In this day and age, almost 11 years of working in one place is a moderately lengthy amount of time. D worked as a financial advisor for Edward Jones first in Lexington and then Campbellsville, Kentucky, between January 2014 until November 2024. This job was his first ever business job in the financial industry and the beginning of a phase of our life together as a more settled family with two children in tow.
When we just had one child, J1, and when he was younger than school age, we were mostly hanging out together and definitely not serious about the family finance. Being in our late 20s and with only one small child, we were still young lovers and dreamers who enjoyed traveling, spending money and going out late at night after J1’s bedtime. The arrival of our second child, J2, in our early 30s and having J1 in elementary school helped us become more aware of our family’s material needs, educational opportunities as well as our children’s future with respect to financial stability.
D had an arduous beginning at Edward Jones because he had to find his own clients… on foot. Edward Jones prided themselves on placing their advisors in branch offices located in small residential areas where the advisors go out to meet local residents to offer their investment services. Thus at Edward Jones, traditional prospecting was also called “door-knocking” because the financial advisors found their clients by going out to prospective clients’ houses and try to obtain business by using creditable first impressions, personable communication and persistent following up through phone calls.
Through a hard beginning and a multitude of challenges, D learned on the job to persevere and push on in spite of rejections and setbacks on a daily basis. He eventually learned to handle clients’ investments skillfully with the help of more experienced colleagues within the firm. As a family, we participated in some of Edward Jones’ communal activities and got to know some other people and families who were doing the same thing. D was growing his career steadily for a while and we thought we had found a solid, family-focused and trustworthy company to be with for the long term.
However, not too long after our family joined Edward Jones, they decided to expand and increase exponentially the number of their advisors and branch offices across the country so as to gain more recognition and generate more profits. Edward Jones thus became a bloated organization in a very short time with a diluted culture and managerial headaches coupled with technological challenges. Growth and change come with growing pain, and exponential growth comes with rapid changes and excessive needs for adjustment. The result was that after major organizational restructuring and value shifting to facilitate super-fast expansion, Edward Jones was never the same family-oriented, people-centered and value-focused Midwestern financial firm our family had joined.
Bold, Slow and Intentional 