o_19grqq7snim9mn019q11f7ds26a.pdf

APPROACH
DISCOVERY
We spend whatever time
necessary learning what is
unique about your financial
situation, experience,
goals and resources. A
brief introduction to our
Asset Class approach to
managing portfolios is
also covered.
PLANNING
his parents repaired itself and he actively
sought a much different approach to
advising clients. Knowing that he had
burned his own flesh and blood, Nelson
decided that if he was going to remain in
the business of providing financial advice,
he couldn’t make a repeat performance.
He had to learn methodologies based on
well-regarded investment theory and evidence,
not those that were sales driven.
“That was the catalyst for me,” Nelson
recalls. “I learned from the experience
that I cannot just depend on what some
brokerage firm is telling me to do. To this
day, when I am presented with a situation
where a new prospect has a scenario
that I may not be familiar with, I am not
going to just throw out some off-the-cuff
solution. I am going to spend a good bit
of time reading up on what the evidence
says is the best thing to do in that situation.”
By 2002, the former star Hobart basketball
player and his wife, Paige, moved to
her Oklahoma City hometown, going to
work for Charles Schwab – the same firm
that today provides custodial services for
MANAGEMENT
Servo clients. While at Schwab, Nelson
attained the prestigious Chartered Financial
Analyst designation. Five years after
first joining Schwab, he moved over to a
registered investment advisory also in
Oklahoma City. Within a year, friends
had convinced him to move to San Francisco,
California, where Nelson spent
three years with Equius Partners.
With each move, Nelson was gaining
valuable experience, additional investment
expertise and a bigger, loyal band of
clients who followed him, while keeping
Schwab as their custodian.
“The advice did not change and the
custodian did not change, just Eric’s employer
changed, is how client’s viewed
the moves,” Nelson said.
When it became increasingly clear that
perhaps the couple could begin their own
firm, Nelson finally had the experience
and confidence to take the plunge in 2012
with 10 clients and $20 million in assets
under management. “It’s the bare minimum
necessary to pay the bills and keep
a firm running,” he admits, also noting
that, “it was pretty skinny there just a couple
of years ago.” Now, in 2014, the firm
has 25 clients from across the continental
United States, with more than $52 million
in assets under management.
Nelson keeps building the firm through
referrals from existing clients and by continually
blogging, creating an awareness
of the Servo brand, with an emphasis on
educating prospects and current clients
regarding the importance of evidence and
goals-based, long-term investing. While
the firm has more than doubled in its first
two years, it still has room to grow, with a
goal of 125 to 150 long-term clients.
“I look at our job as swimming upstream
against the financial media who
are constantly inundating investors with
short-term oriented market timing noise
and nuisance – and not what they should
be looking at,” Nelson emphasized. “The
one thing I can promise people when
they come on board with me, is that I
have been doing this for almost two decades
and can help clients from making
the same mistakes that I have made in the
past – giving them a leg up.”
THE SUIT MAGAZINE p.53