If you scrolled past our social media last month, you probably assumed we were on vacation. Turquoise water, warm sunsets, Cameron turning 40 surrounded by some of our closest friends, it looked exactly like what it wasn't: a break from work life.
Here's the truth: we worked full-time that month in Puerto Vallarta. We took client calls, built relationships, and grew our business from a rented casa with the ocean in the background. We weren't disconnecting from our work; we were living proof that work doesn't have to be something you need to escape from. Arriving at that realization took the better part of a decade, two very different career paths, and one terrifying leap of faith exactly one year ago.
We followed the script perfectly. Degrees earned, ladders climbed, titles collected. We did what ambitious people are supposed to do: we said yes to the hard assignments, we stayed late, and we outperformed. For a long time, forward momentum felt like enough of a reward on its own.
Cameron built a career at some of the most recognized names in finance: Goldman Sachs, Fidelity, Northern Trust, eventually landing the VP title that looked impressive on paper but felt hollow in practice. The prestige was real. So was the cost. His days were so consuming that he barely had time to step away from his desk, and by evening, there was nothing left; not for himself, not for his marriage, not for anything outside of preparing to do it all over again tomorrow. Weekends weren't rest; they were recovery time and Monday prep wrapped into one anxious blur. He was hyper-focused on adding to corporate shareholder value while quietly depleting his own.
Kody's version was a different kind of disillusionment. He spent 14 years as one of the first employees at two early-stage startups, and for a long time, that felt electric. Being on the ground floor of something, building it from almost nothing, carrying the energy of people who genuinely believed they were creating something meaningful; there's a particular kind of drive that the environment produces, and Kody had it in full. Earning a Senior Director title and leading cross-functional teams to deliver software and AI products. But over time, the cracks became impossible to ignore. The equity he'd been promised slowly revealed itself as a mirage. Early startup employees pour themselves into building something extraordinary, but when serious VC money enters the picture, it becomes painfully clear: the capital investment will always be protected before the people. After 14 years of outsized effort and genuine impact, the return simply wasn't there.
We both arrived at the same place from different directions: exhausted, running on empty, and quietly asking ourselves whether this was actually the life we wanted. The titles were real. The paychecks were large. But so was the chronic stress, the creeping resentment, and the growing sense that we were spending our best years building someone else's vision of success.
We looked at each other and finally said it out loud: this isn't what success looks like. This isn't happiness.
The opportunity to join Alpha Wealth Funds arrived right at that inflection point, and it came with its own set of complications that we didn't try to minimize.
On paper, the risks were obvious. Leaving stable, well-compensated careers meant giving up guaranteed salaries and full corporate benefits. It meant a real moment of personal grief, mourning the titles we'd worked years to earn, saying goodbye to the teams we'd poured ourselves into leading, stepping away from projects that had genuinely mattered to us. That kind of loss is worth naming honestly, because people who've never walked away from something they built don't always understand that leaving can feel like grief even when it's the right decision.
Beyond the professional risks, this move restructured our lives in ways that went much deeper. This wasn't just a new job; it was going into business with Cameron's brother Chase, who founded Alpha Wealth Funds, and working alongside his sister Jenny. It meant that the relationships we valued most personally would now also be our working relationships.
Then there was the most significant layer of all: choosing to work side by side with each other, every single day, as husbands. That's not a decision you make lightly, and we didn't. This commitment carried an additional layer of complexity: as gay men working together, every interaction with every client, prospect, business connection, and peers required us to come out and be fully open. Because we were doing this together, it was impossible to 'cover' this part of our lives. The boundaries between work and home don't just blur when you work together; they disappear. Every conversation at the dinner table has the potential to become a debrief. Every difficult day at work follows you home (metaphorically, of course, as we work from home). Disagreements that might stay professional between colleagues become something more personal between spouses. You have to be honest with each other in ways that go beyond what most business partnerships require, and you have to be intentional about protecting your relationship even when the work gets hard.
Layered on top of that, Cameron's siblings were now our colleagues. If you've ever tried to navigate a family dynamic inside a professional setting, you know it's a different kind of challenge; the history runs deeper, the stakes feel higher, and the conversations that need to happen don't always have a clean HR framework to lean on.
We didn't romanticize any of it going in. We understood what we were choosing, and we chose it anyway, because the alternative was continuing down a path that was slowly taking more than it was giving.
What we couldn't fully anticipate was how much we would love it.
A year in, the lifestyle flexibility is real, and we won't pretend otherwise. Spending a month working from Mexico is a privilege we don't take for granted. But if we're being honest about what actually changed, it isn't the location freedom. It's the work itself.
We don't just manage investment portfolios, plan complex tax strategies, or build retirement plans (though we do all those things). The part of this role that gets us out of bed every morning is something harder to put in a brochure: helping people fundamentally transform their relationship with money. A relationship that, for most people, is far more complicated and emotionally loaded than they ever let on.
Money carries weight that most of us were never taught to talk about. There's shame around not having enough of it, anxiety about not understanding it, and a kind of paralysis that sets in when the gap between where you are and where you want to be feels too wide to cross. We meet people at all of those places, and what we've found is that the most valuable thing we can offer isn't always a specific investment strategy; it's the experience of being genuinely understood and not judged, and the confidence that comes from finally having people to lean on in your own unique financial journey.
Rather than relying solely on the traditional passive approach, such as buying and holding stocks and ETFs, we work with our clients on active, income-generating strategies that may complement their broader financial plans, not just over decades, but right now. We coach people through the big decisions and the small ones. We sit with them in the messy middle of their financial lives, not just at the milestone moments.
The results we've been lucky enough to witness over this first year have reinforced everything we hoped this work could be. We've watched close friends start from very little and build significant wealth. We've helped clients work towards retirement goals that felt out of reach. We've sat across from people with tears in their eyes, not because something was wrong, but because they'd just realized that the life they wanted was actually within reach, and that they didn't have to figure out how to get there alone.
That's not something either of us ever experienced in the corporate world. Not once.
Cameron turned 40 in Puerto Vallarta, surrounded by people he loves, doing work that matters to him, in a life that finally feels like his own. That sentence would have been unimaginable two years ago. It still catches us off guard at times.
We don't share this story to boast or to suggest that what worked for us is the right path for everyone. We share it because we spent years quietly assuming that the discomfort we felt was simply the cost of ambition. That burning out slowly, feeling unfulfilled, sacrificing everything for a title and a paycheck, was just what serious people did. Nobody told us there was another way. Nobody in our circle was talking about it.
If you're reading this and something in it sounds familiar, if you're staring at your finances with a knot in your stomach, or grinding through days that are taking more than they're giving, or simply wondering whether your money could be working harder than it is, we want you to know that anxiety doesn't have to be tackled alone. We are here.
Our door is always open. No sales pitch, no pressure. Just an honest conversation about where you are, where you want to go, and what building a different kind of financial life might actually look like.
This is just the beginning for us.
This article reflects the personal experiences and opinions of the authors. It is provided for informational purposes only and should not be construed as investment, legal, or tax advice. Investing involves risk, including possible loss of principal.
