Sharon C. Allen

With just under 30 clients, Sharon C. Allen, founder of Illinois-based Sterling Wealth Management, knows the people she serves exceptionally well. She also shares much with them in terms of back-ground and perspective. Like many of her clients, she is an entrepreneur and family-oriented, running Sterling with her husband.

As a wealth manager who brings together the personal with the professional, Allen hopes to enrich clients' entire life experience. "Working together with our clients, we are committed to identifying their key life goals and challenges and implementing the strategies needed to meet their specific needs," explains Allen. "Our approach is designed to align our clients' wealth and resources with their values and help them achieve all that is important to them."

Given her background, it is not surprising that Allen runs a highly successful firm today (Sterling currently manages approximately $25 million in assets). But in keeping with her down-to-earth personality, she measures her success based on the quality of the relationships she has developed with her clients, not on assets under management.

Allen's current position was perhaps predictable, considering that it has been her goal since college, when she began to take courses with a professor who was a financial planner and advisor. After graduating from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a degree in finance, Allen went to work for the professor's firm before finally going out on her own. A Certified Financial Planner (CFP) professional and a Certified Trust and Financial Advisor (CTFA), Allen has been intimately involved in all levels of managing the financial lives of affluent families and individuals since 1993.

On a practical level, Allen's objective with Sterling is to provide counsel to a limited number of high¬net-worth investors by developing a deep and personal interest in their lives. She's able to build those relationships largely because she uses a disciplined approach to wealth management that seeks to uncover and address clients' most crucial values and needs. Lately, those needs have centered on significant life changes that many of her clients are experiencing. "Some clients have gone through difficult financial times, and we have been able to add a lot of value by helping them navigate through those waters," Allen says.

In particular, Allen cites an aspect of wealth management called the Discovery Process—essentially a meeting designed to help clients and prospects identify what is most important to them. "Discovery pulls out so much information about people that it allows us to build stronger relationships and have an impact on all areas of their lives," says Allen.

Indeed, one seemingly odd Discovery Process question—"Do you have a pet and how do you feel about it?"—helped Allen build a bond with a relatively new client. "It turns out the pet is the client's life. If I didn't have a process that involved asking that type of detailed question, I wouldn't have known about this really important aspect of the client's life," she says.

To deliver truly comprehensive wealth management solutions, Allen acts as her clients'"personal chief financial officer"—coordinating efforts in investment consulting as well as advanced concerns like estate planning, tax and insurance planning, and development of philanthropic initiatives. She utilizes a team of professional advisors—including a CPA firm, an independent insurance agent and a private client lawyer—to manage this process and develop customized solutions that she presents to clients in a unique and highly effective way. "Whenever we talk to clients about their advanced planning needs, we always have a one-page document that shows their entire financial picture graphically," says Allen. "It's always in front of us, so we never lose sight of the key issues we need to address."

The wealth management model that Allen uses was developed in part by CEG Worldwide, a leading wealth management coaching and training firm based in California. Allen participated in the CEG Worldwide program and adopted much of the wealth management approach offered there. "The program was extremely helpful in defining a disciplined process that truly provides value to clients and gives them a plan that is easy to understand and adhere to over the long term," she says.

In addition to implementing CEG Worldwide's wealth management strategies, Allen utilizes an asset-class-based approach to investing that is implemented via Austin, Texas-based Dimensional Fund Advisors. DFA's practices are based on Modern Portfolio Theory, which holds that risk is defined as volatility over time. The firm provides funds made up of asset classes that help investors build and maintain portfolios with specific levels of risk and reward. By partnering with DFA and other best-of-class providers, Sterling is able to offer investment solutions normally reserved only for large institutional investors—yet another example of how the firm works to bring as much value as possible to clients. "We are loyal advocates for our clients in all that we do," concludes Allen. "Because of our deep, personal interest in the lives of our clients, we can offer service far beyond what is provided by large financial institutions."

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