Adviser builds a niche emphasizing careers

While some financial advisory firms have placed a heavy emphasis on the equity in one’s home or on constructing a strong portfolio, a burgeoning financial advisory firm south of Milwaukee places its focus on the value of a client’s career.

And that strategy is working.

The Financial Service Group Inc. in Racine, Wis., is planning to double the size of its firm to 15 staff members, from seven, in the next four years.

The firm, which considers a client’s career as an asset class, views a career as the sum of a client’s time, talent and potential.

“Our objective is to find clients who are finishing their formal education and ready to kick their career in gear,” said Michael P. Haubrich, president of the group, which manages $125 million. “We are trying to attract clients who have high career capital.”

In addition to working with an adviser, Mr. Haubrich’s clients work with a career counselor to help them pursue their desired career direction.

As the model of employment in the United Sates has evolved, and Americans make multiple job changes throughout their career, the country has become a “free-agent nation” as companies will be morphing their human capital as projects, and the demands of the times change, he said.

In a white paper,, “A New Frontier for Financial Planners: Managing ‘Career’ as a Financial Asset,” Mr. Haubrich cites a 2002 study put out by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics which points out that Americans entering the working ranks now are looking at making more than nine job changes during their careers.

As for his own clients, he said, many are baby boomers who have become burned out in their current jobs, while many are looking to renegotiate their contract to create a better work-life fit.

Some clients, Mr. Haubrich said, are looking to use an early retirement as a way to turn their dysfunctional career around and subsequently improve the implications that their career may have for their investments. Meanwhile, other clients need to make sure that they have their financial assets in line with where their own careers are headed.

“We live in a world where people can actually achieve that highest level of their own needs,” Mr. Haubrich said. “If you are working with an employer who doesn’t follow this approach, then get out.”

Some of the tactics that Mr. Haubrich’s firm employs include ensuring that clients have adequate resources stocked away in a “Career Asset Working Capital Reserve Fund.”

The purpose of such a fund, he said, is to ensure that there is adequate liquidity to fund life and learning, and keep a client’s career a viable asset.

Additionally, Mr. Haubrich said, clients need to have the liquidity to handle future job changes, to fund an occasional sabbatical from work, family medical leave from a job or time off to rehabilitate one’s career.

The Financial Service Group is in the process of looking for the best human capital possible so that it can build an organization with the best practices for managing people to improve the quality of its employees’ lives, he said.

A founder of another Wisconsin registered investment adviser practice has adopted some similar principles.

“Advising on career asset management is a combination of listening in order to discern the client’s goals and values, providing information and referrals to other professionals as appropriate, and also acting as a trusted sounding board as a client thinks through important personal decisions,” Paula H. Hogan, founder of Milwaukee-based Hogan Financial Management LLC, which manages $100 million, wrote in an e-mail.

Peter Vessenes, chief executive of Shorewood, Minn.-based Vestment Advisors, who coaches and assists advisers in building their practices, likes what he sees from Financail Service Group..

The firm has “a coaching and consulting advisory piece, and there are a lot of people who try to help small-business owners in that context,” he said. “If it is working, word will get out, and people will follow in the trail of the innovators.”

“To combine life and career coaching is a new twist,” he added.

Aaron Siegel can be reached at [email protected].