Investment Advisor Talk with Dao Le

Throughout my career, whether it was on Bay Street or here or even before I got into finance, I was able to manage stress very well and and yeah, I think you’re right.

Being in the military certainly trained me to handle the stress and helped me manage stress better.

Okay, Doa, thank you for coming on the podcast today.

In preparation for our conversation, I actually called my 83 year old dad who emigrated from Denmark in 1962.

And I wanted to know from him how much money he had in his pocket when he arrived in Edmonton off the plane.

And I was hoping he was going to tell me that he had like $2 and, you know, built a life for him in Canada.

But apparently he had $200 in cash in his pocket when he arrived in 1962.

I’m guessing that was a lot of money back then.

You came from Vietnam in 1979, and I’m guessing you guys did not have $200 cash in your pockets.

No, you’re absolutely correct.

We we had $0 in our pocket.

We essentially came here with nothing but the clothes on our back.

And, you know, thankfully for us, we were we were sponsored by a church.

And they helped us get back on to our feet, you know, coming over as refugees.

When we left Vietnam, my parents had money and we were we were robbed on the seas.

We basically basically took everything.

We ended up in a refugee camp with nothing and came to Canada with nothing.

So. And how old were you when you arrived in Canada? I was seven.

Seven.

And where in Canada did you arrive to? And where did you grow up? So very interesting.

We’re based out of Edmonton here and my first stop in Canada was Edmonton.

So back in 1979, Edmonton was a major processing center for refugees.

At the at the at the base in Namao was where all refugees were processed.

So, you know, you get your immunization, you get some clothes, you get your whatever records the Canadian government needs from you.

And then from there you move to where you’re going to be settled in Canada.

And we ended up settling in northern B.C.

in a little town called Smithers.

And he didn’t speak English.

Did your parents speak English? No, I didn’t speak a word.

My parents didn’t speak English.

My dad spoke French because in Vietnam, French is a very common language.

So he spoke some French that didn’t really help us.

So it was, you know, we came over here not be able to communicate with people and ending up in a small town.

There was no translators around.

So there wasn’t somebody who could translate Vietnamese into English.

Honestly, I don’t know how my parents did it.

As an adult, I couldn’t imagine being put into a place where I did not understand a word of the language and having to make a life of it as a kid, you know, you get by very quickly and I don’t remember ever not being able to speak English.

You know, obviously there was a period where I didn’t speak English, but it.

Yeah, you were pretty, pretty young then anyways.

I was. Pretty young.

And I think as a seven year old I picked it up pretty quickly.

Yeah. And what did your parents do? What did they start to do to start to make a living and live in Canada? So the the church that sponsored us set up my parents, they gave them they got them day jobs.

But initially, what they did is they put them into adult ESL school English as a second language school where they they learned a little bit of the language.

And then from there they worked jobs like my mom worked as a house cleaner in a hotel or housekeeper in a hotel.

And my dad started as a in a steel fabrication shop doing.

I don’t know what.

Labor, I assume. Yeah.

And then, you know, it was once they picked up the language and learned learn more of the culture, the companies that they worked for were very good.

They my dad’s company got him into an apprenticeship program for steel fabrication.

And my and my mom ended up being a hairdresser.

Okay.

So let’s jump to you.

What was your first experience, post-secondary experience after you graduated from grade 12? So when I am when I finished high school, I went right to university.

Couldn’t wait to get out of the small town.

So I moved to Vancouver and went to UBC.

Now the road that I took was not the road that I expected to take.

When I was in high school, I had this this idea that I was going to work in finance.

You know, I, I read all about the banks.

I read about jobs in the bank.

And I thought being a a branch manager at a bank was the best job in the world.

And that’s what I aspired to be, was a bank branch manager going through high school. My I was very, you know, I always my grades were very good and my science and math grades were exceptional.

And so I had a lot of influence, not my parents, but other adults and teachers.

That said, you know, they knew I wanted to go study finance.

And they said, well, you know, you’re so good at the sciences, why don’t you do something in science? And so I chose a path that I really didn’t think I would choose, and that was engineering.

