do you think that out of, I think you said three dozen, why do you think 33 firms didn't give you the time of day? Didn't even respond. Why do you think that is?

Matthew Gray: I think it's because there's not much value coming back to the firm owner, it seems like, in those scenarios, and I've been around to see those college students doing the same thing I was doing, and talk to the owners of like the firms I've been involved with.

And I get it, like the owners are like, “Okay, if you wanna come in and do an internship or even one, like an entry level position, the fail rate is so high in this industry that chances are you're probably not gonna stick around.” It's a compliance headache. They've gotta figure out what to have these grads or interns doing.

So there's a lot of headache, a lot of investment from the firm, but unless it really pans out, which the odds are really low, they don't really get much back from it. So it seems like it's really skewed to the value being for the intern and for the new entrant. And I think that's why I had so much trouble getting traction.

Caleb Brown: Let's pick the story back up. So you did the internship with the family friend, and then I guess he sponsored you for some licenses or something, and then did you pursue those license exams?

Matthew Gray: Yeah. So I took four weeks. I was like, hey, this is what I'm, you know, what I would love to do. I loved that he was working with clients, and I liked sitting in those meetings and seeing how he problem-solved and helped people.

And so I studied for the license over the summer. I took the 7 and the 66 at the same time, which I don't recommend necessarily, but did it just because he was like, “The faster you get licensed the better.” And the arrangement after I got my licenses was. No salary, straight commission, and so I worked a full-time retail job in addition to studying and starting in this career. And it was tough. I mean, he was an old Ed Jones guy, even though he wasn't with Ed Jones at the time, so he sent me door-knocking plus the natural market deal about–

Caleb Brown: How did that work out?

Matthew Gray: Not well. I'm, maybe there's some people who can still do the door knocking and the natural market, but that's the reason why it's a 90 to 95% fail rate for people going in.

So I think I was there after I got my licenses like five or six months, and I found like maybe six, seven clients, most of those natural market. A couple, I think I had like one door knocking client out of like the 800 doors I knocked on, but realized it wasn't working. He realized it too. And there were some other things that we just both realized it wasn't a good fit.

And I, at that point, I wondered like, is this really for me? Like, do I really have what it takes to hack it? Because I hated the sales too. I loved everything about the field except the door knocking and the selling. But I reached back out then to all the financial, or a couple of the financial advisors, who had actually responded to me the first time when I was graduating.

And one of them, or two of them, were really interested, and I was really surprised by that. But when I asked them why, they were like, “Well, it's very different talking to someone who's been in the industry, even six months, and has their licenses and is still trying to go at it versus a college grad.”

And so they both were interested. They both made me offers, and I decided on the one that I thought was the better fit and ended up being there for five years up until this last fall. And that's where I really learned how to be a financial advisor and actually got started. And if it wasn't for that opportunity, I probably would be in a different field.

Caleb Brown: Great persistence. I mean, it's just amazing to me you're over here working a retail job during the day, like to try to be a financial planner at night. I mean, that's like, I live here in Athens, Georgia, and that's what the musicians do. They try to do their music and art or whatever during the day, and they have to wait tables and do their bar job at night to pay the bills.

So it's like, it seems like to me, it shouldn't be like that if you wanna become a financial planner, and I hope I can, during my career, can see that. So talk to us about, so you found a fit. I mean, that's really cool. So it sounds like you picked the right one. You had two offers? Why did you pick that firm and then just walk us through how you started, what role, and what you learned, and then how you progressed?

Matthew Gray: Yeah, and how the firm that I ended up at, how they started me, I was so, and I think we all can learn a lot in the industry from that process. The two offers I had, it was similar firms, I think two advisors each, a couple of support staff, very normal what we see in the industry. The one that I didn't go with, their pitch was they had some sort of like tax approach and retirement plan where they were gonna send me out to different employers and pitch like tax planning, and then try to get them in. But it was a new program. They hadn't done it. It was basically, “Hey, you come in, you learn it, you work it, and go.”

Which sounded all right, but the one I went with, they said, “Hey, you come here and you just learn, you'll be an assistant,” kind of like a CSA client services associate or assistant, “And you're just gonna learn how to be an advisor for the first probably two to three years. And then we might start handing some clients off to you. We'll teach you how to prospect.”

But it was a much longer ramp and I felt a lot more confident that they were gonna really equip me with the tools to know what I was doing, 'cause the first experience with the internship and just going out and door knocking, I didn't even know what I was selling really.

