Long before I had a single client of my own, I sat in on a meeting between a wealth planner I was interning for and the two people who raised me. My mother is a retired veterinarian and a former high school valedictorian, and my father finishes the New York Times crossword for fun, so when the planner asked whether they would want to hear about a strategy to raise their return and lower their taxes, I expected my father to wave it off. Instead, he said yes, because he knew almost nothing about the subject and understood the value of having an expert in his corner. Watching the sharpest man I know admit he needed help told me that nearly everyone does, and that the people who need it most are often the teachers, first responders, and working families who were never handed a manual for any of it.
My own start came by accident, when I dropped a class in college and wandered into my roommate's Econ 101 lecture. It made immediate sense to me, partly because I had spent high school and college selling televisions and appliances at Best Buy, where supply and demand stopped being a textbook idea and became something I watched play out on the floor every shift. Finance pulled me in as a life skill worth mastering, and once I was in the industry, I found the part I loved most was not the trading or the numbers but the coaching, sitting with someone and helping them understand what had always felt out of reach.
Decades later, that is still the center of how I work. I prepare for every client meeting by going back through old notes and taking apart the current accounts line by line, so our time together goes to the real questions rather than the setup. My aim in the room is to make sense of what can feel like chaos, to keep each decision pointed at the goal we set, and to follow through afterward with the research and coordination it takes to put a strategy in motion. Clients tell me I make them feel well looked after, and I take that as the highest compliment there is.
Away from the office, coaching is still my first love. I have led a high school varsity ice hockey team, advised my college fraternity's alumni, and these days coach rec baseball, basketball, and softball, along with a travel baseball program I started for my oldest son and the ten-and-under players in our town. I still lace up competitively in a league that includes off-season college players, which keeps me honest. My wife Sam and I met at Rutgers, hold season tickets to the football games, and are raising three kids, including boy-girl twins. When time allows, I volunteer as a guide and dig researcher at the Edelman Fossil Park and Museum. What gets me out of bed is the chance to leave people better off than I found them.