Scott Sarber

There's a touch of a lighthearted sports emphasis at the Petersen Hastings financial and investing practice. Wealth manager Scott Sarber's biography even boasts of him being the firm's lone "Eastern Washington Eagle"—a former member of a Washington state college football team.

Competitive sports have greatly influenced Sarber's approach to business and finance. The sports mind-set of Sarber (one shared by founder Jim Petersen) emphasizes the kind of systematic, strategic fair play that leads to successful results. As the firm has approximately $400 million in assets under management and nearly 400 clients, its approach seems to be working. "The best athletes and teams feature consistency and clarity in order to generate results," says Sarber. "There are plenty of lessons in sports that translate into larger life-lessons, which is one reason that sports are so helpful during formative years and are played at schools."

Of course, all the sports talk in the world wouldn't matter if the firm lacked a sound financial strategy. The two disciplines that Petersen Hastings employs, wealth management and asset-class investing, provide Sarber and the firm with a winning system for solving clients' most important financial challenges. Wealth management seeks to align resources with values through a disciplined process of financial planning and "discovery" interviewing. Meanwhile, asset-class allocation often uses the customized, institutional funds of Dimensional Fund Advisors to provide a variety of fund choices that, when combined, provide a client with a certain amount of reward for a certain amount of volatility.

"We try to minimize conflicts of interest and provide a replicable system that meets expectations. I've worked in other places where these issues were handled less well or even ignored, and that's no way to provide a service, much less conduct a business," Sarber explains. "I'm satisfied that everything we do properly supports the client and is for the benefit of the client. That's the ethical way to do business—in sports and business."

Sarber says he enjoys working with entrepreneurs, due in part to the competitive spirit and focus that entrepreneurs must have when starting and building companies in the face of competition. "The consistency and discipline that you find in athletics is often reflected in the entrepreneurial approach," he explains. "I enjoy that kind of personality because I understand that more often than not you're going to end up with success, which is to everyone's advantage."

Sarber has used the twin approaches of consistency and discipline not only for sports but in building a career that he says was in the planning stages even when he was in high school and realized that he didn't want to pursue a career in his father's construction business. For Sarber, finance seemed a more appealing option—and after an internship at a brokerage firm in Washington, he began to look around for a fee-based advisory practice. "Sometimes you just see a better idea," he explains. "It was obvious to me that fee-based financial advisory work was a better way of approaching planning. I wasn't comfortable with the commission-based approach in that it seemed to provide the possibility of too many conflicts of interest."

Once Sarber started looking seriously for a practice that emphasized financial planning without conflicts of interest, he was introduced by a mutual acquaintance to the principals at Petersen Hastings. "I went to visit them and played some tennis with [president] Jeff Petersen. He beat me, and then he offered me a position," he recalls. "I quickly decided I would much rather have had the position than the win."

That was in 1995, and Sarber is now a principal in the firm. He's amassed numerous industry certifications and memberships, along with a successful practice specializing in entrepreneurs and business executives. Currently, as a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professional, Sarber belongs to the Financial Planning Association, the CFA Institute and the CFA Society of Spokane. He has also served as the Columbia Valley Daybreak Rotary Club's president.

In the past couple of years, Sarber became involved with wealth management coaching firm CEG Worldwide. "I took the course they offered, and it solidified a lot of thinking I had about the industry in general and financial planning in particular," he says. "When you are able to offer a properly structured wealth management program to your clients, it's kind of like giving them an entrée into the Davis Cup. You're allowing them to compete at the highest level—but without the stress and emotional entanglements that usually come from portfolio management."

Sarber says that the firm has redesigned its systems and focus based on the information provided by CEG Worldwide. "I took the initial course, but everyone at the firm has benefited because of it. CEG Worldwide doesn't necessarily have a sports emphasis, but they certainly know how to play the game. They're professional at what they do, and they've thought it out every step of the way. The level of detail that they offer makes their system easier to replicate—and that means success is easier to attain as well."

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