Earl is a Wealth Advisor and was co-founder of Hines Warner Wealth Management, where he served as CEO for over twelve years before our merger in 2019, before the combined firm was rebranded as Adero Partners. He specializes in financial planning and portfolio management for high net worth families and business owners. Earl has extensive experience designing complex legacy plans, including the formation and management of charitable trusts and private family foundations. As a respected author and financial speaker, he is known for his infectiously optimistic approach in demystifying financial concepts. His first book, Fearless Retirement, was published in 2008, and he has been featured as a financial expert in Medicine in Oregon, a publication of the Oregon Medical Association and in the online investment magazine, SeekingAlpha.com. Prior to entering the world of finance, Earl worked for Intel and IBM Corporation for over 17 years, serving in a variety of professional and executive management roles. Active in our community, he has served on the boards of numerous social service and arts charities. Earl holds a Series 65 securities license and is an active member of the firm’s investment committee.
What drew you to wealth management?
Before founding our firm, I was an executive in the high tech industry for over 17 years, mostly focused on strategy and planning. In 2006, I decided to change careers, and saw wealth management as the best way to re-use and build upon those skills, but with a new emphasis: helping people live their best lives.
What do you enjoy most about Adero?
The people. It’s an honor to work with a group of talented folks who are so passionate about supporting each other and our clients.
What do you enjoy most about wealth management?
The people. Getting to know our clients and their families, the people and causes they care about, and then helping them set goals and build strategies to achieve them.
What do you feel is the biggest value Adero brings to its clients?
Our people. Our combined life experience and financial expertise. We care deeply about helping clients meet their goals, and are expert at keeping them focused on the actions and behaviors that actually matter to their long-term financial success.
How should people think about their wealth?
Wealth is about more than money. It’s about what that money allows you to do with your life. Proper planning brings greater confidence and peace of mind, and this enables you to devote more of your energies to the people and causes that truly matter to you.
Which quality makes you best suited to provide wealth management services?
Empathy. Clients come from different backgrounds, with different values — they’re engaged in a variety of diverse pursuits. Everyone also communicates and learns a little differently. I strive to discover and meet each new client wherever they are. My job is to then place myself in that specific client’s shoes – centered on their goals and life circumstances – and provide the best possible advice, unfiltered by any of my own personal biases or emotional baggage.
What professional accomplishments are you most proud of?
Co-founding Hines Warner Wealth Management, later merging with Vista, and then together, bringing these combined firms forward as Adero Partners.
What personal accomplishments are you most proud of?
Publishing my first book of poetry in 2021.
What do you love to do outside of work?
Traveling. Writing. Reading.
Who would you most want to meet in history (living or not) and why?
Thich Nat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, who recently passed away. He has been a consistent source of inspiration over the years because of his quiet, but powerful teachings on waking up to the present moment so one can live a more joyful life.
What is the biggest challenge in providing advice?
Putting yourself into the skin of another human being.
If you could play a character from a movie, whom would it be and why?
Neo. From the Matrix. Why? Uh, I mean, why not?
What’s the most influential book you’ve read and why?
That’s a tough question – I read a lot! Professionally, I’d probably say: Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein. Forming new habits is very difficult for most people, and I love how this book revealed the unconscious mechanisms we use in day to day decision making, and how to re-arrange one’s life with subtle cues that make healthy new habit formation easier. And while not the point of the book, this sparked in me new ways to better coach clients to adopt new financial habits that help keep them on track.