We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jason Bright a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Jason, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you share an important lesson you learned in a prior job that’s helped you in your career afterwards?

All experience is relevant. I’ve done so many different things over the years. Post college, my first job was as a designer, and I hated it. But the experience I got designing things that had to be manufactured was invaluable. As I progressed into business development, I was the only person at my company that had the relevant design and manufacturing experience to help pull the right team of vendors together for us to create complex systems ourselves vs. relying on our mother company. That experience solving and designing complicated systems sharpened my problem solving skills. Combine that with my sales and strategic business growth and marketing experience and now as an Financial Planner, I look at and solve problems in ways most people who’ve only ever been advisors don’t think about. Design fabricated structures help me be a better financial planner.

Jason, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m a mechanical engineer by degree. I got inspired on a mission trip in 2016 to start my own business so that I could make more money and be in a better position to have more impact in the community. I became a financial advisor/insurance agent with a national brokerage firm and realized pretty quickly that a captive environment with all its restrictions just wasn’t the right fit for me and the types of advice and guidance I wanted to give to clients. I built my book of business there for about 4 years and in 2022, broke out on my own and went independent.

At BRIGHTSMITH Advisors, we focus on 2 types of relationships; Successful business owners and Tax professionals.

For business owners we help them solve their biggest problems and achieve their most important goals through building a deep relationship and an understanding of their business and biggest challenges and leveraging a network of some of the nations top experts to in the areas of wealth management, advanced tax planning, risk mitigation, business advisory, and legal services.

One of the most difficult changes a lot of successful business owners face is lack of coordination between all of their relevant business advisors. They may have an accountant, a money manager, an insurance agent, and business lawyer and all of these professionals are giving this business owner advice from their own perspective and none of them are talking to each other. What often happens is the business owners get conflicting advice from their professionals and it’s up to them to coordinate all of this and sort through the differing viewpoints. And most business owners just don’t have time for this. So thinks fall through the cracks and get left undone. This creates inefficiencies in their business, personal and financial lives.

We provide a central hub of business, tax and financial planning under one roof to create a TEAM of people all working together in a collaborative way to serve that business owner client. That’s what really sets us apart. If the client has professionals they’re already working with, we can come in as “head project manager” to help coordinate existing professionals as well as bring a wide array of additional horsepower through our Virtual Family Office of national best in class experts.

So for the business owner, our goal is to help them increase efficiency by keeping more of what they make, make wise investments to build wealth, while helping them become better business owners to grow their revenue engine, all the while keeping an eye out for the risks that can sabotage all of this and building a “mote” that protects them. And in the end, hopefully, helping them deploy excess wealth back into the community through increased generosity! Helping people give money away is our favorite thing to do.

Tax Professionals are the bread and butter of our business owner relationships. The tax professionals is typically the business owners most trusted advisor. But the accounting and tax profession has undergone major shifts in the past decade and clients are demanding more and more from their tax professionals. Clients are demanding more than just compliance service from their tax pro and they’re wanting more and more comprehensive and holistic advice. On top of that, many tax pros are burnt out because they’re handling hundreds of clients for very small dollar amounts and they’re stuck in this tax season roller coaster.

We partner with accountants to help them build a repeatable, defined process to their practice to shift from an hourly, compliance based model, to begin providing comprehensive, proactive and holistic planning to their most important clients. We leverage the power of our Virtual Family Office and a proven process to help them transform their business by dramatically increasing the value they can bring to their clients, thus significantly increasing the tax pro’s revenue per client. We do all this by deploying our team based model right into their practice and bringing the coaching, training, resources and tools they need to launch this model very quickly and help them build a more profitable, sustainable, referrable, SELLABLE practice that they can enjoy working in that doesn’t burn them out and does what they really want; bring tremendous value to their clients.

One of the things that really sets us apart in the investment space is our use of alternative investments. Lots of wealth managers and advisors out there are only using publicly traded stocks and bonds in their clients’ portfolios. Because of our network and experience of our team, we bring a level of access to private investments and alternative asset classes that most wealth managers just don’t have access to. This allows us to exploit inefficiencies in the private markets to help clients achieve higher returns as well as create diversification that’s not correlated to the public markets so we can help drive more positive outcomes for our clients.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

As a “recovering” engineer I’ve always been driven to try to know “how” things need to be done. As I’ve built my practice I’ve realized there is way too much to learn for one person to be an expert. As I was building my practice I would see really advanced advisory practices providing the kind of comprehensive and advanced planning I wanted to do, but most of the lead advisors had to build that knowledge over the course of many decades. I wanted to bring that value to my clients NOW and it seemed like an impossible hill to climb.

But what I realized is that only relying on my ability to learn and absorb information, I was drastically limiting my effectiveness. That’s where I had to shift my focus from learning “how” something was done to finding out “who” could help me do the things I needed.

That’s where our Team Based Model was born. By letting go of my need to “know everything” I can focus on what I do best, serving my clients and knowing them intimately, and bring in the necessary “who” from our amazing team to execute on the “hows.”

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

Not surprisingly, the book “Who Not How” by Dan Sullivan has been a game changer for me. It is the foundation for how I’ve built my practice. A company I used to work for sent me to an 8 week Sandler Sales training course as well. That was incredibly influential for me, not only how to sell but more importantly, how to interact with people, and how to be a better listener and relationship builder. John Maxwell’s books on leadership have also been hugely influential for me in my professional and personal life when it comes to leadership.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.brightsmithadvisors.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brightsmithadvisors/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonbrightbrightsmith/
• Other: https://www.linkedin.com/company/brightsmith-advisors