How to Make First Year Financial Advisor Goals

Getting started as a financial advisor requires a certain amount of planning to ensure that your business has everything it needs to succeed. Setting specific goals for your first year can give you some targets to aim for as you begin the process of marketing your business and acquiring new clients. Tracking your progress and performance against those goals can help you figure out what’s working and what isn’t as you scale and grow.

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How to Set Goals as a Financial Advisor

Goal setting is highly personal, as the objectives you set for your business may be very different from another advisor’s. With that in mind, here are a few important rules of thumb to remember as you map out your goal strategy:

Goals should be specific and actionable, with an objective that’s relevant to your business.
Creating goals that are measurable makes it easier to track your progress.
Each goal you create should have an expected completion date.

In terms of how many first-year financial advisor goals you should set, the number is up to you. Keep in mind, however, that setting too many goals may spread your time and energy too thin. If you’re trying to do too many things at once, then you may not make much progress on any of your goals.

Defining the key areas of your business that are your biggest priorities can be a good place to start. For example, in your first year of business, you might be focused on:

Increasing your visibility through marketing
Acquiring a certain number of clients or fine-tuning a niche
Managing your finances and reaching a specific revenue or AUM threshold
Creating systems that allow you to run your business more efficiently
Developing your skill set and cultivating your expertise
Building out your professional network
Maintaining a good work-life balance

Once you’ve identified the things that are most important to you, you can begin shaping goals for each category.

Studying the objectives of established advisors can offer insight into the types of challenges you’re likely to face, and what goals you might set to conquer them. For example, the number one challenge reported among advisors was growth, according to the 2025 Raymond James RIA Annual Benchmarking Report. Other key areas of focus included compliance management, cybersecurity, technology infrastructure, talent management, profitability, and succession planning.

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5 First-Year Financial Advisor Goals to Set

Advisors reviewing their first-year financial advisor goals.

While your goals should be personal and tailored to your own circumstances, there are some common themes you can build around, as well as some ideas to get you started:

Goal #1: Establish Processes

Processes and workflows can make your first year as a financial advisor easier to manage if you’re able to spend less time dealing with the back-office so you can devote more hours to prospecting and client relationship-building. Some of the core processes to develop center on:

Lead generation and prospecting
New client onboarding
Compliance management
Business development and marketing
Financial planning
Investment management and portfolio construction
Document management and recordkeeping
Communications

Technology tools can help you realize these goals. For instance, choosing the right customer relationship management (CRM) platform can be critical for organization and lead tracking.

Automating and outsourcing can also be helpful. For example, you may delegate certain activities to a paraplanner or financial advisor virtual assistant. The less attention you have to give to the minute day-to-day tasks of running your business, the more time you’ll have to devote to acquiring new clients and other activities that are designed to generate revenue.

These types of goals may be more deadline-based than KPI-driven. For example, you might make it your goal to develop detailed processes for each operational area at a rate of one to two per week until you have everything that you need in place.

Goal #2: Cultivate Your Brand and Marketing Strategy

Your first year as an advisor may be a period of refining your niche to decide who you truly want to serve, but that’s informative for shaping your brand. Branding conveys who you are, what you do, and who you’re uniquely suited to help. A cohesive brand image can also help to foster trust, which can be critical for attracting clients in the early stages of your business.

Marketing is how you promote that brand image to connect with prospective clients and build credibility within the industry. Surprisingly, just 27% of RIAs included in the Raymond James report said they had a marketing plan.

If you don’t have a marketing strategy yet, creating one belongs on your first-year goals priority list. There are different ways to approach marketing as a financial advisor. How you choose to do it can depend on who your ideal client is, and what kind of marketing efforts they’re most likely to respond to.

Some of the ways that you might market your business include online:

Social media
A financial advisor website or blog
Email newsletters
Digital ads
Online seminars or workshops
Collaborations and partnerships

Interestingly, 96% of RIAs polled by Raymond James cited LinkedIn as their number one choice for marketing and communications. LinkedIn can be a lead generation tool, and it can also help you to build your professional network as a fledgling advisor.

As far as goal setting, here are some examples of targets you might try to hit:

Gain [x] number of followers on LinkedIn/Instagram/Facebook, etc.
Post [x] times daily/weekly on your preferred platforms
Increase post engagement by [x%] on your preferred platforms
Add [x] subscribers to your email list per month
Aim for an email open rate/click rate of [x%] per month
Upload [x] new videos/shorts per week to TikTok/Reels/YouTube

Don’t forget about offline marketing initiatives as well. For example, you might launch a direct mail marketing campaign to accompany your email marketing efforts. Or you may market your business through local events that attract the types of clients you hope to work with.

