Career Insights for New Grads Aspiring to Become Financial Advisors with Raphael Hanna – Ep 086

Graduation marks an exciting new chapter for young professionals, but for those eyeing a career in financial planning, the path forward can feel uncertain. What are the skills that investment firms are looking for? Which licenses and designations matter most? And how do you land that first opportunity in a highly competitive field?

Today, Matthew Peck welcomes back returning guest Raphael Hanna to share his journey from Stonehill College to SHP Financial. Drawing from his own early experiences, Raphael reveals how internships, networking, and a willingness to adapt shaped his career path. He also explains the difference between independent advisory firms and other industry models, why relationship-building is as important as technical skills, and how to decide where you want to specialize.

In this conversation, you’ll learn the difference between independent advisory firms and other industry models, why relationship-building is as important as technical skills, and how to decide where you want to specialize.

Whether you’re a recent grad, a career changer, or simply curious about what it takes to thrive in financial planning, this episode provides a blueprint to start off on the right track and build a career that lasts.

In this podcast interview, you’ll learn:

• Why networking can make or break your early career.
• The important licenses every new advisor should consider obtaining.
• How to choose the right firm for your career goals.
• The pros and cons of independent vs. traditional advisory models.
• How professional designations like the CFP® can set you apart.
• The best ways to explore career paths within financial services.

Inspiring Quotes

• “If you’re not one of those people that are kind of just going to wait until senior year or whatever it is to try and find something, well, no job’s going to come to you. You’ve got to go and make your own luck and basically just put yourself out there.” – Raphael Hanna

• “If a recent graduate asks about finance, I can’t stress that enough in regards to the importance of relationships and connecting with people and just being able to talk with people.” – Matthew Peck

Interview Resources

• UMass Lowell
• NVIDIA
• Handshake
• John D. Rockefeller
• Turnkey Asset Management Program (TAMP)

[INTERVIEW]

Matthew Peck: Welcome everyone to another edition of SHP Financial’s Retirement Road Map Podcast. I’m your host today, Matthew Peck. And this is the season. Now, it’s not Christmas season or the fall or any other holidays, it is graduation season. It is commencement. I just went to my first sort of graduation party the other day, and there was this young upstart about to enter the world after graduating from UMass Lowell. And it just made me think, what advice do we give to young graduates who are considering the financial planning field, right? Like, what now? I mean, you graduate, you have a degree, and you’re about to embark on your career and on your journey. And there might be some moms and dads out there or grandparents that are wondering, what does it take to enter the financial planning field to work at a company like SHP Financial, to grow a book of business? What designations are necessary or helpful? What licenses are required? To help walk us through all of that, we’re going to bring back a returning guest, Raphael Hanna, the NVIDIA specialist from before, but he’s a younger guy, a little bit more handsome, a little bit more hair in his head than I am right now, but…

Raphael Hanna: Not a whole lot more.

Matthew Peck: Yeah. But I figured he’d be a great guy to explain that, but what his perspective was when he was first entering the financial planning field. I mean, a while ago now, but still within recent memory, I’ll be able to share, kind of spin some yarns about what it was like back in the early aughts, early 2000s.

Raphael Hanna: Back in your day.

Matthew Peck: Yeah, exactly. Before this cell phone thing or iPhone thing. But hopefully, we can provide some guidance and some perspective to all the young graduates out there and their families to consider what is a very rewarding and fulfilling field that I look forward to. Again, sharing our stories, but also telling you why it is a path that, obviously, we both believe is well worth taking. So, without much further ado, again, Raph, welcome back to the show.

Raphael Hanna: Awesome, Matt. Thanks for having me, and I’m glad to be back.

Matthew Peck: Yeah, so I guess like if, put yourself in those, because I’m trying to think, how many years ago now? Eight, seven? How many years did you graduate?

Raphael Hanna: Yeah, going on, yeah, six, seven years now.

Matthew Peck: Six, seven years, okay. So, when you graduated from Stonehill, go Skyhawks.

Raphael Hanna: Yeah, right, go, school will take it.

Matthew Peck: Right, absolutely.

Raphael Hanna: Division I now.

Matthew Peck: D1, there you go. There you go. Just in case, well, I’m sure there’s a separate Skyhawks sports podcast, but that’s not this one, Raph.

Raphael Hanna: Not today, yeah, yeah.

