Planners Luis Barajas and Daniel Gillen have launched a new registered investment advisory firm. They aim to be a stepping stone for young Latino financial advisors to enter the profession.
San Diego-based International Private Wealth Advisors officially opened on April 1, after Guillen and Barajas. member Our client base includes many Latin artists, with whom we also work as CEO. Business Management Lab, retired from his previous company, MGO Private Wealth.they announced a new company Post on LinkedIn By Barajas earlier this month.
MGO Private Wealth
“Our vision began decades ago. It was to provide Latinx families with financial planning and investment for hard-working people. deserve the same respect and dignity that it offers only to the rich and wealthy,” he wrote. “All our clients — iconic celebrities, Panaderia owners, doctors who make sacrifices to help Latinx patients in our community, teachers who want to make a difference in their classrooms — they are all treated with the same respect and dignity in our company.”
In an interview, Barajas said his values were not aligned with the team at MGO, and said the new company was a “second wind” in the profession for the 61-year-old veteran planner who began working in the industry more than 30 years ago. ” explained. After growing up in East Los Angeles.
A representative for MGO declined to comment on Guillen and Barajas’ departures.
Alongside co-stars Gene Chatsky and Patrice Washington, Barajas currently stars as a financial coach to wealth-building families in the PBS series.”opportunity knock $.” The new company Planner Uziel Gomez Joining an all-Latino team of seven employees also represents a vision for another way forward in the profession, Barajas said. The company has approximately 450 clients and he has $140 million in assets under management. Also a business management company he works with 32 Latin American recording artists, actors, entertainment executives and entrepreneurs.
“The best wealth managers don’t always attract the most AUM,” Barajas said. “We’re not going to sit down and have a conversation like, ‘What did you sell this week?’ It’s ‘Who did you help this week?'”
Fellow planners who have come to know Barajas during his decades-long career praised his vision for the new company. Margherita Chen of Gaithersburg, Maryland, said the idea was “really beautiful and amazing.” Blue Ocean Global Wealth.
“The profession is evolving and I’m thinking about the next generation. Gen Z really cares about having influence,” Cheng said in an interview. “They want to be successful and make a difference in this world. It’s either or neither.”
She met Barajas in 2007 at a conference of the Financial Planning Association. Standing CommitteeHannah Moore in the Dallas area Guiding Wealth I remembered the support of the organization Virtual “externship” training program For the aspiring planner when she started the course ten years later.
“Louis has been a role model for the next generation of financial planners for years and continues to work for his new company,” Moore said in an email. They want to know how to build a company that puts values front and center, and Lewis shows you how.His vision is one that many new financial planners today want to be in financial planning. I doubt Lewis’ influence will continue to extend beyond his clients and into the larger financial planning community.”
Luis Rosa has filed registration papers for his own RIA based in Pasadena, California. Building a better financial futurenearly four years ago, the month after he first spoke to Barajas.
“Using assets under management or sales as metrics only measures an advisor’s financial success and not its impact on clients,” Rosa said in an email. He said he would “cheer” on Mr. Gillen’s new achievements. Hard.
“My first interaction with Luis was reaching out to him through LinkedIn for advice,” says Rosa. “He kindly set up a phone call with me and gave me career advice based on my situation at the time. He encouraged me to start my own company. I remember him telling me that I could always turn around and find a company that didn’t have the assets to invest in but could work with clients who were in the same industry. It showed how difficult it is for
Guillen joined MGO in 2021 after working for an RIA called Sentry Pacific Financial Group in 2013.Barajas spent roughly Last three and a half years at MGOHis wife, Angie Barajas, co-founded the management company that runs the company today.
Barajas and Guillen expect to grow the Florida and Texas company, primarily from its existing base in Southern California, by adding more planners to those states in the coming months and years.
“We love life now,” said Barajas. “No one tells you to focus on numbers. I focus on community. I focus on people.”
