Evergreen Advisors offers generations of financial planning experience

Financial planning firm Evergreen Advisors is a family business, and that’s a tradition they’re proud of.

Father-and-daughter team Jim Place and Jayme O’Donnell have led the firm since 2009, recently welcoming Kyle Bryant as a partner. Place and O’Donnell first met Bryant about 20 years ago, while he was working at a local accounting firm.

They all stayed in touch after Bryant left to start his own firm, Market Street Advisors, in 2016 with partner Kevin Rose. After selling and merging Market Street with a larger firm two years ago, Bryant realized he missed the small-team atmosphere, and began conversations with Place and O’Donnell about joining Evergreen.

“We were all on the same page about where we’re going in the future and what we want out of life,” Bryant says. “Our day-to-day is focused on clients. It’s taking care of people, making sure their money is in the right places.”

As registered financial advisors, they provide their services for a fiduciary fee and do not sell products on which they make a commission, Place says.

“You’re operating on a fiduciary standard, which is different than the standard for your normal brokerage firm,” he says. “It puts you in a situation where you are legally and morally obligated to do what’s very best for the client.”

Most of the time, what’s best for the client is the advisor’s opinion, which is based on their collective observations over a long period of time and their understanding of the client’s goals and objectives, Place says. Getting to know the client and what’s happening or changing in their lives helps an advisor understand the impact financial decisions will have.

Bryant says working at a small firm allows him to develop relationships with clients.

“Being able to invest in people and help them achieve their goals is so rewarding,” he says.

For many people, the riskiest part of investing is what they don’t know. Educating people on what they don’t know they don’t know, such as tax code, is a major component of what Evergreen Advisors does, says Place.

He has worked in finance since 1983, and O’Donnell says she knew before college she wanted to follow in his footsteps.

She considers educating people about finance an important service they provide through “Let’s Talk Money,” their daily radio show on Talk Radio 102.3. The show includes casual conversations with listeners and covers a wide variety of financial topics, such as Bitcoin, international finance and the impacts of politics on financial markets.

While it serves as advertising for the firm, O’Donnell says she realizes most listeners will not become clients but considers the show a service to the community. Many younger listeners don’t need a planner; they just need direction.

“We can sit down with them for an hour, give them really good advice and tell them how to go execute this on their own in an inexpensive, efficient way,” O’Donnell says. “I’m of the opinion that the better financially educated anyone in our community is, the better off we all are collectively.”