Matthew Peck: So, tell, like, did you always want to become a financial planner? I mean, how did you get into the field? And literally, take us back from when you literally have a cap and gown on, and what was next for you at that point?

Raphael Hanna: It’s a good question. So, it was funny, my background before actually getting into financial planning was when I was an undergrad, I was actually a chemical engineer. So, like completely 180 from like kind of where I ended up. And I think that’s kind of the trajectory a lot of people end up in. Like, the saying is like, what you graduate, with your degree is not what you end up pursuing. So, I started off as a chemical engineer but ended up pivoting to accounting and data analytics and then, throughout that process, going into my senior year, was applying for internships and kind of was networking with other alums, right?

So, Stonehill had a pretty good, still does alumni network. So, when you go through that internship process, you’re just trying to network and leverage people within the field and then kind of stumbled upon a wealth management internship and really didn’t know too much about wealth management other than the fact that you just manage people’s retirements, but thought that that was like an interesting career path just from the standpoint of having the accounting background, doing some level of financial planning, kind of in college.

Matthew Peck: But did you think or at least expect, so here, you’re an intern and you’re walking with sort of like a data analyst background, did you then expect to then apply that? Did you say, oh, I’m going to be like, crunching numbers and picking stocks, or I guess what were your expectations?

Raphael Hanna: It’s a good question. I think, at least for me, I thought maybe I would do something on the tax side, right? Because obviously, graduated with an accounting degree. So, I thought maybe I would carve a niche within just the accounting tax planning piece of wealth management. But obviously, took the internship, it was on the finance side. So, getting to understand portfolios at a deeper level, getting to understand building financial plans on a deeper level. Obviously, there’s the tax component to that, right, as we both know. But yeah, no, it kind of segued into just the finance part just how that internship had taken place.

Matthew Peck: And then from the internship, did you then work at that same company or let me back up, did you then decide like, yes, this is the field for me after that internship?

Raphael Hanna: Correct. So, they hired me full time after I graduated. And then from that point forward, I was kind of just like, you know what? Accept the offer. Kind of see what I think of the field on a full-time basis and kind of fell in love with just like the whole client facing aspect of what we do because at the end of the day, we’re in front of clients all day, every day, and the part that I kind of resonated with was that relationship aspect of it. And that’s kind of what I stuck with and brought us here today, so.

Matthew Peck: And you mentioned the relationship because like the– I think that’s one of the biggest things that if sort of like a recent graduate asks about finance, I mean, it’s like I can’t stress that enough in regards to the importance of relationships and connecting with people and just talking with people and being able to talk with people. I mean, you would think that, oh, it’s fine. It’s numbers and it’s planning and it’s this, and it’s all of those things, but it’s just so relationship driven. And was that something that was always kind of came naturally to you as well? Like, I mean, is that why you also think maybe you sort of ended up in this field as well?

Raphael Hanna: I think so. And obviously, like the internship that I got to kind of kickstart the career was through again, networking with alumni, just trying to put yourself out there, right? You kind of make your own luck with who you rub elbows with. And that’s kind of really what led me to that point. So, I think the relationship aspect, when you’re young and hungry to kind of build a career for yourself is super important, because you just got to put yourself in those uncomfortable positions to say, okay, what do I want to pursue?

And again, when you’re in college, you don’t know those things, but you got to talk to people, right, in those fields that you might be interested in to kind of get an idea, hey, could this be something that I want to do, right? And people might take a liking to, as my first firm did, and it kind of creates the career path from that point forward.

Matthew Peck: Well, and I want to go back to the idea of networking. I mean, I remember way back when similar idea, like a young graduate and my dad saying to me like, “Oh, son, you got to network.” And I’m like, “I don’t know what that means exactly. Like, what do you–” like, do you just start to randomly shake people’s hands and be like, hey, I’m looking for a job? I mean, but then, whatever, 10, 15, 20 years into the job, now I kind of understand, it’s connections. It’s making sure that, and putting yourself out there, like you say in, Raph, and getting, whether it’s in the community and like attending different charity events or whatever that may be, whether it’s connecting with just local organizations, local businesses, I mean, I think it’s– and maybe, back in the day, and this was, yeah, again, talk about the differences of entering the fields 5 years ago versus 25 years ago, yeah, there was– I mean, the internet was just, yes, here we go, sorry, everyone, but literally, like I mean, the internet was just becoming popular, right?

