Bob Hall
Investment Advisor Representative
From Humble Beginnings
“These days,” Bob says, “people are looking for transparency. They want an advisor who treats them with respect, whether they have millions or thousands in assets. After over 15 years in the business, I understand how hard these retirees have worked to save for their retirement. The world is different than it used to be and was for many of them when they were growing up.”
Along those lines, Hall brings old school values and a powerful work ethic to every client he works with. Throughout high school and college, he worked for his father’s swimming pool construction company, engaging in all the backbreaking labor the other employees didn’t want to do. By doing every kind of odd job, including scrubbing the bottoms of pools when it was 120 degrees out, he learned the value of hard work. Hall credits his grandfather on his mother’s side, a ranch hand from Texas who eventually became a carpenter, for imparting the value of hard work as well. “I thought he was the strongest man alive,” Hall says. “He could take pecans in the shell off the tree and put them underneath his bicep and forearm and crack the shells!”
Hall’s paternal grandfather, who hailed from Boston, was an early inspiration for his choice of career path. “He was a stockbroker back in the 50s,” he says, “and when I was growing up, I would ask him about the pros and cons for me getting into the financial industry. I wondered, ‘How can I be successful?’ He told me that there were three ways to be more successful than anybody else: show up on time, say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’, and deliver what you promise. Those are the simple values I have built my business on.”
In 1995, Bob Hall took his finance degree from Arizona State and jumped right into the financial services industry. Though he became one of the top reps in his five years with a large brokerage firm, he quickly grew tired of the constrictions of working in such a corporate environment – where a manager came to him every week and told him which products to recommend to his clients.
With Hall Wealth Management, Hall focuses full time on working for his clients without worrying about reaching quotas under someone else’s supervision. Whether from their office in South Carolina or in California, he relishes the opportunity to specifically help this underserved demographic and help educate pre-retirees on strategies that could help bring them income and added confidence during their retirement years.
Reaching Clients’ Goals
In the economic downturn of 2000-2001, Hall was alarmed at how quickly retirees who had been led into more risky plans saw decades of their life savings wiped out in such a short period of time. While vowing to ensure to work on behalf of as many clients as possible to ensure they wouldn’t suffer the same fate, he also brought a more personal motivation to his desire to help and be an advocate for them. Another factor in his decision to work with retirees was observing the financial challenges his grandfather faced when his grandmother wound up needing long-term care at a relatively young age.
“I am a very patriotic person,” he says, “and I have felt very blessed to live in America and have all the opportunities I have been given. I know that wouldn’t have been possible if not for the hard work and sacrifice of the generations before me. I have a lot of passion for that group and the subsequent generation, and it’s my privilege to have the chance to serve my clients.
“After meeting some of these retirees,” Hall adds, “I realized that they were often out of balance with their investing style and were taking a lot of unnecessary risks. After the bull market of the late 80s and 90s when stockbrokers could wear blindfolds and still hit bullseyes, it was challenging to now advise people that they needed to focus on preserving what they had accumulated. So many had learned the hard way that it is a whole lot harder to accumulate wealth than to lose money.”
Never having embraced the idea of “passing people off to a 1-800-WHO-CARES line,” Hall enjoys the fact that he has fashioned a small, independent firm that allows him to be available to his clients from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., Monday to Saturday. Having been married since April 2006 and now the father of two, he appreciates the time flexibility as well.
A Family Business
Hall is proud of the fact that Hall Wealth Management is a family run business. His wife, Melody, serves as the firm’s office manager.
He stresses that clients of Hall Wealth Management have unique experiences, working with a friendly and personalized, family-run firm that thoroughly evaluates and customizes their investments with the confidence of knowing that their assets have been strategically invested. Hall sees himself as a client relationship manager, “where the client sees me as a point of contact able to give them personalized attention and the personal touch they need, but with the power of those deep resources behind me.”
Becoming a father of two in recent years has changed Hall’s perspective on the work he does on behalf of clients and his vision for the future of Hall Wealth Management. “I know Lily and Jacob are kids now,” he says, “but someday when I’m ready to retire, it’s nice to imagine that maybe Jacob or Lily will want to carry on the family business. Raising them with Melody also makes me realize that when I’m working with clients, I’m not only serving their long-term financial goals but also, in very important ways, serving their children and their children’s children, who will be beneficiaries of all we do here when they are gone.”
In the end, it is all about knowing that when they can be confident knowing that we are here to help them prepare for their retirement.
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