I agree we've made it too hard to enter this industry. The expectation now is you leave school, do a Bachelor of Financial Planning and upon completion aged 23 you walk into a role as an Adviser earning $150K plus. Australia as a whole is not ready for the 24 year old Graduate to be telling a 32 year old with their first kid and a mortgage valuable life lessons. Sad to see you knock back plenty of good opportunities. During my own career, I took a $40,000 pay cut and worked in client service for 2 years and I worked practically for free for 6 months on the promise of buying a business at discount that never happened. I spent two years as a paraplanner earning about half I made in another role. Upon setting up my own business I made nothing in the first two years and spent the next 5 years paying off the mortgage I took out to feed myself.