Spotlight on Jen Walenter

In this episode, Jeremy and Jen take over The Wiser Financial Advisor podcast to talk about Jen’s exciting transition into her new role. Jen is Series 65 licensed and currently pursuing the Certified Financial Planner™ (CFP®) designation as she grows into Keystone’s third adviser position. She’ll be joining client meetings alongside Josh and Jeremy, continuing to build her expertise and deepening relationships with our clients.

Before coming to Keystone, Jen spent more than 13 years with Edward Jones, where she guided clients through complex financial decisions with empathy, clarity, and genuine care. Today, her top priority remains providing high-level, personal service—always with a warm smile.

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Contact Josh Nelson: https://www.keystonefinancial.com
Contact Jeremy Busch: https//www.keystonefinancial.com
Podcast Editing: Tim Leaman/info.primegen@gmail.com

Transcript

Wiser Financial Advisor – Spotlight on Jen

Hi Everyone, and welcome to the Wiser Financial Advisor show with Josh Nelson where we get real, we get honest and we get clear about the financial world and your money. Let the financial fun begin!

Jeremy: Welcome to another episode of the Wiser Financial Advisor. I’m Jeremy Bush, CFP, and I will be your host today. Joining me is Jen Walter. And you know, Josh has had a big 25 year anniversary for Keystone Financial Services, and so we are looking back, asking, “Do you remember when?” We thought this would be a good opportunity to spotlight you, Jen, and talk about your history. So tell us, how did you start your career in the financial industry?

Jen: I started in late 2010 and got introduced by a family friend to a financial company. They said, “Hey, come work here and you can figure out the path you want to choose. Come join us.” So I went ahead and began my career there. I was an office administrator for many years. I didn’t have a strong financial background, didn't go to school for that. So finding out about the financial world was fantastic, but 2010 looked quite a bit different than it does today. Still, I feel like it gave me a solid foundation into what the financial industry looks like with investing and how to approach good client relationships.

Jeremy: Let's go back in time. We're hopping into the DeLorean. In 2010, what are the most notable things to you about what the financial services industry looked like then?

Jen: Recently I attended a birthday party to celebrate a great man's 100th birthday. And up on the wall they had posted what happened in 1925. And so I thought, let's look back at my career and what happened in 2010, right? The BP oil spill happened at that point. That changed a lot. It was a big news event. The Affordable Care Act was signed into law, which feels a lot more recent than 2010, but its 15 years already. Holy cow. Another crazy thing—the iPhone 4
launched and it was only $200 for 16 gig. That was pretty big then. Facebook was only about 500 million users, which Facebook is now just over 3 billion users. Isn't that crazy to think about? 500 million is not a small number but compared to today it is. And something that shocked me going back in time, is that the Dow Jones closed by year end at 11,500. Today it's at approximately 44,000. So there have been wild changes in 15 years. Those are just highlights of 2010 to today, showing how much its changed from when I started working.
What was my day-to-day like back then? Well, paper reigned supreme. E signature was not a thing, so everything had to be printed and packed with physical signatures, which definitely provided a different experience for everybody involved. Paperwork either had to be put in the mail or clients had to come into the office to sign. That's just how it was done. We did a lot of
technological things, but not to the degree we do now. Texting wasn't a thing back then. It was around, but not from a business standpoint. We couldn't text clients.

Jeremy: That's still a pretty new thing. It's within the last year, maybe 2, that the SEC has relaxed about it and said, “OK, now you can text clients.” There are still a lot of rules around that.

Jen: Absolutely. We use some of these technologies as part of our day-to-day now, but it wasn't that way back then. Regulations were huge around how we handled things. It shows how much technology expedites our experience for clients and for us.

Jeremy: Yeah, even here at Keystone, it doesn't seem like a day goes by when there's not some new tech thing. We know Josh is a big proponent of efficiencies and everything. A lot's happened over the last 15 years with that. So, take us through your progression with Edward Jones up to present day. We find you now getting ready to do that CFP (Certified Financial Planner) thing, transitioning into an advisor role. What's led you to this point?

