Wen Nottebohm: A Go-Getter’s Career Tips for Young Financial Advisors
17:48 Share

Welcome to Barron's The Way Forward. I'm Greg Bartalus, and my special guest is Wen Nadebaum, a Crescent Wealth Advisor in Atlanta, who at age 36 runs a team that manages about $5.7 billion in assets. This year, Wen appeared on multiple Barron's rankings, including its Top 100 Independent Advisor list, Top Women's Advisors, and its Best in State Advisor list.

And today, Wen will discuss what next-gen advisors need to know to advance their careers.

Welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much for having me, Greg. My pleasure. Tell us a little about yourself, how you accomplished so much in such a short amount of time. And then let's, you know, discuss some of the things that next-gen advisors can learn from you about how they can best position themselves to succeed in the future. So I've been an advisor with Crescent for three years now.

Prior to that, I was with Berman Capital Advisors, which merged in with Crescent. So I've been with the firm collectively for about 10 years. I'm originally from St. Louis, Missouri, and really stayed around the Midwest until I went to college. So I studied economics and management science at MIT. I was in Boston for four years and started out my career at Morgan Stanley in New York, focused on wealth management, but really in risk management.

specifically. And then I was recruited by a headhunter to work for AQR Capital Management in Greenwich, Connecticut, as more of a product specialist. And from there, I decided to go to business school. So I was at Wharton for two years, studied finance. And I met my husband there, and we decided to move down to Atlanta together. So I re-recruited to be down in Atlanta. And I had found Justin Berman, who's the founder of Berman Capital, through the alumni directory. And

And the rest was history from there. So my role today is really to work with clients and be their first call for anything related to their financial lives. And really that's to help them live their best lives and know that they're being taken care of. Well,

Well, that's all very impressive. Now, there are a lot of people who've had very impressive resumes in the time horizon you described, but who've achieved not as much success. Let's go a little beyond that about the credentials, et cetera, about other maybe things that might even be intangible, but other things that you think contributed to your success. Yeah. So I had a, I'd say, unusual entry into the business because

Because I didn't, my first clients weren't from cold calling or doing a lot of networking. I was very lucky to meet Justin early on in my career. And he really, you know, it was a fast growing business. And he needed a partner who could help service and manage those clients. And that's where I came in.

And so early on, I started out with smaller clients and really had to prove myself, right? Being able to work with clients, deliver excellent service, manage portfolios, kind of do everything that a family might need in their financial lives. And as I was able to prove myself, I worked on bigger and more complex clients and so forth. In 2017, I was actually very lucky because there was a court case, lender management that came out.

That basically established that a family office is a trade or business for federal income purposes. And you can deduct investment management expenses and tax related expenses that you couldn't deduct anymore after the 2017 tax reform. And so at the time, we had a new client who was structuring a family office.

So we learned a lot from working with that family and their service providers, and we really became an expert in this space of helping large family offices structure that family office in an appropriate way, how to manage it, and kind of think through the steps of everything that they needed and whether it was appropriate for them. And then, so there was a big learning curve, you learned a lot, and then you applied that wisdom and knowledge for other situations like that? Exactly. Exactly.

And those clients started referring other clients in similar situations. And that's how we really started working with very complex families. Interesting. And I assume that given the complexity and demands of that, there are only not that many who can perhaps do it and do it well, right? So if you can get there and plant your flag in the ground, so to speak, then through word of mouth referrals, you're going to develop that further. Exactly. That's excellent. Now, you talked about the beginning when you were with the earlier clients, and

They were smaller, maybe fewer moving parts, but then over time, the complexity, the scale of everything grew. Tell me about that and the role of self-confidence. So you had, on the one hand, having to win the trust of other people and...

Then over time, I'm assuming that you gained more confidence in yourself as you're like, hey, I can do this. To what extent, if any, did you ever experience from older clients, maybe perhaps because of age, like some older clients, like older advisors, there's an element of that.

Did you ever experience that? And to what extent? And is there anything you could say on that point? Yeah, absolutely. I think as a younger advisor, you do have to work harder. I think you have to really know your stuff, know what's going on with the client portfolio, know the markets, have an opinion. And at the end of the day, you have to make up for what you lack in years of experience with knowledge and expertise. And if you can do that, oftentimes clients don't care about your age. Right.

In my entire career, I think there's been one client who has not wanted to work with me because of my age. And that actually has come full circle where a few years ago he had actually requested that I be his advisor. But I really think that if you can present yourself

as being very knowledgeable. And again, just having, knowing the ins and outs of everything. Because when you think about a senior advisor, oftentimes they are busy in meetings or they're on the road and it's hard for them to keep up with everything. And if you can fill in that void and fill in those gaps, that can really help, again, build the rapport with clients.