I didn't understand it. And that always kind of bothered me of like, I wouldn't necessarily trust myself with giving advice yet, yet I'm supposed to go out here and convince other people. So at that second job, I was really convinced that they were going to train me how to be an advisor and then slowly acclimate me to being a producer, which is what happened.

Caleb Brown: It's the classic apprenticeship model, and I mean time after time again, I feel like, I mean, that model works pretty well. But the hang your sh–and we see all the stats and that's the hang your shingle model, go out there, not the apprenticeship model, and people fail, or the failure rate's a lot higher.

Okay. So you started as, and it's interesting to me because you. And I get a lot of feedback from firm owners. Some of 'em listen to this show. It's like, “Yeah, these grads come, they don't want to be a CSA, they want to go right into a planner role.” And that's what a lot of my students say, too. But I think the fact that you had to do, you had to knock on 800 doors, and you knew the other side, someone that came to you and said, “We'll teach you everything. And a CSA role for two to three…” I mean, you were all over it. But you may not have been, had you not had that other experience.

Matthew Gray: Absolutely. The first experience really poured cold water on, like the dreams of being an advisor right outta the gate, which I needed, like, I needed to have that humble pie of, I mean, I knew I didn't know everything coming out of college, but I needed to realize just how much I had to learn that I was like, “Man, you'll pay me a salary to just learn and help and be the errand boy, be the note taker.” It ended up being much more than that quickly because, turns out, the CSA, they had quit two weeks into me being there, so I ended up being like the full-time CSA right out of the gate and training some of myself.

But I really got to just sit with the lead advisor in a meeting after meeting after meeting, and just soak up all this knowledge that he had and the ways that he did things and the concepts that he was talking about with clients, and to just see how he related to different clients and how he related to prospects and how he closed new business.

And that training is so invaluable. It's hilarious to me that in this industry, most firms do it the opposite. We expect you to sell before teaching you what you're selling, and yet the most effective salespeople know it so well, they don't even have to sell it because they're just able to explain it in a way that makes it apparent that people need what they're selling.

Caleb Brown: And when you're so confident about what you're selling and you just know it helps you, I mean, it's just contagious. People just see that like, “Yeah, that really, I want that. Whatever that person's got, I want that.”

Matthew Gray: Right. Which is funny because that's actually how I got my first client is I hadn't started prospecting, they weren't having me produce, but like a year, a year and a half in some 401k participant wanted to have a meeting about their 401k account, and one of the other advisors was like, “I don't really have time for this, Matthew, you do the meeting.”

So I did the meeting, and I just treated it like an intake session and asked questions. And by the end, like the 401k participants were like, “We need a plan. We need help.” And then it kind of stole itself, and then the firm motor's like, “Well, I guess you should start producing now.” So that's kind of how the next phase unfolded.

It just, I had grown so confident and learned so well that I just started selling without even realizing I was doing it.

Caleb Brown: Okay. And just so that we, I mean, we're gonna link to your LinkedIn profile and all your information, but you started this job March of 2020. Could not have been one of the worst times ever to start a new job in literally, at that point, anything.

Matthew Gray: Yeah. No, I started March 2nd at Larson Wealth Management. Like I said, the CSA quit two weeks in, and then like three days later everything shuts down. The market drops 30%. But I've joked with people since then. It was one of the greatest learning experiences because all I knew from the beginning was bear markets, like, I get thrown into a 30% decline, and they had me on the phone calling clients just to make sure they were okay.

Like, and I'm only been there like four weeks, so they did teach me a lot and they were very intentional about it. But at the same time, got really thrown in drinking from a fire hose, and it really showed me like, okay, markets are unpredictable, the world is unpredictable. How do we help clients still have security and confidence in the plan that they've created in the most unprecedented of times?

Caleb Brown: How did you handle the nerves of calling these people? One, asking if their health is okay, but just don't like, they’re, “Matthew, why is my account down 30%?” Here you are, a couple weeks on the job, I mean, how did you handle that?

Matthew Gray: Well, the other folks at the firm did a really good job of preparing me for that and making it as kind of most hands-off, pressure-wise as possible. Like, hey, if anybody's got a really big issue, they wanna talk about book them for a call with the lead advisor, and I kind of felt like people didn't know me anyway, so if they were gonna be mad, they probably weren't gonna be mad at me. And thankfully, the messaging of the firm had always been kind of buy and hold. That was their approach. And so a lot of the people I called were like, “Yeah, it's bad out there, but we're okay and we know we need to just stick with it.”

And so I only had a handful that were really worried, but it also showed me the value of the pre-education, 'cause I wasn't there for the education part. And yet I'm seeing like, man, the news and all my friends are all freaked out, and yet these people have been prepared so that they're not going off the deep end when you know the most unexpected things are happening.

