We at Morton feel very lucky and fulfilled to get to do what we do every day, even in an industry where it’s often impossible to truly predict what’s going to happen in the future (though many try). This year has certainly presented some challenges for the economy, both expected and unexpected—record-high inflation, a never-ending pandemic, and a looming recession, just to name a few things. But in such a tough economic environment, we are proud of how we’ve been able to help protect our clients’ portfolios and hard-earned wealth, all while still working towards achieving their life goals. We know how we invest is unique, but we are dedicated to investing in a way that we believe truly serves our clients’ best interests, even when that means we look different from everyone else in our industry. We are excited to share with you all we’ve been working on over the past year, and how we have impacted each other, the industry, and our community.
Investment Research, Financial Planning, and Wealth & Legacy Planning
This year has really showcased the value of our investment approach and all of the hard work the investment operations and research teams do behind the scenes to serve our clients. Our financial planning and wealth & legacy planning services add an additional layer of purpose, to make sure everything we do is always working towards helping our clients live their best lives.
Our investment research team screened over 200 new investment opportunities.
Out of those opportunities, we introduced 9 new strategies.
Our investment operations team processed over 1,000 subscription documents to get our clients invested in all of our strategies.
Planners reviewed and completed over 100 financial plans and estate deliverables.
Wealth Planner Brian Standing completed approximately 150 wealth & legacy planning meetings with clients, oftentimes meeting with them more than once to ensure their legacy plans truly meet their wishes.
We held 35 education sessions for our team members around estate planning, tax strategies, retirement planning, and investment strategies.
Morton Team
At Morton, we believe our team is our most important asset. That’s why it’s so important to us to celebrate our successes together and support each other as we continue to cultivate ourselves and the firm.
CELEBRATE:
We changed our name to mortonwealth at the beginning of the year to better reflect the role we want to play in our clients’ lives and how we can truly support clients in getting the most life out of their wealth. Watch the video here.
Along those lines, we added a sixth core value—engagement—to reflect how we want to work with and support each other as a team.
We brought impactful investment content by hosting our first annual Better Investor Symposium in October, where we brought together several of our investment fund managers under one roof to educate our clients as part of our mission to empower better investors.
Two new services were introduced: Our Strategist offering for business owners and Herself, a community for women, which included several webinars and live events.
We wrapped up our Origin Stories series, which highlighted over eight leadership and advisory team members and the diverse pathways that led them to Morton Wealth.
We held our third annual Core Values Awards, highlighting team members who exemplify each of our (now six!) core values.
Eight team members furthered their education with new designations: Certified Exit Planning Advisor (CEPA): Mike Rudow (Wealth Advisor); Certified Financial PlannerTM (CFP®): Patrice Bening (Wealth Advisor), Sarah Ellis (Advisor Operations Manager and Wealth Advisor), Amber McBride (Planner), Olivia Payne (Client Manager), and Brian Standing (Wealth Planner); SERIES 65: Jon Wingent (Wealth Advisor) and Peter Duan (Client Coordinator).
We added another partner to the firm: Director of Operations Dan Charoenrath
Congratulations to our team members who advanced along their career paths this year: ADVISORY: Patrice Bening (Wealth Advisor), Austin Overholt (Client Service Manager), Amber McBride (Planner), and Jamie Domke (Client Coordinator); CLIENT OPERATIONS: Moriah Bowles (Training Specialist and co-team lead) and Michelle Loakes (Client Operations Administrator and co-team lead); BUSINESS STRATEGY: Stacey McKinnon (Chief Marketing Officer in addition to COO), Adam Bartkoski (Director of Finance and HR), Sherry Uchuion (HR/Compliance Manager), Arlene Vaughan (Office Manager), and Kierstan Lewis (Office Administrator/Event Coordinator).
CULTIVATE:
We are passionate about working with team members to develop career paths that are meaningful to them, so we’ve continued to focus on this: We launched a career development plan (CDP) program that uses the OKR framework so that managers and team members can set development goals with clarity and accountability; Morton leaders met with team members biannually to check in on career path goals, with over 100 meetings occurring across the firm.
Everyone at Morton is passionate about helping other team members, even beyond professional goals. Through our mentor/mentee program, we had over 800 meetings throughout the year, with 35 total pairings meeting twice a month.
Peer accountability groups were yet another way that team members supported and empowered each other in helping improve small daily habits to create a much bigger impact.
To cultivate our current and future leadership at the firm, we continued to pursue leadership development initiatives and certifications, including the Admired Leadership program. Our leaders also put on over 20 team retreats to enhance communication and growth on individual teams.
We added 8 new team members: ADVISORY: Jon Wingent (Wealth Advisor) and Peter Duan (Client Coordinator); CLIENT OPERATIONS: Liam O’Hara (Client Operations Administrator) and Nick Valaika (Client Operations Administrator); INVESTMENT OPERATIONS & RESEARCH: Hunter Daniel (Portfolio Management Analyst) and Nadya Mets (Senior Investment Analyst); BUSINESS STRATEGY & MARKETING: Alexandria West (Administrative Assistant) and Hannah Cheng (Marketing Coordinator).
Through the hard work and dedication of our team, we were able to add 45 new client households to the Morton community (which translates to a whopping 322 new account applications processed by our client operations team!). We now manage over 1,100 client households and $2.4B in assets under management (AUM).
