In this episode of Financial Planner Search, John Llodra, CFP®, co-founder of New Harbor Financial Group in Worcester, Massachusetts, explains why he refuses to hand his clients' money off to a third-party manager. He spent the first decade of his career in the energy industry the last stretch of it at Enron. He watched good, ethical coworkers lose their life savings to somebody else's fraud, then took a severance, read a book called Do What You Are, and walked away from several hundred thousand dollars a year of guaranteed income to start over at essentially zero.

That experience shows up in how he runs the firm today. John and his founding partner Mike Preston are both engineers by training, and they bring what John calls "healthy skepticism" to markets — show me the data, where are we in the cycle, what does market history actually say. They'll tell a prospective client that US stock valuations look richer today than at any point in history, including 1929, and that the honest read on the next decade isn't a comfortable one. John's line for people who have already built the nest egg: your biggest risk is screwing it up, not missing out on late-stage gains.

He also talks about what he never expected to enjoy most — teaching. His dad was a teacher and the math never worked out for John to become one, so instead he built a YouTube channel approaching 10,000 subscribers, with monthly unscripted live Q&As where clients can put him on the spot. He and Mike stay personally reachable for investment conversations, because "the buck stops with us."

Takeaways

* Healthy Skepticism, Backed by Data

* Defense Before Offense for People Who Already Won

* Teaching as the Growth Engine

* Direct Access to the People Making the Decisions

* No-Pressure Conversations, No Arm-Twisting

Chapters

* 00:00 New Harbor Financial Group and hands-on money management

* 01:41 Engineering, Cornell, and the road to Enron

* 03:19 What Enron actually felt like from the inside

* 05:15 Founding New Harbor in 2005 with Mike Preston

* 06:29 Why engineers keep becoming advisors

* 07:52 Clients nationwide and why they leave their last advisor

* 09:21 Valuations, market history, and your real risk

* 12:20 Conversations with no pressure to close

* 13:38 The YouTube channel and monthly live Q&As

* 16:43 The questions people actually ask

* 17:42 "Your job is to gather assets" — and why he rejected it

* 18:50 Vision: $830 million today, and hiring humans over AI bots

* 22:39 Onboarding, fiduciary duty, and Schwab as custodian

* 24:54 Transferring in kind and protecting clients from tax surprises

* 26:50 Accessibility, quarterly reviews, and open-door access

* 30:01 How to get in touch

You can find them at: https://www.newharborfinancial.com

If you are a financial advisor looking to grow your business you can find out more about Wilnau Design at https://www.wilnaudesign.com/

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