Alex Jenkins is the Vice President, Relationship Director, and Investment Specialist with Avantis Investors based out of Charlotte, NC. He joins the show today to discuss his career path from engineering to finance and what it’s like in an institutional money management firm structure.

Listen in as Alex shares what first got him interested in the profession and why he changed his focus from engineering to finance. You'll learn why the decision to move across the country for a new role helped to shape his career, how he pivoted from wanting to be a portfolio manager to an investment specialist, and some of the attributes successful firms and individuals tend to have. Alex also gives some great tips for new planners looking to secure an internship or first career opportunity. 

What You'll Learn In Today's Episode:

• One of the biggest positives that has come out of the pandemic. (2:30)
• How Alex found his way to financial planning. (3:15)
• Why he didn’t have the typical financial planning internship experience and what it looked like instead. (5:00)
• Why it’s important to be open to change when it comes to your career. (8:30)
• How moving across the country shaped Alex’s experience as a financial advisor. (11:45)
• Why he made the decision to move from New York to Austin, Texas. (14:30)
• What has separated the top firms that Alex has worked with from the rest. (17:00)
• Alex’s experience with his current firm. (20:45)
• His advice for newer financial planners. (25:00)

Ideas Worth Sharing:

“There are more career switchers who are advisors than you would see in a lot of other fields right now.” - Alex Jenkins Share on X “Talent is set from the top.” - Alex Jenkins Share on X “A growing firm is going to have more opportunities for you as a young person than a stagnant firm.” - Alex Jenkins Share on X

Resources In Today's Episode:

• Alex Jenkins: LinkedIn
• Avantis Investors
• EP #30: Transitioning from Engineering to Financial Planning with Aaron Grey

Download your free copy of the New Planner Career Roadmap!

In this roadmap, you'll be guided through the details of various stages of your financial planner career, including position descriptions, licensing, skill and experience level requirements, and compensation ranges.

 

Enjoy the show? Use the Links Below to Subscribe:

 

 

Episode Transcript:

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 the 39th episode of the New Planner Podcast. This is Caleb Brown, your host. My guest today is Alex Jenkins, vice president, relationship director, and investment specialist at Avantis Investors in Charlotte, North Carolina. Alex joins the show to discuss his career path and the institutional money management firm structure. He discusses what got him interested in the profession, why he changed his focus from engineering to finance, and how he secured his first internship with a financial planning firm. Let's do the middle part where he shares his experience of driving across the country from California to start a new job in New York City a few years after college, and how that role led to a change in his thinking, and prepared him for the rest of his career.

Caleb Brown:

He also shares how he pivoted from a desire to become a portfolio manager to more of an investment specialist and consultant that helps financial planning firm owners better service their clients, and why he left Dimensional Fund Advisors for a startup. Check out the end, too, where he discusses what characteristics successful firms and individuals have that separate them from the rest of the pack. Plus, he lays out his tips for success for new planners and securing an internship, first career opportunity, and succeeding in the profession. If you are interested in focusing on the investment management side of the business for a large institution, then this episode is for you.

Caleb Brown:

Alex, welcome to the new planner podcast.

Alex Jenkins:

Hi, Caleb. Thanks for having me.

Caleb Brown:

How're you doing with all this stuff that's been going on recently?

Alex Jenkins:

It's been quite a 15 months. I was looking back at the calendar and seeing how much things have changed the last 15 months, in terms of my work life balance, family balance. It's all been a big change, but I think there'll be some real good positives coming out of this, such as podcasts, more webcasts, and being able to communicate with folks without necessarily having to be there in person every time.

Caleb Brown:

Let's stay on that. What's one of the biggest changes, positive, that you think has come out of all this coronavirus stuff?

Alex Jenkins:

I think one of the biggest positives is it's made a lot of us re-examine how we prioritize work within the rest of our life, and made us rethink, have we maybe over prioritized that, and are there ways to reconnect with family, friends, and others while still accomplishing what we need to do to be successful in our careers? I think that's a really good positive as we get back to normal, that folks will have a little bit better balance between those aspects of their lives.