So I went to UBC, studied engineering, didn’t like it, finished my, finished my undergraduate university with a Bachelor of Science rather than a Bachelor of Engineering because I didn’t like the engineering.

Yeah.

So yeah, that was my.

You know, after, after high school, I went to university and studied something that I never thought I would study that really led to no career.

Yeah, well, we differ in science and math definitely wasn’t a strong point for me, so I’m always impressed with people who excel in those two courses.

So you finished with UBC and then what was next for you? So next for me was I had to get a job out of with a Bachelor of Science, which there aren’t very many jobs.

I could have got a job in a lab and mix chemicals making 15 bucks an hour.

And what I did instead was I got a job in a in a factory as essentially a laborer.

And I knew the boss’s wife.

She got me a job there, and I just wanted to do something while I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do.

Yeah.

So in that, in that company, I worked in the factory and I got to know the boss and he was quite impressed with my, the background I had.

And to go back a little bit further, I was in I was in the Canadian Army at the time.

I joined I joined the Army when I was in undergraduate, when I was in my undergrad.

And this man was in the military as well.

So he he liked me because of that.

And I was a hard worker.

And he actually brought me into the office and gave me an office job.

And eventually in that job, I became the operations manager for the for the factory.

You know, I came out of university with no business background, and I had some leadership skills because of the military and ended up getting this job running a factory because of my military background.

At any point, did you think that the factory job was going to you were going to put 30 years into the factory retire and that that was it? No, no.

I never thought that this is going to be a long term career for me.

I did it and I was good at it.

And that’s why he gave me the position.

But I didn’t enjoy it.

And quite frankly, I didn’t think I was making enough money at the time.

Now, I think if I recall, I think I was making $30,000 a year at the time running this factory with 50 people reporting to me.

And I was making $35,000 a year.

So it wasn’t a career that I wanted to take.

And during my my short time there, which was five years, I decided that I’m going to go and pursue what I had originally pursued, which was business and finance.

So now I’m going to forge the path that I thought I would forge when I was in grade 11, and that that’s when I made the decision to go back to school and do a business degree and the business degree, if you already have an undergraduate, is an MBA degree.

Yeah, MBA. Okay.

I I’m just going to back you up a little bit because I’m kind of curious about your military career.

Like you and I both have the same amount of hours in the day and the same amount of days in a week.

How are you creating a career in the factory going to UBC, but you’re also serving in the military.

How does that timeframe work out? Yeah, so when I was in second year university living in residence at UBC, one of my roommates was in the Canadian Army and I thought it was fascinating.

So I asked him about it and I said, you know, how are you in university, in the military at the same time? You know, back then I had no knowledge of the military whatsoever.

My dad was in was in the Army.

So I you know, I know a bit about what army was like, but I had no idea what it was like to be in the army in Canada.

So he told me about the Army Reserves and he you know, he told me exactly the type of jobs you can get in the Army.

And he also told me that, you know, you get paid to do this.

So I said, you know, that’s interesting.

So I went down to the recruiting center in my second year university and basically signed up to be in the Army.

And that first summer after finishing second year, they sent me off to New Brunswick, CFB Gagetown to do basically boot camp for officers.

It’s called basic officer training.

So how I was able to be in the military, be in school, and also after finishing school and working, is that the reserves gives you flexibility.

While I was in university, I had to work every once a week and else I had to work every other weekend.

But more importantly with military, I didn’t have to look for work in the summer.

You know, most students, university students are looking for work in March, April, trying to get a job for the summer.

I didn’t have to do that.

The military basically guaranteed me a job for the summer, and that job was training more than working.

But I got paid to train, so that’s how I was able to do it while I was in school.

And then once I graduated, it was the same thing.

I would have to work every once a week, plus every other weekend, and then in the summers I’d have to go away for two weeks at a time to do kind of full time training.

Smart Would you recommend people look at that? Because it seems like you found a perfect summer job when you weren’t studying.

