Getting Started in Financial Consulting

Book Description

Comprehensive Coverage
Completely Up-to-date!

A detailed road map for getting started as an independent financial consultant

Each year, thousands of people from all walks of life leave the security of their nine-to-five jobs to pursue careers as independent financial consultants. For a great many of them, the experience is financially and personally rewarding beyond their expectations. If you, too, are thinking about taking the big leap into becoming a financial consultant, but you aren't sure how to go about it, this book is for you.

How can I be sure that financial consulting is right for my personality? What kinds of training and skills do I need to succeed, and how do I get them? What special licenses or certification are required? How do I find clients and build lasting relationships with them? With the help of first-person accounts from successful financial consultants from across the country, expert Edward J. Stone provides complete answers to these and all your questions concerning:
* Acquiring and honing key skills, including the all-important "people" skills
* Organizing and structuring your business
* Indispensable software tools
* Services you can offer clients and why you should specialize
* Marketing your services, targeting clients, and building a solid core clientele
* Why you should become certified and how to go about it
* Profiling clients and drawing up formal financial plans
* Dealing with state and federal regulations
* Contracts and key legal considerations
* Surviving in a down market

Customer Reviews:

Pick another book to "Get Started with".......2006-06-25

The author Edward Stone did nothing for this book but interview a bunch of different financial consultants then write this book. Shouldn't an author of a book know what he is writing about? Find a book written by a financial consultant. The writing style was incredibly boring and I had a hard time finishing this book. This book did very little to educate me on getting ready to be a financial consultant.

Way outdated.......2006-04-05

I borrowed this book from my local library back in 2001 when I was getting into the financial planning business, and it gave me some basic information. It was easy to read, but I never felt I could trust what the book said, because it all sounded "too easy." But it was an eye-opener, hence the 3 stars.

But, this book is now six years old, so it's of very little value to someone wanting to get started. The only book on this topic that's been updated is Jeffrey Rattiner's "Getting Started" book, but that's more toward starting an FP business. Another expensive book by an author named Nancy something offers too little for the $55 price; besides you cannot trust that book's reviews on Amazon because all the positive ones seemed planted by the same person. So check out Rattiner's book (2005 edition) to see if it's right for you.

Excellent for Newbies.......2003-12-20

As a new person to the world of financial consulting, I was searching for a way to make sense of all the different certifications available, how to go about getting them, which would be the right certification for me, etc. This book gave me 100% of what I was looking for and more. In addition to certification information, the author discusses, in a highly readable manner, other nuts-and-bolts beginner's topics, such as legal/regulatory issues, marketing, and different services one could offer a client. I highly recommend this book to anyone starting out in the field, or to someone just wanting to explore whether financial planning might be for them.

Good stuff but bad writing style.......2003-10-09

Instead of filtering information and writing it appropriately, the author keeps quoting financial planners and their opinions about different topics. These opinions are often not well fundamented, repetitive, biased by self-experience or contradicting each other, in a way that it makes reading very difficult and boaring. It took me weeks to finish the book. It has useful (although basic) information for people thinking of starting in financial planning, but contend could be condensed in 20% of the pages.

Excellent Overview.......2003-04-26

Great overview of the industry and how to enter into the Financial Planning profession. Highly recommended this book for those who want an insight into the job functions and roles of a typical FP.

Customer Reviews:

This book got me a signed book contract.......2004-08-04

I purchased "Writing That Sells" by Dr. Kathleen A. Begley at a Chester county PA book signing and writing seminar. Dr. Begley not only signed my book, but she gave me the key idea that helped me get my own (and first) book contract signed. That idea, which is one of many important ideas in her book is to tell the publisher how your book will greatly benefit the publishing company, not how the book will help you.
It worked for me, and it will work for you.

Paul H. Harkins

Writing That Sells.......2002-07-28

I found this book provides simple yet effective techniques to get others to embrace your ideas. The self tests were particularly effective in reinforcing the teaching points. Easy reading at an affordable price that will surely produced results and pay for itself.

