Understand that the best financial advisers prefer to work with wealthier clients. As my ex-boss said, it takes just as much time, if not more, to handle a $400K acct as a $4M or a $40M acct. If you were him and had limited # of hours in a day, which would you concentrate on?
Really good advisers don't "hard advertise". They are known and respected within their industry and by their peers. They are interviewed on CNBC and quoted on the WSJournal. A good portion of their client base - in fact most of it - are long-term clients who go into second and even third generations of doing business with them.
Also, the best clients are those who DO know enough to know what they DON'T know. They ask questions, and know that no question is ever "too dumb to ask". They are also willing to expend time to work on their planning. They consider the financial adviser as part of "their team", which includes the tax adviser and the attorney/legal firm.
Of all the thousands of useless adviser titles, only 3 are allowed to do "financial planning" by the SEC. And that, NOT investing, is actually what you need from a fiduciary adviser.
Can you DIY on planning? Yes. But it takes more than a knowledge of stocks vs bonds or market trends. It requires the ability to do comprehensive risk assessment as you go through life and your situation changes. And frankly, most people don't know how to do that.
If you just want investing help, you can get that from a variety of sources. All major brokerages have perks for their customers who meet minimum #s on investment accounts, so if you meet those minimums you should try them first.
"Stock tips" are a risky come-on. As a small investor you cannot play with the big boys of finance. Slow and steady will get you further ahead, in the long run, than dashing and darting around, futilely trying to beat micro-second high-speed trading accounts (which deal in hundreds of millions of $$$$$ on every deal, if not billions).
If you like day trading - I have a couple of friends that enjoy it - park the majority of your funds in a balanced portfolio, and reserve a portion for the "wild and crazy". When I worked in the CFP office, we had a couple of clients who did just that. As a fiduciary, my boss could not and would not recommend risky investments to his clients. So both clients (separately) took a certain amount of money from their portfolio and reserved it for DIY high-risk investments. That way, the bulk of their assets were lower-risk, and they felt secure in engaging in high-risk market sectors without endangering their overall finances.