Taylor Zimmerman

While all my friends are out being bar stars and attempted ballers I decided to take a unique route with my younger years. After flying from my parents nest and surviving a three year digital design program condenced into 12 months at VFS in Vancouver, BC I found out that sometimes starting a career while you're young doesn't always help. Everyone wanted experience, and no one wanted to offer the opprotunity. After 5 months of job hunting and eating instant noodles so I could pay my downtown apartment's horrendous rent, I swallowed the pride pill and moved back to the nest in Edmonton, AB.

In Edmonton I continued looking for design work but the story on the west coast was the same in the prairies; no one wants to hire a designer with no resume. I took stock of what my year in Vancouver had taught me, what it had gifted me, and realized that maybe design was my pass time passion, not my career. And that I was meant to be in BC for life experience, not education.

After many hours on the internet doing research on careers I ended up falling into the one I have now: financial planning, investing, and insurance. Ironically, in this line of work starting young is actually a benefit! After almost a year of believing I needed to work somewhere I hated in order to get "job experience" life lead me to a place where I can not only start early, but finish early too!

My collegues continue to tell me that they wish they got into this career at my age because they could be set for retirement at their age now. Clients have stated that they would rather have me handle their investments rather then their "father's friend" because I literally have longer to commit to their investments. I love what I do now, and I am happy that I am on my way up the success ladder before my 21st birthday.