Reflecting on 2024: Lessons, Growth, and What’s Next for Correct Capital

Life is full of uncertainty, from market fluctuations to career changes, and managing your finances can feel like one more challenge. That’s why we’re here. At Correct Capital we focus on creating a financial future that helps you sleep at night and live your best life. Today, we’re reflecting on an eventful year and sharing insights into how we’ve grown as a firm to better serve you.

For recent investment news and our take on the current market, retirement planning, and investment, listen to our podcast Capital Conversations or view our recent blog posts.

Below is a transcript of our most recent podcast episode, "Reflecting on 2024: Lessons, Growth, and What’s Next for Correct Capital"

---

---

Colin Day: Welcome Everyone to another Capital Conversation. I am Colin Day, CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professional, and with me today is another CFP® Pro, Brian Pultman.

Brian, welcome back.

Brian Pultman: Thank you, Colin. Good to be here with you today.

Colin Day: Brian's always so formal. He has to show me up wearing his jacket and everything. But there's a reason that he wanted to get a little bit fancy, because I asked Brian to come back on the conversation because we wanna talk about 2024. We want to talk about what we did as a firm, how we helped our clients, so that people get a better feel for who we are, but then also, we get to toot our horn a little bit too, right? To kind of show people how we're a little bit different from others.

So, Brian, maybe I'll just prompt you and we'll get started here. Could you give us a couple words of wisdom as it goes to how you thought 2024 went for our clients and the firm?

Brian Pultman: Thank you, Colin, absolutely.

2024 starting out was actually a very challenging year. We have a lot of uncertainty in the world. We had an election year this past November, as you may recall. In addition to that, we had some real high issues with inflation that really put a damper on a lot of people's mood and pocketbook. So we really weren't expecting much.

However, here we are today in December where the market is hitting just about all time highs, which is mind boggling. So overall, I would say it was challenging.

On the other hand, I would say it was an amazing year. We just celebrated our six year anniversary back on October 1st. So it's been very fortunate to be independent, objective, and unbiased in our approach. And we feel that it's really made a difference in people's success rate.

Colin Day: Yeah, absolutely. And I would say that what we saw at the beginning of the year, and what we were maybe communicating with clients from an economic perspective, was, “Okay, brace yourselves. We don't know exactly what’s going to happen.” That bad “R” word, that recession word that we were talking about a lot, even in 2023, we just figured, “Okay, we're just a year away from that.” And things didn't really turn out that way, did they?

Brian Pultman: No, not at all. As a matter of fact, it was just amazing about how the markets reacted once the election was over. Regardless of how you feel about either candidate or party, the reality of it is, the more certainty we can provide our clients in the world, the better off people feel about investing longer term.

Colin Day: Yeah.

Thinking about our anniversary – so, like you just said, we celebrated our six year anniversary back in October. Thinking about that first year, just out from underneath your previous firm – they'll remain nameless – thinking about where you were there and where you are now, what are your thoughts? Is there anything that comes to mind in terms of the growth that you've experienced or the people that you brought on the firm or the clients? Anything that seems very different from where you started or where you thought you would be six years into now this new journey as an independent?

Brian Pultman: Yeah, great question. Thinking back of that first year, it was a very traumatic year. A lot of things, a lot of movements, a lot of trust [in] hoping our clients would come over with us. Very fortunate to retain the high 90% of people that came over. It was a great opportunity for us to kind of clean house and only really invite the people that we really enjoyed and wanted to embrace their continued success in line with our values going forward.

As I look forward – and I was going through some dark times – as my wife Mindy said to me one night, she said, “Hey, it's not like you're going to go back. You just got to power through this tough.”

I think the biggest change that we made was that, you know, we all came from a large brokerage wirehouse. And that mentality is pretty much, “The home office does everything.” When you go out to an independent, it's all on our shoulders. And over the years, we've been able to kind of upgrade the caliber of our team members substantially, mostly recruiting from other independent Registered Investment Advisor firms to help add not only value internally, but for them to bring their ideas to the table. As you know, I am completely open to people speaking up at the table, and bringing ideas and acting on them quickly and swiftly to improve the experience for our clients.

Colin Day: Absolutely. And I think it's interesting that you mentioned – I was going to say the word poaching. I don't want to say the word poaching – I want to say to people deciding that they want to find maybe greener pasture over with our RIA compared to others.

There was just something I was reading about. I think it was from Schwab, talking about how about one third of growth from a body count perspective of trying to hire people on is from advisory firms trying to take from other advisory firms. There is a certain kind of pedigree, I think, and I think you'd agree with me, that finding people that have the kind of experience that we're looking for, and I'm thinking of again, people that have worked for other independents, their minds work a little bit different when you compare that to the others that are working with maybe the larger groups.

