When I came from the 2008 financial crisis, I felt a bit lost.
It was a dark time in the financial world. People tried to think of an explanation for the financial crisis while trying to find out how to invest in what felt like a new paradigm.
So many people were wrong with the financial crisis, while those who called it were completely blind because of the recovery. I lost confidence in most traditional voices there are.
Then I came across Barry Ritholtz blog. That led me to become a religious reader of Josh Brown’s blog. It was exactly what I needed.
They spoke as normal people, no financial robots. They didn’t pretend to have a crystal ball. They had distinctive voices and enjoyed the markets. No nonsense.
A few years later I decided to follow the lead of Josh and Barry and start my own blog. One of the reasons why I started writing is because I felt stuck.
I did interesting work with intelligent people, but it didn’t feel like I was owned about the philosophy or direction of the investment process. I got the itch to do something else and write was my outlet to find out what that could be.
A few months after I started a wealth of common sense, Josh and Barry sent one announcement On their blogs they started their own asset management company.
That is precisely the type of company and the kind of people I would like to work for I thought of myself then. Oh well, they are in New York City. I am in West Michigan. They have no idea who I am.
Nobody really read my things at the time, but I kept blogging. I immediately fell in love with the writing process. I was able to take everything I had learned and thought of the markets and organize it in a way that was logical for my interchangeable brain.
I slowly developed an audience and found my voice.
I sent a cold e -mail to Josh and to my surprise he responded. I wrote an anonymous blog post for the reformed broker. He liked it and regularly started linking to my blog. Tadas picked it up and started to record my things on his daily round-ups Abnormal returns.
Michael and I started DM and sharing ideas. I started to grow a network of other financial bloggers that I have respected. I found my people.
I went to NYC for work trips a few times and met the entire crew at Ritholtz Wealth. Then I had a phone call with Josh where I told him that I was ready for a career change.
What do you want to do?
I want to work with people who have the same philosophy as I do about investing and managing relationships. I want to help customers in all shapes and sizes. I want my content to be part of my daily job.
So come for us.
At the time, the company only had six people. They all lived and worked in New York. I was in Michigan. We immediately came up with an external work strategy.
That was 10 years ago.
People in my life were skeptical at the time.
You are going to leave the billionaire family who has their name on half of the buildings in Grand Rapids to work for a number of bloggers you met on the internet?!
If you say so, it seems like a crazy leap of faith. The funny thing is that I had the confidence or naivety to overlook potential risks.
I never had doubts that it would work.
Ritholtz Wealth managed around $ 140 million when I participated in the fall of 2015. I was the 7th employee after Barry, Josh, Michael, Kris, Patrick and Erika. We were a start-up at that time. Nobody really took us seriously, but we took ourselves seriously and that is the only thing that mattered.
I traveled to NYC to our old office at Park Avenue when I came to the company. We all went to get tacos on our favorite Mexican place in the street to celebrate.
Barry got up to offer a toast on my first day.
We build the infrastructure to become a company of billion dollars. That’s where we go.1
From June 30, 2025 we now manage $ 6.4 billion. We grow like crazy, well on our way to more than 80 employees. We have offices throughout the country.
We went from a starting band of financial misfits to an adult organization.
I learned a lot along the way. Here are a few lessons:
Client fit is vital. One of the principles we had from the start was the idea of ​​the customer’s fit. The customer of course had to ensure that our services were suitable for them. But we also had to ensure that customers were suitable for us.
It had to be a two -way street to form long -term relationships.
If you accept the wrong customers – people who have unrealistic expectations, chase performance, consistently try to time the market, always call with unreasonable demands, etc. – It is a waste of everyone’s time. That customer will eventually leave and in the meantime they will prevent you from concentrating on other customers who deserve your attention.
My first week at work Crisis -friend (our financial planning architect) and I was worth more than $ 100 million on a prospect call with a man whose family was worth more than $ 100 million.
Twenty minutes after the call, Kris stopped the man and said I’m sorry you don’t fit well with us. Someone else will try to do what you ask for, but we are not.
The man was surprised.
Kris gave him some advice and thanked him for his time.
It was nothing personal. This man was looking for the holy grail of investing (who does not exist). It would never have worked.
That amount would have been a game changer for the company at that stage in our life cycle. We would have doubled almost in size at night. But it would probably have left the door 12 months later when they realized that we could not only invest when the markets go up and they avoid when they go down.
That helped me to realize that this idea was not just lip service. We wanted to work with the right type of customers, regardless of their size.
Success of at night is overestimated. When I came to the company, I assumed that all these rich families and large institutions would throw their money at us. It didn’t happen immediately.
It was the best.
We had to add different layers of expertise, services and people.
We slowly moved upstream and then downstream. We now have the option to serve customers in all shapes and sizes with different offers for households and organizations.
Experience is not the same as expertise, but there are areas where you need the representatives to become more comfortable to deal with certain situations, problems and customers.
Developing institutional knowledge takes time. You can’t hurry.
Content has a flywheel effect. Our marketing strategy is based on content from the start. First the blogs, books, TV performances and then podcasts and YouTube.
My original assumption was that the people who followed our content who needed help would become customers and in the end that would run dry.
But it’s the opposite.
People contact companies for asset management when they need help. It can be a life event or a new level of financial complexity or the realization that it is time to outsource or another reason.
It is not a single piece that matters. It is the consistent effort that worsens over time and keeps your top thought when people need advice.
It is the people who matter. In the course of time we have added great people with expertise in various areas to better serve our customers – tax, insurance, estate planning, pension schemes for companies, etc.
Michael has this saying when thinking about potential hiring that if it is not automatic yes, it is a no. Those criteria is just as good about who they are as a person like whom they will be as an employee.
I like to say that our philosophy is universal, but the strategy is personally when it comes to financial plans for customers. We share the same sentiment when it comes to hiring new employees.
It is difficult to appreciate the possibility of respecting and respecting people you like. These people are now more than colleagues. They are my friends and family.
Last year we received bad news about my brother’s prognosis a few days before I had to jump on a flight to visit our head office in Manhattan. Our worst fears were realized when the doctors confirmed that the cancer spread.
I was in a fan and tried my head to wrap my brother with phase 4 pancreatic cancer. My wife told me that I had to cancel the journey. Everyone would have understood. For some reason I decided to go. Maybe it would get my thoughts from the bad news, even for a short moment.
I spoke with Josh, Michael and Kris about what was going on. We went out to dinner. There was nothing they could say to make things better, but they listened and supported me. That’s what I needed.
Six months later, Michael flew in from NYC for the funeral.
Everyone at the company was supported during what the worst experience of my life has been. You never want to test how closed your ties are really with people, but this has solidified my RWM family.
I try not to make it sound like we’ve come up with it all. We don’t. We have made many mistakes along the way. I am sure we will make more in the future.
But I am very happy with the fact that we did it our way. Our philosophy. Our customers. Our people. Our process. No outdoor capital.
I don’t know what’s coming next, because I can’t predict the future.
I can’t wait to see where we are going from here.
Continue reading:
10 years of a wealth of common sense
1He also said that the company could hardly afford my salary, but we would grow in it. Wait what?! That would have been nice to know that beforehand, but it would not have changed me at all.
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