Announcer 0:00
From Los Angeles, this is the Echelon Radio Network.

Brian Hemsworth 0:12
And welcome to the Echelon Radio Podcast. I’m Brian Hemsworth, and we have a special guest today. It is Jon Wingent. Am I saying that correctly?

Jon Wingent 0:20
You are right,

Brian Hemsworth 0:21
Jon, thanks for coming in and welcome to the podcast studio here.

Jon Wingent 0:24
Thanks very much pleasure to be here.

Brian Hemsworth 0:26
So I want to get into something very important right away. I’m going to spring this upon you. I think it’s something that everybody listening wants to know, which is your favorite Spice Girl?

Jon Wingent 0:37
Oh, yeah, that’s that’s an interesting first question. Well, the Spice Girls, I remember when they came out. I was in school, so as a teenage boy, my favorite was Ginger Spice.

Brian Hemsworth 0:48
Okay! I could see that. I could see that. I think I might agree on that one as well. So I’ll probably have a couple more really important questions like that along the way. But I think that’s the one that most of our listeners were probably thinking of. Jon, you’re a very interesting guy. I met you earlier this year at a couple of our meetings, and I’ve heard your story, and I’d really love for you to sort of share that again, if you’re okay with it, you’re originally from the UK, you’re now living here in Southern California. You’re working for Morton Wealth. You seem like this really nice guy from the UK who somehow mysteriously landed here. So can you tell us a little bit about how that whole thing happened?

Jon Wingent 1:29
Yeah, well, it was, it was through my wife, my wife’s from here. She, when she left college, she came over to the UK for a couple of years. She worked, she did a journalism at UC Santa Cruz, and she came over to work for a publication. It was a financial publication in London on a two year work visa. That was not when we met, but she worked with a mutual friend of ours, and a few years later, that mutual friend was getting married in London, and we met at a wedding. Oh, and so we then proceed to have a long distance relationship.

Brian Hemsworth 2:06
Meeting people at weddings can be quite dangerous.

Jon Wingent 2:08
Oh, yeah, dangerous. But it was, it’s it worked out well.

Brian Hemsworth 2:13
So about when was that?

Jon Wingent 2:15
So that was in 2008

Brian Hemsworth 2:16
2008 Yeah, okay. So long distance relationship.

Jon Wingent 2:20
Long distance for around about a year.

Brian Hemsworth 2:22
okay.

Jon Wingent 2:23
And then Julia moved over to London, and she went through the whole visa process there, interestingly, because that’s something I went through when I moved here. And then we lived in London until March 2021, when we moved over here.

Brian Hemsworth 2:38
So, so, just so that we have the basics on this. What were you doing at the time when you were in London, and then she came and moved over?

Jon Wingent 2:46
Yes, at the time, I was working for Merrill Lynch. So I’ve, since leaving college, I’ve always worked in the wealth management industry. So at that time, I was working for Merrill’s, which was an interesting place to be in 2008

Brian Hemsworth 2:59
I bet.

Jon Wingent 3:00
That’s another story.

Brian Hemsworth 3:02
Yeah, and did you have a particular area that you were working in within Merrill? Was it simply Wealth Management, or was it a sector? Or,

Jon Wingent 3:12
Yeah, it was wealth management. So it was my it was my second job out of college. The first job was with Barclays, and I in wealth management, and I had clients I was in the international side, so I had clients that were primarily in Europe, Africa. And then I was doing the same thing at Merrill Lynch. So when I moved there, some of my clients moved across, and I was covering Europe, Middle East, Africa, Merrill so financial advisory, Wealth Management.

Brian Hemsworth 3:40
Gotcha. Now somewhere along the way you moved here. How did that happen?

Jon Wingent 3:48
Yeah, so Well, when I was younger. So my my dad worked in New York when I was a lot younger, and we lived there for a period of time. So I’d lived here, growing up from the ages of 13 through to when I actually, when I started college, I was at school in the UK, but coming out here during during the vacation times, so I was familiar with us, and I’ve moved around a lot. Born in Hong Kong, lived in various countries, so quite nomadic, actually. So and when I get asked, you know, where are you from in The UK as well, London is where I spent most time. But if I spoke to a Londoner, a true Londoner, they wouldn’t consider me London. Okay, yeah, but I moved around. Did live in the US for a period of time, and then, and then the more recent time was through meeting Julia and then moving here more recently.

