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Sitting under a photo of a Simpsons boiler room stockbroker, Douglas Boneparths pinned Tweet reads. When I was young I was a terrible investor. But after decades of hard work, I am no longer young. Pop culture hints and investment jokes are common on Twitter, however, they don’t usually come from financial advisers who run their own RIAs.
Douglas Bonparth’s Twitter
Forbes
Boneparth has jumped head first into the wild world of Fintwit, a financial Twitter anagram, where everything from stocks memes, cryptocurrencies and Elon Musk are some of the most common talking points. Alongside popular accounts such as Ramp Capital, Litquidity and Wu-Tang Financial, Boneparth fits in with tongue-in-cheek critiques in financial markets but stands out for its profile, name, credentials, and type of headshot more common to the most professional. LinkedIn limits a Twitter account full of memes.
The 36-year-old Boca Raton native is a certified second-generation financial planner and is currently president of his namesake New York-based company, Bone Fide Wealth. Bonparth founded the company four years ago and currently manages nearly $ 80 million in client assets. His career began as a freshman in college at just 19, working with his father, Ameriprise’s financial advisor Andrew Boneparth. While that early start was a differentiator, his notoriety only came when the pandemic hit in 2020. With two young children, no daycare and no time for therapy, he found refuge on Twitter.
Douglas Boneparth, President, Bone Fide Wealth
Bone Fide Wealth
Things were getting pretty crazy with the February-March pullout of last year, and usually when things go really bad or really good is when the best humor comes out, he says. I did it more for myself, it was a cathartic outlet, but it started to resonate.
In just over a year, as the Covid-19 quarantines left more and more people in front of the screens, Boneparth has grown from 39,000 followers to over 117,000 followers.
Bonparth credits his ability to develop this huge audience to be in an independent business, and the freedom that results from the constraints of compliance and public relations often, in his branded franchise, built around the biggest idiot in the business. Many of his colleagues are jumping through the hoops to release a public statement, let alone a meme.
Even before he rose to fame on Twitter, he stood out in wealth management because of his age. The demographics of the wealth management profession are no secret, your average advisor is 60 and over, he says.
In addition to advanced age, Boneparth claims that the average advisor does very average things when it comes to attracting new business. As an older millennial, Boneparth was one of the early adopters of social media. While studying public relations at the University of Florida, the school was among the first campuses with Facebook.
It didn’t take long to realize that if you don’t leverage social media, you will be at a disadvantage, he adds. You compare it to the aging of the profession and realize that this is a differentiator that helps target a certain demographic.
In addition to making people laugh, Boneparth says putting yourself forward conveys an authenticity that resonates with its younger clientele. While other well-known financial Twitter accounts are created under pseudonyms or fake company names, such as John W. Rich, Dr. Parik Patel and Greg, Boneparth is itself.
Bonparth saw social media as a useful tool, but it took years of testing and content creation to figure out how best to harness it. He started with everything from infographics to empowerment to cheese. Simultaneously, he tried to gain exposure in mainstream media, ending up at the CNBC Financial Advisor Council and being honored in the Forbes / SHOOK Advisor Rankings in 2018 and 2019.
I figured out how to develop an audience by making people laugh and I integrate humor into my daily life with my clients, he says. Many of the topics we talk about when we do financial planning, such as death and disability, are not happy topics. Keeping people’s attention can be difficult, but humor goes a long way.
Not all of his jokes landed. At the height of the Covid-19 crisis, Bonparth jumped into the financial Twitter discussion of how people were spending their stimulus checks, making a joke about the high returns that could have been achieved if someone had chosen to invest this money in Tesla. While emotions were running high, his supporters backed down, pointing out that these checks were not for volatile investments, but for food and basic necessities.
His new social media fame even surprised his adviser dad. A few weeks ago he got a call from his father after another advisor told Bonparth senior, I know your son, his reputation precedes him.
Bonparth says that while he does it for fun, he ultimately hopes it will help the industry and those in it take themselves a little less seriously. Unexpectedly, this was also helpful for its volume of business.
To my surprise, I am getting customers out of it, says Boneparth. More often than not, at the end of a prospect meeting, the very last thing the prospect will say is, by the way, I love your Twitter feed.
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