Would you? Again, I think the military is a it gives you fantastic training.

I think everybody should do it.

You know, you’re you’re from Norway.

Is is that where you’re from? Denmark? Yes. Yeah. Right.

So in Denmark, which both surprisingly, my the boss that I was telling you about from the factory, he was he he’s Danish.

Yeah.

And he was in the Danish army.

So over there I think it is, I think it’s such a good skill to have.

I think the military I think everybody should have to do sometime in the military because it it teaches you discipline.

It teaches you about hard work and it teaches you about the concept of being, you know, of of supporting something that has given you the life that you have.

Okay. You know what? I should preempt this.

My dad was born in Denmark.

I don’t speak the language, and he would probably tell you that my blood has been watered down a lot.

So. Okay, you got your MBA.

Where did you get your MBA from at UBC? Okay.

So I was while I was working at this company and I decided to go back and do an MBA and I applied to schools across the country.

And when I got accepted by the schools, including UBC, I decided that, you know what, Vancouver is a fantastic city to live in.

Why would I move away from this city right now? So I decided to do my MBA at UBC rather than move out.

And your designation? You got a designation? The Chartered Financial Analyst. It’s a CFA.

I’ll try to refer to it as a CFA moving forward.

Now, is that different from an MBA? What is the CFA? Yeah.

So the CFA is a professional designation, an MBA is a degree.

Okay.

So if you can think about an accountant has a CPA designation, chartered professional accountant designation which is globally recognized.

CFA is the finance equivalent of the CPA designation for accountants.

So it is really the only globally recognized finance designation.

A lot of regional markets, whether it’s Canada, United States, the UK, they all have their own individual accreditation for finance.

But the CFA is globally recognized.

So if you go into any major financial center, whether it’s London, Tokyo, San Francisco, New York, the CFA is the designation that is recognized.

You worked in Toronto on Bay Street.

Yeah.

And could you talk a little bit about applying for that job and what you were doing when you were working on Bay Street? Yeah, so applying for a job on on Bay Street or Wall Street is a rigorous process process.

So you start while you’re in university, whether you’re you’re doing a business degree, an undergrad or an MBA degree, you apply basically year before you graduate, you’re applying for these jobs.

And I knew as soon as I started my my MBA education that I wanted to be in finance, but I didn’t know what that looked like.

You know, quite honestly, I knew it was finance, but I didn’t know that finance is 100 jobs.

So as soon as I got into the program, I started getting exposed to the different things you can do.

And at that point, I knew that I wanted to work on Bay Street, Wall Street in London.

And the jobs that I wanted to do is I wanted to get into investment banking.

It was you know, it was the glamorous job.

You know, you you you watched movies like Wall Street and you see what these guys are doing and it looks glamorous.

And that’s what I wanted to do.

So I applied to jobs that I knew would either take me to New York or Toronto and ended up in Toronto on Bay Street, working for a major financial institution, doing what I thought I would be doing.

While you were working on Bay Street, what were your job duties while you were there? So what? The first two years of my career on Bay Street was basically learning.

It was I was in a program called the Generalist Program.

And what that means is that they the firm had me working in different rotations for 4 to 6 months, and I did this for two years.

So I spent time working on the trading floor.

I spent time working with a couple of portfolio managers that that managed multibillion dollar funds.

I worked in the market to marketing department.

So it was a program that basically exposes you to all the different the different jobs that can be done in wealth.

And then after you two years, you pick a place where you are going to work or somebody chooses you.

And after my two years of training, I ended up on the trading floor, on the fixed income trading floor, and, you know, on the trading floor, what I did was I worked in an advisory role, and that advisory role is advising people across the country on how they should structure their fixed income, how they should structure their portfolios so part of the role is also doing some trading for those people.

It was it was an exciting job.

I learned a lot.

I got exposed to the market as a whole.

I got to be on a trading floor during the financial crisis, which was a very exciting time because lots, a lot of things were happening.

Companies were going bankrupt, market was going crazy.

And, you know, for a young guy working on Bay Street, you couldn’t have asked for a better place to work.