Brian Hemsworth 4:42
And so when did you move here with your wife to the US to set up?

Jon Wingent 4:48
in March, 2021

Brian Hemsworth 4:49
March, 2021 so mid covid.

Jon Wingent 4:53
It was mid covid. It was so our youngest son. He was born in March 2020 and his birthday

Brian Hemsworth 5:02
ground zero of covid.

Jon Wingent 5:04
Pretty much. he was born about three or four days before the then Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced a lockdown in the UK. Every every country treated it differently. In the in in the UK, it was don’t leave home for two weeks. You could leave a couple of times. So it was a very strange time. But of course, when you’re in the throes of the maternity wing the hospital, and you’re thinking about, you know, when he’s a couple of months old, we can fly out here and meet all the family in the US that trip in March 2021, was that delayed visiting the family over here because there was, of course, a travel ban, yeah, so we came over on an empty plane in March 2021, to finally make that trip, to introduce the youngest

Brian Hemsworth 5:48
goodness

Jon Wingent 5:49
to his grandparents.

Brian Hemsworth 5:50
What a trip that must have been. So you’re traveling with a young one. You’re traveling on a plane with probably next to no people on it. Yeah, there was nobody on and you’re now you’d been to the country, but And had you been here in Southern California?

Jon Wingent 6:05
Oh, yeah. So, I mean, Julia and I had been together since 2008 so I the long distance relationship. I came over a lot, and then we would typically come out Thanksgiving.

Brian Hemsworth 6:16
So you’d met the family here, but they hadn’t met your

Jon Wingent 6:20
My son

Brian Hemsworth 6:21
child? Gotcha

Jon Wingent 6:22
They have not, yeah, gotcha. And he’s the younger. So the difference between the two, they’re now seven and four. So at the time when we came over, he had just turned one, and my oldest was about to turn four, so yeah, very small, and we hadn’t intended to move here. So it was a trip where we had had an extended we were taking extended trip. We were taking a trip for a month. And while we were here, I think the decision was made between us that actually perhaps, I think the way covid was makes you quite reflective, the the age of the children was they hadn’t really got into the school, and we had, of course, we had an established life in the UK, but it just seemed like, well, if not now, when would

Brian Hemsworth 7:12
you say that your that bit of nomadic life earlier in your life, did that make it easier to make that decision, to say, hey, maybe this is the right place.

Jon Wingent 7:22
It was easy. I think it’s it’s different to say, if you’d got a job in a country that you’d never been to, or you didn’t know anyone, then that’s quite different. But here we had, effectively, half of the family were here. I mean, why my wife’s family are all here?

Brian Hemsworth 7:40
So how did you, How’d you make that change from what at the time had been Merrill to what is now Morton?

Jon Wingent 7:47
Well, so Merrill’s was to.\, that was when I met Julia. But the most recent firm that I worked for before moving here was Schroeder’s, okay, which was, which is an asset manager. And I was actually working on an investment team there. I was heading up an investment team. We had all been working from home, like pretty much every corporate within an office environment. It was, it was work from home. So so I had to leave that role, and then when we made the decision to move here, apply for a green card here. So it was an interesting journey, because it was leaving a very secure, stable job in the middle of covid, where I I progressed pretty well throughout my career in the UK, I was in a senior role. So moving over here I was, I was actually considering completely pivoting into something else, because I was, I was seeing a challenge where I could perhaps move across into an equivalent role when, effectively, I’ve come in out of the cold. I don’t have a network who knows me. So when Morton Wealth came up, that was really, really interesting for me, and it’s, worked out really, really well.

Brian Hemsworth 7:47
One of our, one of our group moderators, Davis Blaine, has written the book that is about networking, and he calls it Naked Without A Net. And that sounds to me like so you had covid going on, you had a new baby in the house, moving countries. You’re You’re about as vulnerable in that situation. But Morton, to me, seems like it has suited you very well.

Jon Wingent 9:26
It has. It’s really worked out well. And, and if I’m totally honest and talk to Morton about this, I I had written off the idea of being a wealth advisor when I was when I was searching for for a new career home. I thought, well, as a wealth advisor, I don’t have a network of clients. I don’t have a book, a portable book of business, so I thought that a wealth advisor probably wouldn’t be interested in me. But the with Morton, I mean, Morton’s been growing fantastically, and at the time. Yes, you know, there’s always the element of the right right time, right place. Morton has been growing well over the years, and had to free up capacity across other advisors books. So when I came in, it was more a hire of somebody that has the experience, can hit the ground running, doesn’t require a lot of training, can take on some clients, and then that’s what I did. And then I’ve subsequently grown, grown the portfolio, you know.

Brian Hemsworth 10:27
And I have to say this is I’m not trying to be, not turning to pat Morton so much on the back with this, but I find it to be very true. I’ve met a lot of people from Morton. They’re all really good people, like, there’s a really good vibe. It’s very, very different from a lot of the, you know, the sort of former wire houses that have become wealth managers that we’re used to around here. There’s a lot of them that are that don’t have that vibe, and it’s very noticeable. I think the people that I’ve met are bright. They seem to have a very good understanding of how Morton is different than than others. And I would say in the time that I’ve known you, you fit into that. So it seems like, from me looking at the outside, seems like a pretty good fit.

Jon Wingent 11:20
Yeah, it’s for me, what was really attractive was a very high level of emotional intelligence that Morton has. And I’ve come from really a Wall Street, typical, traditional type background. Morton is the smallest company that I’ve worked for in terms of numbers of people, but I’ve got to say that for me, having worked in organizations of different sizes and and types, that actually fits me very, very well. And your observation is right, I feel very comfortable there. It’s got a great vibe. It’s a very vibrant, entrepreneurial,

Brian Hemsworth 11:58
very much so.

Jon Wingent 11:58
environment. Then they do do do things differently, and that’s really living out what you know, it’s, it’s got the feeling of a young entrepreneurial startup, but it is a firm that’s been around since the 80s, but it’s changed, evolved over that time. So the, you know, the generation of of people that are in in Morton now, obviously moved moved on, moved on, and the it’s really, really an interesting environment to be in, really vibrant, and I really enjoy it.

Brian Hemsworth 12:27
So, so tell us what you’re doing there now. Tell us about your clientele and the kind of work that you’re doing now.

Jon Wingent 12:33
So I’m a wealth advisor, so typically, the clients that I work with range from individual families, charitable foundations, business owners. Also, the other thing is, in the time that I’ve been there is building up amongst the community, the professional community around there as well. I’ve really enjoyed being involved with that. Of course, Echelon is part of that professional community that I’m now part of. But what I really like about Morton and where I’m working with clients, but differently to the traditional space, is is, is in what, what we what the areas that Morton really have been really have been developing over the years, in the alternative investing space, they were pioneering that back in the 80s, when alternative investing wasn’t the thing that now actually is not such a differentiating fact saying you do alternative investing, but if you that, and it’s a very broad term, alternative investing, because if you look at what Morton are doing, they’re working with opportunities that are very localized, general partnerships that are within a five mile visit

Brian Hemsworth 13:48
where the office is, and very local, you know,

Jon Wingent 13:50
very specific investments, very specific partners. We sit on the board of some of them, and that’s what I really like. It’s not, it’s not mainstream alternative investing, investing in some giant hedge fund or private equity group that a lot of wealth management organizations do. And I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that, saying that it’s very interesting that the opportunities and the things that are being uncovered are things that I didn’t really see at firms that I worked before, because a lot of the deals might have been too small for those firms, and that’s that’s been something that they’re very thoughtful about, really seeking true diversification portfolio, so really not taking that traditional path of constructing a portfolio that maybe has 60% in main market stocks and 40% in corporate bonds. It’s really moving beyond that.

