Meet Mike Garcia, AAMS®

From restaurants to retirement plans

I spent more than 20 years owning and operating small businesses. Restaurant concepts from California to Louisiana, hair salons, a catering company. Long days, payroll on Friday, and the kind of decisions that keep you awake at 2 a.m. working out what one missed assumption is going to cost.

In 2018 my wife Jessica and I moved our family from Colorado to Florida, and I moved into financial services. The reason was personal. I had watched business owners I respected get out-played by their own financial picture: taxes, succession, what to do with the proceeds of a sale, whether the family was actually protected if something happened. The industry had the tools. They were not reaching the people who needed them.

Since then I have worked as an independent financial advisor with Raymond James, New York Life, and OneAmerica Securities before joining BRIA Capital Group, an SEC-registered investment adviser here in Wesley Chapel.

Why business owners

I am not the advisor who has only ever worked from a bank branch. I have signed the leases, hired the people, made payroll, paid the taxes, and lived with the consequences of my own decisions. When I sit down with an owner, we are speaking the same language and I am not learning their world on their time.

That shows up in the work. A buy-sell agreement is not an abstract document when you have had a partner. Succession is not a slide when you have sold a business. If you run something, start with business planning.

Family

Jessica and I are raising five children. Most days you will find us somewhere around Wesley Chapel, at church, or on the Gulf coast. I play golf when I can, though the honest answer is that my favorite thing is watching my kids play sports.

Raising five gives you a particular view of money. Decisions about insurance, education funding, and inheritance are not theoretical in our house either.