Now, I have limited knowledge of your industry, but are you on the floor giving the hand signals and on the phone and in that stressful nightmare situation were you doing.

Yeah, yes, I was on the phone.

So on a trading floor, not everybody is a trader.

There are traders, there are salespeople, there are advisory people.

There are administrating administrative people.

So my role was, yes, to be on the phone basically from the time I got into the office until I left, I was pretty much on the phone talking to clients and saying, you know, you should buy this bond, you should sell this, you should structure your portfolios like this.

This is the brand new security that just got issued by company XYZ.

That and whether you should or shouldn’t buy it. Yes.

No, it’s there there is shouting.

There is you know, there is standing up.

There is some hand waving.

It’s if you’re looking down on the trading floor from afar and you’re looking at my area when I was working, you would think, wow, that’s that’s exciting.

It’s exactly what you would picture trading floor environment to be like.

How many years were you on Bay Street for? I was there for eight years.

So you’re working on Bay Street for eight years.

You’re living in Canada’s largest city in Toronto.

It sounds like you have an exciting career that you’re you’re working on.

How do you why did you make the change to leave all of that to come to Edmonton, Alberta? Yeah, it’s a good question.

Yeah, working on Bay Street is great, but it’s you know, it’s not as great as everybody thinks it is.

And the reason is that you are you know, you’re a cog.

You are just one cog in the wheel and you are an employee of the institution you’re working for.

You know, you live or die based on that paycheck.

And most of your income comes at the end of the year, which comes in the form of of a bonus.

So throughout the year, you’re living off your line of credit, basically, and then at the end of the year you get this big bonus, you pay off the line of credit and plus you have extra.

So being an employee is, is, it’s not great.

So my decision to come to Edmonton was because somebody in Edmonton had offered me a, an opportunity to come and work and do what I’m doing right now, which is working with clients, managing their portfolios and essentially becoming an owner in what you’re doing rather than just as an employee of somebody else.

And at the end of the day, I moved because of the potential better quality of life, you know, potentially monetarily, you could be making more money.

It does take time, but the decision was made based on the future potential of what I could be doing with my career rather than being an employee on Bay Street.

Now, you know, that’s there are people who do who spend their whole careers on Bay Street and they make a lot of money.

I’m not going to say that they’re happy.

Maybe they’re happy that they’re making lots of money.

But I don’t think that they’re they’re happy because it’s a very stressful place to be.

And the job is stressful.

You’re working long hours on Bay Street.

So for me, quality of life was was certainly one of the factors that made me move to Edmonton.

Okay.

Let’s talk about what you’re doing now.

And when I ask you that, what is your job title? And let’s talk about what you do in your day to day.

Okay.

So officially my job title is I am an investment advisor.

My official title is Senior Investment Advisor because I’ve been doing it for for so many years.

And my I have a second title and that is a senior portfolio manager.

So the difference between a portfolio manager and an investment advisor is that a portfolio manager is a discretionary manager, meaning that I have authority to act on a client’s behalf.

An investment advisor has to advise the client and the client makes the ultimate decision.

I’m guessing there’s stress involved with the work that you do.

Do you think that your time in the military taught you how to handle stress? I think it did, yeah.

I think it did, yeah.

Throughout my career, whether it was on Bay Street or here or even before I got into finance, I was able to manage stress very well and and yeah, I think you’re right.

Being in the military certainly trained me to handle the stress and helped me manage stress better.

It’s in terms of being in a stressful work environment, it doesn’t get any more stressful than than the military.

Yeah. Okay.

So your day to day, what are you doing between your hours, 9 to 5, pretty consistent or are you always on the clock here? No, I am always on the clock.

So when I worked on Bay Street, my my hours were 6 a.m.

until 6 to 7 p.m..

So it was it was a long day.

And my hours in Edmonton are shorter, but still pretty long.

I start my day at 630, you know, after I have at 630 I have a coffee, I have breakfast and then I’m reading the news and the research that came in overnight.

