Katie Milojevich, Debby Morio, Thom Allison, and Brad Allen.
Thom Allison: The ASA Story
I spent the first nine years of my career working for the J.I. Case Company, a manufacturer of farm tractors and construction machinery. Growing up on the North Shore of Chicago I found myself selling tractors to cotton farmers in West Texas. I worked at the factory in Burlington, Iowa helping to design more efficient ways to build front loader buckets, I wrote the marketing plan for the Africa-Middle East operations and I arrived in Kent, WA to manage the company owned dealership selling small construction equipment. It was all good experience but nothing I was passionate about.
When circumstances gave me the opportunity to re-examine my career I studied several businesses. The emerging profession of financial planning caught my attention because it gave me the opportunity to combine my interest in finance with my enjoyment of teaching and my desire to help people. Financial planning simply appeared to be the perfect fit for who I am.
That is why I was a bit surprised when I found myself living with an uneasy feeling about my practice. I was in a partnership that prized production above all else. This meant that partners who generated the most commission revenue were those who were recognized as most successful and most important. I was not a high production producer so I thought the source of my uneasy feeling was my treatment by the others as a second-tier partner.
Often what appears on the surface is simply a cover for the root cause of an uneasy feeling. This point reached my consciousness in a meeting with my partners when we started to talk about how the commission revenue would be split when two or more partners made a sale to a client. During the discussion, one of my partners used the phrase, “you eat what you kill”. What a repulsive thought! That was the moment when I fully realized the true source of my persistent uneasy feeling.
When I first captured the vision of financial planning, “eating” my clients was not even in the shadows. I wanted to come along side my clients, listen to what they wanted to do for themselves and their families, and then I wanted to help them manage their financial resources so they could accomplish what they wanted for themselves and their families. This fundamental desire of my business life was in direct conflict with the culture and the values of the commission-driven partnership I was in. I knew the moment I heard that disrespectful comment that I had to start a new firm based on my business goals and reflective of my values.
So it was that in August 1997 I started Allison Spielman Advisors along with Debby Morio and Katie Milojevich. From the beginning our objective was to provide sound personal financial planning, implementation of the plan and portfolio management that was consistent with the financial plan. We also determined that in all our business dealings with clients, suppliers, other professionals and employees we would be guided by the following values:
- Each of our clients is a unique individual with unique dreams and goals. We appreciate, enjoy and respect uniqueness.
- We subscribe to the statement that “profit is like oxygen, food, water, and blood for the body; they are not the point of life, but without them, there is no life.”
- Imagination and creativity are qualities that set us apart from our competition. No idea will be deemed impossible or impractical until all potential ways to make it work have been examined.
- Each person is endowed with a unique set of skills and talents. It is through mutual respect for each person’s uniqueness that we are able to create the team necessary to search out and bring to bear the resources required to help our clients realize and enjoy their goals.
- The best way to help clients realize and enjoy their goals is through support from a team of people who are themselves moving toward the realization and enjoyment of their goals.
- We serve each client in a way that makes him or her feel as though they are our only client.
The final chapter of the Allison Spielman Advisors story has not been written. While these core, unwavering values have served us well for the past twelve years and they are at the root of our recognition as a 2009 “Best in Client Satisfaction” award winner, (published in Seattle magazine), they must never be taken for granted. We keep coming back to our values so they can inform our efforts toward continuous, intelligent improvement.
I will be writing about our values examinations, about current events and about strategies, tools and techniques to help you effectively manage your personal finances. Please visit often and share your impressions.
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