Caleb Brown: So it looks like you were there about four and a half years, I think is what you said, and then it sounded like a great fit. I mean, you worked your way up and like what level did you work your way up? I mean, a full lead planner, is that when you left? Is that where you were?

Matthew Gray: Yeah, I was a full lead planner. It was a couple years of really being the lead advisor's assistant, and then I started bringing on my own clients, and I was kind of half and half. And then the book just kept growing because I was bringing my own clients from prospecting, but then also, if there were clients or new clients coming in that the lead advisor didn't make sense for him to work with, he would hand them off to me.

And there were also older legacy clients he'd hand off to me. So by the time I left, I think I was managing like 25 million in AUM across like 65 households. So I'd say for like the last year I was there, I was lead planner doing some support, but not near as much in that second seat, we had three full-fledged advisors at that point.

Caleb Brown: So why'd you leave?

Matthew Gray: That's the million-dollar question, right? It was a place where I really thought I was gonna be long-term, and I loved the service model. I loved how we handled client relationships, the type of planning work that we were doing. But in any small business, and I'm sure this is something you've probably heard a lot in your time in this space, when you're in small businesses, personalities and trust really matter a lot because you're around four to 10 people. You spend a lot of time together. You talk about a lot of really important things together, and conflict can come up pretty frequently.

And really, at the end of the day, it was me and the owner of the firm just had some differing views, and had some things happen early on that kind of degraded our trust. And then some disagreements came up around compensation about a year before I left, and we tried to work through them, but I think a lot of feelings were hurt. I could have handled the conversation better. I think there's things that he could have done to handle the conversation better.

But as we worked through that, what really became the cutoff lever, so to speak, was succession planning, which is something that comes up in conversation in our industry a lot, it can get messy, but succession planning wasn't really something I was that interested in to start. Like I knew I was young, fresh in the industry. The owner of the firm was below 50. So I didn't think anything was gonna happen soon, but pretty early on he told me and the other kind of junior advisor that we were, the 50-50 succession plan, if anything ever happened to him or when he eventually did hand over the reins, he wanted us to be 50-50.

And I'm like, “Okay, that's great. Sounds good.” Not something we're asking for, but hey, makes sense. But then, after the compensation disagreement, he came to me and said, “Hey, because we are having these issues and we don't seem to trust each other, I'm gonna remove you from the succession plan.” Which kind of caught me off guard.

I wasn't expecting that and really kind of threw me for a loop of like, “Well, what then is my long-term future here?” Not that I was expecting a succession plan to start anytime soon, but it just created this very odd dynamic of, you know, I'm still here, I'm a lead planner. I'm involved in a lot of the long-term conversations of what we're doing as a firm, but there wasn't a real path back to being in it. Like he said, his goal was at some point to put me back in, but there didn't seem to be like a measurable timeframe or check marks along the way to get us back to that point. And it just seemed like if we couldn't work through that and me rejoin that succession plan, it's like there's just this tension here of am I here long term or am I not?

And that's when I started looking to see, well, hey, what else? What else is out there, and what opportunities are there? Because still in the back of my mind is like, “Hey, nobody's really interested in new young planners,” 'cause I still kind of considered myself very new to the industry, and it's like, what if I have to start over?

What if I can't take any clients with me? All those doubts and questions of do I even have another option if I were to leave.

Caleb Brown: Appreciate you walking us through that. And you mentioned you could have done some things better in the conversation and some of the other things, and I just wanted to ask you, I mean, what advice would you give to newer planners or anybody going to their boss in terms of approaching the compensation conversation?

Matthew Gray: I'd say that the number one lesson I learned is be curious. Ask why things are happening from a standpoint of, you know, assuming that there's probably something that you're missing, there's probably some piece of information that you may not know or not understand. In my case, there wasn't, but I think it would've changed the tone of the conversation if I had come trying to understand what was going on and assuming that it was just a misunderstanding.

Instead, I kind of came in with like, “Hey, I don't like this. I don't think this is right. I think it's against what we've agreed.” And it just made it more contentious than it had to be. So again, even though the issues would've still been there, I think it would've really helped the approach and, from a relationship standpoint, helped it go smoother.

Caleb Brown: Okay. So you left that firm, and then you just joined a firm. It's been less than a year. So why did you pick, I mean, at this point you're a CFP with five years of experience or so, like everybody wants you. So, how did you decide on this firm, and what's your role there?