Book Description

In this lively and hard-hitting book José Bové and François Dufour recount the dramatic events of their famous demonstration against McDonald's and examine the issues behind the resulting campaign. Their proposal for an alliance of farmers, consumers and ecologists to promote public awareness received enthusiastic support at the WTO protests in Seattle.

Customer Reviews:

We Don't Want to be Assimilated!!!!!.......2003-03-14

Interesting to read firsthand about the work of these courageous activists from France - Jose Bove is certainly not the leader of a group of country bumpkins or Luddites as I had inferred from the popular media. This book covers personal backgrounds & histories of their involvement in various farmers unions , these guys are effective organizers who know their business and also working farmers with a feeling and respect for the land, quality of life and food are goals of paramount importance.

Divided into 3 parts:
1st - The McDonald's story and other planned protests told from the viewpoints of both Bove & Dufour. The McDonald's incident took place in response to import duties imposed on Roquefort cheese in retaliation for EU's refusal to import American hormone treated beef. Not a random or spontaneous incident but a well planned out protest carried out to attract public attention. Both Dufour & Bove have been involved more than 30 years in various movements for change in France.
2nd - History of intensive farming over the last 50 years in France, farming economics, factory farms. Covers topics here such as genetically modified crops, mad cow disease, environmental destruction caused by intensive pig farming
3rd - Farming as a global issue world trade organization and "free trade", protest in Seattle, growth of a movement, a new vision.

An inspiring read for those interested in food, farming and globalization.

It's not just France.......2001-08-29

Since August 12, 1999, Bové has been an icon of the movement against "free" trade and the WTO. It was then that he and nine other members of the French Farmers Union (Confédéracion Paysanne) dismantled a MacDonald's restaurant in their hometown of Millau, loaded the pieces on their tractors and carted them to the local police station. MacDonald's was targetted both as a symbol of corporate domination of public life and as a leading vendor of what the French call malbouffe, food that is not worthy of being eaten.
The actual target of this protest was a 100% duty imposed on Roquefort cheese by the United States. The WTO had ruled that the French were violating trade laws by refusing to import U.S. hormone-fed beef, allowing the U.S. to impose punitive tariffs on Roquefort and 78 other French products. Bové and his fellow defendants raise sheep that produce milk for Roquefort cheese.
The MacDonald's action by the Farmers Union lit the imagination of thousands of activists and was one of the major events leading to the protests against the WTO meeting in Seattle a few months later. Bové and Dufour were in Seattle as part of the official French agricultural delegation but their official status did not deter them from further political theater. They distributed 500 pounds of his Roquefort cheese at the Pike Place Market and they marched arm-in-arm with farmers and AFL leaders at the head of the big march of November 30. In their book Dufour says, "It was an important signal: that in the first mass demonstration of trade unionists and ecologists, farmers were at the front. It's a particularly powerful image for Third World countries, where the majority of the population are farmers or live in rural areas."
In stepping forward as spokesmen against corporate domination of trading rules in general and agriculture in particular, Bové and Dufour have exposed themselves to personal attacks by the major media outlets. They are usually portrayed as nationalistic bumpkins, Luddites or egotistical publicity hounds. Their book puts the lie to much of that. Philosophically they are in favor of policies supporting regional food self-sufficiency--as opposed to policies which promote agribusiness. Why, they ask, should WTO regulations be imposed on all food when less than 5% is actually exported? It is clear that they have spent decades working on agricultural policy; much of the book describes how shifting farm policies since World War II have driven the small farmers out while favoring industrial agriculture dependent on long-distance transportation, monoculture, massive inputs of chemicals and over-reliance on the major agricultural and food distribution companies. Bové and Dufour argue that this is destroying the rural ecology, throwing farmers out of work and putting the world's food supplies at risk of catastrophic diseases (e.g., mad cow disease and foot-and-mouth disease, which are currently threatening European herds) or of callous market manipulation. Even without such disasters, the quality of food is deteriorating and taking traditional culture with it. The WTO had not specifically addressed agriculture before the Seattle round, but its proposals for Seattle clearly favored agribusiness' interests over those of small farmers and of less developed countries. This conflict led to the internal failure of the WTO in Seattle.
Bové points optimistically to "[b]uilding on the international gains won in Seattle." What his critics saw as a hodgepodge of dissimilar interests without a clear agenda, he sees as a new nonideological politics that succeeded in stopping the WTO . He suggests that the different viewpoints within the opposition to the WTO are exactly the point: local interests should not be steamrollered by the one-size-fits-all approach of the free-traders. Further trade agreements will require openness to public scrutiny. Although The World Is Not For Sale emphasizes globalization's impact on farming and rural areas, it also touches on the dangers of genetic modifications of plants and animals and on globalization's erosion of human rights--including trade union rights--and cultural diversity. The Farmers Union is not opposed to foreign trade agreements like the WTO, but insist that they must incorporate protection for workers, culture and the environment. The book offers tentative proposals on achieving these protections.

