Welcome, everyone! Welcome to the 81st episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!
My guest on today’s podcast is Louis Barajas. Louis is the founder of Wealth Management LAB, a multi-family-office style advisory firm in Los Angeles that specializes in providing financial advice and business manager services to entertainers and other celebrities in the Latino community.
What’s unique about Louis, though, is the way that his advisory firm has evolved over time, from trying to serve Latino small business owners in the barrio where he grew up, to writing books and teaching financial literacy to the Latino and broader community, and now focusing on a business that is not just about financial planning, but what Louis calls “financial doing” instead.
In this episode, we talk about Louis’ path into financial planning, from helping his father prepare tax returns and keep the business books as a teenager, to starting out with a broker-dealer in the 1980s but quickly getting tired of the pressure to sell products at the end of every financial plan, getting his CPA license and shifting to an accounting firm that worked with high-net-worth individuals, and then leaving the accounting firm to start his own solo practice after a chance meeting with pastor Rick Warren in a coffee shop, shortly before the pastor published his Purpose-Driven Life book, and how that 30-minute coffee shop conversation changed the trajectory of Louis’ career forever.
We also talk about how Louis built his advisory firm over time, the setbacks he had that forced him to nearly start over from scratch twice after he had to split away from former business partners and associate advisors, because as he’s learned you can have multiple partners in a business but only one Visionary, the Abundance Mentality Louis brings to the table that has allowed each new iteration of his business to grow even larger than the past, and how Louis building more successfully than ever this time with a focus on hiring for heart and teaching the skills, while putting a series of Core Values – or what Louis calls “Immutable Laws” – in place for the business, that serve as a guidepost for the entire team about the deliberate culture of the firm.
And be certain to listen to the end, where Louis talks about why he believes that not just financial planning, but financial doing for clients, is the key to expanding financial advice to a broader range of underserved consumers.
So whether you are interested in learning more about expanding access to financial planning advice to traditionally underserved communities, learning more about how financial “doing” differs from financial planning, or how an Abundance Mentality can help you grow your firm, I hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast!
