Standafer makes move into own office

• Standafer

ryan mcgaughey/daily globe John Standafer stands outside the Humiston Avenue building he has purchased in Worthington. Standafer, an Edward Jones financial advisor, will leave his current Oxford Street office with Jim Lesnar and move into his own building Dec. 1.

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WORTHINGTON — John Standafer couldn’t wait to come back to Worthington.

Not only is he in business in his hometown, but now he’s about to have an office in a very familiar neighborhood.

Standafer, who has been employed as a financial advisor at Edward Jones for a little more than a year, will move into the former Log Cabin grocery building on Dec. 1.

“I wanted this building from the day I moved to town,” Standafer said last week inside his future office, which most recently was home to The Realty Company. “I know you’re not supposed to let your emotions make your business decisions, but this had a lot of meaning for me. My grandfather used to live at 911 Humiston — it was two blocks down from here, and he used to give us a buck or two and send us down here.”

Nostalgia is not the only reason Standafer is excited about the new location.

“It’s a busy street, and I kind of like it because the building is kind of by itself,” Standafer said. “To me, it’s a known location. I can just say it’s in the Log Cabin; I don’t have to say 515 Humiston.”

Standafer grew up in Worthington and went on to attend St. Cloud State University. After graduation, he began working on May 22, 2006 — he remembers the exact day clearly — at Aerotek Scientific in the Twin Cities. He would remain there until a fellow Worthington High alumnus got him connected to Edward Jones.

“Dan Springman is a 2003 graduate of Worthington; after he graduated college I was already at Aerotek, and later he was interviewing with financial companies,” Standafer explained. “He basically ended up getting me into Edward Jones and said, ‘Hey, there happens to be an opportunity in Worthington,’ which I leapt at. I was beginning to get more and more vocal about wanting to have small-town opportunity. I first recruited him to my company, and then he left and recruited me to his.”

Standafer, the son of Paul and Diane Standafer, began working at Edward Jones in Worthington in August 2010, sharing office space with Jim Lesnar.

“I would be working out of my home or out of rented office space if Jim Lesnar didn’t have enough space to work out of,” Standafer said. “We talked about it at the start — the whole idea from the get-go was two offices.”

Standafer said he primarily works as “a retirement specialist” with Edward Jones, noting that it’s his professional responsibility “to make sure that you’re financially independent, or as close to it as you can be, when you want to hang it up.”

He stresses a realistic approach to financial planning

“You shouldn’t bring me five grand and ask me to double it overnight; it’s just not how we do it,” he said. “We are a long-term, serious money investment firm.”

Standafer added that it’s important from the Edward Jones perspective to be involved in the community, and he’s been working to fulfill that. He’s a member of Noon Kiwanis; the United Way of Nobles County, King Turkey Day and the Windsurfing Regatta and Unvarnished Music Festival boards; active in Worthington Area Chamber of Commerce; coaches Pee Wee hockey; is a Hospice volunteer; and recently joined the Client Community Services Inc. board.

“I know it sounds corny, but that is part of what brought me to the job,” Standafer said of community volunteering.

Before Standafer moves into his new building, he will welcome longtime First State Bank Southwest employee Sharon Lynn as a business operations associate (BOA) beginning Oct. 31. She will work with the current BOA in the office now shared by Lesnar and Standafer for 30 days, getting trained to work solely with Standafer.

“Sharon will be the BOA, and this office is basically hers,” Standafer said. “She will run the day-to-day and answer all the really hard questions — she’ll be the most important person in this office.”

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