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A Journey From Medicine to Financial Planning: How To Build A Career You Love

  

A picture looks different depending on your vantage. Imagine being in an airplane, thousands of miles above the ground. Immense lakes look like quaint ponds, clouds become wispy cotton candy, and houses appear to be speckled dots like freckles on a nose.


As financial advisors, we see our client’s financial plan as if from an airplane. We recognize how each piece works together and can map out a productive journey to help clients get where they want to go. At least that’s how ACP advisor Cordi Powell, CFP®, EA, and owner of Favored Financial, sees it. 


She says that serving clients in their financial lives is a lot like getting them to visualize the picture on the outside of a puzzle when they’re only looking at the individual pieces. Cordi’s path to financial planning and ACP is unique and extraordinary. She received training as a medical professional but found that her true passion was in helping people (including her own family) find financial wellness and success. 


We are delighted to bring you Cordi’s story today and illustrate how ACP helped her forge a career she loves.

Trading a hospital for an office

Cordi is passionate about the many connections between money and health. They each impact one another in profound and meaningful ways. When you use your money wisely, those good habits and decisions bleed into other areas of your life like a better mindset, deeper life satisfaction, and stronger relationships. 


The same is true for the reverse. Negative financial situations can affect your sleep, exercise, eating, relationships, and more, all of which contribute to your overall health. Throughout her professional journey, Cordi found many useful parallels in both physical and fiscal fitness. 


But her journey to financial planning was far from typical. Cordi trained as a medical professional through residency, at which point her priorities shifted. She wanted to spend more time with her family and desired a career that could give her the flexibility to do so. 


Faith is a central element of Cordi’s life and practice. She volunteered to do financial ministry at her church and loved helping people take an active role in their finances and get out of debt. But people would come to her asking more sophisticated financial planning questions like how and where to invest, and she was inspired to help them get the answers they needed. 


Cordi promptly enrolled in a local college that offered the Certified Financial Planning coursework and began her journey to planning.

Finding ACP

Cordi came across ACP by happenstance but is forever grateful that the dean of her college mentioned the organization and the benefits he derived from membership. After doing her due diligence, she found that ACP checked all her boxes for building a lasting practice: prioritizing long-term client relationships, applying a comprehensive lens to planning, and providing the training necessary to find success. 


The ACP Success Program turned out to be even more effective than she could have predicted. The tools, resources, education, and community were especially important to her as a career changer. The training materials gave her the foundation she needed to start practicing the way she wanted to. She never had an interest in the commission world as she saw first-hand how it negatively impacted some friends and community members throughout her financial ministry.


ACP was an out-of-the-box, turnkey solution that Cordi could customize to fit her unique practice. One of Cordi’s favorite aspects of ACP is the unique retainer model. She finds that it deepens her relationship with her clients and in turn allows them to open up to her about anything they need. When something changes or if they come across a question or concern, they can call her and talk about it without concern over billable hours.


It allows clients to speak freely about their finances, a reputation Cordi is proud to have cultivated. The retainer model also brings more transparency into the financial space as clients know upfront exactly what they are paying for the whole year. There aren’t hidden fees in the retainer model. It’s all about transparency and honesty.


Alongside the importance of tax planning, Cordi found that the ACP model helped her clients immensely with their estate planning needs. There are numerous reasons people put off estate planning, including a lack of familiarity and the need to involve lawyers. But Cordi finds that she can talk with her clients about their ideal outcome, write it all down, and give them the confidence to approach the meeting with their estate planning attorney. It’s freeing to know the outcome you want and be able to simply work with a lawyer to help make it happen.

Finances and health

Cordi sees a deep connection between physical and financial health. She says we have one body to take care of to last us through our lives and the same is true for our finances. It’s crucial to adopt healthy financial practices to live a beautiful life in retirement, and her work allows her to bring those tools to her clients.


But financial health holds another deep connection for Cordi—spiritual health. She attended a seminar on biblical financial planning and found that there were 500 scriptures about prayer and faith and 2,350 related to money. The bible talks about charitable giving, saving, debt, taxes, diversifying investments, wealth transfer, and more. She found that this biblical application resonated with her clients and helped them connect their finances to other parts of their lives. It’s a niche Cordi was passionate about pursuing and found a great avenue to do so.


ACP gave her the tools to customize her business to include elements of her faith. Not every business owner does this, and that’s the beauty of the ACP community. Our members share a set of professional values but manifest them in completely individual ways. The training and support from other members strengthen how you want to practice and the clientele you want to serve.

Once an ACP member, always an ACP member

Cordi credits her business success to the training and community at ACP. She cultivated the tools necessary to build a practice she and her clients love. ACP prepared her to open her practice and the members inspire her to provide the best service day in and day out. 


Cordi takes part in many of the continuing education opportunities and loves learning from and connecting with other members. Her practice was designed to bring advantage and opportunity to her community. She seeks to increase financial literacy and help people find joy, confidence, and security in their financial lives, something she learned to do through ACP. 


All of our members come from diverse backgrounds and different walks of life. While each person has their reason for pursuing this career, they come together to learn, grow, and bring quality financial planning to clients all over the country. 


Are you interested in how ACP can help you build a fulfilling and profitable practice? Learn more.
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