Pros
People are nice Company has good reputation Extremely flexible work schedule/work life balance as you own your business, but don’t let this flexibility prevent you from putting in the work (probably should put in 50 hrs/week when getting started)
Cons
Expectation is to do “joint work,” but during hiring process they didn’t tell me that you share your commissions 50/50 with the senior reps you get partnered with; this basically amounts to these senior reps getting free referrals (and eventually clients when the vast majority of new reps fail within first year); was a major focused message at this year’s Annual Meeting Whatever they say you’ll need to produce to succeed, multiply by at least 2 times because of the commission sharing and typical lower premium per policy newer reps experience compared to the more tenured reps. Your only way to earn any meaningful money in your first years is selling insurance, no matter what they will try and tell you. You better have an enormous network of friends, family, acquaintances, or community members or you WILL not succeed. If you are not comfortable prospecting and asking for referrals until you are blue in the face, you will struggle. Despite NM claiming to be a planning focused firm, which they really do try to do a good job at, everything at NM begins and ends with a lot of pressure to sell permanent life insurance (PLI). You will not survive/make any money here unless you sell the dickens out of PLI, especially in your first few years! You will get next to ZERO training on using their proprietary financial planning software (which is pretty darn complicated to use!) or their investment offerings. I figure there is no training in these areas because if you can’t sell life insurance, you’ll be gone in short order anyway. Maybe there train you more if you make it a few years. For self-employed investment professionals, starting grid payouts (35% of GDC) for investment production are low. Ability to advance up the grid is tied to your insurance premium production too. You climb payout faster if your premium productions is good, slower if it isn’t. They were not transparent at all during the hiring process about the details surrounding your expenses, revenue/pay, and ongoing expectations for you to hire employees to build out your support team. IF you survive the first year, be prepared to start increasing your expenses by hiring support staff and footing the bill for a bunch of office related expenses, such as general shared supplies, copying expenses, and office food/water service to name a few, with more starting in year 3 like renting your office space, paying for your company issued computer, paying for NM support staff if you didn’t hire your own yet and more.