There's nothing to say that that's a bad thing, that they're working and that's their work experience. But, finding individuals that have the unique kinds of talents that we need. Because being independent isn't just us as an organization, it's [being] independently minded, because we all wear a lot of hats here.

I know you want to talk about growth, so maybe this is our segue into that, but thinking about the amount of people that we have brought on, and where they're coming from, when you were making decisions in hiring, especially coming out under the Wirehouse arrangement, was there anything that you were looking for now that you're very happy that you've made those decisions that have blossomed over the past six years? Anything from either the investment in technology or in people that comes to mind there?

Brian Pultman: I have to say, coming right out of the gate, leaving the wirehouse, I was a bit naive. I felt my team was solid. I thought that we can grow, grow, grow. But as I found out, the independent channel is a completely different animal.

As opportunities came up to increase the caliber of individuals on the team and bring people from other independents, it has just excelled our growth, excelled the experience for our clients to a much faster magnitude than I ever imagined. So I really believe bringing on great people. Our firm, based upon the demands of our clients, we just can't bring somebody out of high school or just the first year of college. We want to have people that have five, ten years of experience, have degrees, come from good schools, and really get this industry so we can provide that value from day one.

Colin Day: Yeah, absolutely. And maybe we talk a little bit about team member growth here. Because we've hired a lot of people in the past year, not just from the advisor side of this but also in operations type of roles as well. Because of what we've had there.

Any comments in regards to who we brought on this past year?

Brian Pultman: Absolutely.

As a matter of fact, the first thing I would say is that you have been instrumental in helping us develop the right people and process. So as we've grown over this period of time, over the last six years, we now have a specific process of onboarding people. We have people lined up in terms of taking care of the planning, account transfer, the investments, and the relationship management.

Just to name a few in the last year, we brought on Jordan. Jordan's number one primary focus is on planning. Once again, being a smaller firm, we were with one company, a company called Money Guide Pro, [an] outstanding financial planning tool, but I was introduced to some other new employees on the team that we should take a look at a new financial planning company called Right Capital. We decided to make a change within a couple months after doing a demo and some research, and it's been a big uptick. So, Jordan's job is to help migrate all the clients from the current model portfolio, Money Guide, over to Right Capital, and that's going really well.

Cheri joined us as well a couple months back, and she came as an analyst from another competing firm. Once again, [she] brings a lot more depth to the analysis. She wanted to be a financial advisor. Now as a financial advisor, she can bring a lot more resources to that client and understanding.

And then I would say Manasa. She is our front office manager and marketing guru. She brings a lot of energy and love to our clients, being able to handle my schedule and being able to be proactive with our clients.

Colin Day: Yeah, and most recently, Kate. So, we've actually brought on many new faces, uh, in the past year. Kate's going to help us on our 401(k) plans as a relationship manager.

So, we have hired a lead advisor, associate advisor, front office associate, and then we have a relationship manager that works exclusively with our 401(k) plan. We have really spread out. This hasn't been any one particular area of focus where we felt like we were maybe falling behind. It was just, “Hey, we need, we just need more people to help.” Because, as we grow from a household perspective on our wealth management side and as we bring on new 401(k) plans for companies across the United States, we really did find this is a great opportunity to start to deepen the bench as you put it.

Brian Pultman: Exactly. I was going to talk about the 401(k) and also Kate as a major addition to the team there.

But, this past year we brought on three great new plans. In addition, we had some companies that we currently have merge or [that] were sold to other companies. We are very fortunate not only to maintain that business, but also take over the business from the parent company that bought some of our companies. Because in the 401(k) business, there's always change and there's always a risk of losing that relationship. Not that we've done anything wrong, but just because they might be a bigger corporation to swallow up a smaller company. But, in the last one or two cases, we actually came in strong to take over the larger company, which was awesome.

In addition to that, we've had a promotion. Ryan right now has become the primary portfolio manager. We really instill a lot of values of continuing education. Pintip and Marquita are doing a great job [handling the back-office responsibilities]. Pintip is actually in the process of completing a two year certification for compliance. So she can step in another year or so to help out on our compliance side.

Finally, I would say as far as the team members, we were blessed to have a couple of awards. I was able to achieve the Barron's award for one of the top 1200 advisors, which I deeply value.

You also had an award. Why don't you tell us a little about your award?

Colin Day: Well, which one really? There's so many to count, Brian.

