Adam Torres and Kevin D. Kimery discuss the service based approach to wealth management.
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Show Notes:
There is no one size fits all approach to wealth management. In this episode, Adam Torres and Kevin D. Kimery, Founder & CEO of Kimery Wealth Management, explore the Kimery Wealth Management process and why the firm utilizes a service based approach.
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About Kevin D. Kimery
As a Financial Advisor, Kevin seeks to help his clients and their families navigate the complexities of wealth while understanding their unique goals and challenges. Serving as the founding member of the firm, Kevin draws upon his extensive knowledge and more than 22 years of experience in the financial industry to design and implement customized wealth planning strategies and investment portfolios for his clients. He is often recognized for his superior service, and for seven consecutive years was named a Five Star Wealth Manager by Memphis magazine. Additionally, he holds honors from The American Registry, Wealth & Finance International, and Barron’s.
Prior to joining Morgan Stanley in 2005, Kevin spent seven years in the Private Client Group of Goldman Sachs and three years at Merrill Lynch. He also served as president of Accuship, an information management company.
About Kimery Wealth Management
Kimery Wealth Management is a privately owned investment advisory practice that focuses on family wealth advising and institutional consulting for individuals and family groups. We create highly personalized financial strategies that are designed to help preserve and grow wealth conservatively over time. We manage both the financial and emotional intricacies that come with accumulating substantial means. Our clients’ financial profiles range in scope and complexity, and they appreciate our institutional style investment approach which produces sophisticated financial plans tailored towards their goals. The team at Kimery Wealth Management delivers savvy advice and refined investment strategies across multiple individual, trust, and estate entities to our clients.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of mission matters. My name is Adam Torres. And if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to mission matters. com and click on be our guest to apply. All right. So today’s. Special episode. We brought Kevin Kimmery on the line and he is the founder and CEO of Kimmery wealth management.
And I’m proud to announce an author in our upcoming business leaders book which it’s a bestselling series and I’m proud to have Kevin join us. So Hey, first off, Kevin, just want to say welcome to the show. Thank you, Adam. Delighted to be here. Delighted to be a part of this production and you know, looking forward to spending some time with you today.
Oh man. So I’m excited to have you on. I’ve been working on getting you on the show for quite some time now and not the easiest person to get a hold of, but that’s great because no pressure, but those are always the best interviews. But so to get us started, we’re going to start this show the way that we start them all with what we like to call our mission matters minute.
So, Kevin, we at Mission Matters, we amplify stories for entrepreneurs, executives, and experts. That’s our mission. Kevin, what mission matters to you? You know, what mission matters to me and to Kimmery Wealth Management is our unrelenting goal to provide our clients with the confidence they need to boldly go out and live their life and use The money that they have collected so that they realize your dreams they envision.
We thrive on making sure they’re prepared and that we are by their side all the way through whatever life event that happens to them along the way because, well, we have a lot of good times. Sometimes we have trying times and it’s good to have somebody in your corner to help you and that’s what we want to be.
We are your personal CFO. It’s great. Love bringing mission based individuals on the line to share, you know, why they do what they do, how they’re doing it and what we can all learn from that. And I definitely want to go further into Kimmery wealth management. Some of the things that I believe give you a competitive edge and really just a big benefit for the clients.
But before we get into all of that let’s just go a little bit further back in your career. Like, like how did, how did you get started in wealth management? Like when all that gets started for you? Well, it’s a. a long story, but I actually started in this business working for EF Hutton back in a long time ago, back in the early eighties.
I worked in the mailroom, worked in operations, and that’s really where I developed my love and passion for this industry. Wow. So you started, so this is like one of those old school stories for all the young people that are watching this. We used to start in the mailroom. I started, so for the, for the new listeners, I you know, I.
I was filing things at Raymond James and Associates when I was 16. So hey, we start at the bottom and we work our way up. Go ahead, I just gotta, gotta, gotta pull that one out for the youngins. No, no, I was just gonna say, I fell in love with it. I was very fortunate. You know, we get to pass the mail out when we actually had mail to pass out.
We get a lot of good tidbits from financial advisors and they were always actually very generous with their knowledge. And one thing led to another fast forward to 1993 when I got out of Vanderbilt and went to work for Goldman Sachs. And really, this is all I’ve ever thought about or done my entire life.
