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Meet David Geller of JOYN Advisors in Sandy Springs

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Today we’d like to introduce you to David Geller.

David, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
We’re a Behavioral Wealth Management firm – the first and the only one in the country. We have an ambitious goal to change how America thinks about money, and we’re well on our way to doing it. It really started in 2003. We were doing a great job of growing and protecting our clients’ wealth. Yet no matter how well we did, many clients told us they expected that wealth to make their lives better, but honestly, it wasn’t. When we discovered the now-famous study that found that increases in wealth didn’t lead to a corresponding increase in happiness, it was a real punch in the gut.

The study said if you earn more than $50,000 a year, people generally don’t get happier. That figure today is $80,000.The more we looked into it, the more we realized the problem was a universal one. Our industry’s approach just wasn’t working for most people. That’s when we resolved to change how we do business. We decided our duty extended far beyond finance to helping clients USE their wealth to create the more satisfying, joyful lives they expected but weren’t experiencing.

Behavioral wealth management sits at the intersection of behavioral finance and wealth management. We do all the things a traditional wealth management firm would do – help people with estate planning, retirement, education planning, tax savings, and getting liquidity out of their businesses. But we integrate all that with behavioral finance to help people overcome the very real barriers that often prevent them from using their wealth to build a more meaningful, joyful life.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
In multiple ways, the journey has not been a smooth road, but really, it has been vital to get us where we are today. The first journey investment advisor business, we made a whopping $32,000. Not very much. If you count internal and external costs, we probably sunk north of a million dollars into that business before it turned around and started making money for us. We were nothing if not persistent.

There were certainly big challenges along the way as we moved to Behavioral Wealth Management, because that required us to reorganize the whole firm. Incorporating expertise in behavioral science into our wealth management practice is no easy feat, especially when you’re the first one doing it. Not only did we have to develop a new discipline, but we had to become the sole flag-bearers for that approach. Now, other registered investment firms (RIAs) are dabbling in Behavioral Wealth Management, but only as a tactic, not a holistic approach. I’m proud to say that our persistence resulted in our firm becoming the pioneers of an approach which the rest of the financial industry is just now beginning to scrape the surface of.

JOYN Advisors – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
Over the last 14 years, a combination of behavioral expertise with superior wealth management has become our core competency. Whether our industry acknowledges it or not, human emotion and cognitive biases drive our decisions – especially critical financial decisions – in ways that can defy logic. In addition to building that expertise, we evolved beyond how traditional RIAs operate. To mitigate behavioral bias and deliver superior results for our clients, we restructured into teams and built new processes – rooted both in science and our passion for our clients – to help them make better decisions and lead the extraordinary, joyful lives they have worked so hard to achieve.

We strive to build lifelong relationships with our clients and to make their lives better because they joined us. Our business is built on personal one-on-one relationships addressing real needs and real issues. That’s why we put so much time and effort into our workshop series – we run several a month. We’re always focusing providing programs that get at the heart of what people today are facing. They cover a wide variety of fundamental behavioral concepts as well as help people deal with big life decisions like caregiving for elderly parents, selling a business, or just figuring out what’s next in life.

I’m also really proud that we reject many of the financial industry’s attitudes – for example, trying to keep clients from withdrawing money from their accounts, which lowers a firm’s revenue and assets under management. Just recently, we were approached by an outside company and told that JOYN’s outflows are essentially double the industry average, and there were a number of things we could do to “fix that problem.” We told them “No thank you.” We feel strongly that money is a tool to help create a joyful life, and clients should use that wealth to do so. We also believe trying to convince clients not to withdraw funds conflicts with the fiduciary duty to put the clients’ interests first.

What is “success” or “successful” for you?
I’ve been very lucky. I went to college here. I went to law school in Ann Arbor, Michigan and found that was way too cold for me. I moved back to Atlanta because I like here. I’m incredibly fortunate because I’ve been here at a time when Atlanta has experienced tremendous growth and opportunity. It’s a city that has lots of people who live here as adults, but were not necessarily raised here, so it’s very easy to build community and develop friendships. Atlanta is a community that as it has grown, its artistic community has flourished – theater, restaurants, and culture. There’s so much richness here.

One of the things I feel incredibly fortunate to do is to be in a position to really help people. Two years ago, clients told us the most important service we could add is help for people navigating the many challenging financial, legal, relationship, decision-making and logistical issues of caregiving. We’ve been building our Seasons of Care workshop ever since. We believe caregiving is perhaps the most important conversation we’re not having in our society. It can create tremendous stress, even serious health issues for caregivers. By listening to our clients and through our own experiences, we realized just how little help is out there. We vowed to have these crucial conversations and help our clients make the difficult decisions less stressful and the process more loving. Because that’s what it’s really all about – making our lives better and more meaningful.

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