Senior Representative, Financial Advisor, First Investors Corp

>> My name's Terrence McDonald. I am a senior representative with First Investors Corporation in Atlanta. First Investors is an 84 year old Wall Street based investment firm. What we do is we sit down with our clients on an individual basis and create a personalized investment strategy for them. So whatever their goals they're trying to accomplish are, we create a plan to achieve those goals. Whether it be retirement, tax sheltering, college planning, etcetera. Well, basically, you know, I work with individual clients like you and me. I work with some institutional clients like 43B plans, 401K plans, creating overall retirement strategies for larger groups of people, but mostly I do work with individuals and families. >> Okay. And could you run me through what a busy day would look like for you? >> Yeah. A typical busy day is going to be, you know, up in the morning, meeting or maybe planning session in my office in Atlanta. And then at that point lunch and out to meet with clients. I typically like to meet with, in a full day, 3 to 5 clients a day. Sometimes I'll spend an entire day just meeting with clients from morning to evening. Sometimes days run long. Generally I meet with people in their homes. I find it's where it's most comfortable for them. Also if we need to lay hands on statements and things like that it's really easy for them to get those or pull up documents on their computers. And so a lot of times people want to meet with me after they've gotten home from doing their job. So sometimes, you know, my most important or most extensive meetings don't even begin to take place until after 6 o clock in the evening. So the days can be long. So a busy day -- That's a pretty typical busy day. >> And what's the life cycle of a client like? So you know garnering new business, finding -- So what are you -- >> When you say life cycle, do you mean, you know, from start to finish or from how do I find my clients or -- >> Yeah. Let's start with just that. >> Sure. So I use various different methods for finding new clients, meeting new people. The best I've found and most reliably successful is introductions from existing clients. We -- While we are the largest non publicly traded investment firm in the country, we're not a huge firm on the scale of maybe some of those that you would see advertised on TV or billboards. We don't feel like we have to do that because if we're doing right by our clients they're going to put us in touch with other good clients like themselves. And so some of my best clients have come from that sort of just natural marketing, if you will. A lot of times also -- Most recently I did an event up in Atlanta last weekend. It was a Halloween event. We set up a table. We did face painting for the kids, made some student IDs for the children, and just talked to the parents a little bit about what we do, you know, with a particular focus on college planning for that demographic. And then, you know, I've begun calling those people and scheduling appointments with them. So marketing, networking, and then just referrals from individual clients. Yeah.