Rick Raybin

Rick Raybin chose not to follow his father, an orthopedist, into the medical field. Instead, he decided to go to business school and pursue a career in the financial industry. "I wanted to get in on the inside, where the real money was being made," he says.

But after three decades climbing the corporate ladder—including serving as CFO of Rosenberg Real Estate Equity Funds (RREEF) and helping to found the National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries—Raybin realized that something was missing. "I got to a point where I had to do some deep reflection," he says. "I have a real passion for helping people, and I realized that what I really wanted to do was help others by using my knowledge of finance and financial products."

So in 2003, Raybin made the decision to leave behind the rigors of the corporate world and forge a new path. His goal: to help individuals protect their wealth and make sound financial decisions. The result was Lifetime Capital Group, a Redwood City, California-based wealth management firm that Raybin founded in 2006.

The firm's ethos—to offer clients unbiased wealth management services—is Raybin's response to those financial professionals who put commissions and compensation above serving the client. "I just couldn't do it that way," he says. "I wanted to protect people from those bad practices."

Lifetime Capital Group is largely a one-man operation, with Raybin working with seven clients and managing roughly $8 million in assets. His corporate pedigree has translated well to working with individuals: As the CFO for RREEF, Raybin not only helped diversify multibillion-dollar pension funds with real estate investments, he also paid careful attention to everything from his company's balance sheet to the financial impact of long-term corporate initiatives. In much the same way, Raybin today is focused on protecting and growing his clients' capital while also keeping their personal balance sheets in line and making sure the clients are staying on track to reach long-term financial goals. He does this by combining an investment approach rooted in Dimensional Fund Advisors' efficient-market philosophy with advanced wealth protection and estate planning services that take clients' entire financial pictures into account.

Raybin isn't content to simply deliver his services to a small group of clients. He aims to build Lifetime Capital Group into a firm with $100 million under management within the next few years—a goal that he admits will require some creative thinking. To that end, he is working on several initiatives to expand the firm's reach.

The main project Raybin is developing is the Ophthalmology Wealth Network (OWN), of which he is founder and CEO. OWN seeks to deliver targeted wealth management services to clients who work in the field of ophthalmology. In addition to investment advisory and other wealth management services, Raybin and nine other advisors across the country aim to help ophthalmologists tackle industry-specific problems such as practice-management issues and cash-flow questions. "It's a new level of service," says Raybin. "We can tailor a plan to really address their specific needs."

For example, Raybin recently worked with an ophthalmologist client who was concerned about labor law issues with his staff. Raybin contacted a practice-management specialist who was able to come into the doctor's practice and solve the issue. "The client's CPA said he'd never seen a financial advisor do something like that before," says Raybin.

To grow OWN, Raybin has connected with industry groups such as the American Academy of Ophthalmology and the American Academy of Ophthalmic Executives. He and the other advisors regularly attend ophthalmology conferences to present OWN's wealth management strategy.

Raybin's goal is to make OWN a national brand that independent advisors can use to target new reservoirs of clients. With the right blueprint, Raybin is optimistic that the program will offer advisors an immediate reception into that professional community. The OWN model, says Raybin, could also be developed for other medical specialties. "We can give people a road map that explains how to do this in a given medical community," he says.

Raybin is careful to note, however, that rolling out OWN or another network to a wider group of advisors must be done strategically: "The biggest hurdle in financial services is consistency in the delivery of services," he says. "So we have to make sure all the advisors have a common foundation."

Meanwhile, Raybin also is actively working to build his local client base. Living in the heart of Silicon Valley, however, has meant that Raybin has had to be selective in choosing the clients that will work best with his firm's comprehensive wealth management approach. "A lot of the people in Silicon Valley are go-go types. All they want is investment return, and they don't stop to think about anything else and certainly not about risk," he says. "But when you're trying to provide service in a way that's actually going to work for the long haul, it takes a different approach—and a lot of patience."

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