In regards to Netscape and all that stuff, I remember like the first time the libraries, the Homer Babbidge Library UConn had all of these old PCs, but you could surf the net, right? And so, there wasn’t LinkedIn and there wasn’t– that’s my point. There wasn’t LinkedIn, there wasn’t social networking, there wasn’t anything along those lines. So, I think the concept of networking and being able to connect with people is a whole lot easier than it was, sort of 25 years ago. However, certainly, 25 years ago, to argue on that side or at least to say that the value there, it was all personal. Like, when you were networking, you were sitting down, you were meeting people, you were having a cup of coffee with them or lunch or whatever that is. So, it was always on a one-to-one basis.

Explain your concept of networking, right? So, we know it’s important, whether it was 25 years ago or 5 years ago or now, sort of like wisdom or what you’ve learned to a young professional, a young graduate about to come out, sort of explain networking in your own terms and how would you approach it?

Raphael Hanna: Today?

Matthew Peck: Yeah, today.

Raphael Hanna: I think, you kind of hit the nail on the head like, back when you were graduating and breaking into the industry, like, there wasn’t LinkedIn. Today, the reach and your ability to go network with anyone in the world is at your fingertips, right? So, leveraging LinkedIn, leveraging these different platforms that your schools offer, I think, could be pretty critical because some people might say, oh, it’s LinkedIn, this person’s, the head of whatever firm, SHP, Matt’s one of the partners, oh, he’s not going to respond to my LinkedIn. Well, no, Matt might have on the right day, if he’s on LinkedIn, right? So, I think it’s, at a high level, just trying to understand that you can connect with anybody and just making sure that you’re taking the opportunity to craft well-thought-out messages to people because again, you can literally network with anyone at any point in time now, just because you have the reach on LinkedIn and there’s Handshake that’s like another platform that schools use, so yeah.

Matthew Peck: That’s pretty cool. So, yeah, and so I’m curious, not just for yourself, but also for anyone else that’s your age right now, no matter what the industry. Now, and then walk me through Stonehill. You mentioned about there was a networking thing there or sort of like there was the school-sponsored internships, but that’s something you had to do before you graduate, though, right? Or what happens after you graduate?

Raphael Hanna: So, obviously, like schools will have their co-ops, right? Like, Stonehill didn’t necessarily have a co-op program, but obviously, Northeastern and other schools do have that, where they require you to go grab an internship going into your junior or senior year. And again, firms like us at SHP, we have a great internship program, right, where Michelle, she leads it, and every year, we have a handful of applicants that are trying to just get more exposure into the field.

Matthew Peck: And just a real quick plug, it’s internship like…

Raphael Hanna: Wink, wink.

Matthew Peck: SHP Financial, we have SHP-mates here, and so, I just want to make sure it’s internshp, no I on the internshp. Okay, continue.

Raphael Hanna: No pun intended.

Matthew Peck: Yeah, we’re very clever here.

Raphael Hanna: Very cheesy.

Matthew Peck: Can’t you tell? Okay, continue.

Raphael Hanna: There we go. So, I think, like, back to your point is like, again, I’m actually now trying to remember.

Matthew Peck: No, we were talking about the school networking and the co-op program.

Raphael Hanna: Oh, correct, yes. So, obviously, like Handshake is another one of those platforms where it’s, I think, like a universal database for all these universities to go in and plug their internship programs, right? They have partnerships with different alumni, different firms, institutions, and it’s just a way for you to go in, and they have events where you can go in, again, you show up with your resume. Again, it’s basically you shaking hands and making introductions.

Matthew Peck: But just Stonehill guys and gals?

Raphael Hanna: Yes. So, Stonehill will have theirs, obviously, like UConn will likely have theirs now. So, again, different events, but again, it’s all about putting yourself out there, right? If you’re not one of those people that are kind of just going to wait until senior year or whatever it is to try and find something, well, no job’s going to come to you. You got to go and make your own luck and basically just put yourself out there, right?

Matthew Peck: That’s fantastic. Okay, so we decide that financial planning, so we hit this internship and we say, you know what? Ooh, I kind of like this. I like working with the clients and maybe a little bit less than the books or a little bit less on the accounting and more kind of client facing as the term that we use. So, how does one become a financial advisor? Let’s literally, like, give us some basic block and tackle.

