Welcome to the Financial Advisor Success Podcast, where you go behind the scenes with

financial planner, speaker, and consultant Michael Kitsis to hear stories of how leading

financial advisors navigated the inevitable challenges that arise on the path to success,

and get insight from leading industry consultants about how to break through to the next

level in your advisory business. And now here's your host, Michael Kitsis. Welcome, everyone.

Welcome to the 206th episode, Financial Advisor Success Podcast. My guest on today's podcast is

Drew Stottler. Drew is the founder of Stottler Wealth Management,

a hybrid advisory firm based in the suburbs of St. Louis, serving 100 middle-income clients.

What's unique about Drew, though, is his path to building his own advisory firm,

having started his career in the employee advisor model at Edward Jones, deciding to break away

to an independent broker-dealer, only to get hit with a temporary

restraining order after leaving, despite having tried to do everything he could buy the book,

but ultimately overcoming the challenge as he can now build his advisory firm the way he always

wanted to. In this episode, we talk in depth about how Drew built his career as a financial advisor.

From starting out in the Edward Jones Operations Division, focused on anti-money laundering

reviews before requesting an internal transfer to become an advisor, how Drew built his early

client base literally knocking from door to door in local neighborhoods, what he did to build

early rapport and connections while

cold knocking, and the books that gave him the inspiration to keep powering forward despite

the challenging early years.

We also talk about why and how Drew ultimately decided to make a change.

Why the transition was less about the difference in payouts between employee and independent

...