Getting a little uncomfortable might just be a sign you're growing as a professional and a leader, Penny Pennington, managing partner of Edward Jones told TheStreet in an exclusive interview. After decades of work in financial services and serving at the helm of Edward Jones since 2019, Pennington shared the biggest lessons she's learned about achieving financial and professional success.
Top Tips From Penny:
I think it's very important for all of us as professionals to be what Satya Nadella called, 'learn-it-alls,' not 'know-it-alls.'
Get comfortable being uncomfortable and raise your hand, especially for the things that your gut says, 'I want to say no to this, I don't know.'
In a volatile marketplace, one of the most important aspects of success is sticking with a long term plan.
Related: Edward Jones has more than 15,000 office locations and there's a critical reason
FULL VIDEO TRANSCRIPT BELOW:
SARA SILVERSTEIN: I'm here with Penny Pennington, the managing partner of Edward Jones, which is the equivalent of a CEO. How is it running such a huge financial company?
PENNY PENNINGTON: Well, we're a partnership, so I work in partnership with 52,000 people to take care of 8 million clients, 1.08 trillion of their assets that they allow us to care for and their hopes and dreams for multiple generations of families all over North America. So it's why I wear this little chair on my lapel every day, because this is who we work for. Those 8 million clients and their families trying to help them achieve possibilities in their lives that maybe they didn't even know were possible. But we help them achieve.
SARA SILVERSTEIN: And working with that many different investors, what do you learn about what are what's currently going on in investors minds?
PENNY PENNINGTON: Well, we learn a lot about their hopes and dreams. We learn a lot about their families because we work multi-generationally with our clients. We work, we talk to them about your purpose. Like, why does all this matter? They want to talk to us about their health. We found out, strangely enough, and they they want to talk about realizing the possibilities in their lives. What immediately becomes important in those conversations, then, is sometimes the uncertainties of the market, which your audience is is looking at right now as we think about those uncertainties. It's about interest rates, about what the Fed might do. It's about geopolitical uncertainty. It's about whether we're going to have a recession or not and how deep it's going to go. What's important about those conversations is that they fit into the context of someone's long-term goals. So they're very important for the impact that they can have on a plan. But what we work very hard to do is keep people focused on their long-term plan, discover if there's something that needs to be shifted because of of the impact that markets are having. So it's a very comprehensive kind of discussion that we have with our clients.
SARA SILVERSTEIN: And one of the hardest things that comes with investing and financial planning is getting started. What is the hurdle that you see in before people make it to you who have it on their mind?
PENNY PENNINGTON: Well, every person has got an origin story for how they feel about money. And many times it starts with the way they were brought up with experiences they might have had as a young person, as young people with experiences they're having today with their budgeting or their cash flow or decisions they're making about student debt, all of that comes home to roost in an individual in how they feel about money and the confidence that they have in approaching a professional financial advisor to learn and get advice. And sometimes people feel like 'I don't have enough money or I have too much money or I don't know what questions to ask, I don't know what these all these financial terms mean.' And so all of that becomes a stopper that we want to break through for clients. You and I were talking earlier and the metaphor that I used is if we own a car, we know we have to take that car in for maintenance on a very regular basis. I have no idea what's going on under the hood. I don't even know what pieces part and I don't know what questions to ask. But it doesn't stop me from taking my car in when I know that that it needs some some maintenance or or worse. The same is true for good financial advice. You deserve good financial advice. So have confidence in that. And then choose a professional who will open up a conversation about you and who you are and what's important to you. Really discover those things about you and then learn as you go.
SARA SILVERSTEIN: And I want to talk a little bit about you. I've heard you talking about leading with purpose. Can you talk to me a little bit about how that can be a strength in leadership?
PENNY PENNINGTON: Sure. Well, strength in leadership and strength in a competitive advantage, for a company. So our purpose is to partner for positive impact. We say we are here to leave people and places better than when they found us, and when we met them. We improved the lives of our clients and our colleagues. Together we want to make a difference in communities and even society. And so when we state that ambitious purpose, it sets us off in a strategic direction that results in success for our commercial enterprise. And I'm not I'm not apologizing at all for having an ambitious purpose that fires our success commercially. It helps us think of the possibilities and more people's lives, in fact, 10s of millions of people's lives. I heard somebody say recently that purpose is a great alarm clock. And so in an environment where competitively you have to innovate and grow quickly, you have to test and learn new ideas. You've got to, you got to. Says the marketplace and bring the best talent. When we align our purpose as talented professionals, Wow, we're unbeatable and unstoppable in serving more and more clients.