Raphael Hanna: Yeah, so the basic starting points is your securities licenses. So, the way I started in the industry, I was to use the technical term, I was on the broker-dealer side. So, what I needed was my Series 65 and my Series 7. So, for me, the 7 allows financial advisors to theoretically buy securities on behalf of clients. But obviously, being on the independent side, we have our investment committee that does that for us now. The Series 65 allows you to provide financial advice to clients, right, for and on their behalf. So, those are kind of the initial starting points that you need before you can even, again, provide recommendations, put together those types of investment portfolio recommendations, however you want to phrase it. And that process generally takes anywhere from 6 to 12 months, right? Obviously, if you’re working full time while studying, could be shorter, longer, depending on how disciplined you are. But again, usually, those two exams are what you need to start. Obviously, SHP is on the independent side. So, most advisors just need their 65. But then, again, that’s just the starting points.

Matthew Peck: But you’re working throughout it. So, you were able to continue to work in the financial planning industry while you’re studying to get your license?

Raphael Hanna: Correct. I was working full time while kind of doing these exams, or the studying at night, and then you would, obviously, sign, when you’re ready, you go take the exams.

Matthew Peck: Okay. So, now, we have that license, which is basically sort of like a driver’s license, because I don’t want to go down into the weeds because I know there’s Series 65 and 63 and Series 7. And I think there’s a bunch of them out there.

Raphael Hanna: There’s a bunch, yeah. There’s a ton.

Matthew Peck: I mean, which even myself, I mean like, just get confused because it’s like I don’t even know what’s necessary and unnecessary at this point or at different stages of finance, if you will. But okay, so you are working while you’re studying. Now, you get your license and so, it’s basically a driver’s license. And so, from that point on, though, how do you start to sort of enhance your career? I mean, is it just experience? And if you have that license, can you go in any direction that you want? I mean, I guess, so now you have a year under your belt. You have your license and now you’re professional or compliant. I mean, I guess, how do you further your career, right? I mean, do you pick a lane at that point, almost like law school or not really?

Raphael Hanna: Yeah, I tell people like, and again, I’m going to use a few examples, like if you enjoy the client facing aspect, well then, again, you kind of stay in the land of like, I’m going to be a financial advisor. And again, me and Chris are fortunate enough to be under your tutelage, tooting your horn a bit where the career growth and the opportunity to carve your own lane is there, right? But then if you’re not necessarily so much on the client facing aspect, but you do enjoy investments, right, we’ve had advisors go from the advisory team to the trading team. The investment committee, I think, Dave Hathaway.

Matthew Peck: Yes, correct.

Raphael Hanna: Yeah. So, I think within, once you start, you get licensed, you figure out, hey, where are my strong points, right? Am I good client facing? Am I more technical, and maybe less client facing, right? Trying to figure out where your strong suits are, and then you kind of make the initial pivots from there. And obviously, the hope is you kind of latch onto a strong firm that gives you that upward mobility to kind of play to your strengths and develop any weaknesses that you might have.

Matthew Peck: And I think some of the other, just to add to that, and some other thoughts, recent graduates, not just your own experience, but others, I mean, you’re also deciding sort of like the level of net worth to work with. I mean, there’s something called like high-net-worth clients. There’s ultra-high-net-worth clients. And so, literally, there are what are called family offices, right? And so, the family offices focus on the term family, right, where it helps one family, or at least how they originally started. So, imagine helping the Rockefellers, the Kennedys, the Roosevelts, things along those lines. So, an entire office, an entire firm was sort of founded to help manage the assets of this one family. Now, that’s a very simplistic explanation. They come in many different shapes and sizes.

But imagine if you’re a recent graduate and you say, okay, I really want to work with the ultra-high net worth, well, there are these family offices, and what’s interesting about that is that you’re not necessarily client facing, isn’t necessarily the original patriarch or whomever made the money, like John D. Rockefeller. Now, you’re talking with their kids, grandkids, great grandkids.

Raphael Hanna: The lineage, yeah, right?

Matthew Peck: Yeah, right. So, now your client is their great, great grandson, but you’re still helping to steward the original wealth or on the opposite side of that, what are called the wealth creators. And these are majority of SHP clients, if not all, are the ones that sort of saved, earned, maybe there was a little inheritance here and there, but primarily they created their own wealth. They saved their own retirement IRAs, 401(k)s, however they got there. And so, that’s kind of who SHP obviously helped serve. But I just wanted to kind of share that to our listeners to kind of get an idea that not only, when you say, okay, client facing and things along those lines, there’s a wide range of…

Raphael Hanna: Who we service.

