Inside one woman's focused, forward-thinking practice

Too many advisors develop their practice with a shotgun approach, firing randomly toward targets that might meet their threshold for demographics and financial assets, but aren’t necessarily a good fit for them otherwise. Sometimes, as you well know, advisors and clients just don’t fit.

Rebecca True, president of True Capital Advisors, takes the opposite approach. She has an extremely focused practice with an emphasis on building relationships with women business owners and executives. To take it one step further, True often develops even stronger bonds with women who come from technical industries.

“I tend to relate to that group because that was my background, so we have a commonality,” says True, who got her start out of college as a technology project manager, building websites for financial services firms.

Working out of New York City, at the time of 9-11, she saw firsthand the devastation of the attack, as many of the male advisors who her organization provided technology for lost their lives. “Our firm did a great deal to help the widows transition and take financial responsibilities for themselves and for their families.”

As one of the only females in her technology company, True was able to play an instrumental role in helping educate and heal some of those that were grieving. “It really gave me a unique opportunity to realize the importance and the impact that I could have as a financial advisor.”

Already armed with a securities license, True wanted to make a difference for women as a financial advisor and landed a job with Merrill Lynch, which proved to be the training ground for her. During her tenure at Merrill she and her husband relocated to Orlando, Fla., where she learned how to win clients and provide sound advice. But in the back of her mind, there was an entrepreneurial itch.

A focused practice

True’s found that even in a male-dominated industry like financial services, there’s room for a concentrated approach. When she opened her firm, True Capital Advisors in May 2009, True had a clear idea of the kind of practice she wanted to run — one that met the needs of professional women. I ask her how she’s able to target such a specific niche. The short answer is networking, something that women might be just a little better at than men. “I am very active in a number of women’s groups in our area. I spend a lot of time actively involved in getting to know the participants.”

Some of the groups were established professional organizations that True joined, while others were networking groups that she established, but all of them have at least one common goal: to provide a platform to introduce professional women to one another. “I’ve found that these groups allow me to work with women for common purposes, whether it be for helping each other out professionally or toward charitable means, and it’s allowed me the opportunity to get to know people on a deeper level and to serve more women over time.”