Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Marilyn Suey. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Alright, Marilyn thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Often outsiders look at a successful business and think it became a success overnight. Even media and especially movies love to gloss over nitty, gritty details that went into that middle phase of your business – after you started but before you got to where you are today. In our experience, overnight success is usually the result of years of hard work laying the foundation for success, but unfortunately, it’s exactly this part of the story that most of the media ignores. Can you talk to us about your scaling up story – what are some of the nitty, gritty details folks should know about?
With my marketing and sales degrees/background, I felt that I had to build a personal and corporate brand to build our wealth management business. It’s challenging to build a business based solely on referrals, particularly in today’s business environment. We focus on business owners, health care professionals, and C-level executives. In addition we serve our community of “Savvy Women” who are in these three client segments as well.
A majority of our practice is comprised of women clients or women led households.
We invested more time, energy, and investment in our marketing to attract, and engage our prospects to take action in managing their Financial House. This is a graphic that we use on our website and our marketing materials to display our comprehensive wealth planning strategies and tactics.
(www.diamondgroupwealthadvisors.com)
We have been in business for over 20 years, and have designed and built an engine that can propel our firm for many more years.
Marilyn, 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 had a successful career in high tech corporations and some successful financial results from those companies. When I looked for a financial advisor then, I was disappointed in the lack of comprehensive care for our family wealth and the interest in capturing and aligning my financial goals with my dreams and intentions. What was important to the firms, was transferring assets, funds etc. and managing the money. As we know, wealth management is so much more than investments and portfolio returns.
I was able to retire early and started The Diamond Group Wealth Advisors from scratch. No clients, no certifications, but a strong mindset motivated by the desire to fill the gap I experienced. I worked through licensing and have several certifications, showing that we are taking fiduciary care of our clients’ Financial House at all times. We collaborate with estate planning professionals, CPAs, and other specialists to provide that comprehensive service.
I wanted to help make a difference for executives, business owners and families like mine while meeting them where they are and gaining a deep understanding motivations, stories, dreams and desires. We are most proud to collaborate with and have a special sensitivity to independent women or women-led households. For over two decades, we’ve partnered with independent, savvy women—doctors, dentists, business owners, and C-level executives—guiding them through life’s most important financial decisions.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
My financial services business has evolved over time, with initial brands and team members. I have had to pivot quickly at least twice as my partners had changed due to organizational challenges. Coming from the high-tech venture capital backed businesses, we learned how to pivot quickly to build those businesses rapidly.
I had the same experience in the growth of my financial services business for the first 10 years. I had tremendous growth and had a team that worked well until it didn’t.
The last major pivot was in 2016, when I moved away from all partners and built my own personal corporate brand- which is now -The Diamond Group Wealth Advisors. Since that last transition our business has grown 450% in gross revenue.
We’d appreciate any insights you can share with us about selling a business.
In my last role as CEO of a venture backed high technology firm, we had an offer to be acquired by a much larger firm our networking sector. However, my board requested our leadership to look for a better offer, one that would 2x the current offer. ( $200-300MM, which was a huge valuation in the Internet age) What was a missing factor, was that the timeframe, in the early 2000s, the tech market was starting to crumble, and our firm while a market leader, we still had to work hard to keep up in our respective markets.
By the time I had hired bankers, consultants to help move our firm along, the greater market was starting to dissolve and the firm which mad the offer was acquired by an even larger global firm. Guess where are offer went to…. zero!
Lesson learned, take the offer, work the details and understand your firms, strengths and weaknesses in the current economic and market environment in which you are operating. Your Board, may not know better than you!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.diamondgroupwealthadvisors.com
- Instagram: tbd–until recently, not able to use Insta
- Facebook: marilyn suey; diamond group wealth advisors, Savvy Women
- Linkedin: marilyn suey; diamond group wealth advisors
- Youtube: @marilynsuey….videos
