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April 01, 2011 at 04:41 AM
David B. Armstrong
CO-FOUNDER AND MANAGING DIRECTOR, MONUMENT WEALTH MANAGEMENT, LPL FINANCIAL, ALEXANDRIA, VA
WHY MONUMENT WEALTH’S PARTNERS PAINTED THEIR NEW WIRELESS FINANCIAL PLANNING ROOM RED: “If planning is all about thought and collaboration and creativity, let’s make sure the place really screams: ‘You have come here to work and create!’”
When David B. Armstrong pitches prospective clients, he gives them an iPad to help follow along with his slide presentation. (“It makes the pitch book obsolete,” he says. “The impression: ‘These guys are early adopters. They think outside the box.’”)
Armstrong, 43, tweets often and edgily about articles he disagrees with. (“If I say this article has it all wrong, people say ‘Wow, this guy has an opinion. Let’s learn more about this guy,’ and they’ll google Monument Wealth Management.”)
And he routinely posts his blogs on Facebook. One snappy headline on a recent Armstrong blog: Turns out, “denial” IS a river in Egypt. (“The traffic driven to our website off of Facebook is astronomical. We’ve got five really good leads right now that have come to us through our social media and digital marketing efforts.”)
Armstrong’s goal as a new wave marketer: to drive traffic to Monument Wealth Management’s website.
“When they come to the website and see all this opinion and thought, it solidifies for people that Monument Wealth Management is a thought leader. The majority of our efforts are bearing fruit. They’re reading about us on the website and taking a meeting,” says Armstrong, who oversees investment strategy for the Alexandria, Va., firm, which has $250 million in assets under management. “Then I can put all this stuff away and just be me.”
Armstrong has been a technology devotee since “You’ve Got Mail” first entered the national lexicon. On active duty as a U.S. Marine Corps officer in the 1990s, his “guilty pleasure” as he puts it, was logging onto America Online and reading The Motley Fool. Armstrong, who served a combat tour in Somalia, began managing his own money while still in the service and discovered along the way that his interest had developed into a passion. “I had this epiphany: This is what I want to do with the rest of my life,” he says.
After getting an MBA from the Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina, Armstrong in 1999 joined Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette as a financial advisor. Prior to co-founding Monument Wealth Management in 2008, he was associated with the global private client group of Merrill Lynch in Washington, D.C. Notably, Armstrong remains a major in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves, commanding an artillery battery in Chattanooga, Tenn. one weekend a month.
