Sam Gullette – CEO & Certified Financial Planner
My mission in life is to play a meaningful role in the financial services industry, by surrounding myself with other good advisors, and empowering each other to make a real difference in the lives of our clients and our families.
As a financial planner, I help my clients build wealth, secure their futures, and protect their families against life’s storms. As CEO of WestStar Prosperity Group, I work with our team to assist financial firms and advisors who share our client-first ethos, in developing their careers and growing their businesses to full potential.
I was fortunate to spend 12 years working for Merrill Lynch and AXA, when the game was mainly about selling insurance, annuities, and mutual funds. While I developed a healthy respect for their role in accumulating and safeguarding wealth, I wanted to build and scale a business on predictable recurring revenues by managing people’s money astutely.
By the early 2000’s, this idea of doing advisory business steadily gained traction: thankfully the financial houses encouraged their advisors to shift from a “commission only” approach to include fee-based financial advice. This move was championed by the industry’s compliance and regulatory bodies, working together to promote the clients’ best interests.
My motivation to build WestStar Prosperity Partners and acquire the WestStar Prosperity Group businesses stems from a desire to help clients, partners, advisors, and firms achieve success. In this way I’m able to apply everything I’ve learned – and truly value – in business and life, and to share success with others.
In our totally objective, client-first model, the client and advisor get to sit on the same side of the table, and to forge a special bond. The fiduciary’s responsibility and privilege is one of always acting in the best interests of others: by upholding this contract, we get to promote the value of relationships founded on professionalism, experience, integrity and trust, and to safeguard our clients from making the potential mistakes that the automated investment alternatives expose them to.
Whether by helping clients pursue their goals, or enabling advisors to grow their businesses, the best part of my job is dealing with the people themselves; sharing insights of all kinds and on many levels with our clients and each other to create opportunities and impact lives.
Both as business owners and advisors, it boils down to what we do, how we do it, who we do it for, and the colleagues we work with: these are the things that allow WestStar to create a unique value proposition and accomplish our goal of growing together in tomorrow’s world.
My incredible wife Gena and I love raising our three children and going to all their events and activities. Outside of work I love to play golf, to ski, and mountain bike.
