John McCarthy: Authority Magazine Appearance
January 4, 2023

Heritage’s Partner and Financial Planner, John McCarthy, was interviewed by Authority Magazine’s Jason Hartman for the five things you need to know if you want to build, scale and prepare your business for a lucrative exit.

Read below for snippets of John’s answers from his appearance:

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

I grew up in Europe, and both of my brothers-in-law were bankers; one was a Swiss banker, the other a British banker, so I looked up to them and listened to their stories of how they helped people and the markets. They were both in the high-net-worth area and what I was listening to drew me into the wealth management arena. I was in my early teens, but they had a major influence on me, so when I got out of college, I wanted to be in finance and wealth management. That is where I hung my hat and got introduced through an alum of my college to the Financial Planning arena and was enthralled by the opportunity because I was twenty-two and fresh out of college. I did not really need a lot to survive at that point. It intrigued me because I could be my own boss, and if I were successful, the sky’s the limit, along with the flexibility of running your own practice. So, I figured why not take a chance, and at 24 or 25 years of age, if it did not work out, I could go and work for another company as an employee, but it worked out, and I am thankful it did.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

I do not know that it is a funny mistake, but early on, I made a mistake that has stuck with me, even to this day, and is something I stress to our younger team members as they try to bring in their own clients. Three or four years in, I had a significant opportunity with a Microsoft executive who was really taking a chance on me at the time. I created and delivered what I thought was an excellent plan; we had a great meeting, and everything felt good. One day she called me and said, “Hey, I’ve just decided I’m going in another direction. I really enjoyed meeting you, and everything you put together was very impressive, but I just feel like you were lacking attention to detail.”

I was caught off guard by that because I spent a lot of time on this financial plan. The reason she mentioned I lacked attention to detail was that I spelled her name wrong. From her perspective, if someone misses a simple thing such as that, you might miss other important things, and that has always stuck with me and was an especially important and tough lesson to learn, in retrospect, because attention to detail is so important in our line of work.

To read the full interview with John, click here

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