No, we've been very fortunate with my goofy videos that I put out on the internet. I was listed as a top influencer, a social media influencer with NAPA, which is the National Association of Plan Advisors. I was named to the Investment News Rising Stars list, which is basically a 40 under 40, and some other things.

But ultimately, it's the pride that we take in our work, the trust that our clients put into us that allow us to put ourselves into these positions where we can even be nominated for these kinds of awards. So we thank you all for your trust and guidance as we continue to journey on and grow.

Speaking of growth and speaking of moving on. What's the future hold for Correct Capital, Brian? Looking at 2025 and beyond, what are the big themes or things that you're thinking about?

Brian Pultman: Well, I think the future looks bright, as they would say.

I would say the goal of Correct Capital – it's nice to grow – but our idea here is not to just become a massive, big company. It's all about the client experience. We'll continue to add strategically to the team members to continue to support and provide the type of service that our clients demand.

In addition to that, we're looking right now, expanding our office, whether it's going to be in this building or perhaps another building. We hope to stay here and take over the offices next door to provide us a larger footprint to be able to have team members. It's really important to have that camaraderie and team approach to be all together.

Colin Day: Yeah, and even on that note, some of us are actually exploring some work from home opportunities, partially because we just don't have the space. So Brian's being kind and saying, “Well, we're kind of busting at the seams here.” We have 11 people that now work for our firm, which is wonderful. When I joined, I'm actually trying to remember, I think there was maybe six, seven?

Brian Pultman: Six people.

Colin Day: So thinking about that, the amount of growth in the four years, almost five years that I've been here, adding at least one person every single year let's say on average, is pretty solid growth from where we started from. Finding the space, finding the right kind of talent, takes time, takes energy. But thankfully it allows us to better serve you all as our clients.

So beyond that, Brian, big themes, thinking about our clients going forward, thinking about how we're going to continue to continue to serve them in the future. What thoughts do you have there?

Brian Pultman: Well, I want to continue to build, with you and the rest of our team members, an entity that goes beyond the investments. We want to take a much more comprehensive understanding of where our clients' major concerns are. Whether it's money, fine, we've got that. We have the right people, we have the right process in place.

But sometimes I wonder if we need to have a psychiatrist on the team, because literally as we get older, I'm coming to my 32nd year in the industry, unfortunately, some of our clients pass away. Being able to really be there for the clients to hold their hand, the spouse to get through that process, to help the distribution of their assets, the retitling, dealing with attorneys and other types of documents is very key to lot of our clients, thanks to a mutual success of their support and our support of people retiring. Helping them go into retirement. Helping them define, “What does retirement really mean? What are you going to do in retirement?” Because people, regardless if they punch the clock every day, they still want to have a purpose. So we have deep conversations about that.

In addition, helping people with gifting. Helping the next generation be out there to help family dynamics. Once again, it's not just an investment firm. We like to figure that our mission is to help people live the best life possible. Help them sleep at night knowing there's peace and security in what they're doing and trusting us to help them through this journey of success.

Colin Day: Yeah, absolutely. Well said Brian.

Any parting words for our audience? Well wishes, or otherwise for the year 2025?

Brian Pultman: Those of you that are current, valued clients of Correct Capital Wealth Management, I deeply thank you for your continued trust, commitment and friendship.

For those others that are not, [that] are contemplating maybe a change or a second opinion, we welcome that opportunity to sit down, find out what's important, be able to document our value and see if we can help you explore opportunities that we can be of service to you in the future. I thank you very much for this opportunity, and good job influencing me to be part of this blog video.

Colin Day: Thanks for joining me, Brian.

Until next time on Capital Conversations, this is Colin Day. Take care.

Brian Pultman: Thank you.

The opinions expressed in this program are for general informational purposes only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual or on any specific security. It is only intended to provide education about the financial industry. To determine which investments may be appropriate for you, consult your financial advisor prior to investing.

As always, please remember investing involves risk and possible loss of principal capital. Please seek advice from a licensed professional. Correct Capital Wealth Management is a registered investment advisor. Advisory services are only offered.

Capital Conversations | Correct Capital Wealth Management

As we look ahead to 2025, we’re excited to continue this journey of growth and service. If you’re ready to explore how Correct Capital can help you achieve your financial goals, we’d love to hear from you. Schedule a consultation with us today to see how our independent, client-focused approach can make a difference in your financial future. You can schedule a meeting with a member of our advisor team, contact us online, or give us a call at 877-930-401(k). It only takes 15 minutes to understand if we’re a good fit.