John Calvert: Helping Entrepreneurs and Families Connect Wealth With Meaning

John Calvert still vividly remembers, at age 23, closing the door to his childhood home for the very last time. His father, a struggling entrepreneur, had put the family’s house up as collateral with the bank—which, in short order, took possession of the property. “I’d never felt so much financial insecurity as I did in that moment,” recalls Calvert.

That painful experience ultimately inspired Calvert to become a financial advisor. Today, as a partner and private wealth advisor at Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management in Los Angeles, he serves primarily business owners and multiple generations of families. “What fuels me every day is working to ensure that other families didn’t have to go through the same struggles we did,” he says.

To that end, Calvert has implemented a virtual family office business model that brings together a team of expert professionals to address the full range of affluent families’ concerns. That means going well beyond mere investment management to incorporate tax mitigation, wealth protection, estate planning, charitable impact, and business succession and exit planning.

It’s an approach he’s honed over the past decade as a member of CEG Worldwide’s advisor coaching programs and mastermind groups. “I think back on all my coaching experiences during the last 10 years, and I don’t know that I could put a price on it,” says Calvert. “It’s been profound.”

For example, one key component of Calvert’s ability to take a comprehensive approach to clients’ financial issues is the advanced planning skills he learned through CEG’s Advanced Planning Academy—where he and other like-minded advisors reviewed actual anonymous client case studies and debated how various ideas and solutions might maximize value. “CEG’s advanced planning training increased my understanding of current tools, added some new tools that I just I wasn’t aware of, challenged my thinking on some tools, and gave me other perspectives,” he says. “It’s given me a road map that can guide me with essentially any challenge a client faces.”

CEG Worldwide also helped Calvert implement steps to emphasize the personal and meaningful side of clients’ wealth as much as their hard financial numbers. For example, when working with entrepreneurs looking to exit their businesses, he of course models their ability to remain financially secure in retirement. But he also goes further by helping these driven business owners identify what a post-work “life of significance” looks like to them—so that they, in turn, can use their wealth to have a meaningful impact in their own lives as well as the lives of their family and their community.

“Entrepreneurs’ identities are often tied so closely to their companies that they don’t really think about what’s next for them or all that they can do and enjoy and accomplish after they stop working,” he says. “When we have that conversation, they start to see not just that they have the wealth they and their family need, but also how they might use that wealth so that the rest of their lives are deeply satisfying and meaningful.”

As Calvert has gained the insights, expertise and tools to deliver greater and greater value to clients, his practice—not surprisingly—has excelled. “I’ve become fully confident that my team and I have the capabilities in place to help anyone, even the wealthiest person that I can imagine, and that we’re on equal or better footing than any firm out there today,” he concludes. “The coaching, and especially being around other supercharged advisor peers, have help me see that there’s no limit to who I can help and how I can help them.”