Matthew Gray: Well, that's what I found out is like, as soon as I started looking, I was like, oh wow. Like all of a sudden, everybody's like, chasing me and wants, I didn't realize how much of a difference that is. And so I had a lot of offers, and it was also really cool because other than I would've been very happy to have been where I was, but I didn't realize quite like how underpaid or the opportunities that I was missing just by keeping my head down and going.

And so I looked at a lot of different opportunities. I had some headhunters who I worked with and talked to a lot of different groups, but there were some things that I knew I wanted to prioritize. I wanted to stay independent. I've been with LPL at both places, and I really liked that relationship. I wanted to be able to make the transition as smooth as possible for any clients who did come with me, trying to maintain those relationships, 'cause I know that's so key, especially early on. And I wanted a lot of freedom to do things as I'd seen them go well in my previous firm, and so kind of my independence of movement in how I serve clients and having that high level of client service was important to me. And so I had a couple of different places that I got really serious with, but in the end it was a really clear choice for me because Shrock Financial, where I'm at now, it was still with LPL.

It was the only option other than going completely on my own that was with LPL, and so I didn't have to repaper everybody's accounts, which was huge. And it was a partnership where I knew the owner really cared about me. He really valued me having my independence and being able to serve people how I wanted to and grow my book how I wanted to.

And so even though it wasn't necessarily the most comp right out of the gate, it was absolutely the best fit to make things easy for me, my clients, and really look towards the future with, I think, the clearest vision that I could have.

Caleb Brown: And is the role you're underneath their RIA building your own book? I mean, you're not an employee or doing anything with him?

Matthew Gray: That's a good question. Sorry, I didn't answer that originally. I am a W2 employee, but I brought my own book with me, about 12 million and growing that, and so it's kind of like two separate roles, even though it's just one job title. I'm a financial advisor.

I'm still CFP. I'm still lead advisor for my book, but I'm growing my own book through my own networking and referrals. And then I'm also supporting the other advisor, who's also the owner of the firm. He has a very large client base. He's having to step back more 'cause of aging parents and different responsibilities.

And so I'm sitting and share a lot with him, or filling in for him when he has to be out to create that continuity for his own book, 'cause he was a solo advisor up until this point and really wanted that continuity planning to be able to have somebody else to be here when he's on vacation or out of the office.

And that's been a really good marrying of the minds, which I would say for people who are looking to either join a firm or switch firms, I realized that the most important thing is are our values aligned and is the vision of how to serve clients from an underlying like ethics standpoint, is that aligned?

And the rest of it isn't as important. Our investment philosophies are very different. Financial planning services are very different, and that has actually gone really smoothly that our books look almost completely different. But because we're aligned on how we care for clients, how we care for each other, and the independence and latitude that we give each other, it's worked really well.

Caleb Brown: Gotcha. Okay. So I would call that a hybrid role, like you're building your, partly building your own book, partly working, supporting him. I mean, now people that hear hybrid, it's like, “Oh yeah, we can work from anywhere for two days, three or four days,” Like that’s the geographical working arrangement, not necessarily the structure.

So okay, that makes sense. And then you mentioned that your book looks differently, and I think you said you were working with maybe younger accumulators or something like that, and talk to us about that. Is that the sort of niche you built out and then maybe how you charge?

Matthew Gray: Yeah. That's also been a nice thing about moving is I feel like I've really been able to focus on my niche.

There was a lot of focus at my previous firm on like ROI, out of the gate, bringing on ideal clients, which makes sense for a lot of firms. But for me, I noticed that the demographic that tends to come to me and that I enjoy working with more is I work with married couples who both earn an income part-timer, full-time, have kids, life is really complicated. They're in their, I'd say mid-thirties to age 50. So they're dealing with education planning, real estate planning, tax planning, retirement planning, all these different things, they don't have any time, and perhaps they haven't accumulated as much savings, but they're earning a hundred fifty, two hundred, three hundred, $400,000 a year.

So they recognize the value of advice and leveraging their time. And so I do a lot of subscription for that, and so I'm really able to hone in on that. I've even started my own podcast called the Financially Fit Couple, focusing on that demographic. And Dale, the other advisor, he's more the traditional retiree, between the age of 50 and 70. So that's why our books look so different.

Caleb Brown: I really like the point you make earlier you said like, you don't have to have the same clientele for this to work. I mean, I think you said values and then sort of the service, the ethics, and if all that matches, it probably doesn't really matter as much.

I mean, there might be some small economies of scale if everybody's working with the exact same client, but you don't have to. That's not a deal breaker, I think, is an important point. So you've been there seven or seven, eight months or so. I mean, how's it going thus far?

Matthew Gray: It's going really great. I mean, the first few months, obviously there was a lot of work to do, a lot of answering the why question for clients 'cause it had been very under wraps.

They were really surprised I was leaving and then meeting the new clients who are, or the existing clients who were at this new firm, introducing a new face to them. And then on top of that, we also do tax prep for a lot of our clients. So I came in like November, and then to turn around January, I'm learning how to do tax prep.

So it was really busy to start, but Dale and I, we've talked a lot through the whole transition process and we both have just been so pleasantly surprised with how smooth it is, how well things are going, and I know there's such thing as a honeymoon phase and all that, but I can't underline enough how important those values are if we care about each other, we care about our clients, we wanna take care of each other and the clients.

That's the lens we view everything through. And so when it comes to decisions about going the extra mile for a client, like helping them get their social security set up, or going to the attorney's meeting if they're getting their estate planning, like all of that is very facilitated and we give each other, and he gives me a lot of independence to do that because he trusts me that I'm taking care of the business and taking the care of the clients.

Caleb Brown: That's great. I meant to ask this earlier. I'm in that client, that niche clientele, so I could be a potential client, but like if I came aboard, what am I looking at? I mean, what are you gonna do for me? And then how many times are you gonna meet with me? And then what's the price?

Matthew Gray: Yeah. So I tell people there's really two stages when I bring people on. There's an initial three to six months where I'm gonna meet people four to six times to create a financial plan. I've got like the WealthVision and those types of tools, like eMoney type tools, but really, I don't use them as much. Like I'll use 'em for the Monte Carlo, but really it's a note taking process that I put together on like a Word document that just summarizes the conversations we have about all these different areas, life insurance, tax planning, cashflow planning, estate planning, what's going on right now, what's important, what's the goals, and then what's the recommendations, what do we recommend doing?

So we spend the first few months meeting more often than we normally do, having those conversations, getting those notes down, and deciding what our action plan is. And then the second phase is the ongoing planning where we meet on average twice a year, sometimes more, sometimes less, to tackle life changes as they come along and adjust that plan as the unexpected occurs, which always happens even in the short time that I've been in this field.

The pricing is very flexible, and I know there's a lot of debate in the industry about how to do this, AUM subscription, fee-based, fee-only. I am fee-based. I am licensed for life insurance, frankly, because there's not a lot of life insurance people I can trust out there to refer it to. I've tried that route and it really has just been a better experience.

If I could do the insurance in-house and just say, “Hey, I'm a CFP, I'm a fiduciary, so your best interest is on the line every time when I'm giving you advice.” If clients, have the assets to do a often I'll just do the pricing based on AUM at like 1% or one and a quarter percent because it's easier, it's more tax efficient, but a lot of my clients don't have those accumulated assets, and so I do subscription through advice pay for a lot of those clients of, hey, based on, and I don't charge hourly, but I just base it on how much time I think I'm gonna spend with them and on average year, and that's a sliding scale, I'd say from like 200 a month, all the way up to 500 hours a month. And I tell them it's not hourly because I don't want you to feel like you're paying extra 'cause you have to go to the bathroom.

And so I do it flat fee. I'm just like your Netflix, just like your other subscriptions, you're paying to have access to me. And if you use more access one year, I'm not gonna charge you more. If you use less access, I'm not gonna charge you less unless there's some huge event, which I haven't had one of these yet, like maybe if they started a business and we weren't anticipating that, but I've really landed on, I like the flexibility of being able to meet clients in different spaces with the fee that they don't have to fit an AUM model.

They don't have to fit a flat fee model. I still don't take everybody who comes just because it may not be a good fit. If they're looking for just an investment manager, I'm probably not the person for them, but I like to be able to meet the needs of people who have a million dollars to invest, and the people who have a million dollars stuck in their 401k or 500,000 in their 401k that they can't get access to.

Caleb Brown: I mean, it sounds like you have a lot of flexibility there, as you said. This has been a lot of fun, Matthew, very informative. Thank you again for coming on and sharing all this. Is there any final thoughts or closing words of wisdom you'd like to share?

Matthew Gray: I would just say I really appreciate what you and your business are doing in this space. Whenever, I met with a college grad or college student who was about to graduate just a few weeks ago, and I met with several of them, but when I was talking to him, I'm like, it's just a hard industry to get into. Like if I could go back, I would've tried to leverage a group like yours to find those kinds of fits, because the most important thing with getting started in this industry is finding a place that will educate you and train you before they put you out to sell and I feel like that is the biggest determining factor to making it successful in this industry.

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

Matthew Gray: Absolutely. Thank you, Caleb. Really appreciate you having me on.

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.