The Art of Wealth Management
The Art of Wealth Management is to see ourselves and our work as an essentially human and creative work of building — the opposite of hoop-jumping, box-checking, and life-draining busy work.
Why I built
this firm.
I spent 26 years at Goldman Sachs, UBS, and Merrill Lynch learning how to do this work at the highest level. What I also learned, over those 26 years, is how much of the institutional structure around that work gets in the way of actually serving clients.
Production quotas. Approved product lists. Conflicts built into the compensation structure. The pressure to bring in assets rather than to help people. The hand-offs to junior staff as accounts "mature." The sense that the client relationship is a means to an end rather than the whole point.
Downtown Wealth Studios exists because I believed there was a better way — and because I'd been watching the people who most needed excellent financial advice get the least of it. Founders on the edge of exits. Executives buried in equity comp they didn't understand. Creative professionals with genuinely complex financial lives and no one equipped to handle them.
We built this firm for those people. Fee-only, fiduciary, independent. No products to push, no institutional quotas, no conflict between what's good for us and what's good for you. Just the work — done well, done with care, and done for people who deserve it.
That's what DTWN is. That's why it exists. And that's the only standard we hold ourselves to.
The principles that
guide everything we do.
Fiduciary, always.
We are legally required to act in your interest. Not "suitable for you" — in your interest. That distinction matters more than most people realize, and it shapes every decision we make.
No products to push.
We earn no commissions, referral fees, or compensation from third parties. Our only incentive is to give you the best possible advice. We think that's how it should work — and we're surprised it doesn't work that way everywhere.
Complexity is our strength.
We were built for the financial situations that most advisors oversimplify or avoid. Variable income. Concentrated equity. Business exits. Multigenerational wealth. The harder the problem, the more useful we are.
You work with us, not a team below us.
The people you meet in the first conversation are the people managing your account. We don't have a tiered model where clients get moved to junior staff as the firm grows. That's a deliberate choice.
Creative thinking about money.
The name Downtown Wealth Studios is not an accident. We think about financial planning the way a good architect thinks about a building — the structure has to work, but it should also reflect something about the person it's built for.
We coordinate the whole picture.
Your CPA, your estate attorney, your mortgage broker, your accountant — we work with all of them. We think the biggest failure in wealth management is the gap between advisors who each see one piece and no one connecting the dots.
"What is done in love is done well."— Vincent Van Gogh
Why being an RIA
changes everything.
As a registered investment advisor — not a broker-dealer — we operate under a different legal and incentive structure than most of the wealth management industry. Here's what that means in practice.
Fiduciary standard, not suitability
RIAs are legally required to act in your best interest. Broker-dealers only need to recommend something "suitable" — a lower bar that allows for significant conflicts of interest.
Fee-only, not commission-based
We charge an advisory fee based on assets under management. We earn nothing from product sales, referrals, or third-party compensation of any kind.
Independent, not captive
We have no approved product lists, no institutional quotas, no parent company whose products we're incentivized to push. Every recommendation is made solely in your interest.
Assets held at BNY Pershing, not with us
Your assets are custodied at BNY Pershing — America's oldest bank, with over $52 trillion in client assets. We are your advisor, never your custodian. Your money is always yours.
If this sounds like
what you've been looking for —
The first conversation is exploratory. No pitch, no presentation, no pressure. Just a real conversation about your situation and whether we're the right fit.
Get In Touch → ✻ Invest Beautifully ✻