Deepa Lahoti is a newly-minted Financial Advisor in the Alpharetta, Ga., office of Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC.  She came to the job after spending twenty years making strategic marketing, financial and investing decisions for many different industries, including manufacturing, technology, and financial services.

When did you become a Financial Advisor?

I’m starting on my third week. I’m brand new!

How are you marketing yourself?

Basically, I’m doing an aggressive marketing campaign on a person-to-person basis.  This business is based on trust and relationships. All my business cards from 20 years of working experience are coming out! I have also identified several market segments and I am joining networking groups within them. 

What are your target market segments?

I am an Indian-American, so I am focusing on the Indian American community. They usually like to manage their own money but they're becoming more open to professional help as they're getting older. Within that community, I am focusing on professionals, including doctors, engineers and business owners. I also have an interest in working with professional women—particularly women entrepreneurs, which is a natural fit. 

Because I was a consultant for a number of years, I am also focusing on independent consultants. And I would also love to work with members of the New Age community. Over the past ten years, I have become more spiritual and attracted spiritual people who want to help others. I genuinely feel that what I’m doing is a service—I can really help people live better lives. 

Tell me about the career path that led you to become a Financial Advisor.

I got my B.S. from the University of Tennessee in Electrical and Computer Engineering.  I wanted to design Integrated Circuits. During my senior year, I interviewed for a position with Texas Instruments. Ten minutes in, I realized that they were looking for sales engineers. When I told my interviewer that I thought I was in the wrong place, he said, “Sit back down, young lady--you belong in sales!"  I joined TI’s semiconductor sales and sold customized integrated circuits to IBM, TI’s largest customer at that time.  And, as part of my initial training, I did design integrated circuits for a year!

Why did you get an MBA? 

I wanted to rise in corporate America. I was also getting tired of what I was doing.  Because of my GMAT scores, I was invited to apply to the Wharton Business School.  I majored in finance, and I really enjoyed it. So with my engineering background and my decision making and analytical skills, I became a consultant.  

I was recruited by Deloitte & Touche to work in their manufacturing strategy division in Atlanta, providing consulting services to different organizations. One of my favorite projects was re-engineering customer delivery and service processes for the Arkansas Public Employee Retirement System.   

How did you end up moving to Wall Street? 

I was traveling all the time, I had no work-life balance, and most of my friends from Wharton were in New York City. So I moved to the internal consulting group at Bankers Trust and worked there for a few years, providing management consulting services to senior level executives. I worked mostly on marketing and strategy assignments.

In 1999, I headed up a very interesting research project. Bankers Trust wasn't doing that well compared to other banks and they wanted to know what industries they needed to expand their presence in to do better. So we developed a process to help identify attractive companies, industries and trends. 

What happened next?

I went to CitiGroup as a product manager in electronic banking. I helped develop and implement their electronic banking delivery strategy for their transaction processing, custody and clearance services. 

In the meantime, I’d gotten married and had two children. Because of my husband's job, we also moved several times. So I scaled back my professional life and consulted part-time, while focusing most of my energy on my family. 

What kind of consulting did you do? 

Mostly strategy, market entry and business planning. I worked with two Indian-owned companies to help them penetrate the financial services industry as outsourcing outfits, and I developed a business plan for another start-up that wanted to create the first bed & breakfast company in India. 


So how did you make the decision to become a Financial Advisor?

I’d been thinking about doing it for many years. Then my husband decided he wanted to start a consulting company, so we moved back to Alpharetta, where our kids had been born. After we arrived here I said, "Okay, this is the time." 

I did a lot of introspection. What do I really want to do? What are my passions? What are my strengths? 

Following the markets has always been a passion of mine. And I firmly believe that we all owe it to ourselves and our families to take care of our accumulated wealth and make it work for us.  And I also enjoy helping people. 

I suddenly realized that this was the definition of a Financial Advisor. 

How did you find this job?

After I had my realization, I typed "Financial Advisor position in Alpharetta, Georgia," into Google and the first thing that came up was an opportunity at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney.  I applied to the training program and it just happened.  It was like it was meant to be!

How does this compare to what you've done in the past?

It's like being an entrepreneur within a company.  It's a very good opportunity for people who want to build their own business from scratch, yet at the same time want the comfort of being in an organization and the benefits that go with it. 

It's an interesting time to go into the market, considering the recent turmoil.

Actually, I think it’s a great time, because I think there's tremendous opportunity and people are sitting on so much cash!  The markets change all the time, but the key is to have a plan, know your goals, stay the course, make the necessary adjustments, and remain calm during the ups and downs. 

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