I want to see what happened in Europe or what happened in Europe in the morning, what happened in Asia overnight.

What are some of the things that moved the market? And then also overnight, all of the research for stocks come out.

So the research analysts that publish reports on companies overnight, they will publish their reports.

So if anything important came out with a company, they would have written a report on it.

I will skim through all the reports to see what what they’re saying about these companies.

If a company reported earnings, what are their earnings like? If a company announced a major acquisition, what does this acquisition look like? So I’m reading research from 630 until probably 830, 9:00, reading the news and reading research.

And then for the you know, at 9:00 and onwards, I’m usually either in meetings with clients or I’m on the phone with clients or I’m out doing marketing things, prospecting things.

You know, like any business, you have to keep getting new clients to you, always trying to grow.

Or even if you maintain the status quo, you currently have to, you have to always get new clients.

So I spend some time every day doing that and then my day, you know, after the market closes.

So the market opens at 730, lots of things are happening, market closes at 230.

And once the market closes, things quiet down.

If I am not in a meeting, then I’ll spend the afternoon reading more research or I’ll spend some time reaching out to clients and giving them updates on, you know, what happened during the day.

Usually my day ends at between four and 5:00.

My demands. Yeah.

And do you do any activities to help with stress or do you play sports? You go for long walks.

I exercise.

I think exercising does help me manage the stress.

So I we have a home gym which I, I do peloton and I in the summer.

I like to golf and in the in the winters it’s basically just on the bike.

Do you find.

That you work with or are you an individual? Nope, I’m in a partnership.

So Craig Thoms and I are in a partnership called Thoms & Le Wealth Management were where a team of eight people so myself and Craig being the two advisors and then we have six other people that work for us.

Yeah.

And what are some of your strategies for going out to find new clients.

And the most of most of our new clients come from current client referrals.

So, you know, the most people, most wealthy people know other wealthy people.

And if they’re happy what we do, they introduce us to their friends and their family working for a major bank.

We also get some clients that come from the bank system.

But yeah, I’m going to say most of our clients are are referral based.

Yeah, I’m I hear word of mouth is important in, in a lot of industries.

Yeah.

What, what are you most passionate about when you think about your job? My job is constantly changing.

Like it? No. Two days are the same every day.

There’s something new that’s happening.

The markets are reacting to different news.

There is something happening across the world that’s impacting us.

So I think that’s the most you know, that’s that’s what I’m passionate about my job. But I also a really big thing with my job is just meeting different clients.

It’s it’s amazing that, you know, you meet you meet somebody and there you have two different clients that have very diverse backgrounds and very different levels of wealth.

Yet you get to know them and they’re just ordinary people like you and I.

They have the same issues that you and I have.

So I think it’s an interesting part of the job is just learning what all these different people are like.

Yeah, I a few weeks ago I interviewed an accountant and I was thinking it would be a very boring conversation because I thought he was all about numbers and math and that was it.

And I didn’t even think about the human side of his job being an accountant and he talked about his passion is the conversations he has with his clients who are often entrepreneurs, and he gets to talk to them about what they’re doing every day and gets to learn a little bit about about their lives.

Yeah, but being an investment advisor, what do you think are some of the misconceptions out there about your profession? I think the biggest misconception is what you need, the skills that you need to do this job.

You know, a lot a lot of people who are getting into this industry think it’s it’s all about numbers, you know, spreadsheets, market numbers, research.

And while those are important aspects of the job, I think the human aspect is just as important.

You need to be, you know, you need to be a person that that other people can relate to.

You need to be a person that can you know, that can sit down and socialize with with a very diverse group of people.

So the relation, the relationship management aspect of my job, very similar to an accountants job, I think it’s just as important as the numbers side of the job.

And I didn’t I didn’t listen to your your podcast with the accountant, but, you know, I think if you ask him, he’s probably going to say 50% of his job is relationship building and the other 50% is, you know, the accounting aspect of it.

Yeah.

What are some of the obvious challenges in your day to day work? A big challenge in my job is that we never disconnect.

