Ep #84: Surviving Depression To Find Happiness & Success - The Career of Dave Grant

January 25, 2017

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Today we're talking about a few topics that don't often get discussed in the financial planning space: how your mental health and business are related, and what happens when you struggle with them both. Dave Grant, now the head of Retirement Matters, shares his journey as a financial planner and entrepreneur and opens up about his recent experience with depression.

Dave has spent his entire career as a financial advisor, changing firms several times before establishing his own. In 2013 he started one of the first truly niche financial planning firms, Finance for Teachers, to work with the community of teachers that included his wife and close friends.

Life as a business owner can be tough, however, and Dave found himself under immense pressure to run his new firm, keep up with his day job of actual financial planning (which he loves), and write on the side, too. He talks about how he got out of the prolonged depression that was triggered when the pressure of business became too much, and how he used his love for writing as therapy. This is a great episode for all of us in the business, because sometimes things get difficult and while we don't always know what to do; you're certainly never alone.

Listen to the Full Interview:

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What You'll Learn from This Episode:

How Dave ended up moving from Britain to the U.S., and how he got started as a financial advisor.
The pros and cons of job-hopping, which seems to be common among young advisors.
What it took for Dave to finally make the leap from advising within someone else's firm to being his own boss as an entrepreneur.
How Dave built the connections necessary to start his business and build his niche.
The personal and professional pressure that triggered Dave's depression, and the raw but inspired writing that came out of the experience.
Why you absolutely should not compare yourself to other financial advisors in an attempt to measure your success.