Brian Hemsworth 14:47
So I don’t want to put you on the spot with you know what stocks we should be buying right now, but but rather, I’d like to hear from you if you’re able to articulate what do you see? As the sentiment out there right now, of of your clients, other clients at at Morton, what are people like? Obviously, we’re going into elections, and we know that’s turbulent, but we’ve had a pretty good run for a while. You know, 2008, 2009 not a great time. But since that time, we’ve had equity markets doing pretty darn well, not without bumps in the road. But what do you see in your clients right now? What are their concerns? Well, one of

Jon Wingent 15:28
the things that we really pride ourselves on in Morton is empowering investors to really, really understand the decisions that they’re they’re making, and their approach to investing. And we talk a lot about the right mindset, so behavioral finance comes into play quite a lot. So when you talk about sentiment and what are people thinking, and you see what’s happening in marketplaces, you see a lot of behavioral finance traits coming through. You’re not withstanding. I still get asked, you know, quite regularly. Should I be buying Nvidia? Be playing on that AI trend and and, you know, the way we would approach that is that you do have some exposure in the portfolio to a stock like Nvidia, to a theme like AI, but it’s within a diversified fund of other stocks. And you’re getting that exposure, you’re participating, but you’re not participating that level of volatility. But you do get that, you know that that kind of that that behavioral finance, would be kind of FOMO play on that. I do get asked that a lot, but interestingly, you ask how, how our clients have been a good test recently was earlier in August, there was, you know, markets did take quite a turn, and we didn’t get many phone calls. We didn’t get anyone sort of worried, because the mindset is more around longer term investing, yeah, truly being diversified and and actually, and actually coming around to to the understanding that markets do do this and actually do need corrections. Yeah, like this, because they just don’t go up in one direction all the time.

Brian Hemsworth 17:06
Yeah. You know, I found maybe a decade or so ago, as my mother was aging, my father had passed away, and I began helping her with a lot of her investments and things that she had in the market. She I think part of it was just lost interest, and really was sort of living out her years of enjoying some grandchildren and some travel and just not wanting to worry. And then I took on the worry and and I learned very quickly, don’t watch the market every day, and don’t think that your life begins and ends with what the S&P does at the end of the day, that tomorrow’s another day. And I will tell you that I I still do watch the market every day, but I don’t live and breathe. You know that my life is better or worse because of one day, and that we look at that. So I think when you say that you didn’t get that many calls, I think that’s a testament to two things. Number one, Morton, because I think Morton has trained your clients well, which I think is very important, and I think your clients showing maturity of like, Okay, we’re gonna have some ups, we’re gonna have some downs. We know, if we look at the track record, the up’s will be will outweigh the downs, but it’s long term, so we know we’re going to have some of those ridges. Brings me to the to the next really, really important question. So I kind of think about when we follow a football team, we’re in football season right now, and sometimes your team does really well and sometimes it does really poorly, but what we want to do is we want to get to the end. Want to get to the end of the season. Do people in the UK really hate that we use the word soccer for their game?

Jon Wingent 18:50
I was, as you were saying, that I was thinking, which football?

Brian Hemsworth 18:56
Well, to me, that’s number two to the spice scores. Yeah, still is very important. No,

Jon Wingent 18:59
I mean, actually, it comes from association football. So actually, the soccer is the abbreviation of association so that it actually makes, phonetically, make sense. I often get asked, and, you know, I’ve joked about it in the past, you’re saying between football and soccer. I say the easiest way to remember it is that you use your feet, not your socks, but and you American football is very popular in the UK indeed. I mean, they play regular season games. They’re regular I think they play almost five to 10 games regular season.

Brian Hemsworth 19:35
And and, and US football, but now at the college level as well, is aggressively exporting the sport. They’re exporting the sport around the world. We have a game, you know, tomorrow happening in Brazil, and that’ll be the first NFL game that will happen in Brazil, and it really is a very conscious effort of of the US. I think it’s going to. Take a while before we get anywhere close to the World Cup, and we will still call it soccer when we see the broadcast here, when we get the international feed, or when we watch TED Lasso, we know that it’s football, or no, we know we’re not supposed to call it soccer. And that’s my third question for you. So Ted Lasso, you love it or hate it?

Jon Wingent 20:20
I absolutely love it.

Brian Hemsworth 20:21
`Do you?

Jon Wingent 20:22
Yeah, Yeah. And I love the authenticity of it, because it’s in, I mean, they shoot it in and around an area of London called Richmond, which was pretty close to where I used to live.

