Charting Opportunities With Portus Wealth Advisors

80% of businesses that go to market fail to sell. That's a sobering statistic. And William is the first to admit he doesn't know exactly how much to trust it. But he believes it is directionally accurate.  And more importantly, he knows exactly why it happens. Most business owners are exceptional at their craft. They start a business around what they do well, build a customer base, hire...

Most people see a 5.3% yield on a 30-year Treasury and think it sounds like a great deal.  Before you buy, make sure you understand what you're actually getting into. In this installment of the Portus Perspectives series, William breaks down the relationship between interest rates and bond prices in plain language, using a simple seesaw analogy that makes one of the most misunderstood concept...

 What if your best marketing move was giving away your formula for free? ➡️ https://portusadvisors.com/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=brinson_s2e7 In this episode of Charting Opportunities, John Sanders sits down on stage with Dr. Mark Brinson (Army veteran, former acupuncture physician, and founder of Evil Bone Water) to unpack one of the most unconventional business g...

Most business owners hear "rate hike" and brace for impact. They're looking at it wrong. ➡️ Learn more about how we handle different rate environments: https://portusadvisors.com?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=portus-perspectives-ep53 In this installment of the Portus Perspectives series, William follows up on a previous conversation about interest rates an...

What are your options when it's time to exit your business? William Bissett breaks down the five paths every business owner should understand, from private equity to simply letting it run. ➡️ Talk with Portus about your exit options. https://portusadvisors.com/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=portus_perspectives&utm_content=ep52 Running a business is exhausting. ...

In this installment of the Portus Perspectives series, William takes a step back from client stories and market commentary to answer a question that comes up more often than you might expect, even among people who already have a financial advisor. What is financial planning? Really... William's been in this business for over 20 years.  He started selling annuities and life insurance, moved to...

In this installment of the Portus Perspectives series, William shares one of the most powerful client stories of his career.  A story about a man who had been fighting cancer since 2006, who outlived every timeline the doctors gave him, who left behind something extraordinary for the grandkids he wasn't sure he'd get to see grow up. When the cancer came back around 2015 and 2016, William...

In this installment of the Portus Perspectives series, William opens with a story about a friend, Walt Frye, a longtime member of the Charlotte Angel community who William had the pleasure of connecting with a conference for financial planners here in Charlotte in late 2025.  As a result, Walt ended up as the keynote speaker. One question he posed to the room stayed with William ever since.  &quot...

In this installment of the Portus Perspectives series, William opens with something every business owner knows well. The constant stream of people calling to tell you about the latest and greatest strategy, product, or tool that will change everything. In the financial planning world, that call usually involves tax strategies. And right now, one of the most popular ones showing up on Instagram, Yo...

In this installment of the Portus Perspectives series, William takes a deep dive into one of the most foundational concepts in retirement planning. The 4% withdrawal rule. Where it came from, what it actually means, and why it is a great starting point that should never be the end of the conversation. The story starts in the early 1990s with a financial planner named William Bengen, who set out to...

In this installment of the Portus Perspectives series, William shares a Zoom call he had recently with a client in her 80s and one of her daughters, a conversation that touched on one of the most important and most avoided topics in financial planning. The client lives alone in a new development in Chapel Hill. She has friends in the neighborhood, can cook and clean and drive and manage her own ap...

In this installment of the Portus Perspectives series, William walks through a real and timely situation with a client couple based in Denver, Colorado who have been in serious growth mode. Three business locations. A short term rental property purchased last year. Accelerated depreciation taken on both the STR and a new business location, which dramatically lowered their tax liability for last ye...

In this installment of the Portus Perspectives series, William shares a story from his time working with a client in the DC area that stuck with him ever since. The husband was a professor.  The wife had stayed home with the kids.  They had inherited a meaningful sum of money from her side of the family after her parents passed away in quick succession. It changed their lives in real and positive...

In this installment of the Portus Perspectives series, William tackles one of the most important distinctions in personal finance. The line between investing and gambling, and how easy it is to cross it without realizing you have.  It starts with the excitement.  Jim Cramer pounding his buzzer.  A stock up 20% in a day.  Your neighbor telling you what they made on the latest hot thing.  That energ...

In this installment of the Portus Perspectives series, William shares the ongoing journey of a client he's worked with for years in the construction-related industry. A business that's seen its share of peaks and valleys but has trended upward over time, and an owner who's always known that one day he would sell. The planning conversations started years ago.  How does the business f...

In this installment of the Portus Perspectives series, William opens with a reference to Benjamin Graham, widely regarded as the father of value investing and the man who mentored Warren Buffett and a generation of wildly successful investors in the forties, fifties, and sixties.  Graham had a story he told about a fictional business partner he called Mr. Market. The premise is simple but the impl...

In this installment of the Portus Perspectives series, William shares one of the most powerful client stories from his 20 plus years in financial planning. A story he comes back to regularly because the lesson it carries has never left him.  It was January 2008.  A client William had been working with for a couple of years asked him and his senior partner Dwight to come down to his home in Annapol...

In this installment of the Portus Perspectives series, William opens with a Wall Street Journal article that stopped him cold. Over 1,000 IRAs in the United States with tens of millions of dollars sitting inside them.  Three things immediately came to mind: 1. How do you get tens of millions of dollars into an IRA?  2. What a mistake that could turn out to be. 3.  Why weren't more of them Rot...

In this installment of the Portus Perspectives series, William opens with a personal story that starts with a midlife moment, a loss, and a dream purchase.  2018: William had just lost his dad. He had been driving the same Chevy Tahoe for 11 years. And so he did what made any middle -ged man with the means to do so would do...  He bought a 2018 Jeep Wrangler.  Manual transmission.  Removable top. ...

Most business owners think HR is just an administrative headache. Matt Butler wants to show you the line item in your financials where it is actually destroying enterprise value. In this episode of Charting Opportunities, William Bissett sits down on stage with Matt Butler, co-founder of Pair PEO, a PEO brokerage based in Charlotte. Matt spent over 15 years in the PEO space — first as a user, then...

In this installment of the Portus Perspectives series, Bo, marketing lead at Portus Wealth Advisors, puts together a quick tutorial for business owners who are considering selling and want to know how AI can help them think through the process.  If you have never used AI before, this is your starting point.  The most popular platforms right now are ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude. All three are powerf...

In this installment of the Portus Perspectives series, William opens with golf. Specifically, a clip from the Scottish Open that stopped him in his tracks.  Rory McIlroy, one of only a handful of players to ever win all four majors, a 40 time winner around the world, one of the best players of his generation, is standing in the middle of the fairway about 100 to 150 yards from the pin. A distance...

In this installment of the Portus Perspectives series, William tackles one of the most charged topics in personal finance. Debt.  Everyone has an opinion. Some people believe you should never carry debt under any circumstances. Others believe leverage is one of the most powerful wealth building tools available. And William's take is more nuanced than either camp, which is exactly why it is wo...

In this installment of the Portus Perspectives series, William draws on a recent Charting Opportunities event that brought in a speaker from Florida who runs a company called Evil Bone Water, an ancient Chinese remedy for all kinds of ailments that started as a small batch operation out of a chiropractor's home and grew into something remarkable.  The speaker, Dr. Mark Brinson, did a phenomen...

 Most business owners think branding is a logo. Anne Marie Holder of Spark Strategic Ideas is here to tell you it is not even close. In this episode of Charting Opportunities, William Bissett sits down on stage with Anne Marie Holder, founder of Spark Strategic Ideas and an 18-year veteran of strategic branding and marketing. Anne Marie built Spark out of the 2008 recession and has spent nearly tw...