Marc Luber: Hey everyone – welcome to JD CareersOutThere – where we get you career
advice from fellow lawyers and non-practicing lawyers – to help you find success and happiness
in your career.
I’m Marc Luber – and today we’re exploring the career path of being an Investment Advisor.
We’re talking to David Sadkin of Bel Air Investment Advisors, a high net worth investing
firm in Los Angeles.
Here’s a look at our discussion where I asked Dave what he does as an Investment Advisor.
David Sadkin: Sure, my firm oversees about $6.5 billion for 300 families and we oversee
their investment strategies in both the traditional and alternative investment space.
Luber: Okay and so what does that mean exactly?
You’re handling high net worth investors?
David Sadkin: Right.
Luber: Tell us how that’s different for someone who is handling other kinds of people
who aren’t high net worth investors.
David Sadkin: Well it differs in a couple of aspects: first it’s just the dollar amounts
that we’re talking about.
High net worth is sort of considered to be $20 million and above for the family in liquid
net worth.
So that’s the first distinction, and the second distinction is just the types of strategies
we could use.
There are a number of strategies: hedge funds, private equity, other alternative strategies
that require a minimum level of liquid net worth in order for investors to be qualified
for those types of investments.
So we have a broader platform than maybe a more retail investment firm would have.
Luber: Okay, so what is your role specifically?
What are the requirements that you need to do on this job?
David Sadkin: I’m a client adviser.
So what I do is I work directly with families, both finding families that want to invest
with us and then once they become clients of the firm, we talk about risk tolerance,
appropriate investment strategies, we talk about different asset classes.
What we try to do is figure out how we can maximize their return in a manner that fits
their own risk profile.
So, for example, a very conservative investor might have a 100% of their net worth in municipal
bonds, which is considered to be a relatively low risk strategy.
Whereas, someone who’s looking for more growth-oriented strategies might be in more
private equity or might be in more equities.
Luber: And so, since you’re mostly focused on bringing in these people are you also an
expert in every kind of investment or do you have a team that is the expert in the different
areas and they help guide you?
How does that work?
David Sadkin: We work together as a team.
So my job is really to get to know my clients, to get to know what types of strategies they’re
comfortable in, what their return expectations are, what their goals are and finding ways
to achieve those goals.
But in terms of the actual investing - whether it be buying and selling the bonds or the
stocks or the private equity funds, we work as a team.
We’ll bring in experts in each of those areas.
So my responsibility is for the large allocation decisions: figuring out how much should be
in bonds, how much should be in stocks, how much should be in alternatives, and then what
we do is use sort of a best in class open architecture structure to get the best managers
to manage each of those pieces of the puzzle.
Luber: Great, great.
So it’s really different for every client then - everything is tailored to their needs
and goals, right?
David Sadkin: That’s absolutely right.
There are no two clients that will look the same.
They have different objectives, they have different goals, they have different risk
tolerances.
My job is to figure out what the appropriate strategy for those families are and then we
use those other managers to make the investment decisions.
Luber: Got it.
You guys can watch a full episode of Dave and I going more in-depth into the career
path of being an Investment Advisor and you’re gonna learn more about what he does, how YOU
can do it, how YOU can break in – and how your JD applies to this path.
That’s gonna happen at JD-CareersOutThere.com – or JDCOT.com for a shortcut.
If you’re already at the site, you can scroll down to the full version – be sure to become
a MEMBER so you can watch the full interview and get access to lots more exclusive content
filled with great advice.
Thanks again for watching everyone – I’m Marc Luber and look forward to seeing you
again soon.
Take care.