Brian Hemsworth 20:32
So Richmond is really Richmond?

Jon Wingent 20:33
Oh, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. Lovely part of London, southwest London, on the river. And he’s in one of the pubs there that is an actual pub, not a studio that they’re filming it in when he’s walking around the little cobbles lanes, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s really well done. And they actually film it the ground for Richmond FC. I think that is the team that on on TED Lasso is filmed at Crystal Palace, which is a premier league team, their training ground.

Brian Hemsworth 21:03
Oh, wow.

Jon Wingent 21:03
And then the games the stadium, shots are in Crystal Palace and Selhurst Park.

Brian Hemsworth 21:09
You know, I never realized that, because they lose to Crystal Palace in the first season, that’s one of the teams that they lose to. And I didn’t know that of the stadium. What what I get stopped with in TED lasso is one of the fictional sponsors of football. There is a liquor that is called Royal Hemsworth. It’s my same last name. You should

Jon Wingent 21:39
take royalties on that? Well, I

Brian Hemsworth 21:40
would think so, but, but I laugh at the name, because for most of my life, I would somebody would say, you know, what’s your name? And I’d say I’m Brian Hemsworth. And they’d say, Oh, you mean Hemstreet or Hemingway. And I know, I know my name is Hemsworth. Ever since those Australians, that Thor guy like, ever since they came about. I don’t have to pronounce my name anymore. Everybody can now pronounce it, and I get better tables in restaurants when they say, oh, is Thor coming? Well, I think so. So can we get a good table? And that seems to happen, but so is there that really was just something I wanted to ask, and I’m using Ted lasso as a way, because I love Ted lasso, and anytime I can bring that in a conversation is fun. But for you, you know both sides of the Atlantic, you spend time in both countries you’re living here now, you’ve led that nomadic life. What do you see as the biggest similarities? What do you see as the biggest differences?

Jon Wingent 22:41
So the biggest similarities are, we speak the same language. Maybe we say words differently, but pretty,

Brian Hemsworth 22:47
pretty similar language,

Jon Wingent 22:48
that’s pretty similar. I mean, culturally, we’re actually not that dissimilar. You know, the the love of sport, that’s that’s very similar, big differences. I mean, I see, you know, I get asked, What do I miss about home? Quite a lot. And you can pretty much get anything that you want here, there, and vice versa. I mean, things like special foods and things like that. If you wanted British candy. I mean, you can go down to Target and buy countries and get a world market and buy British food. It’s, you know, there’s, there’s not a lack of availability of that. And a big difference, actually, between when I was living here, when I was younger on the East Coast, was, you know, I couldn’t go and watch soccer, football. Now it’s very, very popular here. I’ve noticed that significantly. But you know, some of the things that are slightly different. You know, there are British pubs here. I film a podcast as well at Morton called pub speak, and that’s based out of the Crown and Anchor in 1000 Oaks, which is a British pub, but they’re and they’re great. And I love the British pubs here, but they are. They’re not, they’re not the same, but they’re not the same. And and going to going to a pub and getting a Sunday roast dinner is not something I can replicate over here. So it was the first thing I did on the trip back this summer.

Brian Hemsworth 24:15
You know, I can tell you that this is going to go way, way back, long before I was married, I think I just gotten out of college, had a girlfriend when I moved back to Los Angeles, and she was, she had been she was born in New York, but her parents came from the UK. They worked for GM in the UK. GM UK, in the US. So it was, she was very connected, and she spent a lot of time in the UK. So when I met her here, she took me to a pub that used to be in Laurel Canyon. It was the cat and fiddle pub. I remember it distinctly, and it had been a pub that was very popular during sort of the Eagles and Linda Ronstadt. At when that whole thing was happening in Laurel Canyon, but I was introduced to a Sunday afternoon meal in that pub, and it was like nothing I’d ever had. It was heaven. It was great drink, great food. I had to take about a four hour nap afterwards because it was it was pretty rich, but I think the I did have, there’s, there’s a couple pubs here in Woodland Hills, which are very close to our studio here. And I met the owner, and I think he was a Premier League guy years back, and one pub is Pickwick, and the other Pub is the Whiteheart. And I said, What’s the difference? And he said, Pickwick is where I’d go with my mates. Whiteheart is where I would take my wife or girlfriend. He said, there’s two different kinds of pubs.

