![Episode 011 Feature Alan Moore](https://www.kitces.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Episode-011_Feature_Alan-Moore-150x150.jpg)
Welcome back to the eleventh episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast!
My guest this week is Alan Moore. Alan and I co-founded the XY Planning Network in 2014, but the reason I invited him to the podcast has little to do with XYPN itself, and everything to do with his own fascinating path as a financial advisor, business owner, and successful entrepreneur.
Because Alan started out his career as most of us are taught from the days we’re young – to go out and try to find a stable job with a steady income, and move up the ladder over time. Except Alan realized barely 6 months into his first job that it wasn’t going to be the right fit. Only to change to another job… from which he got fired in another 6 months. And so, realizing that perhaps being an employee just wasn’t the right fit, Alan decided to launch his own advisory firm. From scratch. At age 25.
These early experiences led Alan to the counter-intuitive conclusion that perhaps the traditional view of trying to find a job with a steady income is wrong, and that it can actually be more stable (at least in the long run) to build a business from scratch. Because as a business owner, even your best client firing you might only cost you a 2% to 5% of revenue… which is a lot “safer” than relying on a single boss who can take away 100% of your income in a heartbeat by firing you!
In this podcast episode, we talk about Alan’s journey from financial planning college student, to getting involved as a volunteer with NAPFA and its young-advisor group Genesis, to his path from employee to (young) entrepreneur of his own advisory firm, how he later launched a second business (XY Planning Network) as well, and how and why he ultimately made the decision that he couldn’t keep both a B2B and B2C business and would have to wind one down to fully focus on the other.
And be certain to listen to the end, where Alan talks about the rut he got into that almost led him to leave his rapidly-growing business entirely after a particularly bad month, and what it took to turn everything around and re-energize him in the business again.
So if you’re thinking about making the switch from employee to entrepreneur, or perhaps are an advisory firm business owner wondering how to better keep your young entrepreneurial employees, I hope you enjoy this latest episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast!