Ryan Wheless, CEO & Founder, Allied Wealth
In an interview with Invest:, Ryan Wheless, CEO and founder of Allied Wealth, discussed navigating market volatility, Houston’s economic evolution, and the firm’s client-focused growth strategy. “The Houston market is wildly underserved, and there is a tremendous opportunity for a good wealth management firm in this space,” Wheless said.
What significant changes over the past 18 months have impacted your operations in Houston?
It has been an incredible year of growth, and a substantial part of that growth has resulted from adapting quickly to a rapidly changing landscape. We have witnessed considerable market volatility, especially in February of this year. We refer to that period as the “tariff tantrum,” when the market was down approximately 23% early on. We also navigated elevated interest rates, new tax policies, and a new administration in the White House. Many things were happening all at once, and for numerous families here in Houston and The Woodlands in the Greater Houston area, that created significant uncertainty. At Allied Wealth, our response was to double down on proactive planning, which is our specialty. We continued to refine our Summit System, which is our proprietary system used to help individuals develop a financial plan that brings them to and through retirement. We further refined our process to stress test every client plan against multiple market and tax scenarios. This ensures that, with increased market volatility and ongoing legislative changes, our clients’ plans will hold up under new tax laws. That agility, the ability to adapt their plans quickly to a rapidly changing environment, has helped our clients maintain confidence. It has fueled our growth and is profoundly important to us. As more families seek a nimble and forward-thinking firm, we intend to remain at the forefront.
What makes Houston an ideal location for your work, and how does it differ from other markets within the industry?
Houston is an incredibly diverse city of industry. For years, we have described Houston as the Hollywood of oil, and that identity remains. The oil market can be resilient in many ways, but it is also subject to economic forces and trends. Historically, as goes oil, so goes the Houston economy. That is not so much the case anymore because we have become technical. There are many technical businesses here in Houston, a great deal of healthcare, and a number of financial businesses. We have developed a more diverse economy. We are one of the largest cities in America, but many professionals are underserved in the discipline we provide.
How are you converting newcomers to Greater Houston into future clients?
We maintain a prominent presence in the markets we need to serve through a radio show, a television show, a prolific YouTube channel, and a podcast. In addition to that, we conduct outreach programs where we teach investing, retirement, estate planning, tax planning, and financial planning classes at local community colleges, universities, high schools, and community centers. This allows us to connect with people on a one-on-one basis and provide them with the education to empower them to make excellent financial decisions when it comes to being smart with their money.
What specific wealth industry trends or dynamics should people be aware of?
The wealth management industry as a whole is undergoing many changes. We are seeing a major shift from accumulation-based thinking to outcome-based planning. Individuals are no longer solely asking how large they can grow their portfolio. There is more to it than that. They are asking how to turn what they have built into a sustainable income stream that allows them to live the life they have imagined, the one they have worked for all these years. Especially here in Houston, where we have many executives and business owners as clients, they want strategies that blend tax efficiency, reliable cash flow, and risk management. It is less about chasing returns these days than it was in the past and more about designing their ideal lifestyle and then reverse engineering the financial plan to support that. I will also note that the rising and lowering tides in various industries create a need to serve people experiencing layoffs. When people go through layoffs, they lose a job, their 401(k) plans become portable, and their pensions become portable in many cases. They need help navigating that space. We help people on the successful side of the spectrum and those going through transitions, such as layoffs. The Houston market is wildly underserved, and there is a tremendous opportunity for a good wealth management firm in this space.
From your vantage point, are there any specific solutions or tailored products that have had the highest demand among your clients?
There are a few areas that stand out. One of those areas is tax strategy, which is huge. Taxes will likely be an individual’s largest expense in retirement, potentially even more than healthcare costs. Income planning is also huge. It involves taking retirement assets and cash assets and using them to replace a paycheck. That is what must be done to finance an ideal lifestyle in retirement. We also utilize many risk management investment designs. Another important caveat is that the private equity, private credit, and private real estate space is a vastly growing sector in wealth management. What is really interesting is that previously, there were 7,000 publicly traded companies, and now there are 35,000 publicly traded companies. The average retail investor only has access to those 35,000 companies. Consider OpenAI, a privately held company worth billions upon billions of dollars. The average person cannot invest in a company like that, yet they should be able to. The plumbing for more average retail investors is now available, making these options accessible in private equity, private credit, and private real estate funds. We are seeing a massive shift into the alternative investment space in wealth management in Houston, and we are implementing that with our clients tremendously. Private credit has been a great way to generate outsized yields for income generation. Private equity has been a great way to generate outsized returns while lowering risk dynamics and volatility in a client portfolio. That is a big space. Additionally, with taxes likely to rise in the coming years, we are helping many families execute proactive tax planning strategies. These include estate planning strategies, Roth conversion strategies, and building tax-diversified income plans. We are also designing strategies that are more resilient to market volatility, which aligns with the private equity and private credit strategies. When in retirement, the order of returns matters more than the average market return, and we call it sequence of returns risk. The solutions we provide resonate with families who want peace of mind, especially in a market as fast-paced as Houston’s and the broader economy.
What is your outlook for the next two to three years, and what are your top two or three priorities for the firm?
Looking ahead, we are incredibly optimistic about the future. Houston is a wildly underserved market, and we are here to serve it in a big way. Our focus is on expanding our footprint throughout Greater Houston. We already have a solid footprint, but we are continuing to expand that footprint. We stay committed to the Woodlands because it is where we are from. It is where we live, where we dwell, where we work, and where we play. We want to serve more families who are approaching retirement and looking for that next-level guidance, not just a financial plan, but a life plan. What are you going to do in retirement? Who are you with? Where are you? Are you retiring to something? We are strong believers that you do not retire to a La-Z-Boy chair. Over the next few years, we will continue to scale our Summit System and grow our team of world-class advisers and support staff. We will invest in technology that keeps up with our client experience, that grows it to continue to be second to none. Our vision is simple: to help people stop worrying about money and start living the life they work so hard to build. That is what redefining retirement is all about.
