By Mary Goodwin | Photography by Cindy Taylor
Long hair, cowboy boots, jeans and a sports jacket. With Jeff Davis – the president of Falcon Financial Management, Inc. and one of the founding fathers of the certified financial planning designation – what you see is what you get.
“When some people meet me, they quickly say ‘He’s not what I think of a financial planner.’ But others come in because they have talked to someone in a coat and tie and didn’t understand what he was talking about. I say to them, ‘Let’s just talk and figure out whether or not you’re comfortable with me and if I’m comfortable with you—if I’m going to work with you the rest of your life or career, we need to be comfortable with each other.”
At Falcon, it’s all about intimate relationships. Oftentimes, an appointment with Davis is 45 minutes spent talking about dreams, adventures and life, and the other 15 about investments. The staff – resembling a close-knit family – offers financial, management and investment services to its 150 clients with an overwhelmingly optimistic approach. At its core, they hold true a solitary mission: to help people plan their Great Life Adventure® of financial independence—by helping them identify their goals and dreams, exploring how to make them a reality, and then managing their next Great Life Adventure®. A sure testament to this sits in Davis’ office in the contents of an antique photo album filled with photos of clients on adventures.
Specializing in retirement planning and “creating an income you can’t outlive,” the firm assists clients with everything from tuition plans to life insurance to tax planning. Advisers help clients to plan their very own Integrated Wealth Management Process™, a “holistic and evolutionary strategic planning program based on a conversation about your financial affairs for the rest of your life.”
With nearly 25 years of experience in the financial business, Davis said he has built up a wealth of knowledge, allowing him to reach a high point in his career. And with his managing partner, Chris Coleman, and daughter, Rachel, who worked at Falcon five years until she accepted a position for a broker-dealer, this seasoned veteran has two people to step in behind him.
“They bring a whole new realm of experience to take care of the children of my clients,” he said. “I think the combination of those two people provides, I hope, an opportunity for Falcon Financial Management to be in business here for a long time.”
In between hosting his own radio show on The Sky 97.3 called Dollars and Sense and recently being inducted as the first wrestler into the University of Florida Athletic Hall of Fame, Davis has plenty of great adventures to tell his clients of.
“I love the work I do; it’s really different for me when people talk about retiring—it’s just not on my horizon,” he said. “I know someday I’ll probably have to, but as I would remind them, Picasso was painting at 90 and Bob Dylan is still singing. As an alternative to ‘retiring,’ I want people to think about it as, ‘What is my next Great Life Adventure®?”
For more information on Falcon Financial Management, Inc., call (352) 375-7977 or email [email protected].