How this RIA lets clients be their own CEO

investmentnews.com:

One of the founding beliefs at Fairway Wealth Management is clients overseeing their own personal wealth enterprise that they’ve created.

They’re, quite literally, their own CEO. Mark Weiskind, founding partner and senior wealth manager at the Ohio-based firm, says that’s been key to the firm’s success.

“They’re engaging us to sit on the same side of the table as them and provide advice on all things personal financial, from investments to tax and estate,” he says. “We get pretty deep in our clients’ taxes and tax planning, education funding, risk management, stock options, restricted stock, [to name a few].”

Weiskind says one of the terms they use at the firm is “reliable value.” This means their value proposition isn’t based off anything aspirational like beating the market or predicting what’s going on with interest rates, geopolitics or market timing but rather focusing on things that are reliable.

“Making decisions based off predictions or anything aspirational is completely unreliable,” he added. “So, we talk about tax efficiency all the time.  We’ve got control of our costs to some extent. We’re big believers in having an investment strategy and sticking to it and not making investment decisions based off emotions or what’s going on in the world around us.”

Weiskind is quick to point out that there’s value in leadership and helping clients – or even the general public because “too often we see inertia, and people don’t do things because they don’t know what to do.

“We give our clients guidance and advice that is actionable, we follow up with them and make sure we’re helping them get things done,” he said.

The biggest challenge with that, Weiskind highlighted, is not being able to control their clients’ financial