Giving back is a beautiful thing. Brent Shaw, Wealth Management Advisor for Northwestern Mutual, savors helping those who help others for a living. Shaw found his passion for financial advising when he interned for Northwestern Mutual in 2006. Following his internship, he studied abroad for six months in Newcastle, Australia, crunching numbers as a financial analyst. Though he liked the work, he missed the human element of financial planning that he experienced while interning in the Cincinnati and Dayton offices.
Northwestern Mutual, which has been around for more than 150 years, has weathered every financial storm and has done it well. While clients have all the resources of a Fortune 100 company, they can enjoy a boutique-type of practice when it comes to having a direct relationship with their advisor. As a result, these advisors are often the first to learn of both the good and bad news in a client’s life.
“It’s a privilege to be in the trusted inner circle of so many families that I respect and care about. You don’t get that when you’re crunching numbers all day,” says Shaw, who joined Northwestern Mutual’s team in May 2008, just before the financial crash.
“In 2006 and 2007 is when markets hit their previous all-time highs. Knowing what it was like to talk to clients before and through the crash in such a short period of time was a pretty amazing learning curve to experience early in my career,” says Shaw. He felt fortunate to have Randy Elam, a veteran Certified Financial Planner, serve as his mentor. Elam worked primarily with affluent clients like medical professionals, business owners and corporate executives.
Having a mentor with decades of experience taught Shaw to share with his clients the importance of setting expectations around their saving strategies in order to prepare for worst-case scenarios and react sensibly.
“Think of it like a fire drill. The point of the drill is to know what to do when the building is on fire,” says Shaw. “We know that market crashes will happen. We educate clients on what their strategy could look like when that happens so that they can turn [a crash] into an opportunity, rather than a disadvantage from which it could take decades to recover.”
In 2015, as Elam started his transition to retirement, Shaw took over the day-to-day operations in the succession of the practice. Shaw has since grown the team, adding two committed advisors: Bridget Snell, Director of Investments & Planning, and Salena Burg, Director of Insurance Operations.
Most of Shaw’s clients are established physicians who have completed 11 to 16 years of post-high school education and training. That schooling can cost between $300,000 and $500,000, often financed with student loans.
“When they get out of training, they start making high income, which is great, but it pushes them into high tax brackets as if they’re wealthy, when in reality, they’re often carrying payments equivalent to a second home in the form of student loans. Additionally, they start saving a decade behind their peers”,” explains Shaw. “These challenges mean they can’t afford to make big mistakes because they don’t have the time to recover after starting so much later and oftentimes in so much debt.”
One of the unique characteristics of Shaw’s team is their demographics. While the average advisor in the industry is in their late 50s to early 60s, Shaw and his colleagues are in their mid-30s, which means they will stay with their existing clients as they enter and continue through retirement.
“Our clients are happy knowing they won’t have to worry about hiring someone new 10 years down the road,” says Shaw. “Youth combined with experience is our competitive advantage.”
Shaw’s future career goals involve continuing to build a national presence.
“We’ve been leveraging technology well before COVID-19 forced us to,” says Shaw. “I’m excited to continue growing our relationships locally as well as nationally in order to help more people.”
For more information about Shaw and the team, visit brentshaw.nm.com or call 513.759.8810 to schedule an initial consultation.