Our Story

A black and white photograph of a newspaper titled 'The Wall Street Journal' lying on a concrete surface, with its pages slightly curled.

My earliest memories of my dad and his work in investments were times when I would sit in a little chair next to him in front of the computer (again, remember it’s the mid-‘80’s; black screen, green letters/numbers). He would read the Wall Street Journal weekly mutual fund prices and I would tap in the latest price of the selected funds in a spreadsheet.

The business started as a do-it-yourself investment tool written in Lotus 1-2-3 (anyone remember this spreadsheet program?). Our very first client was one who bought an early version of this tool, but then said something to the effect of, “This is great, but can you just do this for me?”

Another one of our first clients was a neighbor of ours, and my first employer (I mowed their lawn in the summer and shoveled their driveway in the winter). I’ll leave their names out of it for privacy reasons, but the husband had a very serious medical condition that required around-the-clock care.

They both asked my dad if he would manage their investments on their behalf, and he said that he would figure out how to do that. She is still our client to this day and remains one of our longest-standing relationship in our business. Her husband lived a long and fulfilling life and remains an inspiration to me and many others.

Close-up of a United States one dollar bill featuring George Washington's portrait.

Dad bought out his partner for $1 and started managing the investments of friends and family on the side during his 32 year career at a specialty chemical company working in the new ventures group. When Tempo Investment Advisors was started in 1986, this was very early in the fee-only (non-brokered) advisory space.

Black and white photo of a man in a suit sitting in an office, holding documents. Background shows a wall with the text 'Charles Schwab & Co., Inc.'

The pioneer in the discount brokerage sub-industry, Charles Schwab, started in the 70’s, when the VAST majority of trades were made by commission-based broker salespeople.

Our business was VERY small for many years – it was truly a nights-weekends-and-lunch-hours operation until the early 2000’s. Online trading really got going in the mid-90’s, which made things a lot easier (and less expensive).

Dad took early retirement from the chemical company in 2004, and flipped his schedule; he started consulting in the chemical industry, and was able to focus more on this investment advisory business.

My involvement started soon after that in 2005. I helped him manage a certain set of accounts and I did that during lunch hours, evenings and weekends while I had my own career in process engineering in the medical device industry.

Dad and I would spend an hour or two each Saturday morning talking about what was going on in the market, and what our clients need.

Graphic showing a graduation cap, pie chart, dollar sign, percentage sign, and upward trending arrow with bar graph, representing a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree and business growth.

In my engineering career, I started looking for a change and spoke with the marketing department about an opening. The marketing director, Dennis, said that I was known to be a good engineer and would likely do well… but everyone else applying has an MBA, so I should consider that.

I enrolled in an MBA program not long after that. During the Marketing Management class during my first semester we were all given the assignment of writing a marketing plan for a company we work for, admire, or want to know more about. I went back to Dennis and asked if he had any ideas for a marketing plan I could do for his marketing group. He said that there are so many marketing plans being written for him that he didn’t have any further ideas for me. I asked Dad if he had some ideas for a marketing plan, and to say that he had some ideas would be an understatement!

There were five actions that we took from the completed marketing plan, and every one of them either helped us understand our clients better or helped us reach more people we want to meet. It was the first time I truly recognized that this could be a business that I could help shape, and grow.

I decided to leave my engineering role in 2011 on a plane ride back from an MBA class in London and work full-time in the (now) family business a few short months later. While I joke that I’m still a recovering engineer, I was surprised at how transferrable my process engineering role was to our advisory business.

My first significant project was to create and implement a more robust financial planning process. This was simply an engineering problem to solve that was a little lighter on math; I needed to design a financial planning process around what our clients need most.

I think our clients appreciate our perspective and thought process in our work with them, versus the more traditional sales-oriented approach that has historically dominated the industry.

A person standing in front of a presentation board with charts and graphs, including a pie chart, bar graphs, and line graphs, indicating financial analysis, with a ribbon on top indicating certification.

I earned the CFP® marks in 2013 and used this as the background to further build-out and professionalize our planning process.

After continuing to grow the business together, Dad retired in 2022 to focus more on his work in the private equity startup space continuing to work with many of our clients in this expanded role that he created in 2012.

The reason this business was started was to help people, like our first client. The need for high-quality fiduciary advice (putting clients’ needs ahead of our own) has never been greater.

I’m so proud of the work that we’ve done, and I’m excited about our continued success in working with great families and business owners.