The lessons came early and often—lessons about respect and trust, hard work and education; lessons about treating a client like family, or perhaps even better; and lessons emphasizing that, oftentimes, the most effective approach to telling a client how they should prepare for their financial future is to listen to them in the present.
The lessons Fred Matarazzo imparted to his 10-year-old son, Al Jr., between the youngster serving as a filing clerk and running for coffee for the employees of his father’s company, took place decades ago. But those lessons are as applicable today as they were back then.
“Dad taught me many things,” Matarazzo Jr., president of Main Line Financial Advisors, says of his father, the company’s founder, who died in 2012. “Perhaps the most important was to always put people’s interests before my own. Our business is not always about finance; 80 percent of the time it’s about people’s lives. We’re dealing with people as a bereavement counselor, an advice giver and everything in between. We advise on everything, because that’s what life’s about.
“Yes, finances are part of it,” he continues. “But it’s about relationships and being there for people in the good, the bad and the ugly.”
Since joining his father’s firm in 1990, Matarazzo Jr. has continued Main Line Financial Advisors’ personalized philosophy and expanded the company’s breadth of services. He was instrumental in developing corporate benefits plans for small businesses that worked in concert with other financial services. From a simple accounting practice has been created a singular resource for financial services centered on Old World values.
With offices in Bala Cynwyd, Malvern, Radnor and Pottstown, Main Line Financial Advisors provides an array of financial services for individuals, families and businesses. In particular, the firm specializes in providing consulting services to business owners regarding the creation and maintenance of customized 401(k) retirement options for their employees. Main Line Financial Advisors can simplify the process for business owners, reduce fiduciary liability and, in most cases, significantly reduce the plan expenses for employees and their employer. In addition to providing employees with customized retirement planning education, Main Line Financial Advisors takes it a step further by actually managing the employees 401(k) plan balance and helping them achieve their most important goals, including financial independence to last them a lifetime.
Main Line Financial Advisors is focused on retirement-plan consulting with firms that have retirement plans between $5 million and $50 million. As for Matarazzo Jr., he particularly enjoys working with other successful business owners and entrepreneurs who share his vision for the future and drive to excel.
“We function as an outside third party and provide an independent review of a plan and help satisfy some of the disclosure reporting that companies have to do,” Matarazzo Jr. says. “We’re the consultant that others hire to come in and do analysis, benchmark the plan, against their peer group, against performance, compensation levels, and who gets paid what, especially where there is a broker involved.
“Big insurance firms and brokerage firms don’t want you to know what they’re earning,” he continues. “We come in, strip apart the [retirement] plan components and see what participants are paying, show what the alternatives are, and unbundle all the fees so they become transparent. And if an employee wants to engage us in personal planning and tax prep that would go outside the scope of our agreement with their company, they would engage us directly, one on one.”
What Main Line Financial Advisors provides to those employees of those firms is more than 200 years of combined educational experience by seasoned wealth advisors. They educate employees on varied topics, not just the investments inside their plan.
In addition to retirement-plan consulting, Main Line Financial Advisors offers a holistic approach to wealth management. Personal financial services such as estate planning, cash flow planning, investment management are just a few of the in-house specialties.
In Good Spirits
In addition to heading Main Line Financial Advisors, Matarazzo Jr. is a co-founder of Manatawny Still Works, a distillery in Pottstown. His involvement in the distillery was established less than two years ago, when another entrepreneur, John Giannopoulos, co-founder of Pottstown-based Sly Fox Brewing Co., sought out Matarazzo Jr. for financial advice.
“John came to the office to talk about retirement-plan consulting and accounting,” says Matarazzo Jr. “He said he wanted to start a distillery, and I said so did I. It was so matter-of-fact, and we both knew it would work. Four or five of us put up the money, bought the equipment from Italy, and now we’re in the distilling business.”
The battle in the marketplace is fierce, with nearly 1,000 craft distilleries in America. Even so, since opening its doors in April 2014, Manatawny Still Works’ lineup of vodka, gin and aged whiskey has won awards at national and international competitions, according to Randy McKinley, vice president of sales and marketing for Manatawny Still Works.
Today, Manatawny Still Works is shipping to Pennsylvania wine and spirits stores, and will be part of the state’s spirits program that permits local craft distilleries in its locations. The distillery’s spirits are also being sold in approximately 150 clubs and bars in Harrisburg, Scranton and Philadelphia, as well as New Jersey, Delaware and Washington, D.C.
“The business is a little above what we planned it to be at this point,” McKinley says. “Our latest batch of small-batch whiskey just won a best-in-class silver medal at Whiskeys of the World competition in Texas.”
The success of Manatawny Still Works is largely due to a group of business owners who had the same vision and took steps to do something together.
“Now we have a few more partners,” says Matarazzo Jr. “And literally a year and half after we opened for business, we’re winning awards.”
Main Line Financial Advisors
800-266-6532 | www.yourfutureisworthit.com
Four Area Locations
Two Bala Plaza, Suite 300
Bala Cynwyd, PA 19004
101 Lindenwood Drive, Suite 225
Malvern, PA 19355
211 E. High Street
Pottstown, PA 19464
150 N. Radnor Chester Road, Suite F-200
Radnor, PA 19087
Manatawny Still Works
320 Circle of Progress Drive, Suite 104
Pottstown, PA 19464
484-624-8271
www.manatawnystillworks.com
Photograph by Jody Robinson
