How many times have you heard it? "The first day of my career, I was handed office forms to fill out, and my NAIFA application."

No matter how much things change, one thing will always remain the same; People join People. Someone chose to invest in your future success and invited you to join NAIFA, or at the very least had a guiding hand in your finding NAIFA, and we hope you would agree that decision has been a benefit to your career.

As we look ahead to what we hope will be a summer filled with glorious weather, please pause for just a moment, and think about who you might introduce to NAIFA within your circle of influence.

If you have co-workers who are new to the industry, NAIFA has entry level membership rates to make it easier for professionals to obtain membership in their professional association while they are just getting started in their career. New-to-the-industry rates begin at just $10 a month during their first year of being licensed and increase by $10/ month each year until year five when they transition to full member rates (those details can be found at https://belong.naifa.org/join).

Maybe you don’t have non-members in your office, but if you host summer interns, a terrific way to help them understand opportunities within our industry, in addition to what they’ll learn from you, could be inviting them to take part in NAIFA's Future Leaders Program. Future Leaders is an opportunity for participants to meet, ask questions, and learn from NAIFA members around the country, learn about opportunities they could pursue within their field, and gain additional knowledge about their future career paths. Classes are beginning in June and again in October and they are free to participating college students (you can even check to see if your college is participating).

If by the end of their internship, you can see they're bought into making this their career, consider gifting them a membership to NAIFA. Student membership is only $50/year and is available to anyone enrolled in a high school, university, college, or graduate program seeking a diploma or degree and does not currently hold a license in financial services; this (sometimes paired with a coffee gift card) is becoming a great "Thank You" gift for students as they wrap up internships for the summer.

With all that is going on in Washington these days, our membership and our voice is as important as it's ever been. Even if you don't have an intern or know of someone new to the industry to introduce to NAIFA, we hope you'll take a moment and think of one person you do know who you could invite to join and add to our collective voice, because they're needed.

Thank You for belonging to YOUR Professional Association and for all you do to help NAIFA-Wisconsin achieve our mission of Empowering Financial Professionals and Consumers Through World-Class Advocacy and Education.