Our Founder's Story
I was broke! I painfully lost my life savings over 3 years on a software venture and was spending my last dollars paying employees… this was going to hurt.
I remember the epic embarrassment sitting in the bankruptcy hearing. I was being grilled as if I was hiding assets somewhere. I found my attention fading in and out, dazed from the sobering reality upon me. How did I get here? I had been a successful Investment advisor for 20 years, and now was working at a blue-collar job for $17/hr. swallowing my pride while answering to a child for a manager.
So why didn’t I just go back to Merrill Lynch? I had a clean career before I retired. Why didn’t I dial up one of my many connections and find a job back in Financial services for $150k/yr.?
Some of my closest family members would prod me about this, but I knew something they didn’t. Traditional Financial Services are broken, and I couldn’t with good conscience go back.
More Americans unprepared for retirement
While doing research for my second book, I ran across a statistic about Americans not being prepared for retirement and it hit me like a ton of bricks. In the early 1990’s, 67% of all Americans were unprepared for retirement, today that number is closer to 90%!
The reason: traditional financial services sells products and the potential performance of those products, (often under the guise of a financial plan) but that’s not what builds wealth.
After many conversations, my wife and I agreed bad things don’t happen to us, they happen for us. It was time to pick up the pieces. With the support of my wife, I worked tirelessly to reinvent myself.
I wanted to fulfill the original reasons why I had become a financial advisor so many years ago. I wanted to be that force that people need to gain the financial independence they want.
After 10’s of thousands of hours and years of putting what felt like good money after bad, we are happy to share with our great nation a means to break out of the vicious cycle robbing the lives of most every American.
We would be humbled to know you took the time to explore what this means to you and your family.
Blessings!
Ken Gulliver – UGRU CEO & Founder
