Financial advice and sustainability investing for entrepreneurs navigating the many challenges that come with building a business or brand and acquiring significant wealth.
Our entrepreneur clients are:
Company founders
Award-winning actors & recording artists
Professional athletes
Top online influencers & personalities
Common Pain Points We Address With Our Clients
How would an exit from my business impact my life?
How do I optimize my financial resources to best support my goals and sense of purpose?
How do I build the right team of professionals to protect and build my wealth?
How do I positively impact my family’s well-being for generations to come?
How do I balance my own well-being with my fast-paced entrepreneurial lifestyle?
What do I want my “next act” to be?
Life Strategy
Life Strategy is a process we’ve designed to allow people to move their life into greater alignment with their sense of meaning and purpose. Our proprietary framework incorporates five key aspects of a person’s life. These are your own personal “five oceans.”
Your money is a precious and powerful resource. When harnessed properly through a clear financial plan, it provides a deeper sense of security, flexibility, and well-being, while expanding your ability to positively impact the world.
A career is a paid or volunteer position, a role within a family, a more general contribution to society, or a combination of all three. For many people, it represents a meaningful amount of their overall time and energy allocation and should therefore be approached thoughtfully.
As flight attendants always remind us, we must first put on our own oxygen mask before helping other people. There is no shame in this. If we don’t take the time and energy to care for our own mind, body, and spirit, our ability to positively impact others is greatly diminished.
Relationships are the lifeblood of the human experience. They impact every aspect of our lives, and tie directly to our sense of purpose and fulfillment. We must thoughtfully allocate our time, energy, and money to build and nurture healthy relationships, not just with others, but also with ourselves.
As we get older, the increasing complexity of our lives often relegates the concept of “having fun” to a secondary priority. But you have the ability to make a different choice. By setting a clear intention to build regular fun-generating activities and experiences into your daily life you’ll begin to remember why having fun is so important.
Services & Fees
Our comprehensive service offering allows you to create, and then bring to fruition, your own unique Life Strategy.
Services We Deliver
We provide tools, coaching, and accountability to help you make tangible progress towards meaningful goals across all five key aspects of your life.
As entrepreneurs ourselves, we are passionate about helping our clients gain knowledge and insight into how to grow their businesses in a way that aligns with their values and priorities. Through live events, study groups, and a growing list of resources, we connect our clients with people and ideas to help them never stop learning and growing.
We harness the leading research from financial science to build powerful investment portfolios that support your financial plan and align with your life strategy. Learn more about our investment philosophy.
We believe retirement is an antiquated term and instead focus on helping you chart a tangible course to financial freedom, which is defined as the ability to decide whether or not you want to continue working. We analyze your current and future income, expense, and cash flow expectations and needs to develop a clear understanding of your overall financial picture.
Tax Planning
Through coordination with your accountant, we incorporate your overall tax picture into your financial plan. Specific services include tax loss harvesting, Required Minimum Distribution planning, retirement plan contributions, and backdoor Roth IRA opportunities.
Estate Planning
Through coordination with your estate planning attorney, we help you ensure that all key components of your estate plan are in place, accurate, and reflect your wishes.
Insurance Planning
Through coordination with your insurance professionals we make sure appropriate coverages are in place and support your life strategy and financial freedom goals.
Before Five Oceans, I spent the past decade working in various capacities within the financial services industry. The most recent five years were spent building my own practice both on my own as a solopreneur, and as part of a much larger firm where the vibe was very much “eat what you kill.” As an entrepreneur I’ve never shied away from sales, or from taking a risk, so I didn’t much mind being 100% responsible for my own P&L.
However, when the opportunity presented itself to start Five Oceans and do this business the right way with my friend and mentor Marc, I had to say yes. Marc and I had been talking for years about how our industry is outdated and that in order to build a business that we love, and to provide our entrepreneurial clients with real value, we’d have to reimagine the traditional financial advice firm - and that’s why we’re excited about Five Oceans!
On the personal level, I grew up in San Diego and received a BA in Business Administration from a tiny liberal arts college in Illinois called Principia College, where I also played football (I was the quarterback) and baseball all four years. Yes, I’ve answered the question “why did you leave San Diego for small town Illinois” about 10,000 times and not surprisingly, I did eventually make my way back to Southern California.
I love sports and I of course love spending time with my wife Alexis and my son Pierce. Alexis is a bright light creative - actor/singer/dancer - and I’m the “business guy,” which for me turns out to be a really good contrast. At the moment, the three things I enjoy doing most for myself are surfing, golfing and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, but who knows what’s next!
Prior to Five Oceans, I was a Financial Advisor and Chairman of the Board at TCI Wealth Advisors, a $3 billion multi-office Registered Investment Advisory firm. I feel very grateful for my time at TCI, and for all of the incredible relationships I was able to build there.
