Corrections or additions?
This article by Barbara Fox was prepared for the February 12, 2003 edition of U.S. 1 Newspaper. All rights reserved.
On the Move
While most professionals have a work life spanning four
or more decades, many of Scott Carpenter’s clients pull in a salary
for an average of just four years. Carpenter, through his company,
Pro:act Financial Services, is a financial advisor to pop stars and
pro athletes.
Declining to name names, he says, “I have a Knick. I have a Yankee.
I have some Giants coming onboard.” But what he would really like
is a Jet. “That’s my team,” he says, dismissing the Jets’
season-ending trouncing by the Raiders with a fair-minded shrug. “They
played a better game; they deserved to win,” he says of the Oakland
team.
A New Jersey native who grew up in Edison, just north of the state’s
invisible New York/Philadelphia sports team divide, Carpenter’s loyalties
lie with the New York teams, but his clients come from around the
country. His “biggest success” in 2002 was signing the Giving
Back Fund, a Boston-based non-profit that encourages philanthropy
within the entertainment and sports industries.
Founded just last year Pro:act recently made a big move. It traded
its start-up space, leased from PrincetonResources.com at 245 Nassau
Street, to what Carpenter characterizes as “triple the space.”
The new Pennington office appeals to him not only because it is larger,
but also because it is closer to his home in Hopewell, where he lives
with his wife, Felice, and their two children, a five-year-old son
and a six-year-old daughter.
Halfway to his goal of signing on 50 clients, Carpenter, age 38, says
“I don’t want to be all things to all people. I don’t want to
be a millionaire from this. I want to be home for dinner with my family.”
He and Felice met when they were eight-years-old. “I played Little
League with her brother,” says Carpenter. “She was best friends
with my twin sister.” By the time he was in junior high school,
Carpenter had moved with his family to Plano, Texas. When he was 18,
and a student at Texas Christian University, Felice went south for
a visit with his sister. “We had always had crushes on each other,”
he says in an interview not long before Valentine’s Day. When they
met again in Texas, “the sparks just flew,” he recalls.
A business major, Carpenter worked in the medical industry
in Texas for a short time after graduating from college, but soon
moved to New Jersey, where he started on an MBA at Rutgers and went
to work for Merrill Lynch’s private client group. From there he went
to PaineWebber, and along the way earned a certificate in financial
planning from Fairleigh Dickinson. He was on the verge of starting
an entertainment and sports division there when the company merged
into USB Warburg.
At that point, disillusioned with the culture of large investment
houses, or “wire houses,” as he calls them, Carpenter went
out on his own. During his years at PaineWebber and Merrill Lynch,
his typical workday stretched from 7:30 a.m. to 10 p.m., and, he says,
the house took 60 percent of his fees, leaving him, and financial
advisors like him, on a constant hunt for more clients so that they
could create enough volume to make a good amount of money. He says
that client service suffered because of the time that had to be devoted
to rainmaking.
Now he is working with the clients he most wants to work with, and
can afford to take on fewer of them.
His clients are different from your garden variety multi-millionaires.
“They have to manage so many emotions and responsibilities,”
he says. “So much is thrown at them at such a young age.”
He begins with a thorough interview during which he goes over the
entirety of each young athlete or rock star’s financial life —
wills, disability, life insurance, investments, debts, contracts.
“I do a whole big due diligence,” he says. “I help them
clean up credit, obtain credit, buy homes, negotiate contracts. I
see guys cut, and go through that with them.” The investments
he recommends, for the most part, are conservative. “The money
has to last a lifetime, if they don’t want to work after they finish,”
he says. A pro athlete may work for four, or six years, maybe for
10 or more if he is exceptional, and exceptionally lucky. A pop star
typically has a short run, too, although some entertainers — he
points to soap stars as an example — may pull down a paycheck
for as long as the average postal worker.
In every case, his clients’ career paths are precarious. An injury
can end a linebacker’s earning years, and a plot twist can sent a
soap star to an early career grave. Mindful of the responsibility
that watching over actors’ and athletes’ assets brings, Carpenter
says that the spate of recent corporate scandals gives young stars
a greater level of comfort with his unaffiliated start-up like his
than they have with the big wire houses.
Driving home from a meeting with an agent in Virginia, a meeting which,
he says, netted him five new clients, Carpenter proclaims that he
loves his work. Unlike the Jets, who were undone by a bigger, higher-profile
team, Carpenter and his start-up appear to be thriving in the shadows
of the giants in the financial advice business.
