When Raj Sharma began his career in wealth management, he didn't play golf or have country club connections, which employers expected.
"At the time, the richest person I knew was my mother, who had $20,000 in a 401(k)," Sharma wrote in his debut book, "The Purposeful Wealth Advisor: How to Build a Rewarding Career While Helping Clients Achieve Their Dreams."
Sharma decided to break into the industry after a string of other careers. He began as a radio DJ in Hyderabad, India, where he was known for riding around town on a motorbike. He got an MBA and worked in sales, marketing and finance in India, heeding parental advice to do something practical, but then moved to the U.S. and got a master's in mass communication from Emerson College. At one point, Sharma wrote, he was so broke as a student that he had only $300 in his bank account — not even enough to cover a $1300 traffic ticket, for which he had to get a loan from a friend to pay off.
"I worked in film and video production for a couple of years, attempted to start a gourmet coffee company — long before Starbucks came on the scene — and eventually stumbled into financial advisory when my own stockbroker suggested I'd be well suited to the field," he wrote. Employers, unimpressed with his modest background, didn't seem to agree; he applied to many firms with no luck.
Sharma finally got his break when a Merrill Lynch manager offered him a tentative spot at the firm in 1987, just two months before the Black Monday stock market crash. He stuck it out, and his colorful background became an asset as he devised new ways to win business.
In those early days, Sharma bought a used Volkswagen Rabbit for $600 and drove it around to prospective client meetings. The car's driver-side door wouldn't open, so he had to crawl in through the passenger side. Once, when he closed a sale to a group of doctors, one of them offered to walk him to his car. "I had to pretend I had to take a call from the office so he wouldn't see me crawling into my $600 car!" he wrote.
Thirty-five years later, Sharma is one of the leading advisors in his field, with
His book offers lessons that he learned in his own unconventional career and tackles the "myths" of the trade that he believes have kept nontraditional talent out. Among them: You need to know lots of wealthy people, be good at math, be a white man or have an Ivy League education to make it in the field. "I want to tell you all the ways you're wrong about who a financial advisor should be," Sharma wrote.
The book comes out Dec. 6 and its proceeds will go to nonprofits that promote financial literacy for low-income people, he said. Andy Sieg, the president of Merrill Lynch Wealth Management, contributed an introduction.
Sharma, a steadfast Merrill loyalist and devotee to the gospel of "grit," described himself in an interview on Sept. 29 as "fundamentally an optimistic person." His book reflects this sunny outlook, with its accessible language, practical tips and anecdotal style, though it also acknowledges the systemic barriers to access for people who have been excluded from Wall Street's clubby world of wealth advisors. He urges women, people of color and young professionals in particular to consider a career he believes is "sustainable" and more open to them than ever before. The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
FP: What made you decide to finally write this book after so many years in the business?
RS: The pandemic gave us all some time without going to work, working from home. And I've been thinking about this for many years, maybe for the past eight to 10 years. What compelled me to write the book is, I've had the good fortune of having an incredible career as an advisor. Life has been good to me, and I want to extend that opportunity to more people. And there are a lot of myths and misconceptions about the business. A lot of people don't get into it ... It's important to talk about wealth management as a very durable sustainable career for the long term. You're very much like an internal medicine doctor … I just think it's a wonderful career for anybody who has the patience and the determination to succeed.
It does take time to get clients, I would say a good three to five years. That investment is so important that once you do that, clients come to you automatically. You get referrals, you establish yourself. And I've seen too many people fail at this. They're all from great schools. They fail because they don't quite understand their purpose.
The purpose should not be making money. Making money should not be a goal in any field, especially in this field. But if you are motivated to help people, help them achieve their goals, you're trying to really add value, money will be a byproduct. I also see a lot of existing advisors I speak to, that more of the time were stuck in their business. They don't know how to grow ... So I've tried to convey [my team's] best practices to a solo practitioner, somebody starting out, somebody struggling — how can they redefine themselves? I'd like to see the business adopt a lot of best practices.
FP: What do you think is missing from other publications on how to be a financial advisor that your book might add to the conversation?
RS: I would say the majority of the books are all about asset allocation and how to make money, how to invest. And they have other books about process. But there are very few books which are written by financial advisors for new and existing advisors. And so I felt there was a gap up there. And there was a gap in terms of, people have not been used to understanding what wealth management is. That's minorities, people of color, women and also diverse populations.
FP: You reference barriers to entry for women and people of color specifically. What do you think makes now a moment of greater opportunity for these groups, and how do you think they can be encouraged to enter this profession?
RS: So there's a social justice angle to this. We are living in a society (that) is very unequal. And you can't guarantee outcomes, but you have to give people opportunities. Wealth management, for some reason, has always been a closed profession in some ways, a little bit too esoteric for a lot of people. And I also feel for a country to be sustainable longer term, we need much more equality of wealth ... For that immigrant family or just a lower-middle-class family, I think wealth management is a great conduit and a great career to bridge some of that inequality. You get to meet people who are wealth creators.
And you're right, it's got to look like America. And it does not. The advisor age is rapidly [growing] ... Senior advisors will retire over the [next] five to 10 years. There is going to be an incredible transfer of wealth to the millennials and Gen Z. And Millennials are the most progressively aware. They are diverse. They believe in equality. They believe in working with people who are also diverse. So I think there's a great opportunity, given this confluence of factors, for a young person thinking about this field, or somebody who's working in a job and maybe they're dissatisfied. There's all kinds of pathways now to the field that didn't exist 35 years ago.
FP: Related to that, what else do you think the wealth industry can do to improve its outreach to these untapped pools of talent?
RS: The industry as a whole, I think, should be out front on college campuses and having orientation sessions where they talk about the career of a financial advisor. Demystify it and show examples of many diverse advisors in the industry who can be spokespersons, who can talk about their career, what it meant for them. And I think people will relate to that quite a bit. So they have to double up on their outreach, to talk about what a great career this is.
I'm a big believer that you need to give back, and I believe that a diverse team is actually stronger. Diversity is more than ethnic — it's your economic background ... If you look at our team, go to our website, it's certainly ethnically diverse, and that was a very conscious decision for me. I wanted to make sure that we provided opportunity to women. If I found somebody interesting and they were from a diverse background, I would spend a little bit more time to find out if they have what it takes to succeed in this field. So that's a personal social justice objective for me.
FP: What are you looking forward to doing next?
RS: With the book, I'm sure I'll be called upon to perhaps talk at industry forums, to share ideas and best practices, and I'm looking forward to that. I'd love to help young people succeed in the business … I'd love to impart whatever I have learned in my career to others. And perhaps there are other books in the future.
FP: What was it like for you to write this?
RS: As I mentioned, during the pandemic, there was a lot of time. So my goal was to devote two to three hours every morning. I'm an early riser. I'd get up at five o'clock in the morning and make a pot of coffee and just write and think about what questions over the years people have asked me about the business. How do you build your brand? How do you develop your philosophy? How do you build a team? How do you find clients? How do you keep clients?
And also softer things, like mind-body health. I talk about meditation being a very important part of my daily routine. And I think part of my success in the field, I really credit meditation for. And also make sure you're eating healthy and exercising and all that stuff. So it took me a while to compile the main pillars of the book, and then I would write it.
