Vantaggi
You are your own boss and you can set your own hours. If you are a good salesman and know how to talk to people, you have the oppurtunity to become very successful. If you are successful in the firm, there are great rewards such as trips and limited partnership offerings. They give you your own office and branch office administrator after a few years. There is no salary cap and you can be rewarded as hard as you work. They provide good training in order to pass the series 7 and series 66 exams. Overall, it is what you make of it.
Svantaggi
It is very difficult to get started. You have to walk door to door... in a suit... in the middle of summer. The field training is very inconsistant because you are trained and evaluated by current financial advisors. Because of this, each one is looking for something different but they all want you "do it their way" because it has been successful for them. Not a lot of diversity or acceptance from the firm. Overall, it was somewhat embarrassing to go from a successful position making over 100K to walking door to door basically begging for people's business.