Jen: When I started my career, it was presented to me that I could look at being an advisor or be a branch office administrator. I always knew in the back of my mind that I wanted to be an advisor. I wanted the challenge and wanted a great relationship with clients. It felt like it mixed a lot of good worlds. But because I didn't understand a lot of the details when it came to the stock market, mutual funds, annuities, I got on the path of an administrator to get a solid foundation
and see how everything works from an admin standpoint. So, the plan always was to become an advisor. But as life happens, the timing never felt right. I got married, had a baby, and then there was the pandemic, all of these things. So, I was an
administrator for about 13 years. I got to work with a couple different advisors, different branches, different cities, thousands of clients. I loved that experience. And then, you know what, when its time, it’s time. I felt called to go ahead and pursue the advisor track. I had the very fortunate opportunity to work for the Home Office at Edward Jones and work from home. That helped me see a completely different side of the business, which kept solidifying how much
I wanted to be an advisor. And then I got a fabulous call from somebody you all know who's sitting next to me: Jeremy, who offered the opportunity to come work for Keystone. And something you promoted was that Keystone is a big believer in pursuing education, pursuing credentials, reaching for that star. And that’s when it felt like a natural fit for me to become an advisor. My first year at Keystone, I got to learn so much, which applied all my administrator knowledge in a different way. Josh was very warm and welcoming, saying, “Absolutely, what can
we do.” And so that's where we are today and now I'm pursuing the CFP, which is a big undertaking. I'm ready for that challenge because I think it will enhance my understanding of financial planning in a way that nothing else will. I'm very excited for that journey. So, it's all been intertwined. It's all been working for the good and I'm excited to see what the future holds.

Jeremy: Well, and not many people know this story. It’s no big secret or anything, but you were actually the one that got me started in financial advising way back with Edward Jones. Then many years later I had the opportunity to say, “Come on over this way.” So yes, it's been a fun go round.

Jen: Yes. Full circle.

Jeremy: When I first started being a financial advisor, you were the office administrator in the office I was in. I learned a lot from you about the administrative side. I remember you would always tell me, “You're going to be a better advisor for whatever office you're in, if you understand the administration part of it.” Honestly, I have carried that with me everywhere I go, and I believe it. When I started here at Keystone, I started out as a client relationship specialist.
It was a lot of the OP stuff. I was already licensed at that point to be an advisor, but we took a long route on that one. So, thanks for that right there.

Jen: No matter what career you’re in, I feel like you bring to the table all of your previous experiences, especially if you see how they're like Lego pieces. They all fit together. It all enhances your understanding of the world, your understanding of people, and it makes you much more aware of the situation that's bigger than you and what's your little piece in it. It's
fantastic.

Jeremy: You’ll find as you get more into the CSP too, that it's all interrelated. When you're talking to clients about their situation, everything is related to something else, right? So just coming in with the wealth of experience and client relationship experience you've had is going to be a huge boon for connecting with people. So are you excited about the CFP? Are you scared?

Jen: I feel like I have schoolgirl jitters like right before school starts. I'm really jazzed to get into it, and I know once I get into it, I'll be in textbooks and seeing how everything applies. I am so excited to get to another level of financial planning. So I hope all of that excited anticipation carries through the whole thing. There will be some days that are a little more challenging and I'll have lots of questions, but I look forward to taking it on. Becoming a Certified Financial Planner is the gold standard for financial advisors and it’s going to be a game changer for sure.

Jeremy: We all know you're going to be great at it, but like you were saying, you do this job because the financial services industry is an ever-changing landscape, as we were talking about going back to 2010 through present day. It also seems to be speeding up, right? There are always new regulations coming in, like regulation BI, the Best Interest thing. So, with all the various roles you’ve had in the financial services industry, was there any one thing that came about where at the time you thought, “This is completely going to change how we have to do things.”

Jen: There were probably a lot of events in my career where we’d ask ourselves, “OK, what's going to happen here?” For example, the first time I saw a big downturn in the market. When Brexit happened, that was huge in terms of wondering what's going to happen in the world. But I don't know if there's anything that I felt like would be life-changing in the sense of we might not get through this. We are going to get through it together. We're all going to get through these events. It's going to change a lot of how we do our day-to-day. When the DOL (Department of Labor) ruling was announced, that was a game-changer for day-
to-day. It didn’t go through, but I think they are still working on forms. 

