How many times have we all found ourselves scrolling through reviews on Amazon, Google, and Yelp, trying to decide which product to buy or where to go out to eat? In our digitally dependent world, we are surrounded by many choices and infinite ways to vet those choices. Unfortunately, the most impactful decisions are often the hardest to vet, and we are left unsure of our final decision.

We often find this analysis paralysis to be the case with prospective clients who haven’t had a financial advisor before. Deciding to go with Fogel Capital Management or another firm can be a process that can take several months. We’ve even seen it take more than a year. And it makes sense. Having someone managing your entire financial picture and setting the course for monumental life moments, like retiring or exiting your business, isn’t something to be entered into lightly. 

We say all this because, as part of the vetting process for financial advisors, we find many people are looking for more information to build a deeper understanding of who they’ll be working with. They read advisors’ bio pages, look at website pages that describe the firm’s process, watch videos to understand advisors’ personalities, and more.

But the information prospective clients seek isn’t always readily available or may be convoluted or confusing. That’s why we believe firmly in being transparent, open communicators with both clients and prospective clients, and why we’ve written this piece. Advisors work with all types of clients; some work better with certain clients than others. And how they work with clients is also of great importance. 

Who We Serve

In the nearly 30 years that Fogel Capital Management has been around, we’ve had the good fortune of being able to work with many different clients. We’ve served as the court-appointed fiduciary for incapacitated children in New York state, we’ve helped Native American tribes with their planning and investment management, and we’ve partnered with clients at all stages of their lives, whether that be young professionals in the heart of their career, business owners planning on selling their companies, or individuals gearing up for retirement.

Because of the disparate backgrounds of our clients, it’s hard to categorize select groups without feeling like we’re alienating some of our current clients. That said, there are a couple of subsets of clients we work best with when we focus on professional or career backgrounds.

Engineers in the Treasure Coast

Because of Florida’s impact on the aviation and space industries, it makes sense that we have many engineer clients in those fields due to our office location in Stuart, FL, in addition to the transparency we provide around our methodical investment process. Working for large companies such as Lockheed Martin or Raytheon Technologies can carry a lot of complexities for your financial picture. You have to worry about how employee equity compensation—things like stock options—can skew your net worth as a publicly traded company employee. Having the general knowledge of how something like equity compensation works for a public company is a good start, but our experience with these specific companies and navigating a client’s unique compensation structure takes that to the next level.

Specialized Service Professionals

Many financial advisors say they work with doctors, lawyers, consultants, and other specialized service professionals. But our reason for why we’re cut out to work with these individuals is different than typical. Our difference is that our firm began to take on more clients in this realm because of how we got our start as court-appointed fiduciaries for incapacitated children. Due to the extremely sensitive nature of that field and the high levels of regulation, we had to build out an expansive internal structure to be best equipped to serve our clients and withstand yearly audits, in addition to overseeing all household expenses, insurance, vehicle registrations, etc. This family-office structure is also well suited to serve specialized service professionals, who often have unique needs that come from owning or being a partner in a practice and the resulting transition when it comes to retiring. Not only do we understand the financial obstacles faced by these clients, but we have the back-end support to help them seamlessly move from their profession to the new life beyond it. 

Medical Professionals

With the increased footprint for medical providers like Cleveland Clinic along the Atlantic Coast of Florida, we’ve seen a resulting shift in our clients and prospective clients with medical backgrounds. That’s not to say we only are equipped to work with employees of Cleveland Clinic. Our experience is applicable across providers and is built around you and your career, whether you’re a nurse, physician, surgeon, or another type of employee in the medical field. The financial journey for medical professionals often starts with debt accumulation from years of school, followed by a sudden and dramatic increase in income. We’re here to help you understand your complete financial picture and synthesize its various components. 

Entrepreneurs

Whether you’re nearing an exit in a business you created or your business is simply nearing maturity, there are a host of financial planning opportunities that present themselves as your business grows. Those obstacles and opportunities are different from the ones you had in front of you when you were starting, and carry much more significance with regard to your financial future. Our clients who fall into this area are similar in many ways to the specialized service professionals we serve. The financial lives of entrepreneurs require a great deal of coordination, and they also desire the back-end support that a family office can provide. No matter your business, we understand how important it is to who you are. And we’re here to help construct a path that provides clarity for the years ahead. 

How We Can Help

Whether you fall into one of the above categories or not, how we serve our clients doesn’t stray from our core process, rooted in our family-office approach and how we build customized portfolios for our clients.

Customized Stock Portfolios

Our firm’s roots trace back to Wall Street, where principals managed the assets of financial institutions with strict portfolio management theory in place. As we will dive into further in future articles, that’s why we feel so strongly about how many advisors typically construct—or, rather, outsource—their clients’ portfolio management. We don’t believe in hiring another advisor on our behalf to build and oversee our clients’ portfolios. That’s why we specialize in creating unique client portfolios, consisting of individual investment securities, instead of relying solely on mutual funds and exchange-traded funds.

Customized individual investment portfolios sound like they may only suit an investor with a large risk appetite. But we have strategies available, such as low beta, dividend growth, preferred stock, and others, which we can utilize to fit your unique risk preference, whether you’re “all in” on risk or just looking to play it safe. 

Family-Office Support

As discussed above, our family-office structure inside Fogel Capital Management was a necessary adaptation to serve our clients when the firm first started. And while it served those clients and our needs then, the family-office foundation has continued to transform as our firm has grown and changed in our nearly 30 years of serving clients. 

When it comes to personalized service, we have a bevy of tools to support our clients. Those clients are accustomed to refined attention to detail in every aspect of their lives. In transitioning to life outside of their career, they may lose the back-office support they had, which we’re able to replicate for them. 

If you’d like to learn more about how we at Fogel Capital Management can help you, call (772) 223-9686 or email mcfogel@fogelcapital.com. Let’s find out if we are a good match to pursue your ideal financial future together.

About Max Fogel

Vice President, Private Wealth Advisor

Max joined Fogel Capital Management in the fall of 2022. As an Investment Advisor, Max works closely with our clients to help them confidently pursue their financial goals. Max began his career in finance in 2019 as a Financial Analyst on the Merchant Capital team at Maxim Group, where he advised pharmaceutical companies on raising capital through private placements. He quickly moved into traditional investment banking and joined Canaccord Genuity – Global Capital Markets, working in the Technology, Media, and Telecommunication (TMT) division. During his time at Canaccord Genuity, Max advised on numerous transactions totaling $250 million. In the summer of 2021, Max took on a role as a Senior Analyst at Madison Alley Global Ventures, where he provided expert advice on numerous transactions in the TMT sector. Max attended Indiana University, earning a Master of Science in Finance from the Kelley School of Business and a Bachelor of Science in Public Financial Management. He is registered as an investment advisor in Florida, New York, and New Jersey and holds Series 7, 63, and 65 licenses. Max’s commitment to providing our clients with the highest level of service and expertise is evident in his work. He brings a wealth of knowledge and insights to the team, and we are proud to have him as an Investment Advisor on the Fogel Capital Team. To learn more about Max, connect with him on LinkedIn.

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