From burnt out financial advisor to agency owner

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Welcome to this week’s edition of the Creator Summit Newsletter where every Tuesday and Friday you’ll get an email from me helping you become a more holistic creator and entrepreneur, or a “Full-Stack Creator” as some might say.

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I left my 9-5 back in November of 2023.

(I’m sitting at my desk in our guest room next to the window with my new ultra-wide curved monitor set up.

And I must say… I wish I would have made the investment sooner. If you’re using a two-monitor setup like I used to, I’d highly recommend the change.)

I graduated college in 2020 and for three years after I was working full-time as a financial advisor.

But not what you typically think when you think of someone working in finance…

“Sell me this pen.”

No, not quite like that. 😂

It was less about pitching stocks like you see in the movies and more about holistic, comprehensive financial planning.

Getting a look at someone’s entire financial picture and providing advice and recommendations to them achieve their goals.

Sounds boring, right?

Well, it was… but it was a great opportunity and I learned an incredible amount about personal finance and investing that will forever benefit me (it sure did this tax season after filing my own LLC).

The only issue was… I had no interest in dealing with other people’s financial situations and spending my free time studying:

• Tax law

• Insurance strategies

• In-depth investing strategies

• The ever-changing investing rules

In other words… I had no passion for the work I was doing.

Ever since I was young I wanted to do really well financially and provide for my future family at a high level… so I looked out at the jobs/careers where people were making the most money.

In my area, the Midwest, people weren’t starting their own companies, and definitely not in their 20s. The only “entrepreneurs” I knew were my parents’ age.

And the only people making a killing working a somewhat regular job were financial advisors…

So, that summed up the criteria I used for deciding what I wanted to do with the rest of my life…

Can you see how that might turn out? Yeah, not great.

Throughout my three years working as a financial advisor, I never really found myself excited to get out of bed and go to work.

It was always an absolute grind to go through the day, do the work, and make the forbidden cold calls in my first year.

It sucked, to put it bluntly.

But I thought, “This is what I’m supposed to do, right? This is how I reach my goals and become wealthy.”

Looking back, I was forcing it… bad.

I stayed too long for a number of reasons… fear of letting other people down. Fear of judgment of going off and doing my own thing. I had spent an insane amount of time studying for different tests and exams to earn certain credentials in the finance space.

It wasn’t easy to make a change.

But I knew I had to do something different when I read this quote from somebody you may have heard of:

The most impactful sentence being the one I bolded above…

It spoke right to my heart… I sure didn’t love what I was doing. So to do great work, I had to make a change and find something I love.

Which led me to experiment with a number of different things.

Until I found writing and building things online.

To shorten this email a bit… I’ll cut to the chase.

I started writing online on Twitter in January of 2023.

I quit my 9-5 job the second I made my first $1 online back in November of 2023.

Since then, I’ve gone on to found an email marketing and newsletter agency called Summit Group as you’ll see in the PS section below.

It was a long journey… a lot of early mornings and late nights but I wouldn’t change it for the world.

I can now truly say I love what I do… and hopefully, I’m on my way to doing great work.

Thanks for reading!

Until next time,

Eric Higgs

P.S.

Summit Group is an Email Marketing Agency that specializes in creating high-value newsletters for brands, businesses, and creators, and driving traffic and leads to their business through email.

If you want to take advantage of the power of email and use it to grow your business, click the link below to learn more: