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DOUG HILL
managing partner,
Edward Jones |
TIRELESS
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A MAN WHO
NEVER HAD A JOB GETS ALL OF THEM.
BY KEVIN KIPP
Doug Hill will make it four for four when he succeeds John Bachmann
as managing partner of Edward Jones next year.
All of the brokerage firm’s leaders started in the trenches as investment
representatives: namesake Edward D. Jones Sr. was originally a bond
trader, and also “worked a circuit” as an I.R., what Jones folk
call their brokers.
The founder’s son Ted Jones—the one who came up with the idea of
community-based brokerage—worked as an I.R. around Montgomery, Mo.
And Bachmann, who became managing partner in 1980, got his start
as an I.R. in Columbia, Mo., in 1963.
Hill opened a Dodge City, Kan., office for Jones in 1968. He also
met his wife Vicki, then a school teacher, there. They have three
adult children.
Hill is originally from Homer, N.Y., a small town near Syracuse.
He says, “I figured if I was ever going to live anywhere else, I
better do it in college.”
He looked at the map, picked the middle of the country and earned
a B.S. in zoology, with a minor in business, at Kansas State University.
He had planned to work in hospital administration and felt compelled
to study a science.
But his best friend’s dad, the principal of Homer High School, had
already planted the seeds for Hill’s investment career.
“Mr. Herney made a ton of money in the stock market,” Hill recalls.
“Twice a month, we’d meet during a free period. We’d read the old
Dow Theory Research Letter and the Wall Street Journal.
He and my father helped me buy my first stock when I was 16.”
So the heavy lifting was already done when an Edward Jones broker
spoke to Hill’s business law class. They became friends, and Hill
agreed that a career in investments was right for him. Hill says
he finished finals one day, and drove to St. Louis the next for
training.
“I’ve never had a job,” he quips. “I always worked for Edward Jones.”
(Besides never having a job, Hill also serves on the boards of Webster
University, Central Institute for the Deaf, the Saint Louis Zoo,
The Muny, and the business school advisory board at Kansas State.
He also has held various leadership positions in the Securities
Industry Association.)
As an I.R., Hill says he could see “the value we added for individuals.
Helping people layout their financial objectives, to help them retire
with dignity—that was exceptionally rewarding.”
Some clients even asked advice about buying a car or tractor. “It’s
a wonderful feeling when you gain that kind confidence with individual
investors,” he says. “That relationship doesn’t happen with on-line
investing or working with institutions.”
Bachmann—who calls the guy who never had a job “a tireless worker”—says,
“The core of our business is the relationship between the I.R. and
the customer. To have the leaders be intimately aware of that is
a strong advantage for the firm and our clients. Doug is steeped
in the Edward Jones way of doing business.”
Given his role in establishing and expanding the firm’s training,
marketing and sales programs, one might say that Jones is steeped
in Hill’s way of doing business, too.
In 1978, Ted Jones asked Hill to move to St. Louis to start a training
program for 20 new I.R.s a month. In 1981, Hill established—and
headed for the next 16 years—the sales and marketing department;
Jones had 300 I.R.s.
“John asked me to organize it, so we could handle 1,000 investment
reps,” Hill says. “He believed that, in order to help more investors,
we needed to grow.”
He describes his duties as ensuring that “the sales force had an
orderly supply of product—stocks and bonds—and sales ideas on a
daily basis. When they came in in the morning, they would have some
ideas to talk about with customers.”
Along the way, a mentor at the Wharton School of Business advised
Hill that each department and each product area—equities, mutual
funds, corporate and muni-bonds—should develop its own business
plan. That’s a lot of business plans, and he worked on each one.
“When we finished, I asked Professor [Jerry] Wind for a grade,”
Hill says. “He said, ‘C+. You’re only half done. Now your I.R.s
need to develop business plans.’”
By the time Hill was promoted to COO in 1998, Edward Jones had established
a goal of 10,000 reps worldwide, a number based on 15 percent annual
growth. They ended 2002 with 9,172 reps, and were training 200 new
ones every month.
“That means systems and programs and area teams to keep track of
them,” Hill says. “Today we’re designing for the day we have 25,000.”
In 2002, Hill was assigned responsibilities for the accounting,
human resources, information systems, operations and service divisions.
And in January 2004, the man who never had a job, assumes leadership
of it all.
Kevin Kipp runs Bubble Communications, a creative services and
community relations firm in St. Charles.
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