Matthew Peck: Exactly.

Raphael Hanna: Or can service.

Matthew Peck: Yeah, exactly. Or who the industry serves, as well. So, that’s just, again, food for thought for anyone that’s thinking about this path. The other thing, if you don’t mind, explain a little bit about the different designations because when it comes to– there’s the CFPs and certified financial planners and there’s chartered financial analysts. And sometimes, there’s all these letters that are after…

Raphael Hanna: Alphabet soup.

Matthew Peck: Yeah, exactly. So, just for all our listeners, what are some of those designations? And then, how do you get those?

Raphael Hanna: Yeah. So, the most common one, at least for financial planners is the one that you obviously have, the Certified Financial Planner designation, CFP. So, again, I tell people that’s the equivalent of like a CPA, right, but for financial planners. Obviously, you mentioned the CFA, Chartered Financial Analyst Exam. I think that’s like a three-step exam where, again, if you’re looking to get on the investment side of the world, obviously, we have a few CFAs on our team that gives you direct high-level analysis, if you want to call it that, into just managing portfolios, right? So, it’s much more technical, but the CFP gives you the planning background you need to be a financial advisor, if you will.

Matthew Peck: And I think too about that, I mean that’s something that is sort of part of our DNA here at SHP because the planning, like those five areas, the income, investment, taxes, healthcare, and legacy planning are based on the CFPs curriculum o of the five different areas that when you do embark on that designation, you’re learning, you’re diving into income planning, into investment planning, into tax planning. And so, it gives you a wealth of knowledge in all five of those areas to then be able to provide advice on all five of those areas.

Raphael Hanna: Correct, yep.

Matthew Peck: And I sometimes liken it too, that if you get your license, right, like we were talking earlier about your Series 65 and Series 7 and this and that, the other thing, I mean, let me ask you, Raph, just because you have your driver’s license, does that make you a good driver?

Raphael Hanna: Not necessarily, right? So, it’s only as good as the person behind the wheel in a sense. You know what I mean?

Matthew Peck: Yeah. And that’s why, like, I personally, purposely made sure to really make sure that the CFP and getting my own designation would be. So, like, I wanted everyone to know that not only did I have my license…

Raphael Hanna: Like an accreditation on top of it.

Matthew Peck: Yeah. It’s like I’m a good driver.

Raphael Hanna: Right.

Matthew Peck: Normally, licensed to be a financial advisor, but I’m a good a good advisor because of that background and going through that process.

Raphael Hanna: It’s kind of similar to people in the tax world, right? Like, you have EAs and you have CPAs. Obviously, EAs are licensed to file people’s taxes, but when you’re working with a CPA, it’s kind of, again, just another layer of comfort, another notch of like an accreditation, if you will.

Matthew Peck: Yeah. And I was going to say too, just so you know, I mean, because Raph hears this all the time, especially, and Chris and Brad, it’s like, I’m trying to get these guys to get the CFPs as much as possible, only because it’s like do it now when you’re young, before the kids start to come and then…

Raphael Hanna: Yeah. Don’t have necessarily the time.

Matthew Peck: Yeah. They’ll have the means or needs of their own.

Raphael Hanna: Correct.

Matthew Peck: So, they’ll start to kind of take away a little bit of your own. There’s less me-time.

Raphael Hanna: Luckily, I’ll take the me-time when I can get them and then apply to the CFAs.

Matthew Peck: So, really just kind of trying to do that little plug there at that point. So, all right, everyone, so again, recent graduates, here we have the idea of networking and whether it is electronic or still more of the traditional in person, that is crucial in regards to whatever finding out. And that allows you to kind of explore different industries at that point, right? And then, again, if you do eventually decide that the financial planning and finance is that, at least when it comes to our world, there’s licenses, and then you sort of also decide as to where on the net worth spectrum do you want to work.

And I’d also add too, you mentioned about obviously good firm, I know, no more shameless plugs, but more so that the firms themselves are also very different, different size, and also sometimes different structure. And what I mean by that is that there are kind of independent advisors and then there are teams. And so, if you don’t mind, explain a little bit about how our team works and about– because our firm, obviously, we can speak from experience is more team based. So, what are some of the pros and cons of working with the team?