But as a lifelong entrepreneur, I realized it was time to once again heed the call of my entrepreneurial spirit and jump back into the excitement of building a new business. And there couldn’t have been a more perfect partner for this new venture than Chris. He and I are simpatico in our belief that entrepreneurs need specialized financial advice, and we are committed to delivering an offering that addresses their unique needs and life strategy opportunities.
In terms of my background, I grew up in Rochester, New York, and studied psychology at Hamilton College, where I was also captain of the men’s soccer team. After college, I went to work in the Private Client Group at JP Morgan in New York City. After four amazing years I moved to Los Angeles and received an MBA with a focus on entrepreneurship from UCLA Anderson, where I was Student Body President.
I also have a background in the world of comedy! Though I’ve now “hung up the microphone,” I used to regularly perform stand-up and improv comedy. I also founded an online comedy content company in 2008, and opened what is now M.I.’s Westside Comedy Theater in Santa Monica, California.
I live in Santa Monica with my wife, Ali, and our two kids, Cooper and Hannah-Grace. I love hanging out with the family, eating good food, hiking in the mountains, and laughing as much as possible (oftentimes at myself!).
Lastly, if you ever need a conversation starter with me, feel free to ask me about “Pooper Scooperz,” my first entrepreneurial venture :-)
I began my career in marketing and product management working for large, brand name companies including Mattel, Guthy-Renker, Intuit, and Beachbody. When I became a mother, the sheer difficulty of balancing home life with my corporate responsibilities forced the question of what I really wanted to do in my career. I wanted something that felt more rewarding and that gave me the opportunity to share my unique gifts in the world in a way that would make a tangible difference in people’s lives.
I found my way to a masters program in spiritual psychology and was forever changed. The skills I learned showed me the way to experience more inner peace, balance, and wholeness and pursue my goals with more ease and grace. What I learned was so valuable for me that I knew immediately how much meaning and fulfillment I would derive from supporting others in their life journeys.
So now I work as a coach, blending my linear, get-the-job-done sensibilities, with a more elevated and intuitive approach to understanding the deeper themes behind the variety of experiences my clients describe.
I help clients with a full range of issues and goals in their lives. I typically work with clients who are facing difficult career or life decisions and need assistance to better align their life with their values and priorities. We work together to articulate personal goals and I support my clients by helping them flesh out action plans and holding them accountable. Along the way, I point out the mental and emotional blocks I am observing.
My educational background includes an undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania, an M.B.A. from UCLA Anderson, and a master’s degree in spiritual psychology from the University of Santa Monica.
I’m a native Texan, but I’ve fallen in love with my adopted hometown of Memphis, TN where I’ve lived for over a decade now with my wife, Courtney and our two boys Matthew (8) and Drew (6).
In joining Five Oceans Advisors, I have the incredible opportunity to work with a team of like-minded professionals who are passionate about helping people live deeper, more meaningful lives.
In fact, the inspiration for living and helping my clients live “The Deep Life” comes from bestselling author/entrepreneur, Cal Newport and his life-changing books Deep Work and Digital Minimalism. So the fit with Five Oceans Advisors is perfect for me in my quest to go deeper in my own life and help my clients do the same!
In addition, the other thing that attracted me to Five Oceans was the incredible team that was assembled. Having played college football and baseball with Five Oceans co-founder, Chris Girbes, I learned the importance of having a quarterback/catcher I could trust to know where every member of the team should be on each play. Likewise, we at Five Oceans Advisors are like quarterbacks for our clients by helping them coordinate their financial/life strategy playbook to give them the best chance for success!
In our local community, I serve on the board of directors for Bodine School for children with dyslexia. I also volunteer with an organization called Room in the Inn to provide lodging and meals to individuals experiencing homelessness.
Outside of work, I love coaching youth sports, playing basketball & baseball with my sons, cycling, CrossFit, and cheering on my hometown Memphis Grizzlies. In addition to being a passionate sports fan, I enjoy reading about history and politics. Currently, I am obsessed with everything “Hamilton!”
I got my start as a financial advisor at a large national brokerage firm, where I learned a great deal about the traditional financial services industry. From there (after realizing I wanted to be a fiduciary advisor in a business model that allows me to play a more meaningful role in clients’ financial lives) I joined a fee-only wealth management firm based in Century City. Although I grew as an advisor exponentially in the two years I spent at that firm, when I met Chris, Marc, and the rest of the folks at Five Oceans, I knew I wanted to be part of their team. Since joining Five Oceans, I earned my CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ certification.
Professionally, my mission is to support entrepreneurs and highly compensated tech company employees as they actualize their dreams. There isn’t a map to success for innovators, so they benefit from working alongside a guide who can evolve with them on their journey. Working with the special few who have built, done, and created amazing things sounds to me like a pretty great way to spend the next few decades.
