Wayne B Titus III, CPA/PFS, AIFA founded AMDG Financial and AMDG Business Advisory Services in 2002 based on his 15 years’ experience at two large accounting firms working with Fortune 50 clients. He dove into entrepreneurship to make a bigger impact on people’s lives. As a fee-only fiduciary adviser, his loyalty is to his clients: he places their interests ahead of his own or his firm’s. With assets of more than $150 million, AMDG Financial integrates tax, financial and investment strategies to help clients make financial and life transitions successful on purpose. The company’s credo is, “From financial wisdom, better stewardship.” His latest book is The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Financial Well-Being (Lioncrest Publishing).
Entrepreneurial Role Models:
Wayne’s father, grandfather and grandmother
When business started difficulties overcame:
“I went from a job that was paying me a pretty big salary to earning zero dollars because I started my business from scratch and that was a big adjustment. My wife went back to teaching to help me launch the business. We bootstrapped everything from the beginning and managing that from savings to balancing what cash flows were going to be and then finally making an acquisition about a year and a half after I started my business was a huge challenge. And one of the specific things that was a challenge was that I acquired four employees as part of that acquisition”…[Listen for More]
Favourite Books:
- Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies (Good to Great Book 2) Book by Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras
- The Checklist Manifesto: How To Get Things Right by Atul Gawande
- Being Mortal: Illness, Medicine and What Matters in the End Book by Atul Gawande
- The Infinite Game: How Great Businesses Achieve Long-lasting Success Book by Simon Sinek
Favourite Quote:
- “The ignorant man pronounces, the wise man questions and reflects” Aristotle
- “The wise man knows that he does not know” Socrates
Recommended Online Resources:
KPI Library automates Key Performance Indicators reporting, specialized in measuring and visualizing metrics and performance trends for business executives
Best Advice to Other Entrepreneurs:
“entrepreneurs don’t know what they don’t know. And if you want to engage an adviser that’s an interpretive adviser… I love the word solidarity… Solidarity is when you walk in solidarity with somebody you are walking with them through life’s journey. And you want to find advisers that are walking through life’s journey with you and that are willing to be there with you and to know intimately your business and how you are operating and how you want to operate, what your vision is and help you deliver that. So, I think it’s important to find that adviser that’s not giving advice from a silo, that they have a broad understanding… A broad and pretty deep understanding of how to integrate that tax, financial and investment strategy because again it’s not what you earn in the market, it’s what you keep after taxes that’s important”…[Listen for More]
More About Wayne B Titus III:
Neil’s Quote at the Beginning:
“Little things make big days.” Unknown
Other Quotes From the Chat with Wayne B Titus III:
- “you should always be working on your exit strategy”
- “it’s important to set goals and to track progress”
- “when I started working on my succession plan and looking at my exit strategy the reason, I was doing this was both a requirement because of the industry that I’m in but it was also because I wanted the firm to continue beyond me. My vision of what the firm could do and the impact it could make can live beyond me if I put the right plan in place”
- “I think the secrets to success are understanding your business to the point where you can put a process in place so that that level of quality that you are trying to deliver, whether it’s a product or a service that you are trying to deliver, the level of quality is consistent with what your vision of delivery is. Business process to me is probably the most important thing. It make sure that you don’t drop things through the cracks, things that are really important either to your functioning of production or your delivery of service. So, I would say most important is the focus on process. ”
- “Culture is crucial. And if you don’t have people that you are working with that can conform with that culture it can destroy your organisation”
- “there’s advisers that tell you what to do, those are paternalistic; there’s advisers who are informative and they don’t a bunch of stuff on your desk and say here you pick, they don’t really help you make a decision; and then there’s interpretive advisers that help you understand the information that’s out there and come to some conclusion and help filter that information for you so you can make the best decision”
- “it’s about learning, it’s a bout understanding that you don’t know what you don’t know. And you have to be constantly seeking the knowledge to better understand what your situation is and you can’t always know it all but you can try to figure things out and work with other people to try to work together to deliver that solution. You can’t just do it yourself sometimes.”
- “We want to make financial transitions successful on purpose and have it be beneficial for their families and their future generations”
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