Although Susan M. Wolford has been in the business for thirty-eight years, she says she happened on it by accident. Four years out of college, she was planning to go to law school in Los Angeles when a friend talked her into trying out Dean Witter for a year. She is now a Wealth Advisor and CEO of the Wolford Group at the same branch, now Morgan Stanley Smith Barney in Beverly Hills. Last year, she was asked to chair the company's new Diversity Council. No wonder she believes that life is what happens when you're making other plans.

What was your early training like?
I went into the Broker Training Program at Dean Witter in July of '72. It was a different kind of program than it is now: we sat in a classroom with other human beings. There was no computer class, primarily because there weren't computers. But that's probably saying more about my age than I care to!

How did you get started in the business?
I started out as a single sole practitioner and did transactional business. I somehow managed to get clients without cold-calling. I've only made three cold calls in my life--it was awful.

How did you do it?
I was fortunate enough to get a number of clients through being Broker of the Day, which in those days was a fairly significant program. One broker would handle all calls and walk-ins. We had a front door on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills, so people did in fact walk in. I also got referrals from people that I had worked with before.

Why did you stick with it?
The thing that always motivates me the most are my clients. I really enjoy working with people. I view it as a people business.

Is it still a people business?
Yes, actually maybe even more so. In this day and age, with all of the technology available to everyone--including clients, and not to mention other advisors--what differentiates a Financial Advisor is the personal relationship and the service that you're able to provide.

You came out as a lesbian in 1978. Was that an unusual thing to do at the time?
Yes.

How did it happen?
In 1978 in California, there was an initiative on the ballot called Proposition 6. The thrust of it was to ban all teachers who were gay and lesbian from working in California public schools. It became quite a national event. I got very involved with the fight to overturn that initiative, which we did successfully. That's how I came out. It also got me very involved in the lesbian and gay community--not just in Southern California but in the state.

How did that affect your business?
Amazingly, there was just no negative reaction from anybody in the office, or from clients and friends, and thankfully not from my family either. I was very lucky. It opened up an extraordinary horizon to me, certainly personally but also in a business sense.

Did it change the way you approached your work?
I think it reaffirmed the necessity to live one's life honestly. And it was beneficial business-wise.

Was it your new visibility or your new contacts that made the difference?
I would say both. It goes to something that I think is extremely important in our business: it's vitally important to be involved with things that you really care about. If you have a sincere involvement in organizations or issues, over time the people around you appreciate that sincerity. I think it translates to a belief in the sincerity that you would demonstrate in a business scenario. And getting involved with something that you care about is probably one of the best ways in the world to meet people who can eventually be part of your business. It's something I always talk to the younger Financial Advisors that I have worked with about, but it takes time.

In 1994, you changed from doing transactional business to using managed accounts. Why?
When I started out, you bought stocks and bonds and you talked to clients about individual stock ideas. But as my client base grew, the time constraints were really getting to me. There wasn't enough time in the day to be able to service the clients as I wanted to. Then managed money came into view and I started exploring that as a way to free up time so that I could work more on servicing the client. And that led me to consider establishing a team.

When did that happen?
In 2002. I had been thinking about it for a while, but trying to locate someone with whom I thought a partnership could work took a lot of time. I also thought I should look at succession planning. I am close to my clients, and if something happened to me I wanted to feel absolutely secure that I would have somebody I could completely trust in place.

How did you find the right partner?
It's necessary to have complementary skill sets. If you and your partner do the same thing, it's probably not going to work. I finally found Paul Urbanek whose primary focus is marketing and PR. We've since added two other people to our team. Stephanie Anavim is our analyst /tech person and Christine Geoffray is our CSA and practice manager. Paul is the front person in getting clients, and I'm more the relationship person. Our whole approach is to meet with the clients and talk with them about who they are. For us, the investments come last.

Tell me about your work as chair of the company's new Diversity Council. What have you accomplished so far?
We just sent out an announcement about a new initiative, the Branch Analyst Program, which should be going live this summer. It's a pilot program that will bring in people of diversity for a two-year training program in different branches across the country. It's a paid position and those selected will spend time in all areas of the business. We're hoping that this will allow us to bring in people of diversity who will stay and build their careers here. We're very excited about it. The company has been hugely supportive.

Is there anything else in the works?
We have many initiatives that we’re focused on, but I’ll just give you a couple of examples.

Morgan Stanley has diverse Employee Networking Groups--but they have been concentrated in New York. With Morgan Stanley Smith Barney we've got branches all over the country, so we’re working on how best to establish and maintain ‘local’ networking groups for our diverse employees.

We've also had some great meetings for clients, one here and one in New York, which involved outreach to the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender) Community to talk about estate planning and wealth planning. It's been very very successful and we are going to replicate these kind of events in other parts of the country


I'm still amazed that you've gotten where you are today, yet you only ever made three cold calls.
It's one of the questions that everybody asks: "How did you do it?" Honestly, I look back, and it is very difficult to say. It was not because of cold-calling. It's being in the right place at the right time, and being involved.

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