Then & Now: McLeod’s wealth management firm sees rapid nationwide growth

As owner/operator and lead adviser for Fayetteville-based Nicolas J. McLeod Wealth Preservation Strategies, Nicolas McLeod has led his firm from being a “large Arkansas business” to a fast-growing nationwide wealth management firm.

As a national brand with more than 1,100 customers, offices in Fayetteville, Denver, and San Antonio, Texas, and licensed in 48 states, he said the firm brought in almost $46.5 million each year for the past three years.

McLeod started the firm in 2005, originally focusing solely on retirement income planning. The firm grew to about $12 million in business in 2020 but jumped to $46.5 million in 2021, he said. McLeod credits that success to “humility and rededicating his life to Christ” that year.

“It was a surreal moment and a life-changing event when you realize there’s more to your journey than just serving self,” he said. “But as a result of changing my life and surrendering my life and putting the people I love in front of myself, it was easier for me to see things for what they were – not just spiritually and in my personal life, but also in my business.”

A member of the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal’s Forty Under 40 class in 2007, McLeod said, “I’m a completely different human being than the boy who was in the Journal.”

Success came by keeping customers’ goals at the forefront of planning, and by “blazing his own trail,” he said. “We didn’t become successful until we blazed our own efficiencies, our own path, our own platform. The same old cookie-cutter thing, the same old Ed Jones, Merrill Lynch thing, that keeps you handcuffed. The people at the top make all the money. The clients don’t make the money; the advisers aren’t making the money. The people at the top are millionaires.”

McLeod’s firm, which went virtual in 2021, offers clients a full-service platform, which is dedicated to the four pillars of retirement: income and future expenses/lifestyle management; tax-efficient investing, tax mitigation and Roth IRA planning; custom portfolio design and management to support the first two; and legacy and estate planning. This eliminates the need for multiple advisers.

“Most people have an accountant, an attorney, a stock guy, an Ed Jones guy and an insurance guy,” he said. “People come to us and eliminate all, or most, of those.”

Creating a patent-pending process called the Quantum Portfolio Analytic Tool “allowed me to differentiate myself from others in the industry who have also achieved national recognition,” McLeod said. This proprietary financial review, analysis and roadmap tool gives people “access to a true blueprint of what they own and what it’s doing for them. It can expose the red flags all on its own, so they can determine for themselves if that’s really what they signed up for.”

For McLeod’s career journey, the difference for him came by continually learning, striving for excellence “and figuring out what you’re bringing to the marketplace that’s actually unique. How are you different? How are you bettering those people’s lives? That’s what takes you from being a really good salesman, which is what I was when I made the Journal, to being an adviser and an industry leader at 42 years old. It’s a completely different process.”

Since late 2021, McLeod has also been “coaching, leading and mentoring” the Virtual Apex Group, a selected cohort of top-performing financial advisers nationwide. He is also consistently a top producer in the group.

McLeod executes the education, content and branding part of the business. He gives public speeches every day, creates video content for the company’s social media, and conducts radio, TV and magazine interviews. Every Monday night he offers a nationwide online workshop.

In the next three years, McLeod plans to hire three more advisers for the Fayetteville location and expand the business another “two- to three-fold.”

McLeod is proud of his wife, Shayda, and their two children, ages 10 and 14. Shayda is the chief operating officer for the firm. McLeod relaxes by cooking with his family. A professional musician, he also enjoys playing his guitar in his studio.