 
Jeremy: You make a good point with that, when the Department of Labor ruling came out with all of this stuff, which was I think about 2017, right? We were both still working for Edward Jones then.

Jen: Yeah.
Jeremy: And that entire company was saying, “This is the new rule, and we're going to instill this. We're going to do this.” And a lot of people thought, “Well, this is going to make more work for us on the back end.” As often happens with legislation, especially in our industry, someone comes out with legislation, but they don't give you clear steps such as what to do by what time. They throw it out there and figure the timeline out later. And then sometimes it happens and
sometimes it does not. It’s kind of a moving target.

Jen: Yes, it is, and in this industry, you go into it knowing that your day-to-day won't ever look the same because regulations change and technology changes. The market changes. World events happen. That's part of what makes this industry fascinating, is knowing you have to roll with the punches. It helps us when we're having good conversations with people. We can say we have
been through a lot of ups and downs and seen a lot of changes and we’ve built our confidence, knowing we're all going to get through this together. Let's put together a plan.” Say we need to get to Hawaii—we're not sure when we're going to get to Hawaii; we don't know if it's by boat or plane, but we're going to figure this out and we're going to do this together. And if we have to change course, we certainly can. Every year solidifies how much we have to adapt and change, which has built a solid foundation for a lot of us in the financial industry to know
what we're doing. We approach it on a personal level, but we are all trying to get there at some point. So how can we get there with the least number of waves, knowing there will be a lot more to anticipate.

Jeremy: That's a good analogy. I I love how you're saying we're gonna get there together. And here at Keystone anyway, it's not just an advisor in a room with the client, right? That might be what a review meeting looks like, but on your day-to-day business, we have a team of 12 now and they're not all even in Colorado. We have out-of-state people working with us. We tried to do a tally of how many years of collective experience we have in this office as far as years in the market and whatnot. Last I checked, we were over 150 years. We're probably more than that.
But I do like the analogy of steering the ship collectively. That doesn't mean we won’t make turns here or there, because things are going to happen. But that’s a good way to think about financial planning. We’ve both seen some pretty volatile years. In your 15 years of doing this, it feels like constant change.

Jen: Oh my goodness, think of all the things that haven’t happened yet.

Jeremy: That's also part of the fun. And so, you've been in enough client meetings and you've sat with Josh and with me in client meetings. I know we have different styles of how we do things, but we also have the same message for clients as well, and each of us really knows the reality in which the financial world lives. There will be scary times and good times. And half the stuff that happens we forget about after a few years until we sit down to remember what was happening in 2010, right? Our main goal at any given time is to digest all of the changes. We're
going to be taking it in, figuring out how it works for clients. And especially in uncertain times, part of our role is to be the voice of reason, the calming voice in the room, to remind people that we have a plan and we're not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater because something bad happens. That’s a big help to people, and I think you fit into that very well. I for one am excited to see you as a CFP. I'm sure you'll have your own style as well about these
things, which adds to the team.

Jen: Thank you. Well, I definitely feel honored to be a part of the Keystone team in general, whatever role that is. I'm especially excited to be an advisor and find out what kind of relationships we can develop and the people that we can help. I'm excited to make good connections with more people and be able to be that voice of reason when things feel like there's a lot of unknown out there. I even love doing that. It's a lot of fun to help people in the good times and bad, and very rewarding.

Jeremy: Yeah, very rewarding. You've seen that already. Well, Jen, thank you very much. That’s the spotlight on Jen Walter and her history, always looking towards the future.

Jen: Thank you for having me.

Josh: We love feedback, and we'd love it if you would pass it on to me directly at
josh@keystonefinancial.com. Also, please stay plugged in with us, get updates on episodes, and help us promote the podcast by rating us five stars and also subscribing to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast service.
The opinions voiced on the Wiser Financial Advisor show are for general information only and not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. To determine what may be appropriate for you, consult with your own accountant, financial or tax advisor prior to investing. Investment advisory services offered through Keystone Financial Services, an SEC
registered investment advisor.