Morton in the Industry
We are committed to spreading our core values and mission to as many people as possible, including throughout our industry. Over the course of this past year, we’ve continued to expand how we communicate our message through new content across a range of outlets. At our core, we believe in learning and innovation and always strive to push ourselves to the next level, so we are proud and honored when our industry also recognizes the work we do.
Morton was named one of the top 200 RIAs in Financial Advisor magazine’s 2022 Annual RIA Ranking, which includes a total of 534 firms that are ranked based on their year-end AUM.
Our Employee Value Proposition was featured at Schwab’s 2022 Impact conference in their session, “Elevating Your Talent Strategy with an Employee Value Proposition.”
We released the second season of The Ripcord Moment podcast with Senior VP and partner Joe Seetoo, highlighting 12 industry professionals with an expertise in various aspects of exit planning.
We launched a new podcast series, The Financial Commute, with Wealth Advisor and partner Chris Galeski.
We introduced a new quarterly newsletter series, Perspective with CEO Jeff Sarti. In his latest edition, titled “Better vs. Lesser Investor,” Jeff focuses on our mindset when it comes to our investment strategies. He delves into the difference mindset can have when it comes to prioritizing our future – a “better” investor, who has a disciplined approach to planning for their future, versus a “lesser” investor, who lives distinctly in the moment. Read the full letter here.
We have also continued to make our name heard in print: Forbes recently published an abridged version of Jeff’s Perspective newsletter, highlighting the three differences between a “better” investor and a “lesser” investor. Click here to read the full article; COO Stacey McKinnon wrote a white paper, “Your Career Is Up to You,” featuring Philip Palaveev, CEO of The Ensemble Practice. Click here to read; Wealth Advisor Bruce Tyson was quoted in various The Advicer columns on MarketWatch.
Our advisors continued to be recognized for the incredible work that they do: Joe Seetoo was named as one of the 200 most influential leaders in the Greater Conejo Valley by the San Fernando Valley Business Journal for the third consecutive year; Thao Truong was named by InvestmentNews as a 40-under-40 honoree.
We continued to expand the content we provide on our own website and social media channels (YouTube, LinkedIn, and Instagram), sharing over 100 posts over the course of the year and adding 805 followers to our LinkedIn channel.
Our CEO, Jeff Sarti, and COO, Stacey McKinnon, had several amazing leadership and speaking opportunities throughout the industry over the course of this year.
Joined Forbes Finance Council, a community of respected leaders who are selected based on their thought leadership and depth and diversity of experience in the financial services industry.
Spoke on an executive panel at the Schwab EXPLORE conference about boosting firms’ talent strategy, including how Morton focuses a lot of time on education and career pathing and how we value our culture and a diversity of professional backgrounds on our team.
Included in the Emigrant Partners Private Markets conference panel discussion, “Building an Alternatives Portfolio.”
Stacey's conferences and speaking engagements:
MDRT Global Conference in Sydney, Australia
Fidelity Inside Track, “Moments That Matter: Delivering Value to Clients”
Preeminent Advisor Summit, “Myths and Realities about NextGen Clients”
Dimensional Fund Advisors Symposium, “Reviving Culture”
Schwab Impact, “Are You Telling a Compelling Story to Clients and Prospects?”
Stacey also partnered with Wealth Advisor Sarah Ellis on a three-part virtual presentation series with Women Working in Wealth and the American College of Financial Services about choices we can make as women to impact our careers.
Stacey's podcasts and featured stories:
Featured on the COO Society with Matt Sonnen on employee development
Featured on a rare single-guest episode of the COO Roundtable podcast, hosted by Matt Sonnen, discussing her “Your Career Is Up to You” white paper
Guested on the Balanced Advisor Podcast, hosted by Dr. Travis Parry, on creating balance for advisors and their staff
Stacey is also giving back to the next generation of leaders by serving as a G2 Leadership Institute coach.
Morton in the Community
At Morton, we continue to believe that giving back to our community is a vital component of what we do. Nothing fulfills our core values more than to support and empower those in need. We want to expand our outreach even further, finding more ways to help make our community better for everyone. Below are some of the ways we were able to do that in 2022.
We feel strongly about setting the next generation up for success, so through our continued partnership with Safe Passage Youth Foundation, a program dedicated to providing safety, literacy, and mentoring to children living in Ventura County, we: led financial education sessions for children in the program; helped distribute meals to families for the holidays through the foundation and Family Rescue Center; volunteered at the annual Winter Festival, which included a big toy/gift distribution to hundreds of kids and families in the community.
In September, we partnered with Habitat for Humanity to build playhouses for three military families in Ventura County. Seeing the kids’ faces as they laid eyes on their playhouses for the first time was definitely a highlight of the year!
In September, we also supported charities at their important fundraising events: Morton sponsored the 9th annual Interface Children & Family Services Hope & Light Community Benefit. Proceeds from this benefit fund vital services, such as 24-hour response to calls for help and lifesaving shelter and advocacy for homeless youth and survivors of trafficking and domestic violence; we hosted two tables at the 20th annual Stand Up for Kids Gala for the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Conejo Valley.
At Morton, we also love to pair our desire to do good with our desire to be well, so this year we participated in two community runs for charitable causes: West Valley YMCA’s ninth annual Community Run for the Valley and Malibu Search and Rescue’s inaugural Trail Run.
At the end of the year, we at Morton always like to take a moment to truly appreciate our clients—your continued trust in us and your steady faith in the value that we provide. Our clients are the reason we do what we do, so we thank you from the bottom of our hearts for allowing us to continue to be an important source of support and trust for you.
Have a happy and healthy new year!
Your Morton Team
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