Today we’d like to introduce you to Sean Storck.
Sean, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
When I graduated high school I was on my own and training to be a ballet dancer. Ballet does not pay very well so I needed a part-time job to make ends meet. I always told myself that once I was done with ballet I would turn to some sort of finance job because I always found the stock market and investing as interesting. My in was a family friend that owned a bookkeeping, tax and financial practice. I took a part-time job with the firm working in the evenings and training in ballet during the day.
One day I met the woman I was going to marry. She said she would marry me if I quit dancing. I said fair trade, walked into the office of the director of the ballet school I was training at and told them I was quitting dance in order to marry the love of my life. At that point, I poured myself into my professional education. Tax law, economics, behavioral finance, financial planning, insurance, retirement and the list goes on of the classes and courses I took. I eventually bought the financial side of the firm I originally started working with as a part-time job. I bought the firm at the height of the market in 2007.
At that time I was a married father of three with a newborn. The financial crisis crushed our business for a while. My wife and I were living in a small apartment with our bed in the living room and the three kids in the bedroom. However, we pushed our way through and managed to come out of the crisis strong. The financial and tax side of the business continued to grow. My business partner and I merged our firms in 2012 in a co-buyout of another retiring financial and tax adviser.
What was a small business with a small base of 50 tax clients and maybe a dozen or so financial planning clients is now a company serving about 950 households in the San Diego and Temecula Valley areas with a staff of 6?
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Not a smooth road at all. When I quit dancing and started my education full time while also working for a financial firm part time my wife had two of our 4 kids. When I bought a financial practice at the height of the market our wife had just had our third kid. When the financial crisis hit in full swing we were living in a small apartment and sleeping in the living room so our kids could have the bedroom.
I had people coming to my office in the days after Lehman Brothers went bankrupt just to make sure my doors were still open and that I had not absconded with their money or gone into hiding. We have chipped away at it and stayed the course with a long-term vision in hand not always being certain it was going to work. At one point our closest friends told us they were concerned we were not going to make it. For 6 years we had one vehicle and I commuted to the office on my bike. We always lived as close as possible (6 miles or so) to work so that I could ride to the office. I took a second job at one point in order to pay the bills.
I worked a full-time seasonal job with Intuit from September to February. I would work from 7 am to 3:30 pm at Intuit and then I would head to my office and take client meetings and work on client items until late at night and then do it again. I did these for three “seasons” covering parts of 2008 – 2011. By mid-2011 the business had grown enough where I could make ends meet without requiring the second job. During all of this, my wife was a stay at home mom and we had a 4th child in the summer of 2011.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
We are a financial planning and tax planning company. We believe we are very good at providing our clients with the financial education necessary for them to make the best decisions possible. We have done our job right when someone walks away with a new perspective which will ultimately help them make a better decision or achieve a better outcome than they could have on their own. People cry at our office all of the time.
This is not a joke or an understatement. People cry in a meeting with us almost every day when we have a busy schedule. I know this may sound strange, but our job when done right, is so impacting and transformative that we can change the trajectory of a family for at least two to three generations. We help our clients achieve outcomes which assist them in finding their true joy, meaning and significance in life.
We specialize in working with businesses. That said we do our best to never turn anyone away who is willing to work in partnership with us. It is an important value to us that we never turn someone away if they are willing to work hard to change their station in life. I never want to tell someone that looks like I did 10 years ago I cannot help them and they need to go elsewhere.
We will take personal responsibility to help whoever walks through our doors, asks for our help and is willing to engage our services on terms which we co-create with our clients.
What were you like growing up?
Strange duck. I grew up in a split home going from the high desert of California with my mom to the farm country of Illinois with my dad. I played a lot of baseball. Played board games by myself. Axis and Allies were a favorite. In 10th grade, I realized I was comfortable with who I was and from then on did my own thing. I was the captain of our swim team my senior year in high school. I was also the lead in the school play my senior year. The play was One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and I was the character played by Jack Nicholson.
In one scene I had to run around on stage in just my boxers. I wore two pairs just to make sure there were no Janet Jackson moments. Although this was before Janet Jackson had her moment. I wore strange green and orange plaid clothes some days. Spiked my hair all over my head other days. But generally was just a nerdy normal kid. I was always in some sort of academic program like AP classes or International Baccalaureate. I had a job from the 9th through the 12th grade.
In 9th grade, I worked at a diner as a carhop. That is the person who runs out to your car to take your order and bring you food. This really sucked in the middle of the winter in Illinois. In 10th grade, I worked at a plant nursery. In the 11th and 12th grade I worked at a grocery store. I went into the grocery store every Friday for 10 weeks to get my job at the grocery store. I finally got the job because they were hiring for the pumpkin patch. Plenty more stories. I was just at my mom’s house for my brother’s wedding and we rehashed all sorts of stuff so I could go on forever as it is all at the top of my head.
Contact Info:
- Address: 4747 Morena Blvd. Suite 102
- Website: www.yourreason.com
- Phone: 858-483-7500
- Email: sean@yourreason.com
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/WellReasoned
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/reason-tax-group-san-diego
- Other: http://www.reasontax.com/
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