Twenty years ago, Joel Worsfold felt like he had hit his ceiling as a financial advisor.
“I needed help to get to that next level, and I didn’t know how to do it on my own,” Joel says.
In addition to feeling like his financial advisor growth had stalled, Joel sometimes also felt like he struggled to “turn off” after work in his pursuit of perfection.
“You always want perfection, at least I did, which doesn’t exist, which is a hard thing to chase,” says Joel, now Managing Director, Partner and Wealth Advisor at Carson Wealth in West Des Moines, Iowa.
A desire to break through that ceiling led Joel to Ron Carson, and that first meeting with Ron led Joel down a path he never could have envisioned.
“I wanted someone outside the firm that I was working with, because I wanted them to see it from a different perspective,” he says.
That search for coaching for financial advisors eventually led him to Ron Carson, and Joel was immediately drawn in by Ron’s passion for his work.
“He’s electrical all the time, and you feel it,” Joel says of Ron. “You can feel it when you’re standing next to him. There aren’t very many people who have that going for them.”
Joel shared Ron’s passion for helping his clients work toward securing their financial freedom, and that led him to join Carson Coaching in 2006.
Joel’s Executive Business Coach at Carson, Greg Opitz, challenged Joel in ways designed to get him outside of his comfort zone and help him prioritize the things that mattered most.
“I think it’s frustrating for some of the coaches that they can see so clearly what you need to do, but can’t get the advisor to see it,” Joel says.
As an example, Joel points to a time Greg pushed him to start a newsletter. At the time, Joel remembers thinking, “Everyone has a newsletter, and they’re long and they don’t keep people’s attention.”
But Greg continued to push, and once Joel started sending his newsletter, sure enough, it was an immediate hit with clients.
“You know, if we missed one, like, for a week, (you’d hear) ‘What happened to the news there?’” Joel says. “’I’m like, you’ve got to be kidding me.’”
That wasn’t the only time Greg’s advice would prove correct.
“There were multiple things that I did that I completely disagreed with,” Joel says. “But once he pointed me in the right the direction, I gave it everything I could give it. And 99% of the time, he was right.
“The coaches, they see things that you don’t see. They get to see a whole bunch of other partners (advisors) are doing the same thing. They’re really good at this. Why not give them some blind faith and try it once?”
You can learn more about Carson Coaching and Joel’s journey with Carson by downloading our case study, “Reaping the Rewards: The Journey Through Coaching, Partnership and Succession.” It covers every step of Joel’s Carson journey, the lessons he learned and the challenges he faced along the way – all with a true partner in his corner.
