“We wanted to support our clients as best we could.”
Since the beginning of his career, Wes Miller has strived to provide quality service to his clients. “I had an idea of what clients should experience when it comes to comprehensive financial planning,” he says. “My partner Casey and I, whom I met when we were both on the insurance side of the business, shared that mindset of building customized plans for clients.”
As insurance broker-dealers, Wes and Casey felt they lacked the tools needed to bring their vision to life. “We were being held back,” says Wes. “We knew we had to have better available tools for, most importantly, our clients to grow, but also for us to keep growing as a practice.”
With that goal as an impetus, Wes and Casey left the insurance business and launched Willow Private Wealth, whose mission is to clearly and confidently guide clients toward financial independence. Partnering with RFG and taking advantage of its comprehensive services empowered the firm to thrive.
“We wanted access to all options for investment management. That included the ability to manage our own portfolios and have options available for third-party managers,” says Wes. “We wanted better planning software. We wanted to support our clients as best we could, but we didn’t have the capabilities for it.”
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Ready to Run
With RFG as its partner, Willow was “ready to run,” says Wes. “We needed the place that could allow us to do it, which is how we landed here. And we just exploded after that.” RFG’s commitment to growth while maintaining autonomy was appealing to Wes. “We instantly felt like partners on the same side of the table,” he says. “They routinely come back and say: ‘What do you need to be successful? How can we help you grow? What’s a good vision that we can come along and help with?’”
Since partnering with RFG three years ago, Willow has nearly quadrupled in size. “It almost gives me goosebumps,” says Wes. “We were so ready to have all the tools available to us. [With RFG], we have options for third-party managers. We have alternative investments. We have anything that a client should want, so we can offer what they need.”
Through that growth, RFG has continued to offer new ideas and suggestions while supporting the core values that drive Willow’s business. “They’ll ask: have you guys thought about this? Here’s a software program that might be beneficial, for example,” Wes says. He notes that RFG is equally open to suggestions that come from Willow. “Having partners that will [review your suggestions] and implement them if they make sense is really cool,” says Wes. “That’s also really rare in the industry.”
Three years in, Wes is more excited than ever about his ability to offer the quality of services he believes clients deserve. “We’ve had a lot of growth,” he says, “but more importantly, we feel like we’re offering better services for our clients. We attribute a lot of that to RFG, because they gave us the tools to be able to do it and have supported us.”
To other Advisors considering a potential partnership, Wes has a clear message. “If you want to compete out there in the marketplace as an Advisor and offer your clients the best possible service experience you can—and if you want true ownership of your business and want to build it that way—then you definitely, definitely should be having an interview with RFG.”