What was it like sticking in the early years a little bit longer? What was it like having those type of mentors? Maybe I mean, when I was, you know, when I was coming up, I didn’t even know they were mentors. I didn’t call them that. I guess that now everybody knows the term and maybe they always did, but like, what was it like growing up in that environment?
You know, I look back on that. I cannot be more grateful or appreciative of what life brought me because Oftentimes, we don’t realize who our mentors truly are, but the guys that pull you to the side and say, hey, do this, don’t do that you know, I feel so blessed and one of our mottos here is, you know, we try to pay it forward.
Whether it be with the clients or their children or whomever comes across our path, because mentors have changed me completely. And without them, there’s no way I could be where I am today. You can’t do it by yourself. And so as you’re, so now you, you mentioned you’re out of college, you’re working at, you know, your first, your first firm, like, like, what was all that like?
It was actually unbelievable. I moved from Vanderbilt to New York. I was there for almost a year. Got to work on every desk at Goldman Sachs, which is an 85 broad at the time, and had open years wise. What was this year’s wise? Rough, roughly? This was in 93 through 94. Wow. Those are exciting years.
We getting ready for dotcom. Boom. And a lot of excitement. We . That’s exciting. of a slower economy, minor recession right before we were hired and had no idea that the dot com was ahead of us and what a ride we were going to have. Oh my gosh, who didn’t know, right? Like that. So now like kind of fast forwarding through your career at some point, you decided to start your own firm and to let’s just say, I feel like all entrepreneurs, whether their names on the door or not, or I should say financial professionals, whether especially financial advisors, whether your name’s in the door or not.
I mean, I. industry of entrepreneurs, because especially when you’re working with a book of clients. But when, at some point in your career, you decided to, you know, put your shingle up and to take that leap. Like, what was that like? You know, not many people want to do this, start their firms. You know, post 50, I finally reached a point in my career where I thought, you know what?
I can do this better. I can make it easier. I can actually return fun back into the process, but people still want to be treated like individuals feel like they have a family of people caring about them. And it’s been one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done. And I’m sure you have a lot of people that come on this show and go, oh my gosh, if I’d only done this 10 years later, well, all you people out there listening to me, please do it now.
You’re not going to regret it. It’s a wonderful experience. You’re going ways you hadn’t thought of and your clients will love it. Was it a, was it a kind of nervous, let’s go further into that transition. I’ll tell you when I left a big box firm that I was with for a long time and I started my RIA, I’m no longer in the business for any of our new listeners that don’t know that.
But yeah, I’m no longer in the business. I don’t manage money, but at one point when I did leave the big firms and I, and I. Put my, you know, my shingle up. And I was, I mean, I’d been doing it already for, I don’t know, 12, 13 years or so, maybe 14, but something about like going out and when you’re like, you’re responsible, the buck stops with you.
Like, what was that like for you? You know, I look back on it now and like a lot of things I’ve done in life and think, Oh my God, I did what?
Some of the people around you, did they, people around you, I mean, they want to support, but like some people must’ve thought you were crazy. Like at the time I’m a father of four they were still dependent on me and I was, you know, I’m by no means finished with my career or ready to retire independently.
And a lot of people looked at me very strange. Like why in the world would you do this? You’re the top producer in your office and dah, dah, dah. And I just. I knew that this was what I needed to do and it was thrilling and, you know, terrifying all at once, but I have fond, fond memories of the day I walked in here and they pulled the tape off the name and we were open for business.
Great day. It’s an amazing story. I have kind of like a pay it forward question for you. If you will talk, talking to some of those younger individuals right now that are maybe thinking about entering the financial services industry, whether they’re, you know, whether it’s they’re working for somebody, they’re in there, whatever.
It doesn’t matter. I’m not, not talking about that as an entrepreneur. I just mean in general, like what is That meant for you just being in financial services and like, why might they consider it as a potential career opportunity? Well, I think that if you enter this industry, you really need to first and foremost have a servant’s heart.
It’s very important. You have to truly want to be of service to other people. You have to want to be involved. One of the things we tell each of our clients ain’t come in as prospects is, hey, thank you for letting us into your life. We know you’re going to share a lot of information and if this kind of, this moves forward, we’re going to share a lot of hours, but if you like being involved in people, having them look to you for advice if you enjoy knowing that every time you turn the news on, it might have an impact on your day tomorrow and an impact on somebody else’s day.
