James Knight

James Knight's father was a carpenter who Knight describes as a "creative man." Knight inherited his father's creativity, but has put it to use building and serving as chief investment officer of Vista Wealth Management—a $350 million financial services firm associated with accounting firm BPM, with numerous offices in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The firm's current clients include engineers, entrepreneurs, attorneys, doctors, retirees and corporate executives at various stages in their professional careers, and with liquid assets exceeding $1 million. Knight confesses to a partiality toward successful professionals who could be classified as "family stewards"— people who place particular importance on ensuring the health, safety and financial well-being of their families and heirs. He sees a level of creativity and energy in these individuals that he himself enjoys, and he seeks to configure the wealth management experience around their family-focused values. In fact, a significant component of the wealth management approach that Vista uses is to discover each client's value system and then align financial resources to support the client's most important values and goals in life. The services that Vista uses to accomplish that goal include tax planning and preparation, estate planning and insurance analysis.

For Knight, creativity is a key ingredient in any kind of success. "I can relate to many of the professionals we work with because most of them have done a good deal of soul-searching to get where they want to be," he says. "I did too, even to the point of going to culinary school and working as a chef."

How did Knight go from chef to successful wealth manager? The seemingly unlikely transition began when he returned to school to get a business degree prior to opening a restaurant. "The subject matter just clicked," he recalls. "I became fascinated with accounting, and instead of starting a restaurant I ended up spending seven years at Pricewaterhouse Coopers in its personal financial services practice."

While with the firm, Knight provided clients with financial planning, investment management, tax and estate planning, and even helped with a national consulting startup that provided investment advisory services to the firm's clients.

His obvious predilection for financial services was noticed by both his clients and peers—and eventually he received an offer from Jerome and Michael Spector, the two senior partners at Palo Alto-based Spector & Associates. "They brought me in to run a new division, Vista Wealth Management," he recalls. "It worked out so well that nearly $200 million in assets later they sold the accounting division to concentrate on wealth management."

That wasn't the end of the deal making, however. Next, the Vista principals decided to merge their wealth management business with BPM—the firm that had purchased the partners' accounting business. "First they spun off their accounting unit, and then all parties involved decided that it might be sensible to merge the wealth management group as well," recalls Knight.

The merger also took place because BPM, a very large accounting firm, had a wealth management unit of its own and wanted to build it out more quickly. The two units had nearly identical assets under management and the combined group, with some $350 million under management, offered considerable economies of scale.

Additionally, BPM principals were intrigued by the wealth management model that Vista was using, which was derived from the wealth management coaching firm CEG Worldwide. Knight himself had urged the retention of CEG Worldwide's coaching services, having been introduced to the company by asset-class fund manager Dimensional Fund Advisors.

These days, the firm as a whole uses CEG Worldwide's wealth management model, which emphasizes (among other things) a replicable standard of service, systemization and a focus on a values-oriented process that is intended to help clients realize everything that is important to them. "CEG Worldwide's disciplined approach to wealth management really helped us build the business," he says. "Their market surveys provide you with actual data about client preferences so you're not groping in the dark. And their emphasis on a business that is replicable and gives the same quality of service time after time is very important when you are in growth mode."

The firm is certainly in just such a mode, despite the challenging environment. "BPM has 45 accounting partners and a huge client base," Knight points out. "There is a good deal of need for our services, so much so that BPM is being very selective about whom it introduces. That's a nice position to be in for both the client and company."

In addition to Knight, Vista's senior officers include CEO Henry Pilger and chief operating officer Michael E. Spector. Pilger is one of the founding partners of the accounting firm. As a founder of BPM Wealth Management, he led the BPM Wealth team in their merger with Vista. Spector co-founded Vista in 1999 and has been instrumental in developing and delivering the firm's wealth management services. He assists the firm's high-net-worth clients by providing them with investment and tax solutions to help reduce risk through Vista's asset-class diversification models.

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