Ep 24: Redefining Wealth: Finding Meaning Beyond Money

Thank you for having me this morning, Troy.

Richard, you spent 16 years at Merrill Lynch before successfully launching your own independent firm, SRM Private Wealth.

What did that transition teach you about what true professional freedom actually means?

Yeah.

So before Merrill, I had started in the business in, uh, when I was 17 years old.

So I've been in bulge bracket firms.

Uh, I was at Dean Witter Reynolds back in the day and when I first started, and then Smith Barney after that, and then Merrill.

And all those years of looking at the way that they did products, how they, uh, recommended different things to the financial advisors, and how those financial advisors then implemented, uh, those investment opportunities, kind of showed me what to do and what not to do.

A lot of that has to do with, you know, when I first started, you, you know, it was mutual funds and there really wasn't anything else to buy stock, unless you're gonna buy individual companies, and it was kind of this monopoly of, of what mutual funds meant back then.

And then over time, we got into exchange-traded funds and we got more sophisticated with our, uh, ability to value companies and utilizing a variety of different valuation methods.

So all those things, uh, have allowed and evolved over time and, and allowed us to continue to, um, going back to that word, evolve.

And so that's kind of where we ended up.

And when we left Merrill a couple years ago, what I wanted to do was I wanted to design a firm that didn't have any conflicts of interest.

And what I mean by that is, is that...

So, uh, when the banks started taking over the, the investment firms back in the day, this actually occurred in 1999 after the repeal of something called Glass-Steagall Act, Citibank took over Smith Barney.

At that time, there was, uh, this banking relationship, and that banking relationship means that as a client of Mer- uh, Smith Barney, Merrill Lynch, whomever, that you are now...

One of the products that you have to offer is mortgages and credit lines and things of that sort.

The problem with that is, is that you can only recommend the credit line or mortgage of that bank that you were acquired by, right? Uh, Smith Barney was acquired by Citibank, and Bank of America acquired Merrill Lynch, or merged.

And so you could only do that.

Otherwise, you could get into big trouble for what they call selling away.

So when I designed my firm, we, we wanted to get away from all those conflicts of interest.

We wanted to have a firm that was truly independent and truly advising rather than upselling products that the various parts of a investment firm nowadays has to offer.

Was there a specific moment when you realized that, uh, the institution was actually limiting you more than empowering you?

Yeah.

I actually, uh, two and a half years ago when I left, or right before I left, I was, uh, approached by my management and they asked me to, um, sit down with them and review how I interact with clients.