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Early experiences in life often hone the skills. As an entrepreneur, the early experiences are always deemed important for shaping their vision and leadership skills. Similar to the Co-Founder duo of Centric, Zac Majors and Oscar Mondragon the early age experience was the foundation of them turning into exceptional leaders today. They established Centric Advisors—the fastest growing and dynamic financial services organization that serves clients through its divisions, Centric Wealth and Centric Retirement, and serves professional advisors through its Centric Partners division.
Zac’s keen observation skills helped him learn about money by noticing people with terrible money habits. From an early age, he realized that imitating their view of money would lead to at best, pain and at worst, ruin. After working in the industry for a while, he gathered countable experience to lay the foundation of his company. By combining his observation and experience, he has learned that money is color blind, and it does not discriminate. He further quotes, “The accumulation of wealth is a summation of our choices; it is a response to our behaviors and habits.” Zac, CEO, and Co-founder at Centric Advisors is a visionary with a mindset of a capitalist and with the heart of a socialist that believes success follows closely behind doing good for others.
On the other hand, Oscar Mondragon noticed the gap in good quality advice and was invested in helping people in various financial situations—from those starting on their financial journey to those that have amassed wealth and are looking for creative wealth-building strategies. A scholar individual, Oscar is continually acknowledged for his financial acumen and ranked near the top of the industry for high performance and service. Throughout the journey, he has been awarded countless awards. Oscar Mondragon, the COO, and Co-founder at Centric Advisors is equally dedicated to doing good for others and feels validated in his calling when he sees someone’s life transformed from the very advice he gives.
Apart from being remarkable advisors and entrepreneurs, Zac and Oscar are sought-after speakers and hosts of the TV show, “Live Your Best Life” where they provide empowerment for those in or nearing retirement to live a more fulfilling life.
Both Zac and Oscar met early on in their financial careers. As both shared common interests and shared a passion for helping people they decided to combine their strengths and form a boutique practice tentatively named Majors & Mondragon, along with some support staff. Being one of the best financial advisors, the success quickly followed the team and the demand was continually rising to lead to expansion of the team. What started as a practice in a shared 90 square foot cramped office, has today transformed into a custom-built 8,000 square foot office building, Centric Advisors is now ranked amongst the fasted growing firms in the nation. Centric Advisors is highly grateful for the team and their efforts, as the qualified individuals from each team have helped the company reach such heights.
Centric Advisors understands the advantage of specialization. Being an expert of multiple disciplines is not easy, so instead Zac and Oscar have built a team of experts from multiple divisions which complement each other. The department heads can focus on their area of expertise while they have the support of fully licensed staff.
The Asset Management Team created Centric’s proprietary AlphaTiltTM portfolio series which is based on scientifically tested fundamental factors and offers the benefits of both active and passive investment management. Through the financial planning team, retiree clients are empowered to live their best life when they know they are always getting HUGS—Housing/Healthcare, Utilities, Groceries, Sleep. This way the clients are assured that these needs will be taken care of today and in their later years. Furthermore, the risk management team owns the entire risk strategies and process for Centric Advisors i.e. from case design to field underwriting, illustrations to risk assessment, advanced planning to express issues. The team handles everything swiftly and being an in-house team of experts prevents Centric from having to rely on another group’s system, staff, or resources.
Strong teamwork and deep know-how of their particular niche have fostered an environment where other professional advisors in the financial services industry are tapping into Centric’s vast resources. These professionals are considered Centric Partners. “Because we are equipped to handle so many elements of personal financial services internally, we can offer an agile platform to serve our clients and partners,” expresses Zac.
In a candid conversation with Zac and Oscar, they helped us understand the current scenario of the industry and also let us in on the impact of COVID-19 and how they tackled the challenges.
There seems to be a continual and ongoing assault towards Americans that are high-income earners or have accumulated wealth. These people, many of whom are clients, are painted by media and politicians as un-American, selfish, and privileged. We know differently—these Americans have risked their life’s savings and sacrificed time away from their family to achieve success. Today, with unchecked government spending and politicians appeasing the welfare state, successful people find themselves in the crosshairs of increasing tax bills. Centric guides two types of clients – those that know they are affected and those that haven’t realized that Washington is targeting them.
We have a state of the art website that makes it easy for our clients to learn about money through educational blogs; we have regular financial learning events for the community that can be found on our website; and for clients or those thinking about becoming clients, we have an easy way to book an appointment or get more information—all at the touch of one’s fingertips.
Initially yet only briefly, COVID-19 wreaked havoc on the financial markets. Many people were scared as they saw their retirement accounts drop as much as 30% in 3 weeks, an unprecedented drop. Our priority quickly became using our experience across multiple market cycles to ensure that our clients took advantage of the buying opportunity in front of them.
Throughout the pandemic, we completely transformed our business model to a true team-based business model, which runs counter to our industry’s typical “solo practitioner” business model. This allowed our team members to utilize more of their personal strengths and become masters of their craft—leading to enhanced client experiences and outcomes.
For the most part already, financial advisors have access to the same financial products as the next guy, though a tiny few have the client’s best interest in mind. Additionally, clients can buy most financial products online without a financial professional if they wanted to. The name of the game is becoming creating value, relationships, and personalized solutions. We ask ourselves every day, “how can we provide even more value to our clients” and “what ideas can we generate to save on taxes and protect and grow clients’ wealth”. Sure clients can buy financial products and do research on their own, but most cannot synthesize the information to know if the product/strategy is best for them. Furthermore, people don’t know what they don’t know or haven’t been exposed to.
Personal touch and strong relationships instead of call centers that mispronounce your name and surely don’t know you, along with individualized advice rather than damaging rules of thumb are a part of our present practice and will continue to be part of our future. This coupled with innovative financial strategies and helping clients keep more of what they earn will keep Centric thriving for many years to come.
Humbleness to admit that you don’t know it all and that what you’ve built can be better. Centric yesterday could not compete with Centric today who can’t compete with Centric tomorrow. To be a linchpin, you must believe that entire statement about your business and put it into action to make it a reality.