Customer Reviews:

Incredibly sexist .......2006-07-12

I was surprised by the blatantly sexist attitude of the writer. I was paging through the book and at first assumed it was written by a man. I was amazed to see that the author's first name was Cynthia. Some thoughts of the author...women are at a disadvantage in the work place because we don't participate in sports growing up (maybe that was true in the past, but for at least the last 20 years many girls grew up participating in sports). We will be excluded from bonding with colleagues because we won't be able to play on the company's softball league and it would be inappropriate to join the men at bar for drinks after work. There are many good books available on business communication. Don't waste your money on this rubbish.

Good Info.......2001-01-09

There were a lot of interesting ideas in the book. OSme of the techniques can be used immediatly. This book is worth the money.

Book Description

Bisk and Dror assert that the 21st Century can be the Jewish Century, that no other people is better prepared to face its challenges. However, to do so, a stress on the Jewish Future must replace a preoccupation with the Jewish Past. They offer a neo-Zionist ideological analysis of modern Jewish life as an alternative to both classical Zionism and post-Zionism. They conceptualize a Jewish Grand Strategy by clearly defining and delineating between ideology, policy, grand strategy, strategy and tactics, with compelling proposals for what such a revised Grand Straegy might entail. They suggest a concept of reinvigorated Israel-Diaspora relations based on this new Grand Strategy and the potential of the Information Technology Revolution. They also offer a conception of Jewish spirituality that could be as appealing to secular as to religious Jews. They reject the concept of a "Nation that Dwells Alone." Throughout the ages, Jews have affected and been affected by the world more than any other People they assert. They also reject the view that suffering is the dominant feature of Jewish history as this lachrymose perception cannot inspire needed Jewish ambitions in the young. They stress the needs of the Jewish person and insist that there can be no real significance to the continued existence of the Jewish People unless the real life, concrete needs of the individual are addressed. As former Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations and former Cabinent Minister Gad Yaacobi asserts in his foreword, "The book is original, iconoclastic and in some ways revolutionary....It challenges inherited assumptions and calls for positive action. I believe we have before us a book that must become a reference point for Jewish policy makers as quickly as possible."

Customer Reviews:

Will the Jews last?.......2004-02-15

Futurizing the Jews: Alternative Futures for Meaningful Jewish Existence in the 21st Century

Anti-Semitism is rising and the Jews are disappearing at an accelerating rate, with the median age of American Jewry at over 45-10 to 20 years older than other American norms-and interfaith marriage now a routine affair. Unless the advantages of being Jewish are increased, this trend will continue unabated until a 4,000-year-old history comes to a close by the end of the 21st. century.

The erudite authors, of Futurizing the Jews: Alternative Futures for Meaningful Jewish Existence in the 21st Century, Tsvi Bisk and Moshe Dror, examine this trend from an historic to a current political and economic perspective and offer creative and enlightened ways and means to take advantage of contemporary and futuristic technology to create more a meaningful Jewish identity and support system.

