Jim Yih on Canadian Finance Blog

Jim Yih, who recently wrote the four post series on financial literacy, is joining Canadian Finance Blog as a regular contributor. As you’ll see, Jim is a great writer who brings a wealth of financial expertise. Welcome to CFB Jim!
-Tom

Tom asked me to share a little about who I am.  To prevent boredom, I’ll skip the part from when I was born to when I graduated from University.  So, when I graduated from the University of Alberta with my B.Comm I went straight into the financial industry as a management trainee for a large insurance company.  Five years later, the entrepreneur inside of me decided that the bureaucracy of a large company was not for me.  That’s when I started a business as a financial advisor with a local retirement planning company run by one of my mentors Tom Kofin.  The first couple of  years was tough being a twenty something trying to convince fifty and sixty year olds that I had some knowledge they did not.

In 1999 I self published a book called Mutual Fundamentals and it was a real pivotal point in my career.   The book was based on my relentless efforts to research mutual funds to try to help my clients pick top quality mutual funds and avoid what I call ‘Crappy’ funds.  That book lead to a financial column in the local paper and a number of speaking gigs.  The end result was the growth of my client practice and grow it did!  Life was great – I won lots of awards, I had lots of media profile and the business was very profitable.  In 2002 I bought a commercial building and started my own firm CORE Financial Advisors where my business continued to grow.  By that time, I wrote another book and my column was now picked up by MoneySense.ca (now CanadianBusinessOnline), Fundlibrary.com, Canadian Money Saver Magazine, ProfessionalReferrals.ca, Yahoo.ca, The Canadian Investment Journal and a host of other publications and sites.  I even wrote a series of guest articles for the Globe and Mail.

2007 was another pivotal year for me because I sold the business.  At that time, the most popular question was why in the world would you sell a growing profitable business?  I had two key reasons:

1. Up until 2007, I lived to work.  I loved working.  I loved my business.  I had a passion for personal finance, retirement and investing.  As a result I worked long hours because I had a full time job of running the business and then my part time jobs or writing books and articles and doing my financial and retirement workshops.  Although I would work long hours, it did not feel like work because I was having so much fun.  So what changed? In one word, it was “Family”.  When I was single, it was easy to pour my heart and soul into the business.  But when I met my wife Liz, everything changed.  And then when we started having kids (four boys in five years) time became a premium.  My priorities changed and now I work to live instead of living to work.  I sold my full time business and continued with my part time endeavors of speaking and writing.
2. Although there were many aspects of the business that I loved like my clients (who I miss dearly), there were many aspects of the business that I despised like compliance.  The regulators were making it very difficult to carry on my personal finance column, which was getting picked up the Edmonton Journal and other Canwest papers.  The compliance people didn’t like that I was earning income from my speaking engagements and the worst part is everything I had to say and write about was being scrutinized by compliance.  It was like being 5 years old again with 10 nagging mothers.

In the end, I felt like I had to give up either the speaking and writing or the business.  I decided to sell the business and it  was one of the best things that happened to me both personally and professionally.

Retired or Retarded?

Once I sold the business, so many people asked me what I was up to after selling the business.  Was I a full time dad?  Was I retired?  Was I going to start up again?  In some respects I felt like I was retired.  The new retirement I teach people about in my workshops. I had lots of time freedom, I had a great lifestyle and was in a financial position to do so.  I even took a year off of writing my column altogether after 10 years of writing.  I took that time to finish some really great projects that including 2 more books, 2 software programs, 3 Audio CDs and some upcoming DVDs.

Today I am working again but only doing the things I love to do.  My primary work role is my life as a professional speaker.  I bring financial education programs into the workplace when employers want to help employees become more financially literate and savvy.  I also deliver keynotes at conferences and events.  Most of my topics are on money but I have also been asked to share my life story with others and some of the life principles I believe in for success.  I didn’t think talking about me would be that interesting to others but it’s been fun to share.

As you can see I am writing again and excited about my new relationship with Tom and Canadian Finance Blog.  Tom’s been educating me on this world of blogging and it has been an interesting learn.  I will also continue writing for my own site www.WealthWebGurus.com and will soon announce some other publications that might pick up my work.

At the end of the day, I hope in my coming posts to share something that makes you a better, smarter and richer person.  My goal is to present common sense ideas for more success, wealth and happiness in your life.  See you in a couple of weeks!

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