Raphael Hanna: It’s a good question. And I’ll kind of answer that by talking about the firm that I previously came from, which again, they were basically sole prac advisors, right? It was a family office. And that structure was vastly different from the sense of they were kind of just maintaining their existing book of business and they didn’t really have the bandwidth to build out, kind of what SHP’s built out, the investment committee in-house. Most firms that you’ll see will be like a solo advisor and they have to outsource some of those things, right?

So, SHP is fortunate enough where we’ve been able to build the investment committee, our new business team, all these different components, right, where, outside of you guys seeing me and Matt in meetings talking with clients, we’ve built out this kind of infrastructure behind the scenes where, again, it’s a very much a team-based approach that allows us to, again, really focus on just that individualized planning, hitting on everything that you talked about, that the CFP kind of preaches and we relate to the advisors.

Matthew Peck: Well, and I’d say that, and it’s almost, this is kind of along the same lines, but I mean, for anyone that’s actually looking for an advisor, an interesting question, or let’s say looking for a career or looking for a firm, whether to work for or work with, is the question of, okay, what’s outsourced and what’s not outsourced?

Raphael Hanna: It’s a big question.

Matthew Peck: I mean, there’s a huge industry that the listeners would not know about, and that’s what’s called TAMPs or third-party asset management platforms or something like that.

Raphael Hanna: Turnkey asset, yeah.

Matthew Peck: Thank you. Okay, can you give the actual one?

Raphael Hanna: Turnkey Asset Management Program, I believe it is.

Matthew Peck: Okay, thank you. Much better. That’s why we have you here.

Raphael Hanna: That’s right. There we go.

Matthew Peck: Thank you, Raph.

Raphael Hanna: I gotcha.

Matthew Peck: But their clients are the financial advisors, right? So, let’s say there’s a small financial advisor. He’s hanging a shingle there on Main Street. And you can just say, okay, all right, that’s interesting. So, okay, how do you operate if you’re just one or two people or whatever that may be? And that’s because they can outsource their investment advice, right, or their investment management. I mean, these TAMPs or these turnkey…

Raphael Hanna: Turnkey Asset Management Programs.

Matthew Peck: Of course.

Raphael Hanna: There we go.

Matthew Peck: These turnkey guys will provide, will manage their portfolios, obviously, for a fee, and so, that there are fees sort of embedded on these different layers, but they’ll be able to pipe into these high-quality investment portfolios that are managed third party, right, or billing is done third party. Compliance sometimes is done third party, sometime both insource and outsource. So, it’s good to know about how kind of the industry works, whether you’re thinking about entering the field and working for a smaller firm, and it’s like, okay, how the heck do they even operate to going with a larger firm where a lot of that stuff might be in-house? And then there’s blends. I mean, like, we particularly like SHP will outsource some of our municipal bond portfolio work. It’s just because there are a lot of specialists that are, unless we’re going to build out this massive bond, as an example, this massive bond trading desk and things along those lines, it’s actually more economical for everyone, whether it’s time, more efficiency on time, or whether it’s more efficiency ideally on performance, it makes sense to outsource. Other things, not so much, right? Because whether it’s new business or financial planning and things along those lines, things that are high touch, I mean, we believe that that has to be done in-house because you want to have a complete control and oversight of that. So, I just want to point that out as to some of the other things you might not know about our industry.

Raphael Hanna: It’s funny too, when you talk about that, prospective clients that we meet with when they share their statements with us, if they come from those bigger banks like a Wells Fargo, Bank of America, we look at their portfolios and we see that it’s not necessarily managed in-house by Bank of America. It might be outsourced by like Eagle Investments or something like that. And I think sometimes, clients, when we share that with them, right, they’re like, oh, really? I thought Bank of America was managing that. Yes. So, you always just want to make sure. Again, it might sound commonsensical, but whoever’s managing your money, you want to know, is that person actually managing my money or are they outsourcing that to somebody that I’m maybe not that familiar with type of thing?

