I’m on a mission to positively change the way that financial service providers deliver financial advice to clients. I’ve been fortunate to be around the wealth management business for over 25 years. Now, some of those were in my younger days, but being able to watch my dad build a successful advisory business (that is now managing multiple billions in family monies)helped to shape the way I think about the business. After graduating from Arizona State University, I came back to Atlanta and joined up with the family business (despite ASU being my alma mater, I’m a huge Dawgs fan, but wasn’t able to get into the Harvard of the South!) I got my CFA designation within three years of graduating and quickly after passed the CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER exam. I started managing individual family monies and managing our investment committee. When I joined, we had just launched a newer wealth management business, Wela Strategies. The goal of this business was to provide a personalized and scalable advisory firm for families with less than $250,000 in investable assets. In 2014, I began to take over the reins of this business. In 2015 we began building our own technology solutions for Wela. We eventually created a separate entity for our technology company and built a direct to consumer application that allowed users to track their net worth, open investment accounts and set goals within both a desktop and mobile application. We grew this user base to over 50,000 users and have been able to build our wealth management assets to over $150 million (while not budging and raising our minimum client, that remains at $10,000). As we continued to see the innovation within the space, we continued to see the greater need of helping current financial service providers better integrate technology into their business to stay competitive via efficiencies, but also continuing to enhance the digital client experiences. So, in 2018, we decided to shut down our direct to consumer application and focus all of our technology efforts on building solutions specifically for financial advisors. Our solution, Benjamin™, is a platform that enables financial advisors to better communicate with prospects, clients, and colleagues to make it more scalable (and profitable) to grow revenues. Given our experiences of building two wealth management firms, we were able to architect Benjamin™ to not only be efficient technology but to have the financial service provider’s processes in mind along the entire development cycle. As we were building Benjamin™ and delivering the solution to our own users of our mobile application and internally within our wealth management firms, I decided to write a book! The book is about changing the conversation for money management and how Benjamin helps with accomplishing this change. Ready to be Rich: Smart Financial Advice for People on the Way Up was published in 2018 and is my first book to date. The book highlights our team’s innovation along with giving advisors and financial professionals points to think about when they are looking to attract and talk with the next generation. I’m fortunate enough to be married to an amazing and supportive wife, Hillary. In my free time, we enjoy traveling, trying new foods (big foodies), spending time on the Beltline or in Athens for Gameday and taking our pup on walks around the neighborhood in Virginia Highlands. You can also find me out on the golf course or watching any golf tournament, as my love of the sport continues to grow (even during those rough days on the course). Along with my passion for the Dawgs, I’m a huge Braves and Falcons fan. I’m an Atlanta homer and am always open to talk about the great things happening in our city.