Morningstar - Q1 2023 - 70

Investors
Solo Practitioner
Working on his own, advisor George
Papadopoulos finds success on his terms.
Charles Keenan
USER PROFILE
After George Papadopoulos entered financial
advising about two decades ago, a colleague gave
him advice at an industry conference that he
continues to share to this day: Don't ever let others
define what success means to you.
It sounds simple, but it's not an easy tenet to
follow in a society obsessed with work and goals.
Yet for Papadopoulos, a Certified Financial
Planner based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, defining
success his way is second nature. He has chosen
his clients carefully over the years, shunning
the difficult ones, and has capped his workload.
He has a roster of just 23 customers, representing
$59 million in assets as of Nov. 30, and he
is no longer accepting newcomers.
Working by himself, with no assistant, he handles
all the tasks to run his business. He even
prepares taxes for his clients. For one person, that
can still make for a busy schedule, and that's
about all Papadopoulos wants to handle.
" I have other interests that I want to explore and
devote my time to, and I think I am making
enough, " he says.
Rather than shooting for alpha and taking
more risk, when it comes to investing for
his clients, Papadopoulos, 55, uses broad-based
passive Vanguard exchange-traded funds for
exposure to stocks and bonds. He avoids
owning individual equities and has stayed far
away from riskier investments like commodities,
non-traded REITs, structured notes, and
cryptocurrencies.
102 Morningstar Q1 2023
70
He likes Vanguard ETFs in part because of their
low expense ratios. Portfolios are rebalanced every
six months, with Papadopoulos keeping a
watchful eye on tax efficiency, harvesting losses
and shielding gains.
He counsels his clients not to obsess with
the volatility in the markets. " It's the same mantra
with me, " Papadopoulos says. " We are
always going to be diversified, keep costs very
low, rebalance at set intervals, and make
smart tax moves. "
Coming to America
The idea of staying the course was perhaps
borne out of his own experience of having come
to the United States at the age of 17 from
Greece. Papadopoulos enrolled in an exchange
program for his senior year in high school that
brought him to Michigan. He quickly found
himself lost. From Larissa, Greece, a city four hours
north of Athens by car, he now lived in rural
America. " I realized that my English was not good
at all, and I had to go to a brand-new school
that was totally strange to me, " Papadopoulos
says. " I lived in a farm out in the middle of
nowhere, and I was a city boy. "
Yet Papadopoulos persevered, driven by the
opportunity before him. His father, who ran a gas
station, had taught him at an early age to
value white-collar work over blue. At his dad's
suggestion, he once took a job at a Del Monte
factory during the peach harvest, working
the assembly line, returning home so exhausted
he would doze off at the dinner table. " I lasted
about a week; it was too tiring, " he says.
The greater lesson was to get a decent education
so he wouldn't have to do hard, manual labor for a
career. After graduating high school in Michigan,
he went to Eastern Michigan University, majoring
in accounting, then getting a master's degree.
Along the way, he met his future wife, cementing
his place in the United States.
After school, he worked at a boutique accounting
firm near Detroit and passed the Certified
Public Accountant exam the first time he tried
in 1993. But he found the hours during
tax season to be grueling. He knew he would
eventually open his own business, in the
entrepreneurial spirit of his father.
Planning His Escape
As an accountant, Papadopoulos noticed from
the brokerage statements of his clients that
their financial advisors often seemed to ignore
the tax implications of selling positions.
Papadopoulos saw an opportunity. " I thought
I could do better with my tax knowledge, "
he says. " That's when I really started plotting my
escape from public accounting. "
In 1995, he earned his CFP designation, also in
his first try, and a Personal Financial Specialist
certificate in 1996. " I had some tax seasons under
my belt and knew a career in public accounting
was not going to be in the cards, " he says.
Yet he would leave his tax work for a different
reason. He left his job in January 1998 at
Deloitte to care for his son, who was born with
a serious health condition.
By 2002, his son was able to go to daycare, and
Papadopoulos went to work as a financial
counselor for Ernst & Young, tending to just one
client. He struck out on his own for good late
in 2004. He slowly added new clients, reaching
eight by 2006, then brought on three more
in 2007. His new business came only from referrals.
His clients tend to be professionals, such as
doctors and information technology executives, or
are retired. Papadopoulos chose these clients
carefully. Prospects had to truly want to delegate
their financial planning.
For the portfolios, allocations vary, but he
advocates a minimum allocation of 30% in stocks
just to try to keep up with inflation. Younger
Morningstar - Q1 2023

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Morningstar - Q1 2023
