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WOMEN CAN HAVE IT ALL

Katherine Forrester has learned that happiness comes from a fulfilling work and personal life, and credits the industry for giving her both.

By Michele Bupp

Katherine Forrester launched her solo practice near Minneapolis at the tender age of 22, shocking family and friends because the young woman seemed to know so little about financial planning. Now, a decade later, Forrester finds it difficult to envision herself being happy doing anything other than providing mutual funds, annuities, IRAs and other investment solutions to her clients. Still, she admits having a first love, and it doesn’t have anything to do with being an agent. It has to do with treating AIDS patients.

“I KNEW IF I COULD HELP MY MOTHER BECOME FINANCIALLY SECURE, I COULD HELP OTHER PEOPLE DO THE SAME.” —KATHERINE FORRESTER

In 1993, with her bachelor’s degree in music from the University of Minnesota in hand, Forrester landed a position as a music therapist for young adult AIDS patients at Minneapolis’ University Good Samaritan Center. Her tenure lasted only 18 months, however, when Forrester was called home to help her mother recover from a sudden and devastating divorce.

A different song
While her mother “may have been down, she wasn’t down for long,” Forrester insists. “I was very motivated to put her finances in order—to help her make the most of what she had left.” Forrester’s painstaking task was compounded by worries about her own financial health. While the music therapist loved her work, she made only $8.50 an hour at the hospital, which barely covered monthly expenses, let alone incidentals. Her mother’s situation had made Forrester realize the danger of having no savings.

She knew she needed to make a sweeping change in her financial picture, and decided to change her career altogether. “It’s not what I wanted to do—at the time. It’s what I had to do,” she states. She immediately thought of financial planning and selling insurance—areas that had piqued her interest when she worked alongside an investment counselor on behalf of her mother. “I knew if I could help my mother become financially secure, I could help other people do the same,” she recalls.

Forrester quickly and intensely studied to learn the business—garnering her CLU, ChFC and Series 7—before opening her office in 1995.

From her Northwestern Mutual office in Minnetonka, this Minneapolis AIFA member offers a gamut of investment products and services for individuals and businesses. Since financial security means different things to different people, during the needs analysis that she conducts with new clients, she lets them know where they stand relative to where they want to be, and then recommends “specific, well-planned solutions to make [their] goals happen.”

Staffing up
When working with a business owner, Forrester learns as much as she can about the company so she can anticipate its needs, whether it’s an executive bonus plan to attract key staff, a pension plan or a 403(b) plan. Since new investment products continually hit the market and tax laws are ever changing, Forrester hired an employee benefits broker to handle that side of her business. As her business took shape in the late 1990s and she attracted clients wanting income protection, she brought on another full-time specialist—this time in the disability income insurance market. “If I’m going to sell these products, and I don’t know enough about them, I need staff who knows these areas inside and out,” she asserts.

Nowadays the 33-year-old Forrester focuses on the side of the business she likes best, which is helping clients in their 30s and 40s with their wealth accumulation needs. “It’s never dull. They keep me constantly learning more … Somebody told me she’s learned more from me in six months than she did in three years with her last broker,” she explains.

Yet, the humble agent—who consistently earns $100,000-plus a year—is quick to add that she accepts clients of all income levels. “If I turn away someone because they don’t have a lot of money, what kind of a person am I? Not a very good one,” she says.

With her attention placed in just the areas she wants, Forrester no longer pulls the long days required in the company’s start-up years. “After I made the Million Dollar Round Table in 2001, I promised myself some ‘me’ time to exercise every day and play with my dog, Buddy Lee,” she says. That means working no more than six hours a day, five days a week.

As a result, she has also been able to welcome her first love back into her life. She’s board vice president at the University Good Samaritan Center and volunteers her music therapy skills on the pediatric AIDS floor.

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