New York–based investment advisory firm Ritholtz Wealth Management is famous for its outstanding blogs and for Ben Carlson’s bestselling book “A Wealth of Commonsense”. What Ritholz is also doing is redefining marketing for the wealth management profession.
Josh Brown, is the co-founder, CEO and public face of the firm. “Brown, who tweets under the handle @ReformedBroker, has stormed the advisory space with his relentless and ubiquitous media — both traditional and social — presence. He recently made a splashy guest appearance on the Showtime hit Billions. And with more than a million Twitter followers, Brown also builds business through his widely read Reformed Broker blog, CNBC appearances, and The Compound channel on YouTube, where he riffs with his team about wealth management, markets, and pop culture.”
But in a world where everyone’s attention is distracted by social media, why does anyone listen to what Ritholz has to say. “In a media-drenched landscape, quality guarantees nothing. Being different, however, offers a way to blast through the clutter. And Brown, 41, stands far apart from most advisers by not being buttoned up and polished. A big part of his appeal is his no-bullshit persona with a sense of humor served up in ultracasual attire. Brown’s “let it all hang out” mien is disarming and enticing, especially in an age when every syllable is focus-grouped and spun for maximum effect. People want what’s genuine and recoil from claims of omniscience. However, should authenticity reflexively correlate with trust?… Yet despite a glib and freewheeling style, his advice is informed by humility, he claims, likely born of hard lessons learned over many years as a stockbroker and arguably out of necessity, given his fee-only firm’s sober-minded corporate mission.”
Josh Brown is not the only asset that Ritholz has when it comes to marketing. “Brown’s partner, Barry Ritholtz, 57, also works in the limelight. The co-founder, chairman, and chief investment officer writes the well-respected Big Picture blog and, for Bloomberg, hosts the influential Masters in Business podcast and writes a column. Ritholtz, who tweets under the handle @ritholtz, has nearly 140,000 followers, the second most among advisers after Brown.
In sum, a strategy based on passive investing and active evangelizing is working.
Six years ago, Brown, Ritholtz…launched Ritholtz Wealth Management (@RitholtzWealth) with roughly $90 million in assets. Today the firm has about 30 employees and a stunning $1 billion in assets.”
In case you work for a big brand in the asset or wealth management industry, you will find much of the what guys at Ritholtz have to say really hard to swallow. Eg. “Brown believes that ideas should be vetted publicly and is dismissive of the prestige automatically conferred on people by dint of the company names on their business cards. He once wrote, “I don’t think I would ever invest money with someone who isn’t on Twitter.” Brown acknowledges that it “sounds ridiculous,” then explains: “If you’re just a nameless, faceless person at UBS or wherever, nobody really knows what you think. You’re living on the brand. And no one does the brand anymore. People follow people.” Brown asserts that that’s why Kim Kardashian has far more Twitter followers than the E! channel she appears on. “Nobody cares about the E! channel. They care about her. That’s happening in finance.””
Note: the above material is neither investment research, nor financial advice.Marcellus Investment Managers is regulated by the Securities and Exchange Board of India as a provider of Portfolio Management Services and as an Investment Advisor.
Copyright © 2019 Marcellus Investment Managers Pvt Ltd, All rights reserved.
If you want to read our other published material, please visit https://marcellus.in/blog/
Note: the above material is neither investment research, nor financial advice. Marcellus does not seek payment for or business from this publication in any shape or form. Marcellus Investment Managers is regulated by the Securities and Exchange Board of India as a provider of Portfolio Management Services. Marcellus Investment Managers is also regulated in the United States as an Investment Advisor.
Copyright © 2022 Marcellus Investment Managers Pvt Ltd, All rights reserved.