Matthew Peck: Yeah. We sometimes talk about, but sort of like the proximity to your money, right? Like, how close are you? And how many layers are there in between? But it’s a really, really good point. Okay, so then the other thing, I was– so now, you kind of understand the different type of firms, the different type of clients, and the only thing I was going to really end with, and I’m just curious, your opinion on this. And because I mentioned at the beginning and I really want to stress this, at least when it comes to our lane and where we have chosen, I just want to emphasize that the financial planning world is very, as I said, relationship driven. I mean, it is all about relationships and how much you connect and because it’s a service industry, right? I mean, we, financial services is technically where we fall under when it comes to the category because we’re providing a service, because joke around about our previous podcast, a client doesn’t need me or Raph or anyone to buy NVIDIA, right? They can go ahead and buy NVIDIA on whatever platform and custodian that you want to work with. So, we’re not just these– like our relationship with our clients is not just transactional type of world. And because we don’t live in that transactional type of world, how we connect and how we relate in the closeness that we are to understanding our clients is crucial. So, I guess, I mean, is that something that you learn through time or is that something that, no, it’s almost like it comes naturally to some and others, it’s a skill that they can learn. See what I mean?

Raphael Hanna: Listen, I would tell you it’s definitely something that you initially have that built in piece of you, like built in from the standpoint of, I always thought that growing up and again, interacting with people and being able to connect with people on a deeper level was just something that came naturally to me. And I think the emotional component is huge. And some people’s emotional IQ, EQ, whatever you want to call it, might be higher than others. I’m sure you could develop it, but I think it was just something, at least personally, you might say the same for yourself was something that maybe always came naturally to you and in our business, right?

Somebody comes to you with a million dollars, whatever the number is, right? They’re entrusting their entire life savings to you. So, being able to put yourself on their side of the desk and say, okay, can I feel what that person’s feeling, right, because they’re about to retire. They don’t know how they’re going to now use this entire bucket to supplement their Social Security or their pension and they have all these expenses. Maybe they got a mortgage, like you name it, right? You go down the item. But can you put yourself on the other side of the table and feel what they feel? And I think that’s, forget about all the technical things that we talked about today for a second, if you can do that as a starting point, and then you kind of layer in all the technical things that you need. That’s 101 to becoming a very good financial advisor.

Matthew Peck: Great.

Raphael Hanna: It’s what I think of.

Matthew Peck: Yeah, no, Raph, I think that’s a great way to wrap it up because I mean, think of it this way, right? So, for all of our recent grads or all of our dads and moms out there wondering where their child is going to go, not only is it networking that we talked about, making sure that you, both traditional ways of meeting people and shaking hands and having lunch, as well as the more modern LinkedIn and all the messaging that happens there, and I guess there’s whatever handshake type of service or a connection platform that’s there. Of course, it’s getting your degree and graduating. We wouldn’t be having this conversation if they hadn’t graduated, of course. Then you have your licenses and then the designations on top of that, that really further your knowledge, such as the CFP or the CFA or the CMA and different things.

But don’t forget, what Raph was just saying at the very end there, which was that without a good emotional intelligence or EQ, without the ability to really put yourself on the other side of the table, that is just as important as all these other technical things and all these other things that you have to, obviously, you got to get that degree and you got to get that license. But I think to truly separate yourself is that type of emotional connection and being able to put yourselves in the client’s shoes, especially during very stressful times, whether it’s market stress or life stress. And I think that alone will separate you and lead you in the right direction if you do eventually join our kin and in the financial planning world. So, any final words, Raph, before we wrap up?

Raphael Hanna: No, couldn’t have said it any better. And again, whether it’s pursuing wealth management, right, being a financial advisor or anything else, you might go into private equity or if you’re more technically, go into the hedge fund space. Regardless of what it is, I think everything that we talked about today, minus the designations, will at least kind of get you thinking about the right things. And hopefully, that’s what we’re doing today, just get you thinking.

Matthew Peck: All right, Raph, so again, thanks so much for coming back, for returning guest and putting up with it.

Raphael Hanna: Right. I’ll have to bring the tie next time.

Matthew Peck: Yeah, for sure.

Raphael Hanna: Remember?

Matthew Peck: You got to do that. And it’s hysterical too, because every once in a while, just a little, also, obviously, we’re producers in the audience, but occasionally, we have compliance in the audience. But the best part is, is that compliance isn’t going after bad jokes. So, all the bad jokes are going to go through, that you can…

Raphael Hanna: Aaron, are we good on that? We’re good?

Matthew Peck: Yeah, because there’s no SEC guideline about bad jokes. So, we’re full steam ahead here.

Raphael Hanna: That’s it.

Matthew Peck: At the SHP Retirement podcast. So, thank you all so much for joining us today and certainly, listen again. Thank you for your attention, and be well.

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