— Kathleen McGinn Spring
Pro:act Financial Services, 18 North Main Street,Pennington 08534. Scott R. Carpenter. 609-730-1100; fax, 609-730-1425.E-mail: scott@proactcapital.comHome page: www.proactcapital.comTop Of PageNew in TownIntrepid Capital Management, 22231 Heather Drive,West Windsor 08550. Joseph Rumley, regional marketing director. 609-936-1306;fax, 609-936-1307. Home page: www.intrepidcapital.netJoseph Rumley has opened a regional office for a portfolio managementfirm and now does selling and marketing from New Jersey to Maine.The company was founded by a father and son team, Mark and ForrestTravis, and has $500 million under management. It manages on botha wholesale and retail basis for pension plans and high net worthindividuals. Three of its products were recently added to the SelectAdvisor Program of A.G. Edwards & Sons Inc. Located in Jacksonville,Intrepid Capital Management recently merged with Investment CounselCompany of Orlando.”Even in a tough market, where investors are panicking, our smallcap accounts posted an extraordinary performance of 9.9 percent forthe year,” says Rumley. He compares this to the Russell 2000 index,which shows comparable accounts being down 20.48 percent for the year.”We are in the top one percent of investment managers for smallcap accounts. Our style is conservative and value based.” He sayshis firm manages a total of 10 products, and that the equity selectionprocess is proprietary.Rumley had spent three years in Eastern Europe doing humanitarianwork, such as writing proposals for orphanages and soup kitchens.He worked with Lawrenceville-based Humanitarian Organization for EasternEurope to arrange for aid for former Soviet-bloc nations. Until 2000Rumley was working on a volunteer basis for that organization. “Ourgoal was not to raise money from individuals but to engage in businessendeavors that would raise money.” For instance, he worked onIT solutions for the Y2k problem and on projects developed by scientistsin the former Soviet Union. “Our goal is to donate 20 percentof the profits to the humanitarian efforts.”The son of an international marketing consultant, Rumley went to theUniversity of Central Florida, Class of 1996, and has lived in Australia,Guatemala, Israel, and Poland, where he met his wife. “If yougo abroad and get perspective from all parts of the world, that canhelp you clarify what you do with the rest of your life,” saysRumley, who used his for-profit jobs to fund his volunteer work inPoland. “I am still actively involved in whatever I can do tocontribute to the humanitarian effort.”Associated Builders and Contractors, 2525 Route130, Building C, Suite C-1, Cranbury 08512. Rick Miller, executivedirector. 609-860-5870; fax, 609-860-5873. Home page: www.abc.orgThe New Jersey chapter of Associated Builders and Contractors, a tradeassociation made up of non-residential builders, has opened a newoffice in Cranbury. This move is a consolidation for the trade group.”We had two offices, one southern, one northern,” says RickMiller, executive director of the organization. A resident of Willingboro,he had been working from an office in Moorestown. The other officehad been in Fairfield. The consolidation was made with an eye to givingthe group a unified voice.Miller, a graduate of Temple University (Class of 1962), has beenwith Associated Builders and Contractors for 30 years. A physicaleducation major and football quarterback in college, he received trainingin association management, at least in part, in the Marines, wherehe was a promotion manager.Associated Builders and Contractors has 280 member companies in NewJersey, and, says Miller, is aiming to enroll 400. The biggest issuefor the organization is the Project Labor Agreement. Passed into lawlast summer, it requires all New Jersey school building projects toemploy only union labor. Miller says this mandate drastically reducesthe number of firms willing to bid on school construction projects,while, at the same time, significantly raising the construction costs,and as a result, property taxes. The organization plans to fight thelegislation in the courts. he says, “we’re looking for a testcase.”Jacoby Donner PC, 441 East State Street, Trenton08608. Michael S. Simon, resident counsel. 609-278-2500; fax, 609-695-5911.Home page: www.jacobydonner.comMichael S. Simon has opened a Trenton office of the construction lawfirm based in Philadelphia, Jacoby Donner PC. Simon currently servesas the co-chairman of the construction and public contracts sectionof the New Jersey State Bar Association. He is a member of the NewJersey, New York, and Federal bars, focusing on construction law andalternative dispute resolution procedures.Simon grew up in Maplewood, where his family had a novelties manufacturingbusiness, and he has two grown children and two school-age children,adopted from Paraguay and Guatemala. He majored in building sciencesat Rensselaer Polytechnic, Class of 1963, and University of MarylandSchool of Law. “A substantial part of my practice is in arbitrationand mediation, either representing clients or serving as an arbitratoror mediator,” says Simon.Bruce Demeter, Simon’s former partner at Simon & Demeter, is now anassociate in risk control division for engineering and constructionof XL Insurance in Pennsylvania.Top Of PageContracts AwardedPrinceton Plasma Physics Laboratory, PrincetonUniversity, James Forrestal Campus, Box 451, Princeton 08543-0451.Robert J. Goldston, director. 609-243-2000; fax, 609-243-2751. Homepage: www.pppl.govPrinceton Plasma Physics Laboratory may have a role in the constructionand operation of an International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor(ITERP), a magnetic fusion project. The United States had withdrawnfrom this project in 1998 but will now rejoin scientists in Canada,Japan, China, the European Union and the Russian Federation. PPPLmight build control systems, diagnostics, and/or super-conductingmagnets.Trenton Printing, 1150 Southard Street, Trenton08638. David M. Nugent, manager. 609-695-6485; fax, 609-695-8897.Home page: www.trentonprinting.comThe printing company received a $287,400 direct loan from the EDAto buy plate-making equipment. The six-year loan was made at an initialinterest rate of three percent, to be adjusted quarterly. The companylost 90 percent of its equipment when a transformer blew up. “Thatforces us to rethink our business strategy and move ahead quickly,”says David Nugent. The loan enables Trenton Printing to stay in NewJersey. Now it has digital equipment that eliminates the need forfilm and the use of chemicals. Established in 1929 and purchased in1999, Trenton Printing is a full-service commercial printer and isa union shop.Next StoryCorrections or additions?This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