In the context of a metamorphic paradigm for the expression of the Jewish concept tikkun olam (healing the world), possible alliances with environmentalists and educators, who in one form or another share this purpose, are proposed. The authors counsel, "... Jews who do not believe in a transcendent, supernatural god ...can aspire to a rich spiritual life within the Jewish tradition."

Bisk and Dror believe that liberal acceptance and uncritical ecumenism-referred to here as "the New Age bromide all `religions' are really the same," are the greatest current threat to the Jewish people, a threat even greater than growing anti-Semitism.

They present their fascinating and thought-provoking account of the the real bottom-line differences in values that still exist between the secular (non-believing Jew) and the rest of society, Zionism not withstanding. "...A Jew cannot have a personal relationship with god, because god is not a person." Admittedly, they had me, a traditionally resistant student of this sort of examination, taking an informal first-hand survey of the people I know, to see if their points hit the mark. I'm still at it.

Why is a Jewish atheist who eats pork on Yom Kippur still regarded as a Jew while a Jew for Jesus who keeps kosher and lays tefillin, is not? What defines a Jew? Are they a people who share a common gene pool, a religion, a history? Are you still a Jew, if you do not believe in a god that answers prayers and intervenes in human affairs? Can you legitimately call yourself a Jew if you are an atheist or an agnostic? Is the threat of anti-Semitism enough to motivate you to nostalgically keep up Jewish traditions in which you do not believe and thereby keep the religion from disappearing? For the secular Jew, the non-believer, what does the basic desire to find meaning and purpose and to live an integrated life have to do with Jewish identity?

Book Description

This digital document is an article from The Futurist, published by World Future Society on January 1, 2005. The length of the article is 1285 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: The future for Jews and Israel: action and innovation may be the keys to Judaism's future.(Society)(Book Review)
Author: Lane Jennings
Publication: The Futurist (Magazine/Journal)
Date: January 1, 2005
Publisher: World Future Society
Volume: 39 Issue: 1 Page: 12(2)

Article Type: Book Review

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Futurizing America's Institutions.: An article from: The Futurist

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Futurizing America's Institutions.: An article from: The Futurist
Richard D. Lamm
Manufacturer: World Future Society
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Book Description

This digital document is an article from The Futurist, published by World Future Society on September 1, 1996. The length of the article is 2600 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Futurizing America's Institutions.
Author: Richard D. Lamm
Publication: The Futurist (Magazine/Journal)
Date: September 1, 1996
Publisher: World Future Society
Volume: 30 Issue: 5 Page: 23

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Futurizing the United States government. (includes excerpt of Critical Trends Assessment Act sponsored by Albert Gore): An article from: The Futurist

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Futurizing the United States government. (includes excerpt of Critical Trends Assessment Act sponsored by Albert Gore): An article from: The Futurist
Albert, Jr. Gore
Manufacturer: World Future Society
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Management | Management & Leadership | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Book Description

This digital document is an article from The Futurist, published by World Future Society on March 1, 1990. The length of the article is 5086 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Futurizing the United States government. (includes excerpt of Critical Trends Assessment Act sponsored by Albert Gore)
Author: Albert, Jr. Gore
Publication: The Futurist (Magazine/Journal)
Date: March 1, 1990
Publisher: World Future Society
Volume: v24 Issue: n2 Page: p22(7)

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Futurizing
Siegel
Manufacturer: John Wiley & Sons Inc
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Running Meetings & Presentations | Skills | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0471025003

Futurizing the Jews: Alternative Futures for Meaningful Jewish Existence in the 21st Century

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Futurizing the Jews: Alternative Futures for Meaningful Jewish Existence in the 21st Century
Tsvi; Dror, Rabbi/Dr. Moshe Bisk
Manufacturer: Praeger Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000ORQ1DO

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The most comprehensive guide available to the wealth of both short and long term jobs to be found in the tourist industry around the world

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