Wealthy Santos, the previous writer for WealthManagement.com and its predecessor model Registered Rep. and Trusts & Estates, alongside many different business-to-business media properties, died late final month at age 76.
Santos served as writer by a number of iterations, beginning with The Registered Consultant journal in 1997. He stayed in that position till 2015. He oversaw the successive rebrands to Registered Rep., REP. and, later, the launch of this web site.
“We regularly say we’ll by no means see a writer like Wealthy once more,” stated David Armstrong, govt director, content material and person engagement at WealthManagement.com. “He was the final of a kind—had the staff’s again, it doesn’t matter what. He was the writer that each editor desires of getting. I’m very completely satisfied I received an opportunity to work for him.”
“Wealthy was one among a sort,” added Warren Bimblick, former group senior vp. “He had aptitude and knowledge. He was enjoyable and fearless. And he was an amazing ‘pardner.’”
With out Santos, there can be no WealthManagement.com in any respect. About 20 years in the past, a number of rounds deep into martinis, Santos and Bimblick remarked on how companies have been more and more bandying concerning the time period “wealth administration” because the trade moved away from transactional brokerage providers to extra holistic and fee-based wealth planning.
“We Googled ‘wealthmanagement.com’ to find that nobody had registered it,” Bimblick stated. “The subsequent morning, we purchased and registered the URL for $12. The remainder is historical past. Miss you, Wealthy.”
Santos made an impression on anybody who met him, labored with him or handled him as a shopper or vendor. His distinctive booming voice, impeccably tailor-made top-tier wardrobe, penchant for vodka martinis (stirred, not shaken) and tales of his former exploits as an beginner polo participant made him a focal point in any setting.
The tales of his acumen as a salesman are legion.
In a single episode recalled by Matt Butcher, a former gross sales supervisor at WealthManagement.com, a member of his gross sales staff was having bother sustaining contact with a giant shopper. Santos’ resolution: He instructed the journal’s manufacturing division to publish the shopper’s advert the other way up.
The shopper, after all, referred to as Santos to complain. He apologized profusely for the “mistake” and provided a “make good” that went above and past. That led to a much bigger dialogue concerning the shopper’s targets and, earlier than lengthy, an elevated advert spend with the model. “That was Wealthy,” Butcher stated. “An out-of-the-box thinker. A danger taker. A intelligent and artistic man. A pacesetter.”
Throughout his tenure—a pivotal period in enterprise journalism as the sphere advanced from the reign of print magazines to immediately’s world of multi-platform digital publishing—Santos guided the model to file circulation and promoting development in its print days after which helped usher the profitable transition to digital publishing. Alongside the best way, by its iterations, the model garnered quite a few awards. Santos mentored dozens of gross sales reps and different workers and supported the numerous journalists who labored with him.
Santos impacted numerous people throughout the monetary providers and enterprise info industries in methods each giant and small.
When he retired as day-to-day writer in 2015, Santos wrote that the one fixed in his profession had been “change,” however added, “What hasn’t modified is the retail investing public’s want to your funding and wealth administration planning and recommendation. I’ve loved interacting with a lot of you in all three channels of the enterprise. That’s what I’ll miss essentially the most.”
After retiring because the writer of WealthManagement.com, Santos was based mostly in Chicago and served as managing director at Ten Aim LLC.
Santos graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Enterprise, Administration, Advertising and marketing and Associated Help Providers from Murray State College.
At his household’s request, donations can made to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society in his honor.