Pinnacle Financial Partners

Willis is a guru within the financial sector, earning his bachelor’s and his MBA from the University of Maryland, Robert H. Smith School of Business; obtaining certificates in private wealth management and investment management from Yale University; and earning credentials as a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™, Certified Private Wealth Advisor®, and Certified Investment Management Analyst® professional.

MONARCH: Typically a career path is directly modeled after someone, a parent or mentor of some sort. Then and now, there are not many Black faces occupying the seat you sit in. With that said, what inspired you to pursue a career in finance?

JUSTIN WILLIS: I was working part time and didn’t get into any particular colleges, and I was at a community college just try- ing to figure out my life. My parents were going through some financial adversity during the financial crisis, like a lot of Amer- icans. I began to internalize some of the pain that I saw them going through, and it was right about that time where I stumbled across a business class at Montgomery College. There was a par- ticular business instructor there that, during his course, would put CNBC on the television and make us read The Wall Street Journal. That experience was an awakening. It was like being introduced to a new language, hearing about stocks and bonds and all this other stuff. It was the first time that I realized that there were people that could do a couple of actions with their money, make educated decisions, and become millionaires. So at that moment, I made a decision to learn and take interest in the stock market and financial services, and with that knowledge, I could help my family and friends alike, which is what I still do to this day.

MONARCH: As a senior vice president and trust portfolio man- ager, what does your position entail?

JUSTIN WILLIS: I lead a team of wealth advisors. And when you think about wealth management, you might think of a few things, like financial planning, investment management, port- folio management. Or you may think of tax and estate planning, those sorts of things. On my team—because we are a team—all the different wealth managers have different specialties, areas of expertise. By way of trade, mine is portfolio management.

I’m the person that works with an individual or institution, gets to know their goals or missions, and determines how to align in- vestments with where they’re trying to go, what they’re trying to achieve, what should be in their portfolio. We all work as a col lective so that the client feels well taken care of and appreciated.

MONARCH: What are the steps or processes to wealth building?

JUSTIN WILLIS: There’s no specific rule of thumb, and actually, that’s a good thing. Because a lot of times you hear these gurus give you these rules of thumb and they’re applicable at times, but that’s why there is a difference between personal financial planning and general financial planning. For every client, it’s going to be different. I try to oversimplify the complex concept of financial planning to our clients. I talk to them about what I call the three Ls: liquidity, lifestyle, and legacy.

If you think about behavioral economics or behavioral finance, research has shown that by thinking about money in different, distinct buckets, we use mental accounting for our benefit; it actually ends up with better financial outcomes, and we actually end up having more money. So the first thing is to say that all my money is not the same. If I’ve gotten in my bank account, some of that money might be for a need or some might be for a want, and some might be for an aspiration or wish, whatever it may be. All of your money has different goals. So you owe it to yourself to understand the amount of money that you have, how much should be in your liquidity bucket, stuff that is for you, for paying tomorrow’s bills, or that maybe needs to be in an emergency savings account.

Three to six months is what textbooks tell you that you need in an emergency savings to protect yourself. Once you’ve got an emergency savings account and you’ve got your bills taken care of, only then is it prudent for you to start thinking about investing. And then you may say to yourself, well, I want to improve my life- style. So understand there are two components of your lifestyle, which is your lifestyle before retirement and your lifestyle after retirement. Know how much you want to save for retirement, and understand the earlier you begin saving, the more fulfilling your retirement can be.

But if improving your lifestyle today, and not just at retirement age, is of high importance, we also help clients build broker- age and investment management accounts. For example, you might have an investment account that takes care of improving your lifestyle so you can get to retirement, and you have one that takes care of improving your lifestyle today. An example of to- day’s investments could be you’re planning to start a family, or you plan to start a business, or you may want to buy your first home. Then there are the things that are ten years plus away— that’s retirement. Maybe you want to save for your healthcare, or purchase a second home, or save for college for your kids. As we get to understand our clients and their specific goals, it becomes very easy to understand how their port- folio should be constructed because it has to be aligned.

MONARCH: What makes Pinnacle different than other firms?

JUSTIN WILLIS: Pinnacle is a 50- plus billion-dollar regional bank, and the culture here is unlike any bank that I have ever worked in. Our CEO, Terry Turner, is just a tremendous person. Our regional president is Carolyne Pelton, who is a trailblazer in commercial banking, with a focus on government contractors and owners, and is great at just about everything she does. The people who work here are equally brilliant as they are kind. The selection process to work on the Pinnacle team is that you have to have a minimum of a decade of experience as an expert in your field in banking and financial services. One must be hand selected by an existing team member as well as vetted by multiple people. So Pinnacle is unique in our hiring approach and how we treat our clients.

