On a sunny day this September, the Marshall Financial Group team gathered outside to share in a COVID-friendly celebration for our 15th year of business. Since 2005, we have developed close, personal relationships with our clients to help them work towards achieving their personal and financial goals while growing as a firm. We wanted to reflect on how we got here, what keeps our business strong, and where we want to go in the decades to come.
A Passion for Personal Relationships
After working as a financial advisor and agency director at MetLife Investment Management, Pete Marshall wanted to start his own financial advisory firm based on personal relationships with clients. Out of his row home in the Baltimore waterfront neighborhood of Canton, he began Marshall Financial Group, believing that honest and effective financial management would provide his clients the trust they deserve.
For the first few years of business, Pete worked on his own, which wasn’t without challenges. On a Friday in June 2008, on the day his daughter was born, the markets experienced one of their biggest drops of the year. Clients began calling, and even though he was at the hospital with Lindy, he took the calls in order to reassure them. Even in the midst of the birth of his first child, he felt a responsibility to be available to his clients during those uncertain financial times. After that day, he realized the importance of growing a team to help support him and his clients!
Smart Growth
In early 2009, Lindy joined him to manage the administrative, marketing, and human resources side of the business. Together, they worked to develop the core mission and vision for Marshall Financial Group based around integrity, compassion, and kindness for clients and employees alike. As they began growing and interviewing potential employees, they focused on hiring positive and likable administrative staff and advisors, people who would share Pete’s passion for personal relationships with clients.
The office of Marshall Financial Group grew from a spare bedroom in Canton, to a historic row home in Fells Point, to an office in Hunt Valley, MD. In 2012, Pete also expanded the business by taking over a portfolio of clients from a college professor who taught business and finance, but also had a small group of people whose investments he managed. The professor wanted to focus on teaching and approached Pete about taking over his clients. Pete realized that he could help this financial advisor feel confident about transitioning his clients and help the clients feel secure with a new advisor. Since then, we’ve merged with and/or acquired practices from a number of financial advisors, expanded to a team of eight, and relocated to a bigger office once again.
Crafting a Mission, and Striving Towards It
On our new website, we highlighted three words: grow, nurture, cultivate. This isn’t just something we believe in for the investments of our clients, but our Marshall Financial Group family as a whole. Our goal is to help both our clients and our team to have a meaningful, fulfilling life balance. We believe in working together to help identify and pursue your personal and financial goals while cultivating a relationship based on trust, mutual respect, and genuine care.
Our core values as a firm begin with integrity: we are committed to honesty and integrity in every situation. This belief is also strongly tied to security and maintaining trust in client confidentiality and in financial security for our clients, staff, and firm. We also believe in innovation and smart growth, that is, using technologies and procedures that set us apart from other financial firms. Support, like the roots of a strong tree, helps us grow. We support our clients with exceptional service; we support each other as a collaborative team; and we support our community in a tangible way.
A Vision for the Future
We believe in planning. Whenever a new client comes to us, we sit down to discuss their current financial picture along with their goals and then create a financial plan based on their situation. We have the same approach when it comes to our firm. We are committed to the vision, mission, and values on which our firm was founded back in 2005. These beliefs guide our business, employees, and clients to continued growth.
As part of our client experience, our advisors meet regularly with clients to review their investment strategy and the progress being made toward achieving their goals. Likewise, at the end of every year, we sit down as a team to make sure that what we have done and what we plan to do in the next year fits with what our plan – our mission, vision, and values – outlines. As we grow in the years to come, we know we will be pursuing smart growth opportunities, we will be striving for efficiency in all of our processes and procedures, and we will continue to exceed our clients’ expectations when it comes to service and support.
To all of our valued clients and business associates, thank you for your loyalty and trust and for being a part of the Marshall Financial Group family for the past 15 years. Our firm has come a long way since those early days and we look forward to working with you for many years to come!