By Lucretia DiSanto Jones

Jennifer Lackey Barber, CFP, LUTCF, joined the Atlanta AIFA because she had to. The membership application for the association—NALU at the time—was part of the paperwork that she had to fill out when she entered the business and joined the Equitable team 13 years ago.

Fortunately for Lackey Barber and the association, the trail didn’t go cold there. “A couple of people said, ‘there's a meeting, let's go,’” she says. “I was lucky enough to have people take me under their wings and show me the ropes in the association. I got to meet a lot of people.”

People who need people
People. That’s what membership in a local AIFA association is all about. Members make and keep the association strong. Members contribute to the community where they live. Members make an impact on the association’s efforts to affect legislation positively. And members help keep other members in the business—and in the association.

The effect of the association on Lackey Barber’s professional and personal life has been, without a doubt, powerful. Chances are that without the association’s members, Lackey Barber would be in another industry today. “A lot of people that I met became mentors to me in a sense. It keeps you in the business. I think that you come to know that whenever you run up against something you think you can’t handle, there is always someone you can go to. I'm independent now, but I wasn't when I started. Some agents can be alone even in a career agency, so it's nice to know that you're not out there alone.”

“When you're a younger agent, you want to quit every day. The people in the association make you want to stay.” —Jennifer Lackey Barber

Learning from others
Lackey Barber recognized early on—with the help of her fellow association members—that the freedom a career in insurance and financial advising provides is ideal, but that it can also cause an advisor to fail. “You have to put some type of structure in place. This is a very difficult business, but it can also be very rewarding,” says Lackey Barber. It's a matter of understanding what the most difficult areas are and what you need to tackle. If you can get that understanding from other members, it helps guide you down the right path. There are specific things that people said to me that I kept in mind.”

NAIFA: A lot to offer
To many thirty-something agents, paving solid friendships can be difficult. The rigors of being a new agent and being on the road day after day—and many a night—make it difficult to develop a sense of camaraderie with other young insurance professionals, even for those in an agency.

Lackey Barber’s membership in NAIFA has not only helped her avoid these obstacles; it has helped her focus her career aspirations. “The friendships and relationships that I've made have meant the most to me. I've been on the board for years now,” she says. “Some of the people I've been associated with are 35 years older than me, and I now know that I want to be where they are at their age. There are pieces of their business that I want to mirror.

One of the Atlanta association’s past presidents took a top producer to an association meeting to speak about fee-based planning. The timing was perfect for Lackey Barber. “My partners and I were trying to figure out how to get into fee-based planning. It was a fantastic meeting,” she says. Lackey Barber is inspired by the pervasive feeling in the association of people wanting to help people. “When you're younger, you want to quit every day. The people in the association make you want to stay.”

And vice versa
Boasting younger agents among the ranks is a plus for the association, too. Lackey Barber believes that young agents bring a lot more to the table than just energy and enthusiasm. “They're very motivated, and they're ready to grasp onto an idea and try new things,” she points out.

What’s more, just because a member is still in his 30s doesn’t mean she can’t have experience behind her. Many, like Lackey Barber, are barely past 30 but already have more than a decade of industry experience under their belts. And, she says, they can bring a solid perspective of what's going on in the financial world—because they're not doing just one thing. “Some of our agents date back to the debit-type agent, and they do one thing. The under-35s bring variety, like financial planning, which is good,” she says.

A career-long relationship
Lackey Barber sees membership in her local association as something she’ll maintain throughout her career, with good reason. “We're the only association that I know of that supports our industry legislatively as strongly as we do. Whenever an issue comes up, NAIFA is the one that gets in there to fight it. There are a lot of associations out there, but they don't provide the legislative impact that we do. That's why our numbers are so important. NAIFA provides a safeguard to my business. It’s the only association out there really fighting for what I do.”

Attracting the young
NAIFA is developing initiatives to attract new, young members. One initiative, the Young Advisors Task Force, YAT for short, strives to increase the number of advisors who are under 35 and to pinpoint and develop the benefits that will retain them. For more information on the Young Advisors Task Force, contact the member service center at msc@naifa.org or call 877-TO-NAIFA.

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