Goal #3: Build Your Book of Business

Without clients, your new business may not reach the one-year anniversary mark. Unless you’re buying a financial advisor practice, you’ll likely spend a sizable part of your first year identifying and connecting with prospects. You can also use online tools to help further your goals here. For example, with SmartAsset AMP, you can get leads for your local area in your email. You can then decide which prospects you’d like to contact, based on the ones that best fit your ideal client profile.

Setting one large goal and several smaller supporting goals can help you approach client acquisition without feeling overwhelmed. For example, setting a main goal of acquiring 50 new clients in your first year works out to roughly four new clients per month, or one client per week.

Once you’ve broken it down that way, you can go a step further and create smaller supporting goals. You might set a goal of cold-calling 10 prospects per day, and then set aside time in your schedule to do so.

Michael Collins, founder and CEO of WinCap Financial, who uses SmartAsset AMP to generate leads, mixes up the time at which he makes his calls in order to catch prospective leads when they’re most available.

“When you originally call between 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., so many people might be working and not available to answer,” said Collins. “I’m more likely to call on a Saturday at 11:00 a.m. than I am after 5:00 p.m., although sometimes I’ll do that because you might catch someone on the way out of work. But I just think sometimes mixing up the hours… I’m more likely to get a call back.”

Goal #4: Grow Your Network

Networking can help to increase your brand visibility and allow you to make connections that you can leverage to scale your business. If you’re not actively building your network yet, that’s an important goal for your first year. Why? Because your network can lead to more referrals, which can help you get those first clients in the door.

There are different ways to build out your network, online and off. Social media can be an easy way to expand your network digitally if you’re engaging in conversations and being active within that particular ecosystem. For example, something as simple as commenting on a social media post could lead to an opportunity to be a guest on a podcast. This could then help you tap into a broader audience.

Networking locally also has value if you’re able to get your name out in your community. Attending local business events sponsored by the chamber of commerce or participating in charity events could provide a significant return on investment of your time if you’re able to build relationships with other financial professionals or meet with prospects face-to-face.

Again, keep your goals clear and specific. For example, you might set a goal to add 25 new LinkedIn connections per month, or attend one financial advisor conference quarterly. Reevaluate your goals monthly to see how much progress you’re making and whether you may need to adjust them.

Goal #5: Maintain Work/Life Balance

Work/life balance is important for maintaining your physical, emotional, and mental well being. That can be difficult to do in your first year if you feel pressured to quickly acquire your first clients, or you’re spending a significant amount of time on back-office tasks.

Creating a daily work schedule and routine can help with maintaining work/life balance. Setting boundaries with clients is also helpful. For example, establishing a clear communication policy lets clients know when you’re available so that you’re not pressured to stay glued to your phone or laptop 24/7.

Some specific goals you might set here include blocking off regular time during the week to meditate or exercise, scheduling a certain number of days off each month, or turning off notifications by a specific time each day. These are small habits that could help you to avoid burning out during your first year and beyond.

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Bottom Line

A financial advisor reviewing goals with a client.

Setting first-year financial advisor goals can give you a blueprint to follow as you begin building your business. At the end of your first year, you can reflect on the progress you made and use that as a guide to set goals for your second year of business and beyond. Just remember, “at the end of the day, it’s somewhat of a numbers game,” as Collins says with regard to his marketing strategy. “Your first three months, you might not get anything right… just a lot of average numbers. So I think it’s just important to have a process, and stick to it.”

Tips for Managing Your Advisory Business

Pre-screening for prospects that meet your client profile can help you save time, ensuring you’re reaching out to prospects you have the best chance of converting. SmartAsset AMP (Advisor Marketing Platform) is a holistic marketing service financial advisors can use for client lead generation and automated marketing. Sign up for a free demo to explore how SmartAsset AMP can help you expand your practice’s marketing operation. Get started today.
Even if you’re a new financial advisor, it’s still important to think about how you’ll manage retirement when the time comes. If you’re a first-year advisor, that may be decades away but it’s really never to soon to begin thinking about what your succession plan might look like. You may also want to consider where a business continuity plan fits into the picture. Continuity planning can ensure that your business is able to operate with minimal disruptions if you’re unable to fulfill your duties or you experience something unforeseen, like a natural disaster.

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