Before becoming a financial advisor, I spent a few years as a professional musician. Musicians were many of my heroes growing up, but I realized eventually that music and occupation performed better independent of each other for me. I still love what it adds to my life, but I don’t aspire to pursue music professionally anymore.
I love the game of poker. I think I enjoy it so much because it is a microcosm of life, and an immediate meritocracy. In life we are positively rewarded by the power of compounding good decisions over a period of years or decades, but in poker that generally happens over a matter of just a few hours. There is also a significant amount of luck and randomness in life, and we benefit from understanding our relationship to them and handling the ups and downs with perspective.
On a personal level, I enjoy spending time with my wife Robyn and our son Clayton. We live in Orange County, California where we enjoy traveling, eating great food, drinking the best wine that financial responsibility allows, playing tennis, golfing, and SCUBA diving among an evolving list of other passions.
I studied Economics, Music, and Creative Writing in college, and received a B.A. in Business Economics from California State University Long Beach.
I was first introduced to Five Oceans when I worked as their Senior Relationship Manager at TD Ameritrade on the custodian side. Over the course of the year I worked with them I got married, bought a house, and had a baby, so they’ve been with me through almost all my major life events.
After my daughter was born, I decided to take some time off work to focus on raising her which, in hindsight, was one of the best decisions I could have made. Taking a step back allowed me to reassess my priorities and focus on the things that bring me joy: raising my daughter and working with people that inspire me. When Five Oceans reached out to see if I’d like to join their team I jumped at the opportunity because I believed in their vision and have always thought they had an interesting and holistic approach on financial wellbeing. Only good things can come from working with innovative and open-minded thinkers, and I am excited to see where this new adventure takes me.
Prior to working in the financial industry, I worked in the Army as a Farsi Linguist for several years and am a big language/cultural enthusiast. I have a bachelor’s degree from UCLA in Linguistics with a focus on Near Eastern Languages and Cultures. If you have any fun language facts, I’d love to hear them! In my spare time I enjoy cooking, practicing yoga, snowboarding, listening to podcasts, and salsa dancing with my husband.
It’s hard for me to believe my career in financial services started almost 25 years ago. I had been working full time in another industry, but when my oldest daughter was born, I knew it was time to structure my work life in a different way. I began working for a financial advisor who was a family friend and ultimately became my mentor. I was fortunate enough to have the flexibility that my career ebbed and flowed with my role as mom to one and eventually two daughters. I worked in almost every capacity in wealth management during my 20 years at my firm culminating in the position of CEO. I learned so much through that amazing journey of opportunities but in 2016 I made the hard decision to leave in order to focus on launching my two teenage daughters. In the subsequent years I was fortunate enough to do consulting work for Five Oceans and now am very excited to join the firm and continue the awesome work already done on crafting an exceptional Five Oceans client experience.
Outside of my financial services work, I have a host of things I love to do. I teach financial literacy for young people through a fantastic non-profit organization called 3rd Decade. During the crazy pandemic days, I also started my own t-shirt company where I design and make graphic t-shirts in my home. Of course, spending time with my almost launched daughters and my husband is one of my biggest joys. Whether it’s traveling to the University of Missouri for my daughter’s family weekend or visiting my eldest daughter in New York during her internship, my husband and I getting to be a part of their adventures is such a gift before becoming total empty nesters!
I love living in Arizona and enjoying all the benefits of being here. We benefit from great weather most of the year, fantastic food and events and a wonderful network of friends. In my free time I love hiking, my Peloton, reading and working out but my guilty pleasure is my love of ‘way too young for me’ pop music. At times it feels like I’m just a teenager living in a middle-age body!
As a member of the Five Oceans team, my career in the financial services industry has come full circle. I began my professional journey as a consultant at IBM, but quickly realized that I wanted to work at a smaller organization and one that was involved in investments. After spending two years at IBM, I worked at a boutique institutional investment consulting firm as a performance analyst then as a portfolio manager at a Registered Investment Advisor. Along the way I earned the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation, solidifying one of my passions for capital markets.
Prior to Five Oceans, I graduated from George Washington University’s Data Analytics Bootcamp, which rekindled my interest in technology. I then joined a non-profit as a data analyst where I leveraged my newly acquired skills to automate processes and solve problems through coding and business intelligence software. When the opportunity arose to join Chris and Marc’s team, it was just the right fit! I’m excited to help the firm grow by driving workflow improvements in a role that’s at the intersection of two disciplines that I enjoy: finance and operations.
On the personal side, I grew up in the Midwest (Chicago and St. Louis), but currently live in the greater Washington, DC area with my wife and two kids. Outside of work, you can find me competing in obstacle course races, learning to play new songs on the guitar for my garage band, or watching a baseball game.
