Evan Harp sat down with Zenith’s Jason Ray to discuss his approach to being a financial advisor and the three pillars of values integration, diversification, and long-term growth.
Evan Harp: When and how did your practice begin?
Jason Ray: I founded Zenith in 2019 and partnered with my partner, Chelsea Ransom-Cooper, in 2020 and then we launched our wealth management platform in 2022. I really envision a society where race and gender are not predeterminants in people’s or institution’s ability to create wealth and create long-term value. So, at Zenith, we really operate with that ethos. We’re working to address disparities in wealth in race and gender. We are delivering accessible, relatable, but expert advice to folks who have been underserved or unserved by the industry traditionally.
Pictured: Jason Ray and Chelsea Ransom-Cooper
Jason Ray on Values and Investing
Harp: Excellent. What is your investment philosophy?
Ray: We center around three main principles in our investment philosophy: values integration, diversification, and long-term growth. We do believe that investments should reflect the values of our clients. So, we prioritize impact investing and environmental, social, and governance criteria in the investment decision-making process.
Diversification is key to managing risk and ensuring that our client portfolios are well-balanced across asset classes and sectors. And most of our clients are focused on long-term growth. We deal with a lot of young families. We deal with a lot of institutions that are serving communities of color and women that have perpetual mandates. And we focus on the long term and advise our clients to stay the course and remain patient even amidst short-term market volatility.
That long-term view, making sure that we are diversified across asset classes, and value integration are the key tenets of our investment philosophy.
How Jason Ray Overcomes Skepticism
Harp: What’s the biggest obstacle you had to overcome and how did you do it?
Ray: That’s a good question. There have been a number of obstacles. I’d say the largest obstacle that we’ve had to overcome is maybe initial skepticism from potential clients about our mission-driven approach to wealth management.
I think many were accustomed to traditional firms and models that prioritize the size of assets and complexity of clients as they go after certain clients in the marketplace. The fact is we don’t have minimums at Zenith. We want to work with ambitious folks who haven’t generated the amount of impact that they want yet or haven’t achieved the amount of wealth they want to yet. It’s different.
We’ve really had to overcome that. After almost five years, in generating just over $50 million in wealth for our clients, we’re on our course to 1 billion. We are beginning to overcome that by consistently delivering exceptional results, aligning our clients’ impacts with their values, and showing them through our own primary outcomes. Also, secondary research that we can generate both strong, market-beating financial returns and also conceptualize the positive social outcomes that are coming from our client investments.
Continuing to generate results is how we overcome this obstacle. I think the financial performance has been a great tailwind for us. Obviously, the market has been well over the five-year period that we’ve been open. But we’ve been able to achieve some stellar performance versus the benchmark across a number of different risk levels for clients. I’d like to say the impact component and the societal benefit component should be the one that helps us overcome that obstacle. However, the reality in this industry is about financial performance being table stakes. We’ve been able to deliver that, plus more, for our clients. It has really allowed us to overcome our initial obstacles.
Jason Ray on Digital Disruption
Harp: What’s something happening in the market right now that not enough people are paying attention to?
Ray: I feel like a lot of people are paying attention to it. But I have to say it. Digital disruption in many industries, but, I think, particularly, in our market.
In advisory services, the integration of AI into financial services is going to make significant headwinds in folks’ ability to deliver accessible advice at scale.
I think folks are excited about AI. But a lot of the stock market has been driven by the earnings of companies that are integrating AI. That is just a small subset of how AI is going to change consumer behavior service models.
You look at business models in general. We’ve seen a lot of success come from software as a service and SaaS models. But now right we can run an advisory business that delivers services to clients, just a standard service business. And operate at the scale of a SaaS business, because we have all this digital disruption and all these new tools that are enabling us to really deliver our advice and insights at scale to more and more people.
I think you’re going to see a big shift in the way services are delivered. That is going to change consumer behavior. It’s going to change how service providers are creating their products and services. And really upend the traditional route of early-stage financing and the types of companies that are really poised for scale and huge impact on society.
Other Financial Advisors that Inspire Jason Ray
Harp: I think that’s a terrific answer that covers both the market writ larger and the market of financial advisory. And like the specific other stuff too. Final question, who is another advisor that inspires you and why?
Ray: Yeah, there’s, there’s a there’s a bunch – it’s hard to dial in. I’ve been lucky enough to have some tremendous mentors and advisors who have helped me learn along my career path, including Adam Landau from Cerity Partners, and Michael Forman at FS Investments.
But one advisor in particular that’s really had a strong recent impact on me is David Stevens, from Stevens Capital Partners in Omaha, Nebraska. David is growing his business at a tremendous clip. He has integrated his values and the things that he cares about into his team. It’s flowed through into their clients.
They just renovated their building in Omaha, and they operate in real life, which I just think is awesome. I think it’s different than most people operating today. Personally, I am somebody who really values in-person meetings and relationships with folks. I am really inspired by the way that he’s been able to create a culture of in-person work and innovative growth through partnering with folks and really delivering a value proposition that is unlike a lot of other firms in the marketplace.
So, David, if you read this, keep it up! I love getting advice from you. I’ll certainly call you after this drops. But yeah, David Stevens is the man and I look forward to continuing to learn and be inspired by him.
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