Randy Miller

Family is important to Randy Miller, founder of Oregon-based Advisory Services and Investments, a successful wealth management firm with nearly $700 million in assets under management and a network of offices. What's more, Miller and his staff's use of consultative wealth management has enabled the firm to continue to gain accounts at a time when many other practices are struggling.

By emphasizing his own family values and by presenting a holistic wealth management approach that aligns wealth with each client's key values, Miller is able to provide clients with a new way of looking at their resources—and a new way of positioning them. Miller points out that he does whatever is necessary to put the client first. For example, Miller recently evaluated his fouroffice network in the current tough environment and chose to work more efficiently rather than to shut down any single branch. "Everything we do is for the client," he points out. "We truly believe in the family approach to building this effort, and we will certainly undertake sacrifices to maintain our resources and availability."

Miller had a very close relationship with his mother and father growing up, built in part around a baseball career during his youth. While Miller would never end up in the major leagues, the competitive effort influenced his life and approach to gaining, maintaining and utilizing wealth. "I understood that the resource itself was a secondary issue," he says. "The primary one was the relationship, and to the extent that my father's resources supported our relationship, and the family in general, that made the resource valuable. Money is a tool, not an end result."

Miller uses the wealth management discipline to further that philosophy. A key part of the effort is a comprehensive interviewing process that helps clients identify in detail what they want to achieve personally and professionally so that their wealth can target those specific goals. It's an approach aimed at ensuring that money will provide the most opportunity and satisfaction for the individual and the family. "Markets will always fluctuate. The idea is to make sure that no matter where the market is, you are pointing your resources toward what you and your loved ones need and value," says Miller.

Miller began his career in the 1980s at Kidder Peabody & Co. After several years in the brokerage industry, he took a position with the nationally recognized money management firm Crabbe Huson Group, which focused on institutional investing. In 1995, the firm reorganized and formed Copper Mountain Financial Group, Inc. As vice president and senior advisor, Miller's responsibilities included working with institutional clients and high-net-worth individuals to develop investment policy and guidelines, formulate asset allocation strategies, and provide manager search and selection.

When Miller launched ASI, he put those experiences to use as he searched for managers to run the firm's portfolios. As part of his analysis of money managers, Miller became aware of the asset-class funds of Dimensional Fund Advisors. Impressed with the firm's strategies, he contacted the company in hopes of using DFA funds to manage ASI's equity-oriented investment strategies. After three months of painstaking review by both parties, ASI began using DFA's asset-class funds in client portfolios.

Miller prefers DFA funds because of their proprietary formulas that offer more predictability to returns, which in turn allows Miller and his team to better manage both risk and reward for each client. "We think even in the current environment that the DFA approach yields more predictability," he 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 November, 2007, ASI began to work with wealth management coaching firm CEG Worldwide and soon adopted its strategies in numerous ways. "The concept of aligning values with wealth that CEG Worldwide helped us with and utilizing the DFA approach to asset-class investing gives us a great one-two strategy," Miller says. "It also gives us the confidence to move ahead steadily and know that we have a better approach than the competition."

Miller notes that in addition to emphasizing the individual's values, the true wealth manager acts as a personal chief financial officer—supporting each client's entire gamut of financial needs. As part of this effort, Miller brings other solutions to the table (municipal bonds, for example) to address such concerns as tax management. "We utilize individual bonds managed by seasoned portfolio managers," Miller points out. "Between munis, DFA and select outside managers, we believe we have a great combination of strategies to offer our personal wealth management clients."

"We take a family approach to the business itself, to our colleagues and most of all to our clients," Miller concludes. "By keeping the family uppermost in our mind, we are able to make the long-term decisions that provide maximum benefit. It is the opposite of a transactional approach and truly aligns the firm with the interest of the client. We know what works—putting the client at the front of every decision."

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