Barron's interviewed you, and you said in the interview that knowing your numbers, the market, why a client's portfolio has outperformed or underperformed, and demonstrating competence and expertise will go a long way in building trust and rapport with clients. So, yeah, I mean, I think it's maybe self-evident, but if you really can address every little thing, and they'll say, ah, okay, this person knows their stuff, so...

If someone is a next-gen advisor and they're trying to get ahead in their career and they're doing Googling and trying to get every edge they can, is there anything that you think that's kind of missed that's not being reported on by journalists where you might talk to a fellow advisor and be like, why isn't anyone talking about A, B, and C? Is there something that comes to mind in terms of like career development, maybe success? It could be in terms of landing clients, keeping clients happy. I mean, however it may manifest, but whatever might give you

an advantage and an edge as an advisor? Yeah, I think for me personally, it was starting to build that personal board of advisors pretty early on.

And when I think about a personal board of advisors, it comprises of multiple types of people. So one being a mentor who really kind of guides and provides help on your personal growth. And then one being an advocate for you who will really support your growth and promote you more from a professional perspective. And then kind of peers who will give you real feedback.

And for me personally, when I think about my career, I owe a lot of that to having that personal board of directors who really elevated my career and given me opportunities.

And I will say that in order, they can open doors for you, but at the end of the day, you have to be the one that delivers. And again, I think it comes back to making sure you're knowledgeable on current events, on having a view on the market. And then also over time, as you work with more complex clients, you're learning things along the way, right? Whether it's estate planning, tax planning, things as you work with a client's outside service providers, right?

And you start to specialize. And so for me specifically, that was more on the family office side of things. And so that allowed me to work with, again, these more complex clients and gave me those opportunities I wouldn't have had otherwise. And tell me about the role of, again, specialization, niche, what your thoughts are on that.

Like for an advisor, to what extent, how important is that? Would you recommend to have a certain niche of expertise or what have you? I think it is important. For us, when we think about our client base, it is very, a lot of it's entrepreneurs, right?

And so, you know, when we were Berman Capital, it really resonated because we were also entrepreneurial. And you kind of get that Rolodex of helping a client exit their business very successfully, helping them do a lot of the exit planning. And then they start referring their clients who are in a similar space. And you kind of get that flywheel. Right. Virtuous cycle at that point. Exactly. Yeah. You mentioned earlier view on the market. Do you want to briefly talk about the markets where you have conviction of what you said? Any thoughts on that or...

Wasn't really something we planned to talk about, but I just wanted to put it out there. Yeah, absolutely. Happy to. You know, I think with the new administration, it's likely that rates are going to stay higher for longer. An area that we've been investing in as a firm, more generally speaking, we've been investing in and are heavily invested in alternatives and have been for a long time.

And so private credit has been a big allocation of ours for the last decade or so, which has been great when you think about where rates are basically have been zero and private credit have been kind of in the eight to 10% range. And now that rates are much higher in the low teens.

And these are generally first lien, senior loans, covenants are a lot tighter now in this lending environment. And when you think about those low teen returns, especially if rates are going to be higher for longer, on that risk adjusted basis, it's much more attractive than in some other areas of the market.

And that's an area we continue to really like. If we're talking about equities, we try to focus on quality companies. So ones that have low debt ratios, stable cash flows, sustainable earnings, strong profitability. Those are the ones that we're focusing on. And again, with the new administration's more America first agenda, we're focusing more on the U.S. than more than international and emerging markets. How about in terms of market cap, any preference or bias?

A large cap looks expensive on regardless of which metric you look at, but it doesn't mean it can't remain expensive. But when you look at some other areas of the market, like quality or mid cap or small cap, there might be more opportunity. Okay, great. Now let's go back to talk about mentorship, which is definitely an important topic. You have helped very helpful mentor for people listening.

who don't have a mentor, what do you recommend in terms of finding one? Like they might just kind of not know even where to begin, but just high level thoughts. What do you, what do you think? Yeah, I think, you know, people like talking about themselves and people like helping other people. And I think it's reaching out to, you shouldn't be scared to ask someone that you might not know or someone who's much more senior than you to get a coffee.

Relationships are built. They have to be genuine and you have to nurture them, but they have to start somewhere. And I think you taking the first step and asking them to learn about them and how did they get to where they are today. And also being very upfront with what your goals are and what you want to do and checking in every step.

so often and making sure that you're staying in touch. I think that's a great way to start building. Now, for your own story, when did you realize that this was the profession for you?

