Eileen O'Connor

Eileen O'Connor spent more than a decade firmly entrenched in the corporate world—consulting in New York and Asia, working with venture-backed tech startups and putting her Harvard MBA to good use. But while consulting with a string of startups in Washington, D.C., O'Connor realized she was spending more and more time counseling the firm's principals about their personal finances. "I gravitated toward helping them with their compensation packages and incentive programs," she says. "I realized that advising people on their personal finances was what I liked doing the most."

So O'Connor decided to bid the corporate world farewell, and she dug into her CFP coursework at Georgetown University. The next step: figuring out exactly where she wanted to land once she was ready to start working with clients. That part proved to be the most difficult. O'Connor set out to educate herself on what the biggest and the smallest advisory firms were doing, from how they managed clients' assets to how they made money.

To whittle down her choices within the industry, O'Connor drew on her past experience consulting for banks and financial companies. Her consulting firm was hired by one multinational bank to figure out how to boost its noninterest income. The solution? Create a virtual buffet of financial products that garnered pricey fees from clients.

O'Connor recalls watching as companies squeezed income from every new investment product. The experience served as a blueprint for how not to treat clients. "The products had nothing to do with what these people needed," she says. "They were expensive and confusing, and they were being pushed on the client. It almost seemed that the more expensive the products were, the worse off the clients were."

Increasingly, O'Connor was drawn to the investment model employed by Dimensional Fund Advisors (DFA), which stresses diversification, low costs and manageable risk. She also discovered McLean Asset Management, a fee-only advisory firm in McLean, Virginia, that invested clients' assets with DFA. She joined the firm in 2006, knowing that she had found the right fit. "I agreed with all the investment decisions they were making, and it made sense for me," she says. "I feel very lucky. For someone like me, it was really hard to figure out how to get into this business without starting your own firm, which I didn't want to do. But I also wanted to build some equity, not just get a paycheck."

McLean has eight advisors, including O'Connor—each of whom works with a specific roster of clients and shares revenue with the company. O'Connor currently serves about 20 client families and has roughly $35 million under management. She expects to add $8 million more this quarter from three new clients currently progressing through the wealth management consultative process.

O'Connor already counts several business owners among her clientele, and looks forward to working with more entrepreneurs going forward— particularly women business owners. Part of the appeal of working with business owners is being involved in so many different parts of their financial lives, she says, as they tend to bring fairly complex issues—from succession plans to insurance issues to managing cash flow—to the table. Her mission is to help coordinate those multiple aspects of clients' financial lives. To that end, she wants to be in the room with the client's CPA during year-end tax meetings, and with the estate planning attorney when the client is deciding how to divide his or her estate. "That's the beauty of the wealth management model—it's about a lot more than just the investments," she says.

What's more, O'Connor says business owners are great clients because they tend to be very loyal. Several years ago, she worked with an entrepreneur who was negotiating the sale of his business. O'Connor helped set up a strategy in which the client received a lump-sum payment and invested a portion of the proceeds in investments that would offset his taxes. "That helped save him hundreds of thousands of dollars in real tax savings over a three-year period," says O'Connor. "He was very pleased and now he's a long-term client."

Going forward, however, O'Connor admits she will have to tread carefully to grow her practice while still being able to devote time to each individual client. That will be especially difficult considering her goal of managing $100 million in assets in four years. The strategy? Continue cultivating new and existing relationships with professionals such as CPAs and estate planning attorneys to generate a steady stream of qualified referrals.

In other words, O'Connor plans on working smart. She credits her work with the CEG Worldwide wealth management coaching program with helping her choose the right clients— meaning those with the right financial profile and the right attitude for her skills and overall approach. "It's given me great tools and helped me leverage what I'm good at," O'Connor says of the CEG Worldwide program. "It's been absolutely integral in helping me accelerate the pace of growth."

O'Connor already counts several business owners among her clientele, and looks forward to working with more entrepreneurs.

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