David Bowie wrote All the Young Dudes more than 50 years ago, and Mott the Hoople turned it into one of the defining songs of the glam-rock era.

Lately, that title has been running through my head for an entirely different reason.

A surprising number of my recent coaching conversations with agency owners have involved young men entering or developing within the financial-services profession.

In one case, an agency owner is considering hiring a young associate and asking a deceptively important question:

What kind of person is he?

Not simply, Can he do the job? But:

Does he have the character, values and maturity to become someone we can trust with our clients?

In another agency, a young associate is receiving direction from a respected senior member of the team about improvements he needs to make. His response?

“Yeah, yeah.”

He may simply mean, I understand. But the experienced professional across from him may hear, I’m not really listening to you.

The issue may not even be attitude. It may simply be that nobody has taught him that professional communication is measured not only by what you intend to say, but also by what the other person reasonably hears.

Two different situations. One underlying question:

Are we simply employing the next generation of advisors—or are we helping develop them?

And perhaps there is an equally important question for the young advisor:

Do you understand what the people around you are learning about you from the way you show up every day?

We Teach Young Advisors What to Know. Who Is Teaching Them Who to Become?

Financial services spends enormous amounts of time teaching young professionals what they need to know: licensing, products, technology, prospecting, financial planning, insurance, investments, CRM systems, compliance and client meetings.

Those skills matter. But there are really two dimensions to developing a successful advisor: competence and character.

Competence answers: Can you do the work?

Character answers: Can people trust you with increasingly important work?

Great agencies deliberately develop both.

A technically competent young advisor who lacks responsibility, integrity, service, learning, respect or contribution may eventually create more problems than value. A young person with strong character who remains curious and coachable, on the other hand, can develop extraordinary professional capability over time.

The question is not simply: What can this person do today? It is: Who is this person becoming?

Scott Galloway and the Responsibility to Develop Young Men

Professor Scott Galloway has spent considerable time in recent years speaking and writing about the challenges facing boys and young men.

His argument is not that young men should be excused from responsibility. Quite the opposite.

He argues that young men benefit from relationships, mentorship, expectations, community and positive models of adulthood. In Boys to Men, Galloway describes the importance of older men who served as guardrails in his own development and makes the case for adults becoming more actively involved in mentoring younger men.

In Notes on Being a Man, he develops that thinking into something resembling a code for adulthood: take action, accept risk, build economic independence, create value, be generous, develop relationships and contribute to other people.

Those ideas extend far beyond business. But they also have enormous implications for leadership.

When a 21-, 22- or 25-year-old walks into your agency, you are not simply hiring a pair of hands. You may be participating in the development of a professional adult.

That is both an opportunity and a responsibility.

To the Young Advisor: People Are Watching Things Nobody Put in the Job Description

If you are one of the young advisor dudes reading this, there is something worth understanding early in your career.

The people around you are continually forming impressions of you—not because they are waiting for you to fail, but because they are trying to answer one question:

Can I trust this person with more?

More responsibility. More independence. More important clients. More sensitive information. More opportunity. More money. More influence.

And the answer is often shaped by behaviours that can feel insignificant in the moment.

Do you arrive prepared? Do you do what you said you would do? Do you listen when someone is speaking? Do you ask questions when you do not understand? When you make a mistake, do you own it? When someone corrects you, do you become defensive—or curious?

How do you speak to the receptionist? To a senior advisor? To a client old enough to be your grandparent?

These behaviours accumulate. Over time, they create your professional reputation.

And your reputation often travels ahead of your résumé.

Imagine Sitting Across From a 72-Year-Old Client

Imagine you are 24 years old. Sitting across from you is a 72-year-old client.

That client may have spent 45 years building a business, accumulating savings, raising children, paying mortgages, surviving recessions and making financial decisions that affected an entire family.

They may now be thinking about retirement, their spouse, their children, taxes, health, estate planning, legacy and what happens to everything they spent a lifetime building.

You are not simply discussing a financial product.

That client is silently asking: Can I trust you?

Technical knowledge matters enormously. But so does the human being delivering that knowledge.

That is why hiring and developing young advisors cannot simply be about intelligence, charisma or sales ability. It is also about values.

But values only become useful when we understand what they actually look like in behaviour.

The Young Advisor Professional Code

Responsibility: Own What Is Yours

Responsibility means that when you say, “I’ll take care of it,” the other person can stop thinking about it.

You understand what needs to be done. You clarify what is unclear. You complete it when you said you would. And if circumstances change, you communicate before the deadline rather than after it.

Responsibility also changes the question you ask when something goes wrong.

Instead of “Who was at fault?” ask: “What part of this was mine to own?”

Integrity: Do What Is Right Even When It Is Inconvenient

Integrity means your behaviour matches what you say you believe.

You tell the truth when hiding a mistake would be easier. You admit when you do not know something. You protect confidential information. You do not exaggerate your knowledge or make promises simply to impress someone.

Sometimes the most professional thing you can say is: “I don’t know, but I’ll find out.”

In financial services, clients may eventually trust you with intimate details about their money, health, businesses and families. If people cannot trust you with small things, they will hesitate to trust you with big ones.

Service: Remember Who the Work Is For

Ambition is not a problem. Wanting to succeed and earn more money is not a problem.

But service means understanding that your job cannot be entirely about you.

The professional question is: “What does this client need from me?” Not simply: “What can I get from this client?”

Service means listening before recommending, returning a call even when there may be no immediate revenue attached, explaining something again because the client still does not understand it, and treating people as human beings rather than transactions.

Many of the most commercially successful advisors eventually learn the same lesson: the more value you genuinely create for other people, the more value tends to come back to you.