It’s very invigorating and. Fascinating. It’s a never ending sea of knowledge that there’s no way to consume all of. But if those things are attractive to you, then I would say, yes, find a way in. And it really doesn’t matter how you find your way in, whether it’s the mail boy, a lot of kids out of college, say kids, young people will take the analyst jobs.
A wonderful way to get started, especially that will pay some attention to you. You know, decide whether you want to be on the analyst side, support side, or you want to actually represent families and help them. And, you know, I’ve got families and I’ve got three generations of clients now. You’re embarrassed to say how old I am, but it’s never well, it’s been great.
Like, yeah, talk to your grandma. I remember that. We’re making real big person decisions for them. Very fulfilling. And I feel like now, and this is one of the reasons I bring this up too, is that like the way I feel like financial services was at one point, like many things, there might’ve been less opportunity.
I don’t mean companies, I don’t mean things like that, but like. Maybe you’re not the type of person that wants to work directly with clients. Maybe you do veer, like you mentioned, analysts, maybe you’re a, you know, a back of the house type of individual. Maybe you’re on the tech side. Maybe you’re on, I mean, there’s a ton of different ways now that you can work with people, both client facing and not client facing that still allow you to participate either like, like directly or indirectly in helping a lot of families.
And in my opinion, doing a lot of good. Oh, absolutely. There’s so many different opportunities in this business. A lot of people gravitate toward they think they want to be client facing, but it’s fun. We run a team oriented business here so that if today this is the last time anybody hears me speak, hopefully the my partners will pick that up.
You’ll have about an hour conversation with them. They’ll know what’s going on. The support team all knows it. And we all play a different role. And there are plenty of positions on the team that you can find one that fits you, that utilizes your skills, and still brings value to that person and their life, and I think both parties will be enriched.
It’s lots of things to do here. Don’t, don’t be bashful. You don’t have to come and manage the book. And I think that’s actually a great transition. Cause I do want to kind of you know, open the hood on Kimmery wealth management a bit now, a lot of different routes that you could have chosen in structuring your firm.
There’s a bunch of them and not saying that, you know, we have to go with one versus the other, but you mentioned the team approach and that’s not always the case. Like tell us a little bit more about that. Well, I’ve always believed that If someone’s going to entrust what might very well be, and most likely in most of the cases will be all the money they’ve ever made.
You need more than one person there. Oh yeah. You need groups of people there. We need groups of people with different specialties. We need people that can fine tune your financial plan. We need the state attorneys. We need bankers. We need lots of different people now. We’re not attorneys. We do not produce, but we do ensure they get done.
You have someone overseeing it and that if you need to talk to somebody and whoever you might be used to target is not there. You got somebody else to talk to. We’re all on the same page. We’re all doing the same thing. We have the same analyst doing due diligence for all of our investment solutions. And we’re all very confident and the product we have and the process and why we do it.
Yeah, and so one of the other things that I reasons that I wanted to come to show other than of course You’re one of our authors. And I’m thrilled about getting your story out There is you know, the more I’ve gotten to know you and more conversations we’ve had there’s just been this theme of service and like what that looks like in wealth management and I feel like That doesn’t get enough play in media or enough attention.
Like there’s many, you know, many, I feel like most of the time people kind of want to lean on the portfolio or they want to lean on a certain piece of technical because that’s the fun part to talk about, right? Like what’s a company doing? What’s a fun doing? What’s this doing? But at the end of the day, that service piece, like that’s not the most sexy thing to talk about all day long, but.
To me, that’s one of the most vital components of the entire relationship. Like that’s the, it might not make the headline. It makes our headline. And that’s why I’m bringing it out here because I think it’s so important, but like this concept, like, like delve into it a little bit for me. And I don’t mean any disrespect to anybody in any area.
Yeah, I should say that too. Yeah. No disrespect to anyone else, but there was a time in my lifetime, Adam, you were quite a bit younger than me. And I use this analogy quite a bit that it used to be fun to go to your bank. You know, your teller, they gave the, gave you a lollipop, plenty of things open.
Now it’s most people readily admit I’d rather do almost anything than go to the bank. And for us services, having your calls picked up people, knowing who you are. No, you will not wait. a day and a half to get a return phone call. You should get it that day and I jokingly tell some of my prospects.
You may come to this firm because of me, but you’re probably going to stay because the service that everyone else is giving you because that is important. Nobody wants to go through a call bank. Nobody wants to say he’ll be back in 3 days or this or that the case may be. We wanted to be white glove through and through and if there’s ever Anything that doesn’t fit that parameter for you, we encourage people to call because we are in the business of trying to make it better.
You know, we study some of the great service models that you probably know a lot about a lot of the hotels come to mind and have got renowned service. And we want it to feel like that from start to finish every day, every contact, every piece of. Correspondence, mail, whatever it may be, because that is, it, you don’t want to have to deal with this, and if you’re dealing with it, you want it to be easy.
We want service easy, understanding it easy and very transparent. Yeah. And not just the idea of doing it, but even like things in your practice, whether it’s like, you know, how many, how many clients a particular advisor has or something else like the idea of putting things in place so that, you know, service level stay where you want them to be.
Right. Yes. We are pretty adamant. We do limit the number of clients we take. You know. We do add clients every year, but a general rule for an advisor here is you can have no more than a hundred relationships. We generally try to run under that because we don’t want to have capacity constraints and we don’t want people ever to feel like they’re just a number.
That worst nightmare. And we have done a good job maintaining that our class enjoy it. Does not always ring a lot of bells with them because they don’t realize it. There are lots of financial advisors that will probably tell you I service 300 clients or 300 families and Often wonder, do you, how do you even know their names?
That’s hard. I’m not, maybe I’m just not bright enough to do that. I was in, I’ll pick on myself. I was in that bucket. I had almost 400 and and not picking anybody else, but I probably had, if I had to look at it, you know, the top hundred, I knew everything about the rest. It’s really hard. It’s hard to remember, like, you know, name, wife’s name, kids, they got three kids.
I mean, you’re talking about a thousand names And.
That’s why we don’t have ambitions to grow tooth. Thousands and thousands of clients, because that’s not what we’re here to do. We don’t want to do that. And so let’s get into a little bit about just the process. So just the process and the philosophy of, you know, what it’s like to work with your firm.
Like how, what does that look like? Well, the process starts with like many firms probably start we come in contact with you for some reason, maybe you contacted us, we contacted you. All we send out obviously. little questionnaire to kind of get your brain going, bring you in discovery process is usually it’s one meeting, but it’s usually a full 90 minutes where we just get you to show up and, you know, just divulge everything we get out of you about yourself.
Dreams, aspirations, anything that needs to be there. The process starts with a discovery. Every client gets a financial plan, whether they have, no matter what amount of money they have. Yeah, which is a big deal for everybody listening, especially if you’ve never worked with a… firm that’s strong and planning like that’s, it’s different, but and it doesn’t always have to be, you know readily revelation to you when you get, you might be, wasn’t that money?
Like, I’m not going to go broke. That’s not the point, but it helps dig all the information out. That helps drive your allocation. You know, there’s a lot of factors that have to be considered. You know, we are a fiduciary and that we are held to a slightly higher standard than some other parts of the industry.
Which quickly leads into, do we really have our estate plan in order? And that’s where I think a lot of people really fall short. They’ve done a good job with their money. They’ve saved it, done that. Like, well, how are you going to do the generational transfer? What are you looking at? How are you protecting them?
And that is very important because once we have a plan, we have your allocation, we get your estate, in order. We’ve got the generational transfer the way you want it. You have a lot of the information you need and hopefully at that point you can lean on us and go enjoy your life. And if you need anything, just call us.
We’ll be right here. We got the answers. Stick on that topic of generational transfer a little bit longer for me because I know when I was in it. Pfizer, like, especially with a lot of business owners, entrepreneurs, executives that watch this show. And I can remember as we were getting closer and closer for them to, you know, exit their business.
And they were thinking about it and they’re thinking, well, if I’m, you know, I think my kid’s going to take it or, or I think my children are going to want to do it, but they’re not actively involved today in the business. And it was a. Big, big topic. And it’s like, well, we need to start planning for that.
Like these things don’t just work themselves out. If you want to get, you know, maximum value for not just your business, but also for your family going forward. Like that generational transfer is important. You work your whole life to gather these assets in a build this, like to not make sure that distributed the way that you want is just, it’s not a good situation.
I’ve seen some really bad situations. So maybe, maybe just talk a little bit more about the generational transfer. And I may just break this into two sub topics because we’re talking about succession planning and then we’re talking about estate planning. Yep. Succession planning is one of the more challenging things family businesses run into.
It’s at what age does it die? But the real piece of it is the generational wealth transfer because even if you keep that company, what really matters is, are my giving this to you outright, Adam. Yeah. And if I give it to you outright in the form of here’s your shares or here’s your money you literally have the chance that someone could take it away from you outright.
Yeah. Now, if you will stop in, there’s will based and there’s trust based with some very simple trust Documentation you can put together trust that will help all of your next generation and the generation after that be protected it’s protected from marriages. It’s protected from lawsuits. It’s protected from creditors that is probably the one thing that strikes a chord with people they go Well, I thought that was just for really wealthy people and they’re like, actually, no, it’s really the same price of the will, but it comes with a lot more features that allow you to control it and for future generations to have some control and at times a little bit of restraint for.
special situations that occur in every family with some member that might need just a little extra help along the way to keep that money and live off of it a long time. So Kevin well, and thank you for that, by the way, because this is one of those things that I feel like people hesitate on. They don’t, it’s not always the most fun thing they want to talk about, but it’s important in those years, you know, Months turn to years, years turn to decades is just what it comes down to.
And before you know it, you wake up and you’re, and maybe some things that you could have planned differently are even not even available to you anymore. Like that’s just, you know, things change. So the earlier you can start in planning, especially your business might not be a huge business at this point, it might be, you know, but you, but you have something of value that you worked hard to build that should be in your plan, like that should be a part of your plan.
Absolutely. And that can be put into your plan while there’s worth a thousand dollars or a hundred million. You can go ahead and protect that asset notwithstanding how you plan to leave it succession or anything else. But it does give you a good sleep, good quotient that you may not even know you need.
But once you find out about it, you definitely want it. Yeah, that’s what we want to make sure people are aware of. All right, Kevin. So I definitely want to spend a little bit of time on this book and just for everybody watching this, just so you know, we’ll be bringing Kevin back onto the show for part two of this interview.
So we’re not going to spend too, too much time on the book today. This is just a little teaser. What are some of the things that you hope to present in the upcoming launch? You know, this book really brought to mind a lot of things. You kind of let in kind of teed me up at the beginning of
You know, how did I get to where I am? What happened? What advice have I given my four daughters and what’s it mean? But I think the number one thing that I’ve picked up in life is that, you know, A, don’t give up no matter what your dream is. B, go talk to people that have been successful doing what you’ve done.
And C, be strong enough to actually take advice. I tell clients, peers, spouses, loved ones, I say, you know, one of the things that you’re going to find very hard to do in life is even when you ask for advice, You have to take it. But think about that. Think about the people you see doing something wonderful, whether it’s cutting grass, being a husband, friend, whatever it is, and say, hey, how are you doing that?
Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Get in there. Think about it and keep pushing forward and you will be richly rewarded at the day. Awesome. I’m going to, I’m going to stop it there. I got like 50 questions I could ask you, but nope, not until the next interview. Like I said, this is what we call a teaser for everybody watching or listening.
Well, Kevin, I just have to say man, it’s, it’s fun having you on the show. I mean, what’s next? I mean, what’s next for you? What’s next for community wealth management. You know, we are very happy doing what we’re doing. I think what’s next for us is to go out and find new people that need help that we can shed some light on continue improving our processes and hopefully making new friends along the way.
Fantastic. And if somebody wants to follow up and learn more and to connect with you and your team, what’s the best way for them to do that? You know, you’re more than welcome. My email, I think, is on here probably somewhere, but it’s kevin. kimrey at kimreywealth. com. Visit our webpage. Call us directly.
We’re very approachable and we’d love to help you if there’s a fit. Fantastic. And we’ll put all that information in the show notes so that our audience can click on the links and check it out, of course. And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters or engaging in an episode, we’re all about bringing on business owners, entrepreneurs and executives and having them share their mission, the reason behind their mission, like why do they do what they do and what can we all learn from that?
This is all about learning and growing together. If that’s the kind of content that sounds interesting or fun or exciting to you, we welcome you hit that subscribe button. If you haven’t already hit that subscribe button because we have many more mission based individuals coming up on the line and we don’t want you to miss a thing and Kevin really been a pleasure working with you today until the next time when we get part two of this interview in the book, we’ll be live and we’ll have some more to talk about outstanding.
Thank you for having me.