Caleb Brown:

Well, I'm excited to chat with you a little further about your career today. I mean, you're more on the investment management side, and I'm excited to see how that unfolds. Maybe just start with when you were younger, why this financial planning stuff or this investment stuff? How did you get interested in the finance or the money side of stuff?

Alex Jenkins:

Yeah. First off, let me say, when I look at some of the younger folks today that are getting a lot of experience in internships, I'm a little bit jealous because I did not do as much of that when I was young. My decisions came down to a couple basic things. It came down to something I could do, which was math and finance, what I majored in. Also, that had a good salary attached to it, which you can observe when you're in college. I set out to be in the finance industry to try and help people, and do better, but I didn't have a real path in terms of knowing I wanted to be an advisor, or a asset manager, et cetera. That, I sort of had to figure out on the job, because I didn't do as much of the interning, and some of that pre-work that I see many young advisers doing today while they're still in college, and right after.

Caleb Brown:

A couple things there. You said you majored in math. What is wrong with you? That's crazy.

Alex Jenkins:

It's sort of like with a career path, it evolves and changes, right? I actually started as an electrical engineer, which is even more what's wrong with you. I quickly figured out that there were some aspects of engineering that I was good at, mainly math, and some aspects that I wasn't good at. I ended up switching majors, and made a change on the fly to move into financial mathematics.

Caleb Brown:

Yeah. We had Aaron Grey on episode 30, the Buckingham, who was an engineer who transitioned to financial planning. Okay, you're good at math, good at numbers, looking for a salary, but you said you didn't have the internship experience, and maybe help us understand why not. Is that just because you weren't quite sure what you wanted to do yet?

Alex Jenkins:

My internships had been on the engineering side. I'd had some internships on that side, and a small one in my senior year of college with an advisor, which was extremely helpful, and opened up many doors to me in terms of understanding what the options were that were available. I would really encourage younger folks to, if possible, get an internship on multiple sides of whatever business you want to be in. For example, for finance, maybe you want to be an advisor. Well, it's also helpful to sit in the seat of an asset manager, to sit in the seat potentially of a custodian, or somebody else that an advisor would be networking and working with, so you understand more than just that narrow role, but you understand the broad swath of what's going on across that field.

Caleb Brown:

Yeah. That's really one of the beauties about this profession is that there's lots of channels, lots of business structures, and models you can go to. Then, once you get into those channels, there's lots of roles that you can do as a CFP, or a CFA, or whatever it is. Not just an advisor. Talk to us more. You said in college, you had an internship with a small financial planning firm?

Alex Jenkins:

That's right. I did that while I was still in school.

Caleb Brown:

How did you get that internship, and talk to us about your experience there.

Alex Jenkins:

Yeah. That was purely through networking. It was through a volunteer service that I'd been part of. The leader of that volunteer service knew all the people in my local community in Santa Barbara. Without me realizing it, he offered to introduce me to a few people in the field that I was in in college, which was incredibly thoughtful and helpful. Again, I didn't have a lot of experience or connections in that field, so I worked with this small advisor in Santa Barbara, and did tasks, like filing, answering the phone, and things that you would call a very entry-level job. Because it was a small firm, I got to see many aspects of it and wear a few different hats, rather than being pigeonholed. I think you could have good experiences in both of those environments, but for someone coming in that didn't have a lot of knowledge wearing many hats was extremely helpful for me, and just getting a feel for the business.

Caleb Brown:

What was your biggest takeaway from spending the internship time with them?

Alex Jenkins:

This will probably be familiar for some of your listeners. I got phone calls from individual investors, so clients of the advisor were calling in asking about how much their penny stocks were worth. At a certain point, they could sell those to meet a certain obligation. It just became really clear to me from even just the tone in some of these clients' voice, how important your role as an advisor is. You're helping somebody with more than just their retirement. It's their entire standard of living and their, in some cases, it attaches to your emotional and mental wellbeing. It put a bigger spotlight for me that this is not just managing money, or pushing some numbers. I'm impacting people's lives with what I do in this role.

Caleb Brown:

It sounds like it was a pretty good experience, but then you decided to really go the portfolio manager, or the investment route. Is that right?

