Meet:
The VerWys / Martin Financial Advisor team
Helping fellow business owners build, grow, and exit their businesses to a ‘Life By Design’
The VM Team at Fiduciary Financial Advisors specializes in helping fellow business owners make better financial decisions and live better lives.
Both of our Advisors are Certified Exit Planning Advisors (CEPAs) and business owners themselves. Ben is the Founder and Owner of Fiduciary Financial Advisors. We know what it means to be in your shoes, whether you are early stage, scaling, preparing for exit, or post-exit. We’re with you, and here to help.
Your team of Financial Advisors
Your team of Client Care Managers
The ‘VM’ Team is a specialty advising team at Fiduciary Financial Advisors that focuses on providing tailored services to high and ultra-high net worth families. We primarily work with families and investors who either have or will accumulate at least $3 million in investable assets. At that threshold, we start to see the need for more robust planning in a variety of areas with complexities that we enjoy problem solving for.
To break that down a bit more, we serve our clients through four core areas:
Wealth Management - i.e. Investing in a tax efficient manner.
‘Financial Planning’ which is really a catch all phrase that for us means these: 1) proactive Tax Planning, 2) Exit from the Business planning, and 3) Retirement Planning (if the R word is important to you) - making sure you won’t outlive your nest egg and how to spend down in the most tax efficient way or pass wealth along to future generations strategically. There’s a lot of other work that wraps into these, including optimizing charitable gifting strategy, paying for college, and optimizing a financial strategy through the lens of your genetic pre-dispositions and family health history.
Life By Design planning - using money as a positive tool to live your best life and avoid the old “money can’t buy happiness’ trap.
Family Office ‘lite’ services - things like navigating multi-generational relationships, making sure the bills get paid, estate plan reconciliation, and working collaboratively with your other trusted Advisors to make your life easier, including CPA, Attorneys, Insurance, etc.
In addition to our expanded areas of expertise, there are two other differentiators that allow us to provide the best possible experience for our clients:
Your best interest first, always. We have an unwavering commitment to the fiduciary standard. It’s literally the name of the firm! We operate exclusively as advisors—no brokerage affiliations, no product sales, no commissions. We are truly independent. There are no bosses or shareholders to sway our interests. This independence ensures every recommendation serves our clients' best interests, not our bottom line.
Lower costs means you keep more of your own money. While we serve clients all over the US, we operate out of the Midwest, which is a significant cost advantage for you. Simply put, it costs us less to run our business than it would in the major metros. This P&L advantage allows us to pass significant cost savings along to our clients. We are committed to a significantly lower cost structure than the industry norm. This allows you to keep more of your own money in your nest egg, continuing to compound over time.
FFA was built on a simple principle: the client's best interest comes first. Always. Our approach is anti-commission, fee-only, cost-conscious, and completely transparent. We believe in data-driven decisions because, as our firm credo states: "In God we trust, everyone else must bring data"— or simply put, "Math wins."
This philosophy, combined with our deep understanding of the entrepreneurial journey, allows us to provide the objective, evidence-based guidance that business owners need to build, protect, and ultimately transition their wealth successfully.
Why we work with clients who are Business Owners & Executives:
We are business owners ourselves, and both Certified Exit Planning Advisor (CEPAs). We are passionate about helping Owners build or exit well, on your own terms. Most of our clients either currently own, have owned or run a business; many of whom we helped exit successfully. To see how we help Owners, go here.
Families with investable assets of $3 million or more
Why we are passionate about helping Families with (or on track to have) investable assets of $3 million+
Nearly all of our careers has been spent serving families who achieved financial success from years of hard work, sacrifice, and a high savings rate throughout their career. Many families understand the value of a trusted advisor looking out for their best interests and acting as the family’s ‘CFO’.
Sudden Money Situations
Why we often help clients who face Sudden Money Situations:
Having spent so many years working with families who have accumulated wealth, those relationships naturally resulted in having to navigate situations such as inheritances, estate execution, and legal settlements. I enjoy helping someone move beyond the unknown and uncertainty when facing that ‘what to do next’ moment.
Stock options and Concentrated Stock Positions
Why we love helping clients with Stock Options and Concentrated Stock Holdings:
Whether shares have been accumulated through option grants, RSUs, warrants, an employee stock ownership plan (ESPP), or accumulated over time. We help clients wind down, hedge, and mitigate taxes related to large blocks of stock. This is often complex but highly fulfilling work where we can add significant value.
Advisors on the VM team have achieved a variety of credentials and accolades that we are proud of because they are a testament to the value we have been able to add for our clients and the families that we work with. You can find us featured in:
Other stuff we’re proud of: (Disclaimer - None of these were paid for. They are merit based awards determined by a variety of criteria published by each issuer which you can find by clicking on the award button)
Our FIDUCIARY OATH to you:
As a Fiduciary Financial Advisor, I have sworn the 'Fiduciary Oath' which holds these five principles:
I will always put your best interests first
I will avoid conflicts of interest
I will act with prudence; that is, with the skill, care, diligence, and good judgement of a professional
I will not mislead you, and I will provide conspicuous, full and fair disclosure of all important facts.
I will fully disclose, and fairly manage, in your favor, any unavoidable conflicts