We hope our newsletters have been helpful for you. It’s our attempt to stay connected, share important information, and keep pertinent planning and life topics front of mind as we continue tackling personal finance together.
The information contained in this week’s newsletter is to catch everyone up to speed on the journey we’re on together. It comes from our desire to build a culture of transparency, but also from the fact we are excited to share how things are progressing with you. Three months have now passed since our launch, and these are meaningful updates we believe are important for you to know. We encourage you to reach out if you have questions or would like to discuss anything shared below.
Backstory
We have shared some version of our story with each of you. Today we expand on that story and relate it to what we hope to accomplish together over the next few years. Many of you have known Amanda and / or me for some time. We are a new relationship for others. Regardless of how long we’ve known each other, all of you are important and special to us. Since you have shared intimate, personal details with us in order for us to serve you to the best of our ability, we feel it necessary to also be open and transparent with you since you’re an important part of the community and culture we are building. Without you, there’s no Kinetic Wealth, and we will never lose sight of that.
Serving others was an important value I was taught from an early age. I’m grateful for that because that way of life has guided me in my career and led to so many enjoyable relationships professionally and personally. Upon entering college in 2005, I couldn’t have dreamed I would dedicate the next 20 years of my professional life to learning how to help people use money as a tool to fulfill their aspirations.
I’ve spent most of my career working within larger companies. I’m grateful for that time and the helpful, encouraging mentors I’ve had over the years. One related story I’ll never forget was in my time working for State Employees’ Credit Union in North Carolina. Leaders of SECU regularly made surprise visits to branches to ensure the high service and experience expectations were being met and to connect with employees. Bobby Hall was the second in command of the organization and paid our Robbinsville, NC branch a visit one morning. Being such an important person, it made the most sense for him to walk to the branch manager to be introduced to the staff. Instead, he walked straight to the teller line and started interacting with the tellers, asking them how things were going and how the credit union could be better. One of the top employees gratefully engaging with entry-level employees… That humble act from such a prominent, respected individual resonated with me and made me ask myself why not build my career seeing life and business this way.
Since that day in 2012, the experience I’ve gained, lessons I’ve learned, and relationships I’ve built have been paramount to where we are today.
State of Kinetic Wealth
Some of you are business owners and understand the very personal, often exciting, sometimes scary nature of starting a business from nothing. Having met and served many business owners over the years, I have a newfound appreciation for all the stories I’ve heard, stories of both triumph and tribulation! It’s a beautiful thing, and we consider it a blessing that we’ve had the opportunity to begin this venture and the stomach to see it through. Amanda can tell you all about the countless late nights and 3 AM wake-up alarms to spend ample time building a sound foundation for our launch.
We’ll never forget those projects and decisions early in the planning process. Our decision to adopt the highest level of fiduciary duty to our clients by being fee-only was very important, and I believe that election will continue to set us apart. Only approximately 3% of financial advisors choose this model to operate. Another important decision was to be 100% independent. Everything we have and do is ours and solely for the purpose of serving clients well. This was the hardest way to start our firm, but the reason we chose this path is that now, the only party we answer to is our clients. Being fully independent also affords us the flexibility to partner with anyone, and we are thankful for that flexibility. Our partners at Altruist, XY Planning Network, Vanguard, and Dimensional Funds have been very helpful and encouraging. We also have access to thousands of other like-minded advisors across the country who have been eager to answer questions and be a resource for us as we launched and begin implementing our processes.
This next part won’t be surprising. Before making the final decision to go out on our own, I designed, built, redesigned, poked holes in, and finally implemented a financial plan for our family. As with any financial plan, we took into consideration things we know (education and experience), things we can’t know (risk and uncertainty), and we made the best estimate of what could happen. There were outlier scenarios – worst-case and best-case scenarios – but we focused on what was most likely to happen. As I began planning to share this information with you, I dusted off the old Excel spreadsheet I built in March and April of this year to see how reality compares to those estimates. Although my projections were not perfectly accurate, it’s encouraging how close it was. We are currently around a month and a half ahead of what we planned for, which is approximately 40% ahead of schedule. We’re grateful for that and humbly accept that it could have just as easily worked out the other way. We were prepared for either possibility, and that’s another newfound appreciation I have for financial planning and the comprehensive nature of good decision making.
We are meeting and onboarding different types of clients. Some are young professionals seeking independence, freedom, and flexibility. Others are nearing or entering retirement and are excited about optimizing their income and benefits while navigating ways to reduce their lifetime tax burdens. We are also serving local businesses that hire us to be their trusted advisor for their staff by managing and advising for their 401(k), 403(b), or SIMPLE IRA retirement plans. Common qualities among our clients are a strong value of independence, family stewardship, and organizations that place significant value on the wellness of their employees.
What’s Next?
We couldn’t talk about where we’re going without relating to Kinetic energy – the energy created by being in motion. Just as we hope to propel our clients forward financially, we are also committed to continual improvement internally. We enjoy staying current in financial publications, especially regarding financial planning strategies and topics. But we also ask for open, honest feedback from you. We hope that each of you feel confident and comfortable making suggestions and providing feedback. Some of the suggestions and feedback we’ve already received from our clients have helped us get better! Thank you to those who have provided feedback. It’s a crucial aspect of our professional growth. Although we don’t anticipate significant changes to occur, we do expect minor adjustments along the way to fine-tune our processes and maintain an enjoyable and current experience for our clients.
Along with continual service improvement, we have business targets we’d like to achieve to further solidify the foundation of our firm to serve you and our community well for years to come. Our current target is the addition of a second advisor. Based on our forecasts and planning, we hope this will occur in 2026. This is an important milestone for our family and for our clients. Adding a second advisor will benefit all of us in many ways. Kinetic Wealth is our collective future and of utmost importance to our family, so we are going to be incredibly selective when choosing this teammate and any future additions to maintain our culture. That person will naturally and gratefully uphold our mission and vision.
Our intermediate targets will largely depend on our second advisor. We hope that person will be interested in partnership in our firm. If that occurs, we will consider their long-term goals and what drives them as our firm and our clients’ needs evolve. With their help, we will collectively frame what the next decade and beyond looks like. However, we will not deviate from our core purpose that led to the creation of Kinetic Wealth.
Our longer-term vision is that future advisors we hire and possibly our two sons may take the reins of Kinetic Wealth many years from now. There’s a lot of noise going on in our industry these days with mergers and acquisitions taking up much of the industry news. That’s not necessarily a bad thing overall, but the good news for you is that we have no intention of selling our firm. We can completely ignore those distractions and maintain focus where we believe it should be; 100% on serving you.
We Sincerely Thank You
As I regularly review our client accounts to make adjustments or work on financial planning, I remember all the various ways I met each of you. Each story is unique, but there are several common themes: we met serving our community together, we’re neighbors, we were introduced by a friend or family member, you were an employee of an organization I have served over the years…Knowing these connections and how our relationships have evolved helps clarify for me why you are such a pleasure to serve. Our relationships are real, and we value each other. The fact you’ve joined us on this journey means more to us than you know. We do want to tell you that we appreciate you, but more importantly, we want to show you we appreciate you.
If you made it this far, congratulations! We kindly ask that you save the date for the evening of Thursday, November 13th, 2025. We are finalizing details and will send out RSVPs soon for a celebration and appreciation event for the Kinetic Wealth community! More to come.
Now, let’s go do great things!
Skee Orr, CFP®, AIF®, ATP
Founder, Lead Advisor
