How a Top-Ranked Advisor Saves Her Wealthy Clients Millions

Sara Rajo-Miller Wendt fast-tracked herself from a 21-year-old intern at Miracle Mile Advisors to a managing director there in just a decade’s time.

The secret to her success? Learning from great mentors and becoming an expert in sophisticated planning strategies that have saved her clients millions.

“In many cases, the planning strategies and tax-savings strategies far outweigh the investment returns,” Wendt tells ThinkAdvisor in a recent interview. “You need to find things that add value above and beyond.”

But first, an advisor must determine what’s important to a client, Wendt argues. 

“You need to know what they care about,” says Wendt, now 32. “That’s what drives everything.”

Wendt’s team — which also includes a partner advisor and three support people — manages $3.4 billion of the RIA’s more than $5 billion in assets under management. Wendt has a $2 million minimum, and her client niche is chiefly business owners, many of whom have recently had a partial liquidity event or are preparing for one.

For the past several years, Wendt, based in Los Angeles, has made a number of Forbes’ top advisors lists, including America’s Top Women Advisors and America’s Top Next-Gen Advisors.

Wendt had been an analyst at the William Morris Endeavor talent agency before she applied for an intern position at Miracle Mile through a recruiting posting from UCLA, from which she had received a bachelor’s degree in global studies.

In the interview with Wendt, who was born in Mexico City to globe-trotting journalists, she talks about how reading Ray Dalio’s “Principles: Life and Work” has helped her both in working with her team and in serving her high-net-worth clients.

Here are highlights of our conversation:

THINKADVISOR: What’s necessary to become a highly successful financial advisor?

SARA RAJO-MILLER WENDT: Money is an extension of people’s value system. So you need to understand what they care about. That’s what drives everything. It’s not the other way around.

It’s not just about figuring out what’s the highest portfolio return. You have to figure out what’s important to people, what their objectives are, and then build a portfolio to achieve those objectives.

To what do you attribute your success as an advisor in such a short period of time?

No. 1 is the value-add sophisticated planning strategies that I use. No. 2 is high-touch client service.

Why do the planning strategies make such a big difference? 

In many cases, the planning strategies and tax-savings strategies far outweigh the investment returns.

They’re strategies that I would say sophisticated financial advisors who work with higher-net-worth individuals use or should be using with their clients.

They’re very important to high-net-worth individuals. They appeal to a lot of business owners who can sometimes save several million dollars in taxes by using them.

I’ve saved my clients a lot of money with these strategies. They’ve worked out very well and have attracted many new clients.

What’s an example? 

Anything from charitable trust structures to solar tax credits to gifts of assets to multigenerational trusts.

For instance, moving assets pre-liquidity outside of a business owners’ estate to a multigenerational gift trust.

I had a business-owner client who was getting ready to sell his business. Before the sale, we put a portion of his business, in California, at a discounted value, outside of his estate into a multigenerational gift trust for his kids, who don’t live in California — even though the client lived there.

This ended up saving him several millions of dollars in estate taxes down the line.

Why is high-touch service so critical?

It’s what separates us from automated advisors.

As we continue to see fee compression in our industry, technology advancements, and firms like robo-advisors accumulate assets, it’s more and more important for RIAs and independent financial advisors to focus on high-touch service.

Sometimes it isn’t only money matters [that we work on]. It can be more nuanced; say, the issues of aging and family care.

What’s a specific situation?

One client’s [wealthy] mom developed dementia, and the client needed help getting her full-time care. A specialist in family care that I partner with set that up for her.