No matter where you are in the world, money is always the main concern. Some will do anything to get it, scrupulously or not. Some others will learn how to play the game and build from it. Knowing how to make and keep money is a gift but one needs to understand and follow the unwritten rules. As most people are not great at it, wealthy individuals call upon what is called a certified Financial Planner who works closely with an attorney, and accountant. It is not easy to become a millionaire or a billionaire but it is even harder to manage an empire and keep it. I recently met with Richard McWhorter, Managing Partner & Private Wealth Advisor at SRM Private Wealth, who walked me through what his world entails.
Richard didn’t enter his field with a grand plan or a straight line. He built his company from scratch mostly from lessons learned in the locker room, to the business that takes place backstage. He is a seasoned advisor who thinks outside of the box and believes in an innovative approach to wealth management. He admits that he built a large part of his business around poker games and on the golf course.
“It wasn’t about selling. It was about conversation. People heard what I thought. That’s how trust started,” Richard told LATF.
“The way it happened was by stepping into situations that needed fixing and staying long enough to understand how money, pressure, and ego intersect,” he added.
Early on, he gravitated towards work that required problem-solving rather than performance — learning how financial systems functioned not in theory, but in practice, often under high-stakes conditions.
Over time, that role evolved into something more expansive. Richard became the person clients called when success had already complicated their lives — athletes nearing retirement, musicians navigating erratic income, and high-net-worth individuals whose finances required constant recalibration. His work extended beyond managing assets to managing behavior, decisions, and long-term survival.
“Rather than building my reputation through marketing, I built it through trust which is an absolute must in the world of finance,” he said.
His career grew organically through referrals, long-standing relationships, and an ability to tell people what they didn’t want to hear but needed to know. Today, he describes his work less as financial advising and more as life management — a hands-on, often unglamorous role shaped by decades of experience watching what happens when discipline disappears and no one is willing to say no.
When asked who typically seeks his advice, Richard shared, “Mainly, young professionals, athletes, artists, especially musicians. Individuals who have received instant gratification because they have a hit record. Young athletes get a substantial amount of money when they are on the winning team. So they spend without counting. They buy whatever they desire without realizing the added cost of their entourage, management, agents, publicist, chauffeur etc. which most of the time they are not privy to. Until one day when they realize that it is all gone and that they are going broke. Their income has become erratic. The same thing happens with musicians who may be forced to sell their catalogs, pay capital gains, pay management, and by the time it’s over they’ve traded lifelong income for a few years of cash. Most ’80s and ’90s bands need to tour, but they don’t want to. They’re in their 60’s now. Touring 60 or 70 shows a year is a lot. Touring domestically has become so expensive that some bands barely make any money doing it.”
“That is when they call me to fix their problems,” he said. Over time, he became: The Fixer.
“My job is to get people straight so they’re not going to end up on the street someday. Most of these guys are so focused on what they do that they don’t pay attention to anything else. And a lot of people take advantage of that.”
He explained,“I can’t control their spending. I can tell them not to do something, but if they want to buy it, they’ll buy it. I’m a financial advisor, but it’s really life management. I don’t just manage money. If someone’s kid is having psychological issues, they call me. If something’s falling apart, they call me. A lot of times, I’m brought in to fix situations that are already broken.”
On the subject of excessive spending, he offered an example of a purchase he had strongly discouraged…
“I’ve had a client who wanted to buy a horse for half a million dollars. Even though I did not think it was a good investment, he decided to do it anyway.”
“I’ve told people they needed to sell their yacht because it’s costing hundreds of thousands a year. Some listen. Some don’t. My job is to tell you yes or no. If you don’t follow it, that’s on you. It’s the people around them who put them on a pedestal. That’s when the switch flips. If you don’t tell people the truth, you’re not helping them.”
Richard believes that, in order to be a good Wealth Advisor one must “build credibility, to be a hard worker, to learn how to listen and to tell the truth.”
“I see people with college degrees who can’t find jobs, but they also don’t know how to push. Everything is online now. You send a resume, AI screens it, and that’s it. Back in the day, I’d walk into a place. Now people just wait. They don’t follow up. They don’t show up,” he said.
He agreed that social media is partially responsible, saying: “Absolutely, people are being made into something they’re really not. Kids see this stuff on social media and think it’s normal.”
Having worked with some of the biggest companies in the finance industry, Richard combines traditional financial expertise with a creative, personalized approach. Today, He manages 36 families of (multi-generational, family-office style) overseeing roughly $2 billion (with ~$1.3B coming from relationships formed through his poker game).
Yes, through his poker games. In this profession, he explained that you have to be a bit of a gambler, a hustler with a fixer mentality. You have to have work ethic, and a long view of money, fame and survival.
Will Richard ever retire?
“People ask me about retirement all the time. I don’t know if I ever will. What am I going to do — play more golf? That’s boring. I’ll probably do this until I die,” Richard concluded.
