Financial Planner Search

In this episode of Financial Planner Search, Sean Linder, founder of Honarc Wealth, talks about why a complex family does not want to be dropped into a box. Sean has been an advisor since he left college, about sixteen years. He stayed independent on purpose. He does not want hundreds of clients. Money is too private for that. People do not sit down with their friends and open the balance sheet. T...

In this episode of Financial Planner Search, Dr. Pat Pachciarz, CEPA, CPT, founder of Pinnacle, discusses the virtual family office he built for women in life's transitions. After a decade inside JP Morgan watching wealth leak out between uncoordinated advisors, CPAs, and attorneys, Pat left to build a firm where the CPA, attorney, private wealth advisor, banker, and estate planning attorney all s...

In this episode of Financial Planner Search, Bill Davis, founder of Stance Capital, makes the case that values-aligned investing isn't a sacrifice trade — and anyone who tells you otherwise is doing "performative theater." Two-thirds of his career had nothing to do with financial services: he built a database marketing company in his mid-twenties, ran a venture-backed renewable energy firm for sev...

In this episode of Financial Planner Search, David Wiedmeyer, founder of KLD Wealth and a CFP based in Lebanon, Ohio, shares how a five-dollar Arby's deal shaped his entire career. After his dad — an over-the-road trucker — was in an accident and money got tight, his mom brought home five roast beef sandwiches and doled them out among three kids. The feeling of trying to give one back to her, and...

In this episode of Financial Planner Search, Melissa Yano, a CFP at Capital Wealth Planner, talks with business owners whose companies are already working and who still do not have an answer for what happens if they are suddenly gone. She works with closely held businesses, often a solo owner or a couple, usually up to about $15 million in revenue. People come to her when cash is piling up, a coll...

In this episode of Financial Planner Search, Gary Preisser, Managing Partner of Stonebriar Wealth Advisors, explains what he calls functional wealth. Most of his clients are retirees, or close to it, and he spends a lot of time reminding them that every dollar they have is going to be spent by somebody. It might as well be them. Gary came up through tax preparation and small-business consulting, w...

In this episode of Financial Planner Search, Donny Stewart, CFP and partner at Swan Wealth Management, discusses what people are really asking when they say, "Am I okay?" He and his partners, TJ Bruce and Mike Mahalich, met on the Regis University golf team, spent years on the institutional side, and later bought a book in Edina full of retirees and people close to it. Every client and every dolla...

In this episode of Financial Planner Search, Bridget Grimes, founder of Wealth Choice, talks about the women who make the money, carry the family, and still do not have five minutes for a plan. The firm is about to turn ten. Bridget was a hedge-fund trader, then a pastry chef for a decade. During her divorce, her house in San Diego burned down. Her two closest friends, a hand surgeon and a woman r...

In this episode of Financial Planner Search, JD Ramirez, who leads RAM Capital Group, talks about what changes when a business owner stops running the company by default. JD grew up in his family’s wine business in Colombia. By eight or nine he was around the vineyard. He was not tasting the wine. He was watching his parents turn grapes into something people wanted, then put the money back into th...

In this episode of Financial Planner Search, James Roberts, founder of Intentional, talks about what is left after the title and the income are already there. He entered the business in 2007 because he wanted to get rich. Within three years his brother was diagnosed with cancer, he nearly died in a car accident, and his third son was the 46th child born with a rare genetic syndrome. The work he ha...

In this episode of Financial Planner Search, Peter Culver, co-founder of Wealth Thrive, talks about using taxes as the front door to something bigger: a life rich beyond money. He and his partner work with entrepreneurs, typically people earning around a million a year, or sitting on a liquidity event of that size, who already feel the tax bill in their gut and sense their CPA is only adding up th...

In this episode of Financial Planner Search, Frank Legan, a financial advisor with 26 years in the business and founder of his own independent practice, discusses his "humanity-driven" approach to financial planning and why he believes you can't build a meaningful plan from a spreadsheet alone. Frank started his career at a wirehouse and a bank, where he learned that human nature is "undefeated" d...

