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MAKING CENTS OUT OF THE NEWS
Blog #15
(April 22nd, 2010)
Kicked Upstairs In Honor
By Tom McAllister, CFP®
All modesty aside, I think it proper to call my readers’ attention to a recent honor that came my way. As of a week ago, not only can I call myself a Certified Financial Planning practitioner, but a “Heritage Financial Planner”.
As a paid-up life member of the Financial Planning Association, to which I have belonged since it took the place of both the International Association of Financial Planners (circa 1975) and the Institute of Certified Financial Planners (1977), I find it especially meaningful to be recognized as a Heritage Planner. After all, I am a founder of both organizations’ local chapters. In fact I served as the first Chairman of the Indiana ICPF, and as the second president of the IAFP here in Central Indiana. Looking back over the thirty five years since I left the New York Stock Exchange world to join the then-infant financial planning profession, I think it has been a good run!
I am also fortunate to have had the privilege of serving on three different NASD/FINRA national committees and on the NASD District Conduct Committee in Chicago. After 33 years I am still part of one of these groups. These have been great learning experiences as well as opportunities to serve my profession and the investment industry as a whole. It continues to be a great honor to serve in this manner.
To help clarify my new duties and responsibilities as a Heritage Financial Planner, I have been given a book called “The Heart Of Mentoring,” the implication being that I would now begin mentoring less experienced practitioners. However, I believe I have been mentoring upcoming members of my profession since I joined it in 1975. In fact, it has been my distinct pleasure to see a number of my mentees go forth to serve the financial planning professional on a national level.
Mentoring is, I think, an obligation all professionals and business people share as younger (or newer) people come into our lives. The mentors who offered me guidance in the early years of my own career were vital to my development. Most of those colleagues are now gone ,but I will pay special heed to the late Ray Preston, owner of P.B. & S. Chemical Co., Henderson, KY, for whom I worked four years. Preston taught me a great deal about business and selling while I was in my early twenties.
Then, mid-career, I met Herman W. “Hy” Yurman, one of the eleven co-founders of the entire financial planning profession. Now retired in St. Petersburg and close to 90, he taught me more than any other person during my career in the financial world.
Lastly, the late Ed Lauther (at the time President of Irwin Union Bank and Trust Co., Columbus, IN, and later Chairman of American Fletcher National Bank and Trust Co., Indiana’s then-largest bank), was a mentor. Ed’s quiet friendship and support was a big boost to my self confidence during my first years as a stockbroker. When I tried to thank him for his wisdom and advice, he advised me I could do so only by freely passing along what was freely given to me by mentoring other, younger business persons I meet who appear to have great potential. I continue in this mission to this day.
The best way to be a Heritage Financial Planner is, I believe, not to "pay back", but to “pay the mentoring forward” !
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