MEMBER SPOTLIGHT | September 2021 (Max Dean)

This month, we had the great fortune to catch up with Max Dean, a board member of our WIBN Atlanta Chapter. Max is a wealth advisor and founding member of Bespoke Capital Advisors of Raymond James, who exclusively works with Privately Held Business Owners. 

He has been very successful at Bespoke and has been promoted multiple times, including recently as a Senior Vice President.

Three things jump out when you speak with Max: 

first, he is intently focused on helping people and assisting them to achieve peace of mind with their investment and financial strategies. Second, he loves Atlanta! Third, wrestling has been instrumental in his success, and he credits the sport for many of his accomplishments.  

Early Beginnings

Max grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, and had a very successful high school career. He was recruited to wrestle at Indiana University and attended the prestigious Kelley School of Business. After a successful academic and athletic career at IU, he earned his MBA at the University of Oklahoma’s Price School of Business. Following his MBA, he worked on Wall Street and eventually relocated to Atlanta in 2011, working with AT&T. His success at AT&T translated into relocations associated with promotions, and migrating away from Atlanta was not something Max was interested in doing.

In 2012, as relocation was imminent, Max was volunteering with a high school wrestling program and was introduced to Rob Larmore. 

Max met with Rob and discussed the possibility of making a career transition to become a wealth advisor at a start-up firm for Raymond James. Max had always been a people person and had a solid background in finance. The opportunity to work in wealth management was the perfect marriage for both of these passions. As a result, Max became a founding partner in Bespoke Capital Advisors in 2013.

Growth and Focus

Any start-up requires hard work, and this endeavor would be no different. His firm caters to privately held business owners, and he was starting from scratch and would have to create every new account. It would take months of 14-hour days to build a client base by demonstrating acumen, passion, drive, organization, and enhanced communication. Most importantly, he remained committed to genuinely putting his clients’ best interests in mind and only providing recommendations that he, himself, would make reversed roles.

Who were his first clients?? The Atlanta wrestling community. Although his wrestling background helped break the ice, his firm commitment to their needs created long-term relationships. In addition, he earned trust based on his finance background (Wall Street), use of analytics to make informed, consistent decisions with a genuine concern for his clients and their families. He now counts 50 family/privately-owned business owners as his clients and admits that “helping them is just fun.” He constantly asks himself of his recommendations, “is this right?” and “what are the risks?” He remains client-centric and people-oriented.

Max and Bespoke have been very successful, but it was hard work, and there was much to learn in his early days. The long days were a grind and required grit. While he had a solid finance background, Max hadn’t previously built a client base, and he didn’t have any significant sales background. He overcame both through effort, hard work, and refusing to quit. WIBN was very helpful to him in the early days at Bespoke. 

The WIBN Atlanta was founded in 2014 and was a great benefit to him based on his connections through the network.

Advice to Others

When I asked Max what advice he had for others who might be considering starting a career in wealth management, he thought that any advice must be broken down into two distinct groups of people. Those soon to be graduating from college and those making a career transition. For those soon to be graduating, he (personally) thinks that they start in another industry and then transition into wealth management. He didn’t start his practice until he was 28 and finds that his previous experiences in other industries provided a valuable perspective that has helped him better serve his clients. Of course, he clarified this recommendation with one key caveat: wrestlers. Max stated that wrestlers are called to his industry and often have the skills and attributes to succeed.  

For those transitioning from one career into wealth management, he thinks it is critical to conduct research on the firm and understand their investment strategies and client service because they are not all alike. Understanding the differences will help the transition and create a culture fit. Second, they should talk to no less than 25 people who have a financial advisor and find out what they like and don’t like about their advisor. While the answers are important, this drill is more important to help the prospective wealth advisor candidate gauge how much they like talking about investments and finances. People are the center of the universe for a wealth management advisor.

Max at WIBN

Max has been an instrumental part of the WIBN Atlanta Chapter and was a founding member back in 2014. WIBN Atlanta is a highly successful chapter and has some unique aspects to it. Atlanta is not a wrestling hotbed yet is filled with wrestler-transplants. The Chapter has focused on connecting former wrestlers from around the country who have relocated to Atlanta, and it has certainly been active to drive membership. The Chapter was the driving force for Atlanta to host an NWCA All-Star Classic a few years ago. It has also hosted countless networking events and dinner engagements and has lined up some impressive speakers to connect with members on topics that overlap business and wrestling.

Wrestling’s Role

Max knows that his experiences as a wrestler greatly formed the foundation which has helped him professionally. When Max transitioned from AT&T to Bespoke, he took a “burn the boats” approach and had to be comfortable with it. And, in this business where you get told “no” far more often than you’re told “yes”, he credits the resiliency he learned through the sport and how it helped him to continue to focus and move on from short-term defeats to create long term wins. This speaks to the no-fail attitude wrestlers develop and the willingness to accept difficult challenges. 

It was evident in our conversation that wrestling was vital to Max’s success.

If you would like to connect with Max, please reach out to him at: Max.Dean@raymondjames.com