Robert Pyle

Robert Pyle

Robert Pyle's Boulder, Colorado-based Diversified Asset Management, Inc., provides comprehensive wealth man­agement services to a client base consisting primarily of successful business executives and entrepreneurs. Pyle himself has entrepreneurial tendencies that he has parlayed into a successful business: Diversified Asset Management currently manages some $50 million in assets for nearly 100 clients.

Pyle's entrepreneurial spirit has influenced many aspects of his life ever since he was a child. Growing up in Maryland, he watched his father build a successful construction-products business, and Pyle internalized many of his father's management perspectives in the process. After several years working in the field of meteorology, the entrepreneurial urge took over. "I began to realize that I wanted to work for myself and choose my own destiny," he explains. "I'd always been interested in investing and more and more it seemed like the right move to try to build a career in that arena."

Pyle went back to school, earning an MBA in finance from the University of Colorado in Boulder. He later received his CFP (Certified Financial Planner) and CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst) designations. And he began working for an acquaintance running an independent financial office. He recalls: "My father always told me that if you wanted to be a success in a given field and do it on your own, then you better work for someone else who was already there so you could see for yourself how it really worked."

That approach paid off. With an MBA and hands-on experience, Pyle was ready to open up his own shop in 1996. He says that the business has had the expected ups and downs, but far more "ups"—and that the rocky economy of late has actually been a fortuitous event for his kind of investment approach. "Being mathematical, I've been attracted to analytical approaches to investing and haven't been tempted to do it on my own," he says. "That helps when the markets go through one of their less cooperative cycles."

In line with this thinking, Pyle has cultivated a strong relationship with the asset-class manager Dimensional Fund Advisors. DFA is well-known as a pioneer in modern portfolio theory (MPT) and provides funds that allow advisors to blend assets for their clients in highly specific ways. By combining asset-class investing with other kinds of customizable investments, Pyle believes his clients gain much-needed access to sophisticated, flexible choices and added value. "DFA provides us with customizable tools that clients wouldn't necessarily be exposed to when doing business with a Wall Street firm," he points out.
As part of his analytical and customized approach to finance, Pyle has emphasized the discipline of wealth management—a concept that is increasingly being adopted by the top financial advisors in the industry today. Wealth management is to some degree an outgrowth of technology. With the advent of personal computing power in the 1980s, it became possible to bring different kinds of financial efforts— insurance, investing, taxes and other services—under one roof. The financial discipline that emerged from the computer revolution came to be known, initially, as financial planning.

Wealth management differs from financial planning in that wealth managers do not simply create a bottom-line financial plan, but seek to create a customized approach to building and maintaining wealth that takes into account clients' most important values and their lifestyles. Additionally, true wealth managers make it a point to work in close consultation with their clients to implement the right plan that can achieve their biggest goals throughout all phases of their financial lives. Wealth managers, says Pyle, essentially act as their clients' personal chief financial officers, and even bring in other professionals to provide the necessary expertise that affluent investors require in areas such as accounting and law.

Pyle's wealth management expertise has been greatly enhanced by his exposure to California-based CEG Worldwide, a leading wealth management coaching firm that has helped thousands of top financial advisors apply proven wealth management concepts in their firms. Pyle had been aware of CEG Worldwide's expertise for a number of years, and he joined its coaching program last year. It has been an exceptional experience. "As someone who constantly searches for best practices, I had already implemented much of what CEG Worldwide recommends," he explains, "But they provided invaluable reinforcement and advanced techniques that have further improved our level of client service."

Pyle also values CEG Worldwide for its entrepreneurial culture. "Here is a group that launched a quiet revolution in the industry and provides competence that has real-life applications," he says. Pyle believes the same could be said for Diversified Asset Management. "We're forward-looking and not afraid to be early adopters if we believe the concept is right. Many of our clients have the same characteristics. Success attracts success, and we believe that our wealth management approach will be attractive to those with considerable wealth and an independence of vision."

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