Is your financial advisor really an advisor or insurance salesman?

Have you ever tried investing on your own? What do you think about when you invest?
I know I think about buying stocks. A little piece of a company. I remember in high school picking a few companies to follow on Yahoo finance and see how well our picks did at the end of a certain period. If we made money we were happy. The trick was picking the right stocks. In the real world you have to actually have money to buy these stocks. When you put in that order there are all sorts of fees to pay as well in order to get it transferred to your name. This can be overwhelming. If you are dealing with your own precious money as well you don't want to pick the wrong stock. So you hire a "professional."
I think everyone and their mom is a financial professional. I see more job openings on Linkedin and job boards for financial services than any other industry. On the show Last Week Tonight they made fun of the fact that everyone can claim to be a financial advisor as there is no actual law or licensing to be considered as such. If you find yourself in front of a person who considers them an advisor there is no real way of figuring out  what credentials they hold and what they are really trying to get you to buy. I like the funny video that the CFP Board puts out to show this.
When you pull back the wool though you find they are all just some kind of insurance salesman. No one likes losing money, but they all love making it. So the way advisors make money is by selling you an insurance policy to ensure you never lose, or if you do, it should hopefully be by very little. Who doesn't like that? That is why annuity sales (insurance for investments) are incredibly high. $440 million in 2012 according to LIMRA http://www.limra.com/uploadedFiles/limracom/Posts/PR/Data_Bank/_PDF/AnnuityCompanyRankings-Q4-2012.pdf
Insurance isn't a bad thing, just has a high cost. Remember the way insurance works is you pay for everyone to share in the potential losses so instead of you getting really large gains and possibly really large losses you are paying someone out of your large gains to insure you won't get large losses. You are going to miss out on all of the fun and pay an insurance salesman some great commissions.  Why else do companies recruit agents so much? They give great returns! They also bank on the fact that agent won't last long anyway and any business he/she writes is all commissions they never have to pay out.
So long story short, your financial advisor is really just an insurance salesman. Just make sure you pick one that understands what they are doing and discloses to you the compensation in recommending a product. It doesn't make them evil. Sometimes they can be ignorant and sometimes they can be self promoting (greedy) but just make sure you keep a guard and take control of what you want.