As a umcoming financial advisor, I would like to know what is one of most challenging area of this career field and what advice would you give to someone like me to minimize or eliminate this challenge.

Hi Ichelle!

I wish life was easily boxed up and you could figure out the "one" most challenging area in your future and forever eliminate that challenge ; ) Unfortunately, even if you COULD predict the future, and the biggest challenge you're going to face, just because you beat that one challenge, doesn't mean there won't be another challenge immediately following it (and once you beat that second one, there will be a third and a fourth and a fifth, etc).

I think the most important thing is to keep doing exactly what you're doing - asking people in the industry and doing your own research - these will help you figure out (in the moment) how to handle the challenges - you just have to gain the self-confidence to trust yourself to figure out the "best" answer you can come up with in the moment, instead of trying to apply someone else's solution (and the other person's solution might not even be the best way to handle the challenge, because the other person might not know the full facts and background of the situation... so you might even be using a less-ideal option to solve your challenge!)

I know that doesn't answer your question, but I think it's important to say (though harder to enact!)

For me, my first internships and my first job out of college were in the financial advising business, but I ended up hating it (and switching to financial analysis for a big technology company). Both industries have their own challenges, but for me, the most challenging area of financial advising is that so many human emotions are involved. I think people underestimate the power of human fear and greed. As a financial adviser, you manage other people's money, and people are very attached, insecure, and often irrational about their money. If you were an adviser, say, for NASA, there are physics equations and mathematical equations you can solve to figure out the "right answer" a problem. But, as a financial adviser, (1) there's no "right answer" for how to manage money, because there are so many ways of investing (the "rule" is maximize return and minimize risk... but there are a lot of ways to actually make that happen), and (2) you can't write an equation to predict how people are going to react to their emotions of greed (when the market is going up, people want to wait until the "peak" to sell their investments, and don't want to sell their investments earlier, because they want to make EVEN MORE money), or to predict how people are going to react to their emotions of fear (when the market is tanking, people all want to sell, because they don't want to lose EVEN MORE money, even though the "right" decision is to hold on to their investments and stay in the market and wait for the market to recover (for example in the 2007/2008 mortgage crisis, the market tanked afterward, a lot of people sold at the bottom of the market, lost a lot of money... when they should have just stayed in the market until it recovered, and they wouldn't have lost that money at all). As a financial adviser, you have to "advise" your clients through this fear and greed, and that's a pretty big challenge.

To your second question, "what advice would you give to someone like me to minimize or eliminate this challenge," I would say it would be to acknowledge that financial advising is both an art (dealing with people's emotions) and a science (calculating good investments), and social, communication, and influencing skills are incredibly important. These skills come with practice (if it's your 18th time talking a client down from a money ledge, it's easier than your 1st time talking a client down from selling all their investments because they're afraid), but you could read some of the influencing and communication books out there. (Eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influence_People)

Finally, you mentioned you strive "to be successful by taking small but meaningful actions to reach my goals. I spend at least three days a week researching my future career" - I think that's amazing, and you should keep it up!! That is absolutely the best way to achieve your goals: research and self-reflection. That research (and knowledge you accumulate through the research) will definitely prepare you for future challenges. But just remember you can't possibility predict all future challenges, and challenges are inevitable in life :)

The last thing I would say is that you should keep doing research, but you should also try to get as many internships as you can. One definitely learns a lot from academic classes, classroom situations, and reading research, but the best type of exposure is real life experience (either internships or just honest conversations with people working in the industry). When I was an outgoing high school junior, I thought I had my whole life figured out, I was going to intern in X and Y, and then get a job in Z - but I only liked X,Y, and Z in theory... the actual experiences I got in my first internship made me realize I DEFINITELY did not actually want X, and so then I pivoted to XX, and then interned in XX. After my internship, I thought I liked XX enough to do it full time, so I got a job in XX. But then I realized I didn't actually like the full time work in XX, despite liking the internship, so I got a job in XXX, and now I'm super happy in my third attempt at a company and at an industry. I've friends who are on their fifth or sixth attempts and still not happy, and they keep trying more things to figure out what DOES make them happy :) Any type of experience is beneficial, and it'll help you narrow down what you want do next (which may not be finance at all!) The important thing is to keep putting yourself out there, and raising your hand and signing up for as many experiences (be they internships or any other types of experiences) as you can, so you can figure out what it is you want out of a career (and out of life!)

Hope that helps!