Alex Jenkins:

Yes. Yeah. I got some experience with the advising side and I really liked it, but at least at the firm that I was with didn't take advantage of my financial math background quite as much as I would have liked. I had these ambitions, and again, maybe a little misguided at the time, but I had these ambitions of being a portfolio manager at an asset management company. That was my initial goal when I took my first job as an RFP writer at an institutional asset management company. While that's not necessarily a linear path, I think that's a really important thing for people to think about. If I have a goal of becoming a portfolio manager, or an investment person, or a lead advisor, lots of times, that path is not totally linear.

Alex Jenkins:

You might start at a different entry-level position at that firm. I know lots of advisors that started off in compliance. I know some advisors that started in totally different fields, and at least anecdotally, I would say there's probably more career switchers who are now advisors than you would see in a lot of the fields out there. You don't need to feel that because you pick one path to start, that's what you're locked into. As you get more experienced, as you see more sides of the business, your tastes, preferences, and objectives will likely evolve a little bit. Being open to that and adaptable, I think, will lead to better results in happiness in your career path.

Caleb Brown:

Yeah, I think it was Carl Richards. He has a little sketch. He's always drawing the pictures where what people think success looks like. It's a linear line, but what it really takes is a bunch of jumbled stuff. I mean, it is up and towards the right, but a lot of steps back. I'm tracking with you there. I mean, it's almost like just get in there, and try a handful of different things. That's what I tell my students at UGA, and other people we've talked to: just go to a fee-only I. Go to a broker dealer firm. Try a credit union. Go work at Avantis, or on DFA, or something, and just see what that looks like to help you kind of zero in. There is a lot of evidence out there that the sooner you can find your point, you're going to get there quicker. You said something early. Santa Barbara, so are you a California guy?

Alex Jenkins:

I was born and raised on the tough beaches of Santa Barbara, California. Yes.

Caleb Brown:

Tough, beautiful beaches. Now, you left California for... Was it for the DFA job?

Alex Jenkins:

I was with a firm in LA called TCW. It's based in LA, but it has an office in New York. Being a 25 year old that grew up on the beach in Santa Barbara, I thought New York was the coolest thing in the world. I jumped on that train and moved out to New York for that role.

Caleb Brown:

Talk to us about that. I mean, you're 25 years old. Santa Barbara, surfing, great Golden State. Everything's perfect out there, except for maybe the housing prices. Drove all the way across to the sort of financial capital of the world. Talk to us about how that experience shaped you as a 25 year old.

Alex Jenkins:

Yeah. Well, it was certainly a little intimidating at first, but what I've learned in my role in those first couple years was that I was better when I was a little bit outside of my comfort zone. Pushing my boundaries a little bit, getting myself in a position where, let's say, your backs up against the wall, but where you're feeling more pressure than if you stayed at home, and had some of the niceties and things you're used to to fall back on. I didn't have a network in New York. I didn't have more than probably two or three peers and friends when I moved there, but that city really invigorated me to work hard, to get that work ethic, and to be quite career oriented. Finance is a competitive field, and New York's a very competitive city. That, I think, brought the best out of me in terms of work ethic, and trying to push myself.

Caleb Brown:

That was TCW. That was their office there. How long did you stay with that firm, and then what did you do after that?

Alex Jenkins:

Yeah. I was there for about seven years, and then made the move to DFA in Austin, Texas. I never considered Texas. It wasn't like—

Caleb Brown:

As a Texan, I'm not offended.

Alex Jenkins:

It just wasn't on my radar. I had a funny week where I made a lot of outgoing calls to advisors, like some of your listeners, and heard from a number of them that they worked with DFA, and that that was who they worked with. It made me want to check out what they were doing, and learn more about systematic investing, which was very different from TCW and what I'd grown up with, which was more of the active or what people would call stock picking type of investing.

Caleb Brown:

Just help us on the roll. At TCW, you were calling financial planning firms trying to get them to utilize your strategy or something like that? What were you doing there?

