Denise Schirmann is a partner in the Thompson Schirmann Group in the Barrington, Ill. office of Morgan Stanley Smith Barney. Since she became a Financial Advisor eight years ago, after twelve years out of the workforce, her career has taken off. In 2004, her first year at Smith Barney, she won the Triple Crown: an award which was given based on ranking in three categories: new accounts, new assets and gross production for the first 6 months in production. She was a member of the Blue Chip Council from 2005 to 2009, a recognition program for Financial Advisors who, within their first five years, demonstrate the highest professional standards in addition to excellence in client service. She is also a Certified Financial Planner, the recognized standard of excellence in her field.

What did you do before you became a Financial Advisor?

After graduating from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, I worked in marketing and advertising for five years. Then I had my first child and took a leave of absence that ended up lasting twelve years.

Why did you decide to take this direction?

I have a good friend from college who is a regional director for a small investment firm. For years, he told me I should become a Financial Advisor. Even though I had taken some financial courses in college, I didn't really feel qualified. But he would say, "It's not necessarily all about finance. You can always learn that part of it."

What was it that he saw in you?

I really get along well with people, because I am interested in everybody’s story, and I've always really liked staying current on all sorts of world events. So talking to people about their lives has always been something that I feel very comfortable with.

Also, finance is really strategic--it's about looking forward. It's not what has happened, it's about how you structure things to happen down the road the way you want them to. And I'm very interested in "How do we get there?"

So when it was time to return to a career, I listened to him. We were living in Phoenix then, and Arizona State University had a two-year executive MBA program. It was for people who were working full time and I felt I was working full-time raising my three children! I graduated in December 2000, just before we moved to the Chicago area for my husband's job.

How did you get started?

Once I got my family settled, I decided to get licensed. I was in class studying for the Series 7 Securities License the week 9/11 happened.

I didn't know if it was a good or a bad time to start a business, but I decided to test the waters. So in late 2002, I opened an office near my home for my friend's firm.

Then I became active in the community - things that I really cared about, like the Chamber of Commerce, a group called Women in Networking, and a local educational foundation where I'm now the chairperson. It was really helpful in terms of getting to know people.

How else did you market yourself?

When I started out, I thought, "In order for me to do my job, I have to meet people that I can help." Then the local Costco held a business fair to support a local charity, and a table cost one hundred dollars. So I decided to get a stand. They put me in front of the juice machine. Some people would ask me how it worked, and by the end of the day I could tell them. Then we'd transition into, "Do you know if your retirement is set? How do you feel about the markets?” I still have some very good clients from that day.

Why do you think that gambit worked so well?

Maybe what distinguished me was that I never like to focus on the markets in the short term. Instead I like to talk about trends and how people should be responsible for their own retirement. That really differentiates you from somebody who’s just telling you whether you should buy one stock versus another.

Even then I felt that people have very different needs today than they did twenty years ago, when they felt certain that Social Security would be there, or they knew they would have a pension from a lifetime of employment at a single company. For the most part, that's gone and people need help. As I always tell my clients, we can't control the market. It will always be volatile and there’ll likely be a number of bear markets during your retirement. So, if we know markets can be good and bad, but we just don't know when, we have to have plans in place for both. It doesn’t mean we never make adjustments, but we don't all of a sudden pull the plug in response to something we don’t control.

Was it an advantage for you to start your business after 9/11?

Absolutely. When there's turmoil in the market, that's when people re-evaluate. And it's a great opportunity for Financial Advisors who are very good at what they do to help them.

How did you land at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney?

I soon started getting recruiting calls from larger firms. So because I enjoyed the job and I seemed to be doing it pretty well, I decided to think about one of them.

My former company was very good, but many of the people I was working with were higher net worth and they just didn't have the platforms to accommodate that--a lot of what they offered was proprietary mutual funds. So after doing a lot of research, I ended up coming to Smith Barney (now Morgan Stanley Smith Barney) in August 2004.

Why have you always had such a high net worth clientele?

Maybe because I’ve always wanted to continually learn and develop my skills. When I became a Financial Advisor, I began reading all the different industry magazines because I felt I owed it to my clients to really understand the business. And during the recent market turmoil, in 2008, I went back to school to get my CFP. Developing your craft always leads to a higher level of comfort for higher net worth clients.

It sounds as though you've always taken a fairly craftsman-like approach to your profession.

Just as you talk to your clients about having a financial plan, you also need a plan to manage your career. There's a lot of transition in this industry, and it gives your clients a level of comfort to know that you’ll be there to get them through the ten or more years to retirement and the thirty or so years in retirement. I might not make it that long, but if you have a good business plan, they'll know you've trained somebody to take over.

Did you develop this calm and steady mindset on your own, or did you learn it somewhere?

I grew up in an industrial blue collar town and my dad ran a small machine shop business. I graduated high school in 1981 at the height of the last severe recession and watched him navigate through it and remain calm, and I think that was very helpful. If the plane’s going down, you don’t want a pilot who's screaming, "We're all going down!" You want the pilot who says, "Okay, how do we respond appropriately?" My dad has since retired, but the business is still going strong. They've had to adapt, but you have to do that if you want to stay relevant.

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