When you talk to advisors, we are always connected to the market and whether it’s the evening or whether you’re on vacation and the market never sleeps because it trades on a 24 hour basis.

So I’m always aware of what’s going on and even when I’m on vacation, I am glued to my phone, which has the updates in the market.

And you know, if I’m on vacation and the market is selling off, I feel stressed and if the market’s going higher, I feel a little bit of elation.

So sometimes it’s, you know, I wish I could disconnect, but I’m not sure it’s ever possible.

The you know, we are we are constantly working.

You know, it is you know, yes, I’m in the office from seven until 430, but from 430 until I go to bed, I’m still working.

You know, there’s there’s still things happening and I still get requests from people, which I respond to.

So when you’re on vacation, isn’t doesn’t that just become your partner’s problem? Like turn off your phone and let him worry about it? I think I’m getting better at it, but it’s still it’s still hard.

And, you know, my my family realizes that I’m always working.

And it’s not just me.

I think it’s just our industry in general.

When I talk to other my colleagues, they are when they’re on vacation, they’re the same way.

You know, they’re constantly looking at things and digesting things.

Yeah, you seem like a very analytical person, and I’m guessing that’s probably a pretty important trait in the work that you do.

Has anything surprised you when when you got your designation, your chartered financial analyst designation, looking back to when you got that, too, now, has anything surprised you? No, I would say no.

When I went into into finance, I had a you know, I had a picture of the hard work that would be required.

So when the work was really hard, it didn’t surprise me.

Now, I was expecting to put in, you know, for the first five years of my career, I was expecting that I was going to be working 80 hours a week.

And so when you’re working 80 hours a week or 70 hours a week, it’s not a surprise.

It was you were you knew that was coming.

And then the, you know, my in as in and as an advisor, I think that the the thing that surprises me the most and I kind of mentioned it earlier, is that as I was getting into this job as an advisor, managing money, I just didn’t realize how important the non numbers and non-financial aspects were to this job.

It is, you know, at the end of the day it’s a lot of relationship building, a lot of hand-holding, which, you know, as as a young person getting to do this job, you don’t you don’t think about that aspect.

You think you’re going to go in, you’re going to do some research, you’re going to buy some stocks for clients, and everybody is going to be happy.

But that’s not really not the case.

What kind of advice could you give to somebody that would follow your career path and end up where you’re at? What do you think they need to know? I think two things.

First of all, and, you know, over the years, I’ve spoken to a lot of young people who want to get into this industry, and they’re there asking me what they should do to get into this industry.

I think a lot of them think that it’s you know, you do you do ABC over X number of years and all of a sudden you’re doing this job.

And really, that is not the case.

It’s a very tough industry to get into.

You really have to put your you have to get into the trenches and be willing to work doing, you know, let’s call it grunt work.

It’s you’re doing menial tasks.

You’re doing jobs that you may not like for a long time.

And you’re putting in the time and you have to be willing to do it to be given the opportunity to maybe progress.

So I think expectations have to be tempered when you’re when you’re looking at getting into this industry.

And when I talk to young people who are getting in, they’re quite surprised that that I’m giving them a not such a rosy way to get into this industry.

And it is it is tough.

I think the best thing that somebody could do is give themselves a diverse experience if they’re able to work doing different jobs before they actually get into this industry.

Because doing different jobs develops the skills that you are going to use in this industry.

You know, the most successful advisors that I have met have all done different things.

They have worked in different industries, they have done diverse things, and they’ve developed these skills that, when they became an advisor, were very important skills.

And and most of those skills are not the ability to pick a stock.

Well, now we have had nothing but technology problems throughout this entire interview.

I’m letting our listener know that.

So if this video runs smoothly through its because of my editing skills, but I think I’ve tortured you enough by answering all of my questions.

And I just want to thank you for for joining me on the podcast today.

No problem.

Kim, thank you very much for having me.

I appreciate you asking.

Thank you for tuning in to The Job Talk Podcast.

For more information, please visit us at thejobtalk.com Our podcast music was created by our friend Mike Malone in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.