Alex Jenkins:

That's exactly right. TCW offers a broad range of stock mutual funds, bond mutual funds. I worked with advisors to find places that could potentially improve their portfolio, their risk profile, et cetera. I had a lot of clients. One thing that was attractive to me about the next move at DFA was having a lot less clients, and working with a smaller number of advisors, but also be in a bigger role in what they do, and helping with more than just investments.

Caleb Brown:

All right. Let's just make sure we have... Santa Barbara, New York City, then you relocated to Austin, Texas?

Alex Jenkins:

That's right. Yeah.

Caleb Brown:

Moving from New York to Austin, that's kind of a big move, too. Talk to us about that.

Alex Jenkins:

Well, I was lucky that I did have a few friends who had made that move before me, and spoke extremely highly of it. I knew it was going to be a good fit just from a few visits and a few conversations. Unfortunately, I moved with a lot of nice New York clothes, so that didn't do me a lot of good in Texas where you wear sandals and—

Caleb Brown:

The slick suit didn't work for you down there, did it?

Alex Jenkins:

I quickly fell in love with the city, and really enjoyed my time there. It was sort of the opposite of New York, where you have finance being one of the predominant industries in New York, and a lot revolves around that. Austin is certainly not a finance town, so it was kind of a role reversal in that sense, but it was a welcome one.

Caleb Brown:

In your role at DFA, what were you doing there?

Alex Jenkins:

A similar role, but more comprehensive where I worked with a fee-only advisors across the east coast to help them with investments, for one. That was the primary role, but also to help them with things around their practice. When you work with a smaller number of firms, you get to see some of the better ideas that work. What was so rewarding for me about that was instead of it just being a investments deal, I could add value to the advisor in thinking about how they could get more referrals, thinking about ways to communicate with clients in a more effective manner, and helping them to better serve those clients that I talked about working with when I had that first internship, and people calling in about their retirement dollars. It's the same role as TCW, but I believe it delivers more value than just doing investments.

Caleb Brown:

Give us a sense over the last couple jobs. How many financial planning firms have you had a glimpse into, or have talked to the firm owner? I mean, just give me a sense on how many firms you've dealt with.

Alex Jenkins:

I'd say over the last decade, which has been the majority of my career in finance, I've worked with a good 450 or so firms from the west coast to the east coast, ranging from solo practitioners, to some of the biggest RAs out there. 50 billion type plus national firms.

Caleb Brown:

That's a good sample size. Obviously, there were a few, and then you're like, "Man, these people. They've got a great business." What separated the top firms from just kind of your average run of the mill? Are there some characteristics there that you noticed?

Alex Jenkins:

Yeah. Like most organizations, I really think the tone is set from the top. I can't think of too many firms that had a dysfunctional leadership, but were really successful, and fast growing, and great career paths for young people. What I'm getting at here is I think that people at the top of the company have a massive impact on the culture, on the success, and on the overall experience. That scale based on the size of the firm, of course. Some other things that I've seen work really well is having a systematic process.

Alex Jenkins:

One example I can give of that would be, if you're thinking about something like getting referrals, some firms do that opportunistically, and some firms are going to do that systematically. After every single client meeting, they're going to say, "What do you think about our firm, how can we serve you better, and are there any people in your life that we could potentially help?" That's just one example, but having that systematic processes so that every advisor is speaking with a very similar voice, and obviously everyone's got some variation, but the message is consistent across the firm, and the experience is consistent across the firm. That's what I've seen work, not just helping clients, but also it's a more streamlined organization that can scale and grow. That's really important for young people, because a growing firm is going to have more opportunities for you as a young person than a stagnant firm.

Caleb Brown:

Yeah. On the flip side of that, the firms that you were calling on, talking to, trying to help that were struggling, what were some of the common things they were struggling with?

Alex Jenkins:

One trend that we've seen recently, Caleb, has been folks that are maybe getting a little bit too deep into the investments when they're speaking to clients. I always talk about this like an iceberg, right? We always see the tip of the iceberg, the part that's above the waterline, but we know there's a lot going on underneath the water to support that iceberg, and to support the part that we see. With this analogy, what I always try and do is start at the top of the iceberg with the part that we can all see, the part that we can all understand, and don't go down further. Don't get deeper in those investments, unless the client says, "Tell me more." Unless you're invited to go a little bit deeper, and put on that scuba gear. If not, many times, it's better to keep things high level. If the client's okay with that, you stop, and move on. That's something we've been working with, is not starting with a deep investment description with a client. Starting with the high level stuff.

Caleb Brown:

Wow. I appreciate you sharing that. It's awesome coming from an investment guy. Man, I'll tell you, there was times earlier in my career when I was sitting back thinking like, "Man, all these people I'm meeting and talking to you, they're just all about the investments, and that's all they want to focus on. They just eat and breathe, and love this stuff." I'm just kind of like, "I'm just not all that jazz. It's great, but that's sort of the engine in the car. There's a lot of other parts of the car that we got to deal with, and I'm over here trying to solve all these other problems, and man, am I even in the right deal?" Again, it's changed a lot since then, but man, really cool to hear you say that. You were at DFA in Austin for how long?

Alex Jenkins:

I was there for a year before I moved out to help DFA open the Charlotte office. I've been in Charlotte for six years, but I joined Avantis about two years ago.

Caleb Brown:

Yeah. Sorry, go ahead and talk to us about Avantis, and what you're doing right now.

Alex Jenkins:

Yeah. Avantis is a new management division of American Century, which is a well-known asset manager based in Kansas City. Avantis is a sub unit that's focusing specifically on systematic investing, both on the stock side and the bond side. Maybe a simple way to explain what Avantis does would be to use the information that's readily available in market prices, as well as things like a stock's price-to-book to form portfolios that are investing in stocks with a higher expected return based on academic science. I'm not stock-picking, not trying to find one or two stocks to outperform, but saying what are the characteristics of stocks or bonds that have historically outperformed, and systematically targeting those, as opposed to looking at things on a bottom-up one stock at a time approach.

Caleb Brown:

We'll link to it in the show notes, but I mean, can you give us a sense on how big the farm is, how many RIAs you work with, or employees, or why you're managing, or something to kind of give us the context?

Alex Jenkins:

Absolutely. Avantis launched our first ETFs and mutual funds. We do offer both in September of 2019. Yeah. We still haven't hit the two year mark, but we've been fortunate to have 5.9 billion in AUM across our lineup. We've hired 13 folks the last year. We're up to 27, I believe. It's all within the construct of American Century, a $250 billion company that supports us for all the infrastructure.

Caleb Brown:

You're walking us through your career. DFA has been around a long time. They've got a lot of assets, they've got a lot of different products. What was it like to go from a well-established, what I'm going to call "safe" job and career, to this startup firm in an already crowded environment? Why did you do that?

Alex Jenkins:

First, it wasn't an easy decision, Caleb. I had to really think through that, because to your point, DFA is established, it's a safe role, and more importantly, it's a great firm with really good people that I enjoyed working with. Part of what was attractive to me about starting something smaller and something new was having a big impact on that. While I loved the role I had at DFA, I was one of 150 people in my role, what they call the regional director. While my impact was important, it didn't have a huge role in the success of the firm. At Avantis, we started at zero in September of 2019, and the success was totally going to be dictated upon our ability to structure good products, and to communicate that to advisors.

Alex Jenkins:

The challenge was on a small handful of us. It was about 10 people to start, and it really made me appreciate the risk that advisors take in starting their own firm. I know many advisors who have done that. I can now sympathize at a smaller level, because that's even more risk when you own the firm. I'm not the owner of Avantis, but it made me appreciate that taking on risk, in owning that. I was really, really excited about that part. It's just been a great experience for me to be able to have a big part in the structure and the language, and how we speak to advisors, and having a large role in what the firm actually looks like.

Caleb Brown:

Yeah. What I heard, and I think the takeaway there is smaller firm, you're able to move the needle a lot more there, and you're able to see that, versus being part of an already very large, successful organization where you're doing great and helping your clients, but maybe more personally fulfilling at least where you are right now in your career and your life.

Alex Jenkins:

Yeah. I think that comes back to where you're at in your life. For some people, that risk might not be appropriate at certain stages of their life, but for me, it was. Luckily, I had the backing of my family to say this is a risk that we're willing to take.