Everything at Pinnacle is client focused. Other investment firms, when asked what a good client is, they might say any- one who has $10 million or more. We’ll consider talking to anyone who has 5 million, or 1 million, or 250. For me, that kind of segmentation line in the sand is not the appropriate way. At Pinnacle, we look at the potential client from a human standpoint, starting with if he or she can appreciate advice, and if so, they’re a good client for us. You can have a client that has 50 million and does not appreciate advice and does not see any value in what we do, and we cannot provide value for them; they are not a good client.

Whereas you can have someone who has $50,000, and they see the advice that we provide, and it leads them to create more wealth or have more connections and more opportunities; they’re a fantastic client, and we would love to work with them. And so we don’t have hard minimums; we want to meet you where you are and help get you to a competency where you feel comfortable and loaded up with information so that you now can make an appropriate decision.

MONARCH: What are some other alternative assets that can be used to generate wealth?

JUSTIN WILLIS: Let’s start with defining traditional investment assets, which tend to be stocks and bonds. And a great thing is that even the world’s wealthiest institutions and individuals continue to be wealthy by things that you and I both have access to: stocks and bonds. When exploring alternative assets, they are basically things that aren’t from traditional means, like, but not limited to, art, antiquities, or coins. Alternative investments aren’t always that clear; they tend to be a little bit more speculative. So if you have a rare baseball card col- lection, it is a true investment, but there’s no revenue behind it for you. There’s no limited fundamental analysis you can do behind it to see its value.

Its value is determined by what the next person is willing to pay for it. There are no earnings or anything like that, so it becomes more speculative. And then things like antiques, antiquities, collectibles—they also have different tax rates that people have to be cognizant of. Stocks and bonds have favorable tax rates of usually 15 to 20 percent based upon your tax bracket, but some of these other alternative asset classes, they have a 28 percent capital gain, which makes it even more expensive. You have to be conscientious of the two when you invest.

MONARCH: With all the negative press now surrounding crypto, do you think this is still a viable investment option?

JUSTIN WILLIS: Crypto is certainly a viable investment option. It’s never mutually exclusive—is something a good investment or a bad investment? They just all have different risk factors. So when you think about crypto, it’s just kind of similar to another alternative investment. Crypto is a coin. It’s a digital coin, and like most coins, they’re commodities—like gold, silver are speculative—and speculative doesn’t necessarily mean gam- bling. It means that crypto doesn’t have any earnings to review to determine what’s under the hood that is making crypto valuable or not valuable. The same factors apply whether it’s crypto, baseball cards, or Beanie Babies. Will someone see value and be willing to pay more money for what I have? And that makes it speculative.

MONARCH: What are some ways that your services can help a budding entrepreneur or established business owner?

JUSTIN WILLIS: An entrepreneur, especially someone starting out, is no different than someone who’s got a W-2 job in the sense that the person still has needs. They may be looking to start a family or buy a home, save for retirement, and all those sorts of things that we talked about. So you just have to be cognizant of their tax situation and what planning opportunities will allow them to benefit from the fact that there may be a 1099 versus a W-2 earner. There are a lot of opportunities that a self-employed person has when they get to the mature part of their life cycle, which is a lot of clients that we work with at Pinnacle.

We work with a lot of executives and founders, serial entrepreneurs. We bring what I call the Justice League of financial professionals in front of them because they usually say, “Hey, you know, I love this company. It’s been great. It’s my baby. But I re- ally want to spend more time with my children or my wife, or we want to be abroad,” or whatever it may be. But they’re done with the business or may want to move on to another.

So we start what’s called business exit planning. We will fly in our investment banking and capital markets teams and those sorts of people. They go under the hood of the company, see all the financials, help the company become more valuable between now and the time they plan to sell their business, give them different strategies about what they could and could not consider, and give them a reasonable expectation of how much money they might have from the post-sale of a business.

MONARCH: Thank you so much for your time. This has been so informative. I think anyone can benefit from this conversation.

Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards Inc. owns the certification marks CFP®, CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™, CFP® (with plaque design) and CFP® (with flame design) in the U.S., which it awards to individuals who successfully complete CFP Board’s initial and ongoing certification requirements.

Investments & Wealth Institute™ (The Institute) is the owner of the certification marks “CIMA,” and “Certified Investment Management Analyst.” Use of CIMA and/or Certified Investment Management Analyst signifies that the user has successfully completed The Institute’s initial and ongoing credentialing requirements for investment management professionals.

Investments & Wealth Institute™ (The Institute) is the owner of the certification marks “CPWA ®” and “Certified Private Wealth Advisor ®”. Use of the CPWA® or Certified Private Wealth Advisor ® signifies that the user has successfully completed IMCA’s initial and ongoing credentialing requirements for wealth advisors.