I didn't actually realize it right away. So I had first learned about wealth management when I was at MIT recruiting. So this was during, right after the financial crisis, there wasn't a ton of jobs, but a lot of applicants. And so I studied economics and management science, and I knew that I wanted to do something either in finance or consulting. And I kind of went through the traditional sales and trading, investment banking, corporate finance jobs, etc.,

and interviewed for all of those. And at one of the coffee chats with one of the firms, I'd met someone who was in wealth management, and I hadn't really heard much about it. And through the coffee chat, I learned more about the industry. And I love the fact that it was a good mix of analytical, financial markets, and just the personal aspect of being in private wealth, I thought really appealed to me. And

And so when I had gone through the recruiting period, I ended up having a number of offers, which I was very lucky to have at the time. And I ultimately decided to take the one in private wealth.

So I started at Morgan Stanley, and they had a great rotational program. And then at the end, you get placed somewhere. So I was placed in risk management, which really wasn't what I had envisioned private wealth to be because it's a lot less client interaction, a lot more rules enforcement. And so I was ultimately recruited to work for hedge funds. So I actually left the industry and did something different.

And then when I went to business school, I once again went through the search of what do I really like to do and what kind of job does that look like? And it brought me back again to wealth management. And this time I wanted to make sure that I was working directly with clients. And so when I had met Justin and through some of the other firms I talked to, I was looking for a specific, specifically as a wealth advisor, working directly with clients. And when I started doing that, I, I,

I realized that's exactly what I was meant to do. Excellent. Now, you mentioned that there are a number of aspects to the work that you like involving the in no particular order, the dimension of working with people, the analytical, mathematical, all of it's there.

Is there any one aspect that most fires you up or makes you feel happy with the career choice you made? Yeah. I mean, this is a people business at the end of the day. And if you don't like people, that's probably not the right career choice for you. For me, it's personal finance. It's a very intimate thing. And so you really get to know your clients. You know what their goals are. You get to know their kids.

And so over the decade that I worked with some of my clients, we've helped them, you know, successfully exit businesses. We've helped their kids get into college, mentor them through, you know, what's the right job for them potentially. Help clients set up foundations and donor advised funds to help them magnify their impact. And those are really very tangible things that you can see. And those really, it's really rewarding. And when we think about our clients, they're very philanthropic.

So, you know, we have a client who is very passionate about animals. She's setting up a wildlife sanctuary and

And so we're helping her set up a 501c3. She's putting $5 million into it. And so things like that. Another client, for example, he is a pediatric doctor and giving back to the hospital is very important to him. So we manage his donor advised fund. And as that continues to grow, he's able to give more and make a bigger impact. And those are all things that we can see. And it's very important.

tangible and rewarding. That's great. That's great. What piece of advice would you have for someone listening? Like, what's some bit of wisdom that you learned only by dint of doing this up

up to now where you might be like, oh, I wish someone told me whatever it might be, A, B, and C. Is there something where you could quickly dispense some wisdom to the people listening for shorthand without, to the extent it can help? Yeah. I kind of learned this from Justin, but not every piece of business is good business. And it took me some time to learn that. There are just some clients or opportunities where it's a big emotional drain, big...

mental drain for both you and the team. And it's just not the right fit. And there's an opportunity cost that comes with that. And tell me, like, what are some reasons, aside from an obvious one, like, oh, they don't have enough assets or, you know, sometimes it's self-evident that's not a good fit. But if there's an ambiguity...

What might be a factor or something where you say, you know, the fulcrum, if there's like a tipping point, you're like, no, or yes. Like what, to the extent that you could, you know, crystallize a gray area, what would you say? I think some clients are more, you know, they're, they use a lot of resources, but

and they might not treat your team with respect. And those are not people that you necessarily want to have a long-term relationship with, and that's what you really want in a client, right? Like a long-term relationship over hopefully generations. Right, and I guess the nice thing is as you –

become more successful, you can be choosier and pickier, right? And more exacting about exactly who you want to work with. Exactly. It's definitely harder when you're starting out, but I think recognizing that balance over time, that sometimes you have to take one step back to take two steps forward. Well, thank you so much for joining. Thank you so much again for having me. This was wonderful.

Great. Thank you again. My guest has been Wen Nadebaum. For more podcasts and the latest wealth management news, visit barons.com slash advisor. For The Way Forward, I'm Greg Bartalus.