Then & Now: Hard work, perseverance keys to Baker’s success

Robert Baker credits hard work and perseverance for the 25-year success of his financial advisory practice with Edward Jones in Fayetteville.

“I’ve always loved the quote, ‘Do today what others are not willing to do, and you will be able to do tomorrow what others are not able to do,’” he said. “This is a difficult field to get started in, and even more so to have a long-term success rate in. So, you’ve got to keep your nose to the grindstone for the first several years and always do what’s right for people, and eventually the business will take care of itself.”

That meant working long hours when he started his practice in 2001, after graduating from Oklahoma State University in 2000 with a degree in business administration and a minor in finance. Originally from Enid, Baker interned with Edward Jones during college and knew he wanted to continue with the firm.

“When I moved to Fayetteville I didn’t know a soul in this town, so I had to work pretty hard to build a footprint and a network over time. That only came by doing that longer and more persistently than the average person trying to do the same thing,” Baker said.

His hard work paid off, and he was named to the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal’s Forty Under 40 class in 2009. Now Baker, 45, works with several hundred families in Fayetteville and the Northwest Arkansas area, as well as in more than 20 other states.

An accredited asset management specialist (AAMS) and a certified exit planning advisor (CEPA), he advises people on their overall financial picture and goals: tracking, planning for and accomplishing those goals.

“There are three chapters in a person’s life: asset accumulation, asset or income distribution, and then wealth transfer when something happens to someone, and it gets passed on to the next generation. I help with those processes and facilitate those things through the use of financial security investments,” he said, adding that he specializes in retirement planning.

Baker enjoys meeting people from different walks of life and hearing their success stories, as well as helping them “accomplish things financially they didn’t think were possibilities before they met me.” After 25 years he’s now added the children of his clients to his clientele.

“One thing kind of neat thing as your career matures in this business is that a lot of the people that were my clients back when I was a Forty Under 40. Now I’m working with two or three generations of the family at this point.”

From a corporate perspective, Baker has been a recruiter for Edward Jones and is a hiring specialist, doing interviews for the company’s new financial advisers in the area. He’s also hosted 15 interns over the years.

“I’ve always had college interns work for me because I did that in college, and I felt obligated to pass on the torch, if I could, for someone,” he said.

His advice for those interns is to work harder than the next person and be persistent.

“For any kind of a sales career, whether you’re selling a product or a service, you’ve got to be persistent, you’ve got to be able to hear no for an answer and not let it get you down,” he said.

Over the years Baker has been on boards and chaired committees with the chamber of commerce, but he’s focused on his business and family. He’s a den leader for his son’s Cub Scout den. Baker earned the rank of Eagle Scout when he was in Boy Scouts.

Baker’s wife and 6-year-old son are his motivations for “wanting to have work/life balance where I do a good job for my clients and also as a father and a husband.”

“Ultimately, I’ve got it in the back of my head, if my son grows up and wants to get involved in the industry, then I’ll certainly be here to help him find his path doing that. But that’s a pretty big ‘what if’ for a 6-year-old.”