In this episode of Financial Planner Search, Eli Mikel, founder of Clockwise Capital, discusses why every person is on a path to becoming a business owner, whether they know it or not. Built in 2017 around the idea that every season is not created equal, Clockwise pairs business owners with an AI named Kronos and a curated network of independent financial advisors who stress-test both their portfo...

In this episode of Financial Planner Search, Bill Bloom, founder of Bloom Financial, shares his "Retire as You Desire" philosophy, helping clients plan for their money to last to age 100 while rediscovering purpose before they stop working. Bill's path started with childhood money scarcity and a college professor who pulled up in a Cadillac Escalade in West Virginia, a sign that he could figure th...

In this episode of Financial Planner Search, Leah Hadley, founder of Intentional Wealth Partners and Intentional Divorce Solutions, discusses her work supporting people through divorce and the financial transitions that come with suddenly being on your own. Leah never planned on a career in finance. She was a burnt-out teacher drowning in student loans when she took a temp job on a trading floor a...

In this episode of Financial Planner Search, Josh Ackerman, financial planner and second-generation owner of Context Financial in Lexington, Kentucky, discusses how he helps successful people translate a lifetime of savings into a retirement they can actually understand. Josh's father started the firm in 2000 with a simple conviction: don't sell product, sell advice. That idea shaped everything —...

In this episode of Financial Planner Search, David D'Albero and Carmine Coppola, co-founders of Strata Capital, talk about the moment they decided they couldn't keep working for the company instead of the client. They met at MetLife's Premier Client Group, where the job was to sell a product and move on. They watched on a TV in the office as the news broke that they'd been sold to Mass Mutual, and...

In this episode of Financial Planner Search, Jack Dwyer, President of Sunpointe Investments, talks about why he left a giant consulting firm to build a practice that shines a bright light on fees and conflicts and why he thinks of advising as garden-glove work, not white-glove waiting. Jack came to this as an Army engineer who commanded a bridge company in Iraq. He still uses that same instinct: t...

In this episode of Financial Planner Search, Andy Schelitzche, financial advisor at Manifest Planning, discusses his comprehensive, relationship-first approach to financial planning. Based in the Minneapolis metro with a second office in the Chicagoland area, Andy and his team act as the "quarterback" for around 450 households, coordinating with CPAs and estate attorneys to solve holistic problems...

In this episode of Financial Planner Search, Ryan Staton, managing partner and co-founder of Staton Walsh, explains why the old advice to keep work and home life separate falls apart the moment you own the company. For a business owner, the two are already tangled, the succession plan is a family conversation, the balance sheet is a retirement plan, and nobody is treating them as one thing. Ryan's...

In this episode of Financial Planner Search, Michael Mezheritskiy, President of Milestone Asset Management Group, discusses why his ideal clients often know they have a tax problem but can't put it into words. Michael left a long career at Fidelity to build a fee-only practice that lives in projections, estimated payments, Roth conversions, and Medicare IRMAA management not product sales. He works...

In this episode of Financial Planner Search, Brian Thorp, founder of WealthTender, discusses why most people who never work with a financial advisor still distrust the profession and how online reviews and consumer-controlled search can change that. After 22+ years in corporate wealth management, Brian built WealthTender as one of the first platforms where Americans can read advisor reviews the wa...

In this episode of Financial Planner Search, John Llodra, CFP®, co-founder of New Harbor Financial Group in Worcester, Massachusetts, explains why he refuses to hand his clients' money off to a third-party manager. He spent the first decade of his career in the energy industry the last stretch of it at Enron. He watched good, ethical coworkers lose their life savings to somebody else's fraud, then...

In this episode of Financial Planner Search, Mikey Manghum, Vice President and Financial Advisor at Regent Private Wealth in Tulsa, Oklahoma, discusses bringing a family-office style of planning to households that aren't yet worth $30 million. Born in the UK to a professional basketball player father, Mikey stumbled into financial planning as a college freshman and built a practice around the conv...

In this episode of Financial Planner Search, Steven Jarvis CPA and founder of Retirement Tax Services makes a case most accountants would find heretical: the most valuable thing a CPA can do is say no. Steven jokes that he's "the least boring CPA you know," and he's got the race medals (and one hard-earned skull) on his office wall to prove it. But the real story is why he walked away from partner...