When you’re working in the financial industry, most approaches are very cookie cutter. But if you want to be your own person, how do you really break out of the mold? How do you start your own practice to emphasize where your passion in finance is really at, and do so successfully?
In this episode, Aaron Hattenbach, founder of Rapport Financial shares his journey from working for bigger financial service firms to having his independent service firm which to date has now managed over 500 million in client assets.
Schedule a Meeting with Aaron: https://rapportfinancial.com/
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Automated Transcript Below:
Dean Soto 0:00 Hey, this is Dean Soto, founder of freedom in five minutes.com. And we’re here again with another freedom in five minutes podcast episode. Today’s topic, is this going independent as a financial advisor. That and more coming up. Alright, cool. So we have a really cool show we had we actually been talking right before this a lot. And I’m like, oh, man, we gotta we gotta save this content for the actual show. But I’m here with Aaron Hattenbach, man, is this gonna be awesome. So Aaron, he is the founder and managing member of Rapport Financial. It’s a boutique independent advisory firm, with a decade of experience in wealth management in the wealth management industry, having managed over 500 million in client assets. That’s crazy man. Aaron works with young tech professionals in the early stages of wealth accumulation, as well as high net worth clients, with a particular focus on physicians and business owners. So without further ado, man, I’m so glad you’re here with us, Aaron, how’s it going?
Aaron Hattenbach 1:17 Happy to be here. It’s going well, for a Monday.
Dean Soto 1:22 Well, it’s cool. So one of the things that piqued my interest about you so so obviously, I have my claws out there trying to find really interesting podcast guests. I’ve reached out to several, you know, CFPB, sort certified financial planners, financial advisors, things like people like that. And there’s one thing that is very different about you, when it comes to financial services in general. And that is, right off the bat, you you can tell that you are you, you have your own way of doing things, you you, you kind of have broken the mold. And we can go into this a little bit. But it seems to me in when you’re doing any type of financial advising any securities, anything’s like that. It’s very cookie cutter people are very much on the defensive, because there’s so many regulations and so on. And so when I saw you, I was like, Oh, my gosh, this guy’s doing content this guy’s doing like, just, he’s teaching other people how to run their firms and things like that, I need to have this guy on this on the show, because that is one of the hardest things to do in your industry. So all that being said, I want to get your entire background, you used to work for these big Merrill Lynch, bigger financial services firms. And now you are your own person, and it was not an easy ride. How did that happen? Give us a little bit of background on your entire story.
Aaron Hattenbach 2:54 Yeah, so Dean, I started working right after the financial crisis graduated from from Brandeis in 2009. And really, this all came from an experience working at the attorney general’s office on a case against some of the largest financial institutions and lenders that essentially contributed to the major mortgage meltdown that we saw, and I felt a passionate need to work on the side of the consumer and financial services, not on the side of the sales side, selling the institutions, and creating products, I really wanted to help shelter individuals, families, high net worth individuals across the gamut, and educate them really. So my passion is financial education. And I felt that I needed to start my own practice in order to emphasize that without limitations. So to backtrack to that to 2010. I started with Alliance Bernstein, they’re very large, firm publicly traded, it worked for a couple of independent firms, one of which is hopefully going to go public, and I can cash out my stock at some point. And then found myself at Merrill Lynch and the advisor training program, built up a decent practice for myself. But I continue to find the same issues where I wanted to really be a holistic financial planner, cover everything that’s beyond investing, because quite frankly, I think there’s this misconception that, that building a portfolio is what an advisor gets paid for. I think in order to earn 1%, on a portfolio, you have to be doing full financial planning, and that, that covers retirement planning, tax planning, estate planning, stock options, planning, looking at an employer benefits package. So what I did was I saw this trend at the large institutions that were focused primarily on portfolio management, and recognize that the future of financial planning and wealth advisory for that matter, is helping people with…
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