Jon Wingent 25:50
Yeah.

Brian Hemsworth 25:50
And I went, Okay, I think I got that was, is that, do you think that’s a fair characterization, that there’s certain pubs that you might go to, but not necessarily ones you’d bring your wife?

Jon Wingent 25:59
Yeah. I mean, you do. You’ve got the pub, yeah, you’ve got pubs that have pub pubs, I would say you’re just drinking establishments, yeah, and then pubs that are, I mean, they’re gourmet now that the food, yes, get there. So they’re, they’re effectively very good restaurants.

Brian Hemsworth 26:14
So that was a knock on pubs for many, many years, is that the food wasn’t great, and the food has become, like you say, almost this gourmet experience.

Jon Wingent 26:23
Oh, yeah. I mean, you have, I knew Gordon Ramsay’s fairly well known over here, Chef Ramsay, I mean, he’s got pubs in the UK, and all these famous chefs are opening up, opening up pubs. So, yeah, the the the pub, the traditional pub, is you would get, you know, a packet of call them crisps.

Brian Hemsworth 26:44
Crisps. Yeah.

Jon Wingent 26:45
Packet of Crisps, sausage roll, Scotch egg. And that would pretty much be your substance outside of the the liquid, the

Brian Hemsworth 26:54
The liquid that you’re vibing, yeah, very good. So I want to ask one more thing, while we still have just a couple minutes left. What do you do when you’re not working? Now that you’re here in the US, are you doing the same stuff that you did? You’ve got a family going now. What’s a weekend like? What are what is the free time like for your family?

Jon Wingent 27:15
Well, I think we’re very blessed here in California with the outdoor life, and that’s been the biggest thing for us from moving from the UK is, you know, we can go down to the beach pretty easily. Kids love being out outdoors, so we do a lot of outdoorsy stuff. It’s nice to have a pool as well. Just we spend the weekend swimming beach. You’re hiking, and that’s, that’s what we love doing, really, it’s the outdoor, the outdoor nature that you get here.

Brian Hemsworth 27:44
And you’re near your wife’s family here, right?

Jon Wingent 27:47
Yeah, we’re like, a 15 minute drive from my in laws, and then siblings also live in and around so

Brian Hemsworth 27:54
the kids have kind of that built in network of aunts, uncles, grandparents, stuff like that.

Jon Wingent 27:59
They do, and there. And because they were very young when they moved over, only my daughter had a British accent when she first came over.

Brian Hemsworth 28:08
Was that long gone?

Jon Wingent 28:09
That’s long gone now, yeah, yeah. And the moment when I realized it, when, when we moved over, she would say, mummy. And then we were driving to school one morning, and she went, mom, okay, yeah, it’s gone now,

Brian Hemsworth 28:23
What did your wife think of that.

Jon Wingent 28:27
I think, I mean, she’s, she’s American at its normal.

Brian Hemsworth 28:30
She’s gonna say, probably happy. But I heard Emily Blunt being interviewed one time, and she said it was pretty devastating when her her daughter first, she didn’t say water. She said water, yeah. And she said it was like she knew she had lost, lost her daughter to the American accent at that point.

Jon Wingent 28:48
Yeah, I mean, it’s that age when, when the accent is influences how you’re going to speak for the

Brian Hemsworth 28:53
Yeah and I think, you know, the kids want to assimilate. But you know, if, if opportunity were to make itself available, and they were to spend much time in the UK, they’d probably slip, you know, over into that as well. I think, I think we all kind of do that. We all look for that home. I’m just really glad that you made it here, that you’re, you’re happy with your family. I’m so glad that you were able to come in and join us. This has been fun. I hope you come back again, because I feel like we just barely scratched the surface. But thanks so much for coming in.

Jon Wingent 29:19
Sure. Appreciate it a pleasure. Thank you, Brian. I’ve enjoyed it.

Announcer 29:33
Presented by Echelon business development. More than just networking. Way more.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai