Celebrity, charity, diversity: Insights from a ‘financial architect’

investmentnews.com:

Rick Nott’s godfather would gift stocks for birthdays and Christmas and his stories about listed companies enthralled the young man who would focus his career on working with wealth.

Earlier this year, Nott moved from LourdMurray after seven years to the $1.7 billion Angeles Wealth Management where he is managing director of its Santa Monica office and a self-styled ‘financial architect’.

“By employing diligent and flexible strategic financial modeling, we can help guide investors through financial shocks and ensure financial resilience in any circumstance,” Nott said. “While I am a CFA charterholder, I will always be a planner first because I believe that is what really moves the needle.”

As one of only 2% of Black or African American CFPs, his story is atypical, and he has been sharing his insights of helping ultra-high-net-worth individuals and families look after their fortunes with InvestmentNews.  

So apart from the influence of his godfather’s love of equities, and given the lack of role models in the industry – and his own family circle (they mostly worked in non-profits), what inspired Nott to become an advisor?

“My school friends came from very successful families (attorneys, doctors and entrepreneurs), so I became intrigued by their relative circumstances and the unique way that assets, family values and culture were passed down,” he said. “It was very different from my situation, as money was not something that was openly discussed in our home.”

Nott did an economics degree and learned a lot about how the financial world worked, but there was stark lesson ahead as he entered the labor market in the middle of the Global Financial Crisis in 2008.

“That was when I learned how economics worked in the real world,”