SARA SILVERSTEIN: And you have been at Edward Jones for a really long time. I'd like to hear a little bit about your journey to CEO and mostly when in your career did you realize that CEO was an attainable goal for you?
PENNY PENNINGTON: Well, Sara, I've been in financial services since 1985, so I'm coming up on a 40 year career. I was in commercial banking for 14 years and I found Edward Jones in 1999. I say that I don't know if your viewers have seen the old version of Wizard of Oz, but when it goes from black and white to technicolor, that's what happened to my life. When I came to Edward Jones, I was a practicing financial advisor for six years, as were all of my predecessors. Our previous managing partners all started as financial advisors. What that means is we know what it feels like to be in the seat to build trust with families and to build a practice. I came into our home office in 2006. We're headquartered in St. Louis and I'm on my fifth role since I came in in 2006. The reason that I say that is I think it's very important for all of us as professionals to be what Satya Nadella called, 'learn-it-alls,' not 'know-it-alls' to take what feels like a risk to step outside, maybe your area of technical expertise or a particular comfort zone and to go into a place where you're going to learn in the world that we live in today, learning adaptability, dealing in ambiguity, building teams, making decisions with incomplete information. That's what leadership is. And then rallying a team through purpose to to be able to really make it make a big difference. And so you asked, you know, when when did I know, quote unquote, that this might be an attainable goal. We call it Edward Jones, an opportunity factory. We create opportunities for our clients. As a result, we have opportunities as as talented professionals. And so as I was moving through, through our organization and learning new things, I realized about 15 years ago that my success was going to be dependent on my ability to take those risks and move into new places. So what I say to people is get comfortable being uncomfortable and raise your hand, especially for the things that your gut says, 'I want to say no to this, I don't know.' Raise your hand for those things. And I was not raising my hand. Pick me to be the managing partner. I was raising my hand to say put me in places where I can take that risk and be supported by my organization and my teammates so that I can learn and grow. And as far as I can go in doing that, that's that's what fires me up. That's a good day for me is when I'm feeling uncomfortable.
SARA SILVERSTEIN: Great well, we'll try to make you very uncomfortable. What is the most important decision you've ever made in your life?
PENNY PENNINGTON: My husband has this hypothesis that all of our lives come down to eight decisions. And for each of us, there are different decisions. His view is that it's the decisions we proactively make, not the ways that we were born or what we were born into, because we didn't get to make that decision. The decisions that have been most impactful for me are who I partner with, in this case my husband and my family, Edward Jones, to partner with this organization that has poured into me and that hence I am so driven to help make impactful and successful. It's the partnerships that I make with community organizations that I'm part of, that I'm on the boards of, and so deeply committed to raising the capability of the people who are part of those organizations. So it's these decisions about partnership. I think that that can be very purpose driven and then make us feel more confident about raising our hands for places that we want to learn more about.
SARA SILVERSTEIN: And as far as women investing, what are ways that you can reach women to help them get resources, help them talk to each other more? What's important there?
PENNY PENNINGTON: Yeah, well, a remarkable transition in the marketplace that's happening right now. Over the next 20 years, $84 trillion of assets are going to transfer from the generation who owns them now to the next two generations. 30 trillion of that is going to be dominated by women investors who may be establishing wealth for the first time, who may be establishing their comfort level with growing that wealth and being stewards of that wealth. As women, we're also stewards of so much more. We're stewards of our families. We're caregivers across multiple generations. We think very holistically. About the well-being of of our families and the organizations that we're a part of. So the thing with women investors is there's a level of of confidence getting, of education, of the opportunity to really think very holistically and set in place a financial plan that meets the needs of multiple generations. And all of those goals. What we know about women investors is they are very thoughtful investors. They want to understand before they make decisions. But when we make decisions, we stick with those decisions. And especially in a in a volatile marketplace, one of the most important aspects of success is sticking with a long term plan, taking emotion out of what's happening in the hubbub of the markets and sticking with the longer term plan. Women research shows, are very good investors.
This transcript has been edited for clarity.
