For digital natives, the key to finding an honest answer to their questions on the internet begins and ends with one word: Reddit.
That holds true for young financial advisors, nearly 16,000 of whom have joined the
The "sub" — which recently celebrated hitting 15,000 members by hosting its first
Malone, who still actively moderates the subreddit, said there is a strong desire among young advisors for more than simple news and advice articles. They want to be a part of the conversation themselves, he said. Advisors are flocking to the sub, with a third of its current members joining in just the past year.
The surge in users may have been caused in part by the pandemic, which drove advisors to remote work. While such an arrangement is ideal for many young advisors, to Brown, anecdotal evidence suggests that some advisors who were hired during the virtual-only era of the pandemic have not progressed as fast as their in-person peers.
Malone's experience backs that up.
"We hired an advisor less than a year before COVID-19 happened," he said. "This person was fresh out of college. Really no other experience at all in a professional environment. And then he was remote for two years. Then we parted ways. It just didn't work out. A lot of it, I think, was just because we were not all together to do that professional development."
"It is much harder to learn the business as a new planner when 100% virtual,"
In an email to Financial Planning, Brown said that r/CFP "can serve as a resource in the larger landscape of the other resources available to financial planners when starting and progressing throughout their careers."
An anonymous conversation
In the wake of the pandemic, r/CFP has become an incomparable community for young advisors looking for honest advice and candid conversations about the industry they are navigating.
Although institutions already offer a host of resources to early-career advisors, Malone says that the sub's anonymity and conversational design is more engaging than more formal, one-sided types of educational content.
"r/CFP is really just the only place where you can have these anonymous conversations about our profession," Malone said.
"A lot of those professional development topics that we see are people that are asking, like, 'Hey, I'm in kind of a rough spot with my current firm, between a rock and a hard place,'" Malone said. "And it gives them a space to talk about these issues without needing to say the name of the firm. They don't need to say their name, but they can go into excruciating detail about their situation. And there's a really good chance that no one could ever put together who that is or where they work. It's a great space for talking about those really private conversations where you just don't feel comfortable doing it anywhere else, you know, Twitter or LinkedIn."
Members have used the sub to talk about sensitive topics like
"I love everything about this sub. [There is] always some relevant post I can either relate to or something I haven't thought of," one member posted. Another wrote, "This sub is awesome, [it] has been so helpful to me."
Future moves
As the sub attracts more members, Malone is planning more AMAs with even bigger names in the industry. Jason Wenk, the founder and CEO of Los Angeles-based Altruist, is set to host an AMA on the subreddit in September, with Carl Richards, the founder of the Behavior Gap, following soon after in October.
Outside his own ambitions for r/CFP, Malone said he ultimately wants it to be a community shaped by its members.
"It's not owned by the moderators," Malone said. "This belongs to the community. … Moderators are just here to keep the guardrails up."