Learning: Stay Coachable

Early in your career, there will be people around you who know things you do not know. That is not disrespectful. It is mathematics.

Someone who has conducted 3,000 client meetings has experienced situations you have not yet encountered.

Learning means remaining open to that experience. Take notes. Ask questions. Study. Observe. Seek feedback.

Most importantly, learn to distinguish correction from rejection. Someone telling you that you handled something poorly does not necessarily mean they think poorly of you. Often, they are investing time in helping you improve.

Before defending yourself, try asking: “What would you recommend I do differently next time?”

Respect: Understand That Impact Matters

Respect does not mean blindly agreeing with older people. Experience does not make someone infallible.

Respect means recognizing the dignity, experience and perspective of the person in front of you. It means listening while someone else is speaking, putting your phone away, being on time, and treating the newest employee with the same basic dignity you offer the senior partner.

It also means learning that your intentions and your impact are not always the same thing.

You may say “Yeah, yeah” meaning, I’ve got it. The other person may hear, Stop talking.

Professional maturity includes learning to recognize that difference.

A better response might simply be: “I understand what you’re saying. Let me make sure I have it right.” Small adjustment. Very different impression.

Contribution: Leave Things Better Because You Were There

Contribution means moving beyond “What am I supposed to do?” toward “How can I create value here?”

You notice something that could be improved. You help a colleague when appropriate. You share something useful you learned. You identify a recurring problem and suggest a solution. You create a better experience for a client.

This does not mean becoming everyone’s helper. It means adopting a mindset that says:

I want to create more value than I consume.

That is often the moment when leaders begin seeing a young employee differently—not merely as someone who works here, but as someone who could eventually help lead here.

Values Are Not What You Say. They Are What People Experience.

You do not prove responsibility by saying responsibility is one of your values. You prove it when people stop having to remind you.

You do not demonstrate integrity by putting the word on your LinkedIn profile. You demonstrate it when telling the truth costs you something.

And you do not prove respect by saying, “Of course I respect them.” The other person decides whether they experience respect from you.

Values become visible through repeated behaviour.

That is why agency leaders should look beyond the answers candidates give in interviews.

Anyone can say, “Integrity is really important to me.” Better questions are:

Tell me about a time you made a mistake that nobody else initially knew about. What did you do?

Tell me about difficult feedback you received. How did you respond?

Tell me about a commitment you could not keep. How did you handle it?

Those questions begin moving the conversation from claimed values to demonstrated values.

To the Leaders: Do Not Judge Standards You Have Never Taught

Now the responsibility shifts.

It is easy for an experienced leader to look at a 22-year-old and think, Surely he should know better.

Maybe. But maybe nobody has ever explained it to him.

A young professional entering today’s workplace has grown up in a very different social, educational and technological environment than a Baby Boomer or Gen X agency owner did.

We can spend our time complaining about that. Or we can lead.

That does not mean lowering expectations. Quite the opposite. It means making expectations clear enough to be learned.

Do not simply say, “Be more professional.” Show them what professionalism looks like.

Do not simply say, “Take more ownership.” Explain: “When you agree to do something, write it down, schedule it, complete it and close the loop.”

Do not simply say, “You need better communication skills.” Teach: “When someone gives you feedback, stop talking. Listen. Clarify what they mean. Decide what you will do differently. Then follow through.”

And perhaps most importantly, let young people observe experienced professionals doing the work well.

Allow them to sit in client meetings. Then debrief: What did you notice? Why do you think I asked that question? Why did I slow down at that point? What did you notice about the client’s reaction? What would you have done differently?

That is how judgment gets transferred—not through a policy manual, but through experience, explanation and reflection.

Experience Has an Obligation Too

Those of us who have spent decades in business sometimes forget something: we were not born knowing all of this either.

Somebody corrected us. Somebody believed in us. Somebody gave us another opportunity. Somebody modelled professionalism. Somebody told us something we did not particularly want to hear. Somebody opened a door.

Somebody trusted us before we had completely earned it.

Over decades, those experiences became judgment.

The mistake is assuming that because something feels obvious to us today, it was always obvious.

It wasn’t. It was developed.

Which means experience comes with an obligation: pass some of it forward.

At the same time, experienced leaders should remain humble enough to recognize that learning is not a one-way street.

Young professionals bring different perspectives, technologies, communication habits, ambitions and ways of seeing the world.

Leadership is not about creating younger versions of ourselves. It is about helping the next generation develop enough competence and character to become strong versions of themselves.

So, Who Is Becoming Whom?

Perhaps that is ultimately the question behind all the young advisor dudes.

To the young professional:

Who are you becoming through the habits you repeat every day?

Every client conversation matters. Every promise matters. Every response to feedback matters. Every small act of responsibility, integrity, service, learning, respect and contribution is building your professional identity.

And to the experienced agency owner, advisor or leader:

Who are you deliberately helping that young person become?

Do not merely hire them. Develop them.

Do not merely correct them. Teach them.

Do not merely tell them what they did wrong. Show them what good looks like.

Give them standards worth rising toward—and enough support to learn how.

Your agency’s future may depend upon whether the next generation develops the technical competence to serve your clients.

But your legacy may be determined by something even more important:

Whether you helped develop young advisors into the kind of human beings your clients, your team and eventually the next generation can trust.

That may be the news worth carrying to all the young advisor dudes.

Will You Carry the News?

If this message brought someone to mind, perhaps that is your invitation to carry the news.

Share this article with a young advisor who may benefit from hearing it—or with an experienced advisor, agency owner or leader who has an opportunity to help develop the next generation.

The future of our profession will not be shaped only by what the next generation learns.

It will also be shaped by who takes the time to teach them.

So, whether you are one of the young advisor dudes—or one of the older dudes helping them find their way—please carry the news.

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