>> My name is John McCarthy.
And I am a financial advisor with Wells Fargo Advisors.
So I'm in the money management business.
And been doing it for about 29 years.
Well what you ultimately want to try to do is become the person in someone's life
that helps them take care of their money.
And every person has maybe five or six important people in their life.
You have your pastor or your rabbi.
Your doctor.
Your accountant.
Your lawyer.
Your mechanic.
So financial advisor, the goal would be to try to fit into someone's life
and basically help them take care of their money.
So what you want to do daily is just basically keep in touch with people.
You want to call people.
Ask if you can help.
Ask some questions about where things are.
And when I say take care of money, I mean whether it's trust money.
Retirement money.
Education money.
Bank account money.
Whatever type of monies someone has, you want to try to offer your assistance.
And that's basically what it is to be a financial advisor.
Well I started off, like I said, about 29 years ago.
And I was about 24.
And, you know, the reality is if you are from a lower middleclass background like I am --
I was raised in Allentown, Pennsylvania.
You don't necessarily know a lot of people who have money.
So starting off, I think, in any profession.
Whether you're an attorney, or a doctor, or a dentist, you have to have some kind
of a mechanism in order to attract clients.
So what I would do -- and this is going back to 1986 -- what I would do is I would call --
being that I work in Manhattan -- I would call executives and attorneys,
and business owners in Manhattan.
And I would offer to go meet with them and put some information in the mail to them.
And then after a number of years, what you try to do is work on referral.
As I said, if you're trying to get involved with someone's life ultimately,
you meet other family members, and you meet some of their friends.
So just like any business -- just like any business, it is rough starting out.
But then again, as the saying goes, if it were easy, everybody would be doing it.
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