Edward A. Montag

As the CEO of MONTAG, both my professional mission and personal philosophy are driven by the same set of principles. The first principle that's guided me throughout my career is that it's impossible to do this work well for a long period of time unless you can be honest every day. Often clients seek perfection and a great story, which is generally what our industry tries to sell.

The days that matter most are the days where the story is hard to tell. It's confusing, has a lot of detail, and may not follow the plot the client wishes, so transparency and the proactive sharing of information is critical in building trust, something imperative for clients to have with their wealth managers and in any long-term personal or professional relationship. The second principle that governs my leadership style at MONTAG is don't expect to be the smartest person in the room.

This is especially important in a family-owned business. The way to raise your odds of success is to invite in people who are smarter than you and then delegate as much authority as they can handle. It can take some serious humbling, but it reaps the greatest rewards for everyone. In my first 20 years in this career, my office was 50 or 100 feet from the office of my mother and father.

Having them nearby was a great advantage. It made my decision-making stronger and often kept me from being pulled in the wrong directions. It's very hard to take the lesser path when your mom and dad are present daily witnessing your decision-making play-by-play. I learned how valuable it is to have good people with you who will hold you accountable. When I go to work each day, I remember what I want my legacy to entail:

strong relationships, strong team management, and strong enterprise management with obvious evidence that we were able to meet every challenge we faced.

Having these high level goals for both myself and for our firm help me weed out bad decisions and instead only say yes to the things that will help us achieve them. My time at work is intentionally split between focusing on clients, focusing on teammates, and building our firm services and staff.

If I can keep both MONTAG's clients and teammates satisfied, everyone involved is more likely to succeed. So every decision I make, big and small, comes back to those two goals. Everyone you interact with is a human being. We call them teammates, staff members, clients, prospects, vendors, and a lot of other names. I aim never to lose sight of the fact that each individual needs to be treated with dignity and respect.

This impacts not only how I communicate with our clients and the people I work with, but also in how I decide who becomes a wealth manager. Each of our wealth managers know how to manage people just as well as they know how to manage their portfolios. That's it.