As promised, this is the transcript discussed in Tuesday's post. The video with follow shortly . . .
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My name is Marc Giannone and I’m
a financial planner.
What do you do? Describe your work.
So I get to work with people on making good decisions with
their money. So sometimes that means preparing to get ready for retirement and
making sure that not only they can retire, but they can stay retired over the
next 30 years. Sometimes that means I come into the office and I’m talking with
a couple who just got married and need to make sure that if something happens
to one of them that the other is not destitute for the rest of their life. And then
sometimes it means somebody got an inheritance and needs to make a decision on
how best to manage that money they have received. So day to day it looks a whole
lot different but I think the theme running through all it means I get to help
people make good decisions with what they have been entrusted with.
How did you choose your profession?
I chose my profession just based on what I enjoy and what I
feel like I’ve been entrusted with from God. And I think one of those things is
just a calming spirit, being able to help people feel comfortable, but then
also just an interest in money and budgeting and savings. I remember just even growing
up, my brothers had baseball card collections; I had dollar bill collections. I
had these little baseball card sheets and I just filled them with dollar bills.
I don’t know why, but since I was a little kid, I’ve always just had a general
interest in money.
How does your work help you see aspects of brokenness in the world?
As a financial planner, you tend to be your client’s pastor,
banker, confidante all wrapped up into one. And so you hear things that you
probably didn’t want to hear, didn’t think you would hear, would rather not
hear. And so you get to see brokenness in all different ways. So a recent
example of that would be, I was sitting having a conversation with a friend at
my desk and got a phone call. I picked up the call and it was a client who just
found out he was going through a divorce. So we spent 20 minutes talking about
what that meant for him and how unfortunate it was. But all of a sudden it’s
not a financial discussion that we are having. It’s a discussion about
something very, very emotional and through emotions you see a lot of different brokenness.
It’s just part of every day of what we do.
How does your work give you opportunities to love and serve others?
In what we do with our clients, we are able to really just help
them think through the next 30, 40, 50 years and making sure they are not going
to be dependent upon someone else. Now there are times when you want to be
dependent on someone else and that’s a good thing and that’s biblical but at
the same time, you don’t want to have to put the burden on your kids if that’s not
absolutely necessary. You want to remain independent at least to a certain
extent. And then not only remain independent but leave a legacy. So it’s a great way to leave a legacy if you
are able to support a ministry when you pass, or leave your kids an inheritance
that’s appropriate for them. So allowing a client to not only to live in dignity
but then die with dignity is a way that we are really able to serve them well.
What advice do you have for someone who wants to become a financial
planner?
For someone who is thinking about becoming a financial
planner, I think going into it, know that you are a business owner. That you’re
not just going to go in and help people make budgeting decisions and help them determine
the best way to invest their money. That’s part of it, but that’s probably the
smallest part of what you do. The biggest part of what you do is build a
business. And then once you’ve built that business and you’re building that
business, what you do with clients is way, way more about relationship and
consulting and counseling than it is running spreadsheets. And that’s a reality
that I think most people getting into financial planning don’t understand until
a couple years down the road and they think “This isn’t what I signed up for.”
How can business owners impact communities and the world?
As a business owner, you get a lot of flexibility with your
schedule. So if that means you want to volunteer at your church or you want to
be involved in someone else‘s life you have that flexibility that you can
decide to do that. That’s really nice. One of the other things that we get to
do is provide people with jobs. So as an entrepreneur as a business owner, you get to transform someone’s
life by giving them a paycheck, which is an honor; it’s a big responsibility
but it’s really neat to be able to do that. I think there’s a huge impact on someone’s
life from that perspective.
The other great thing about being an entrepreneur is you can
participate in the profits of the company. So oftentimes that means that you
can give and you can support things that you’re passionate about. Sometimes it
doesn’t mean that; sometimes it means that is no profit to give so you’ve got
to be a good steward to what the Lord has entrusted you with. But oftentimes, profits enable you to do
giving. So that’s really neat.
Another thing we get to do as an owner of a business is that
we get to call the shots about how we are going to have discussions with
clients. And we don’t have to be afraid about bringing up our faith. So with a
lot of our clients we open up the meeting in prayer. Or we get to tell them, “Hey,
you’re going through this tough time; we’ll be praying for you.” And when you
are in a setting when you’re not the boss, where you’re not business owner
there are policies in place to make sure that you don’t do that. And so that’s
a great bonus about being a business owner.