Caleb Brown:

Supportive spouse, right? With going from kind of really safe and secure, to we don't know what's going to happen.

Alex Jenkins:

Yeah. It's a jump, and I think you have to have the support of your spouse in a decision that important.

Caleb Brown:

Yeah. For 5.9 billion in two years, a lot people would say that's great, at least in the independent RIA space. Maybe the bigger money manager side, but in your role there, is it similar to what you were doing at DFA?

Alex Jenkins:

Yeah. It's very similar. I work with the same folks I used to work with. I help them out with the same issues. I have a slightly different toolkit because Avantis is not the same. It doesn't have the same investment options as my previous firm, but it's the same idea. We help them out with investments, but we also want to help them out with how they message that, and how they communicate with clients, and how they're organizationally structuring their firm to do that.

Caleb Brown:

I want to come back. We kind of skipped over this. I mean, you were on the path of, I don't want to be the investment guy, the money manager, and run the money, or whatever, wall street deal. Then, you've sort of gotten over here onto the consultative sales, or whatever you want to call it side. Where did that pivot happen?

Alex Jenkins:

That was at TCW. I realized that there was a lot of very, very intelligent, driven people on the investment side, and that while I was good at that, I had another skill that was also in demand. That was being able to communicate with folks in an effective way, and what I would call simplifying some of the complex and complicated information coming out of those investment folks. Let's just say translating that into a language that everyone can understand.

Caleb Brown:

Yeah. You're a math guy that can talk to people, right? Okay. All right. Got it. Yeah. Again, simplicity. I think you mentioned that earlier. I mean, it's like, "Hey, you're going way too deep on the investments." What I learned earlier on in my career, of course, I had a good mentor. Clients don't care about that stuff. They glaze over... You might have an engineer here or there that wants to talk about alpha, and beta, and sharp ratios, and all this stuff, but for the most part, people don't want to deal with that. This is all great, Alex. I mean, really interesting for what you're doing out there, helping firms on the independent side, which I appreciate. I know they do as well. Any final thoughts on tips for new professionals? Getting an internship, getting a job, succeeding, and working their way up. What would you tell those people?

Alex Jenkins:

Yeah. Well, first off, I think you've done a great job with you and your guests of covering a lot of these tips. One thing I'd like to add is, on the subject of networking, and we're all familiar with how networking can be beneficial in finding the next job. I mentioned how I got my first internship that way, but it's also helpful in thinking about certain inflection points in your career. We're all going to be, at some point in our career, have an opportunity to work at a different firm, or get frustrated with our current firm. There's going to be some inflection point where you have to make a decision around what company you're going to work at, what role you're going to pursue, asking for a raise.

Alex Jenkins:

Whatever that inflection point may be, that's where networking can be really useful. You've got a sounding board there who's not as emotionally attached to this issue and decision as you are. Similar to the way an advisor can give objective advice to their clients, sometimes your mentor or your network can give you objective advice when you get to an important inflection point, and need to talk through that before you come to a decision. I'd highly encourage you to not just network, but to use those contacts to help you make important decisions.

Caleb Brown:

I think it's a common saying, and I can't remember if Dan Sullivan or multiple other people. Your network is your network, and that is, to your point, so true as you try to navigate all this career stuff. Well, any final comments or anything that you want to leave us with, Alex? I really appreciate you coming on.

Alex Jenkins:

No, thanks for having me, Caleb. I'd love to chat with folks about Avantis.

Caleb Brown:

On that note, how do you get hired at Avantis?

Alex Jenkins:

We've got a wide range of roles here, and we do the hiring process through American Century. You can find those roles on either website. It's a pretty normal process where we give very detailed requirements for what we're looking for, for each role. You'll have a good idea if it's a fit or not. From there, we do an informal conversation, which I'd be happy to chat with people who are interested in pursuing a career with us.

Caleb Brown:

Awesome. Alex, thanks so much for stopping by.

Alex Jenkins:

Thanks, Caleb. Great to chat with you.

Thanks for joining us for this episode of the New Planner Podcast. If you're 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.