"Don't try to control outcomes and embrace the unknown, as the unknown is where some of the largest opportunities lie"
James Bogart Tweet
Welcome to ValiantCEO Magazine’s exclusive interview with James Bogart, the visionary CEO of Bogart Wealth. In this insightful conversation, we delve into the fascinating journey of a passionate individual who has redefined the concept of financial success and built lasting relationships with his clients.
James Bogart’s personal fascination with money, investing, and saving, combined with his early exposure to the financial services industry through his parent, set the stage for his remarkable career.
Graduating from college in 2007, he embarked on a path that led him to become a financial advisor at Ferris Baker Watts, where he quickly gained hands-on experience and a deep understanding of his clients’ needs.
Realizing the importance of financial literacy and the lack of education in this area, James recognized an opportunity to become a subject matter expert. As he took the helm of Bogart Wealth, he made it a mission to connect directly with clients, offering valuable insights, and building a reputation for delivering exceptional value.
Join us as James Bogart shares his insights on financial success, the unique strengths of Bogart Wealth, overcoming challenges in the industry, and his vision for the future. Prepare to be inspired by his wisdom and the transformative power of his approach to wealth management.
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Table of Contents
We are thrilled to have you join us today, welcome to ValiantCEO Magazine’s exclusive interview! Let’s start off with a little introduction. Tell our readers a bit about yourself and your company.
James Bogart: I was always a good saver. I was also very fortunate to have a parent who was in the financial services industry. As I tried to figure out what I wanted to do with my life, I recognized that I had a lot of questions about money, investing, and saving, and I was always enamored by how to build a portfolio.
So, when I graduated from college in 2007, I went to work for a small little broker-dealer called Ferris Baker Watts. It was a great opportunity for me, as they had a nice little training program where I was able to immediately become a financial advisor.
During my first week as an advisor, another team at the firm that was responsible for $1.2 billion in assets decided to leave. Given that it was a small firm, it gave me an immediate opportunity to be thrown into the deep end and start talking to clients immediately.
I was pretty unsuccessful at the time, but it was a great learning opportunity that gave me an instant comfort level talking to and connecting with people and understanding their needs.
It also made me appreciate that this industry is not just about picking stocks. There’s a lot more that goes into what people care about and what people think about. I also discovered that consumers are by and large what I would describe as uneducated in financial literacy overall.
It’s a very big detriment within our country. I recognized that there was an opportunity to become a subject matter expert, and when I started leading Bogart Wealth, we decided to go deeper and add a significant amount of value to our target audience — simply by directly connecting with them and their needs.
This became a snowball effect, where our reputation and credibility continued to grow and build on itself, and now we have a robust following and client base.
In the past year, what is the greatest business achievement you’d like to celebrate with your team? Please share the details of that success.
James Bogart: Over the past year, the greatest business achievement I’d like to celebrate with our team has been to still be able to grow our revenue while almost all market factors were working against us.
In 2022, most advisory firms were down 10-15%, and we managed to grow at 25% in the same year! A truly remarkable feat!
What advice do you wish you had received when you started your business journey and what do you intend on improving in the next quarter?
James Bogart: The advice I wished I received when I started my business was to not try to control outcomes and embrace the unknown, as the unknown is where some of the largest opportunities lie.
Some of the changes or expansions of service offerings that we have made over the past several years have come out of necessity from the environment surrounding us. In hindsight, these were single handedly some of the best decisions that were ever made and allowed us to grow at over 400% in three years!
Online business keeps on surging higher than ever, B2B, B2C, online shopping, virtual meetings, remote work, Zoom medical consultations, what are your expectations for the year to come and how are you capitalizing on the tidal wave?
James Bogart: The pivot to online business is undeniable. From how we service our clients to how we market to new clients, digital expansion continues to be more important than ever.
Prior to the pandemic, we had very few, if any, virtual meetings, and now over 70% of our meetings are virtual. This has allowed us to expand our service offerings and spend less time traveling to see clients.
The other major shift we made is that we morphed all of our educational offerings to digital and recorded them. This has enabled us to grow globally, and not simply in the local markets we were serving.
Business is all about overcoming obstacles and creating opportunities for growth. What do you see as THE real challenge right now?
James Bogart: The real challenge right now is growing our human capital. Staff growth has been extremely challenging in both of the markets where we maintain office locations (McLean, VA and Houston / The Woodlands, TX).
Our industry is very much service-oriented, and our locations in Texas in particular serve clients that strongly prefer in-person meetings, making virtual working more and more difficult. Related to this issue is the fact that there are more people leaving the industry due to retirement than there are entering.
We are also seeing a dramatic change in how the younger generations want to work, and in how they value their time, which has led to the creation of more flexible benefits and work-from-home policies.
In your experience, what tends to be the most underestimated part of running a company? Can you share an example?
James Bogart: The most underestimated part of running a company is the unknown. As a business owner, your mind does not turn off even when you are not “working”. You think you have everything figured out, but ultimately the thing you least expect to happen is the one that occurs the most.
This can be good and bad. Recently, the surge we had in new business created by our emphasis on digital marketing generated massive capacity shortages on the client service side.
Behind the scenes, this forced us to have to enhance our processes and automations, while leaning on technology to help fill the rest of the void as we expanded our human capital as quickly as possible.
What does “success” in 2023 mean to you? It could be on a personal or business level, please share your vision.
James Bogart: Success to me in the next year is to have more time available to spend with family. As the business has grown, the demands on my time have exponentially risen, which has meant I have needed to spend more time traveling.
To do this, I need to hire and delegate more. Finding the right additions to the team is of the utmost importance.
Jed Morley, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank James Bogart for taking the time to do this interview and share his knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with James Bogart or his company, you can do it through his – Linkedin Page
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