Welcome everyone! Welcome to the 384th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!
My guest on today’s podcast is Hannah Provost. Hannah is a partner and financial advisor at Lomanto Provost Financial Advisors, a hybrid advisory firm based in Plattsburgh, New York, that oversees approximately $150 million in assets under management for about 380 client households.
What’s unique about Hannah, though, is how she began her career in retail banking, where she rotated positions from lending to working as a teller and eventually becoming a bank-based financial advisor, and then, after realizing she would benefit from time spent learning from a more senior advisor than just continuing to work with her bank clients, took a step back to work as an assistant under an experienced advisor, which ultimately led to becoming a lead advisor with his firm, and eventually a joint partner of their firm.
In this episode, we talk in-depth about how Hannah embarked on this career journey while also building a family, including how Hannah balanced work, family, and the educational demands of building the credentials needed to effectively serve clients (by reminding herself that the demanding workload was a temporary stop on the way to more long-term rewards), how Hannah found that the path towards attaining her CFP certification was able to serve as a north star while navigating her career path through the industry, and how Hannah was able to jump-start the process to becoming a lead advisor by finding an opportunity where she could sit in on client meetings from day one (and be treated as a peer by her mentor).
We also talk about how Hannah and her partner have leveraged referrals and visibility in their small-town community to drive client growth, how Hannah uses email and calendar automations to more efficiently manage their growing client base while still maintaining a personalized touch using email merge fields in MailChimp, and how Hannah has structured her week to treat Wednesdays as “flex days” that give her the opportunity to spend time with family, go for a hike, or get some catch-up work done, and how she holds that space for herself despite averaging 20 client meetings per week between her and her partner.
And be certain to listen to the end, where Hannah discusses the importance for those getting into the financial advice business not just to avoid ‘red flags’ but to find ‘green flags‘, or people who will see and support their human value from Day 1 as a new advisor, how Hannah’s reflections on how her experiences with mentorship and rotational work were the key to leveling up her skills and presence and kickstarting her advisor career, and how Hannah has found that the investments she made in herself earlier in her career, including 5AM wakeups to study for the CFP Exam, have paid off today in the form of a successful practice and strong work-life balance.
So, whether you’re interested in learning about entering the financial advice industry as a career changer, how to build a partnership with a more senior advisor, or how to maintain work-life balance while advancing in your career, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Hannah Provost.
