Today we’d like to introduce you to Bill Kastelz.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
Raised in Middleburg, Florida, I joined the military as a Navy Corpsman shortly after 9/11 and was assigned to the US Marines as an infantry corpsman (medic) from 2002-2007, serving in both Iraq and Afghanistan before honorably discharging in late 2007. Upon discharge, I went to UNF Coggin College of Business in 2008 where I met my mentor, Mike Halloran, who had been a wealth management advisor for over 40 years and he offered me an internship at Northwestern Mutual, which I gladly accepted. I was in the internship until January 2010 when I became a financial advisor full time and where I worked with hundreds of clients helping to secure their financial futures with comprehensive financial planning that included both investments and insurance solutions. After departing there in May 2018, I joined Capstone Financial out of Atlanta to open operations in Jacksonville. There, we consistently out-performed our peers in both client acquisition and performance, leading to multiple company and industry awards.
After realizing that I could make a greater impact on my own, I decided to launch Kastelz Wealth Management in the same building and very same floor as when I started with Mike Halloran nearly 16 years ago. Now, we specialize in creating risk-management-based solutions for individuals and business owners who are looking for ‘outside the box’ ideas that retail advisors simply aren’t educated on or have the ability to implement. We seek to be a value-add to our clients as a complement to some of the baseline financial planning that they may have already established, not as a complete overhaul; not to say that we won’t make those recommendations when needed, of course.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
It’s been quite the rollercoaster, to say the least! In this industry, there is very little in the way of ‘in-house leads’ or people who are already clients so it’s very much a contact sport. The challenges lately seem to be both societal and technical; in that no one seems to answer their phone anymore unless they know the person and the advent of AI, which isn’t always right. I do believe that personal financial planning will always be just that: personal. However I can understand the appeal of getting an asset-allocation in 15 seconds from ChatGPT but that doesn’t account for the human component of our clients and their ‘WHY’. Why are we doing what we’re doing? What lessons from the past have brought us to these decisions today? Who had a big influence over us early-on that may have imparted incorrect information regarding money and our relationship with it? What does it mean to create multi-generational wealth and WHY would we have that desire? AI won’t and can’t ask or understand that so we need to be able to reach clients and have these deeper conversations but reaching them has become more difficult even as we seem to be more ‘connected’ with social media, etc.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
We’re a boutique financial planning firm that seeks to bring ideas to our clients that are both different and unique than what they might normally get in a larger ‘wire house’ or big-named firm. Anyone can build a portfolio model and tell you why it’s better than the competitors but what they don’t talk about are both the tax and personal ramifications of those decisions both now and in the future. We seek to dig deeper and find out WHY our clients are making these decisions and, if they decide to implement (or not), how would that impact them or their families or businesses? WHY is this important to you (or not)? What would it mean to be able to provide this solution to your family/ kids/ employees and how would that affect your sleep at night?
If you’re a business owner, have you covered the bases around your buy/sell agreement with your partner? Do you have key people who leave your office every day and what happens if they don’t come back tomorrow? What’s the plan to sell the business or leave it to your heirs and how does that work from a tax perspective? What’s your exposure to litigation and how would that affect your business?
Perhaps you’ve done very well financially and want to leave it to your children or grandchildren or a charity of your choice – that’s great but what’s the most efficient way to do that? And if you could do it, how would that make you FEEL to accomplish that? If your spouse doesn’t make it home one day, what’s the financial impact on the family or the business and can the impact be lessened with proper planning?
I love that we have the time and desire to sit with our clients and ask the hard questions because our clients are more than just a portfolio amount; they’re husbands and wives and children and business owners who just want the right guidance and to be able to reach their advisors when they need them. That’s why we don’t have 1-800 numbers here and we want to talk with our clients about everything in the most direct and transparent way.
What were you like growing up?
After my dad died when I was about 2 years old, we moved out to Middleburg, FL. Growing up in a small town things were pretty easy! Like most people my age, we rode our bikes around and got in trouble that wasn’t captured on an iPhone, much of which I’m grateful for. In high school I joined NJROTC and ended up leading that unit to multiple awards in drill and athletics. In my senior year, I decided to go in a different direction and tried-out for and ultimately was chosen to be the high school mascot, Bucky the Bronco! That was a good time and because the mascot travels with the cheerleaders, I ended up meeting my future wife, Samantha on the cheer squad.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.KastelzWealthManagement.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/billkastelz
