Stephen P. Rhodes has been a financial advisor for nine years, but he didn’t start off as one.
After graduating from Washington University, he took a detour from his triple major in finance, management and human resources.
“After college, I had my career tracked,” said Rhodes, managing partner and founder of Strategic Partners Wealth Management in Creve Coeur. “I wanted to do consulting work, but then I realized that I never got excited about a helping a $2-billion company become a $3-billion company. I wanted to use my financial expertise to help people.”
A friend in the Maplewood Richmond Heights School District talked him into trying substitute teaching. He entered the classroom on a Monday, and by Tuesday he was in love with students and the classroom environment, he said.
The district offered him a teaching position, but on the condition that he go back and get his teacher’s certification. Rhodes decided to earn a Masters in education from Wash U while he was at it. For five years, he taught math in the district’s alternative program, where 95 percent of the student population was African-American and 85 percent male.
Most of the young men viewed money just as he had growing up in poverty – money should be enjoyed now.
“Their view didn’t surprise me at all,” he said. “What helped the young men is what also helped the retirees and the professional athletes. The only way you are going to sacrifice is if what you see in the future is worth going without the pleasure of today.”
When Rhodes first started his own business, Strategic Partners, in 2007, his clients were mostly retirees who had been teachers like himself.
“That was a logical fit,” he said. “Then I started looking at things I had in common with others.”
As a student at Webster Groves High School, he was a football, track and basketball player. Recently in 2007, Rhodes became friends with a professional athlete, who started talking to him about all the pressures and requests for money coming at him. As a friend, not a client, Rhodes told him to pass out his business cards to the people who approached him for money.
“Most of the athletes are normal people who are now thrust in the spotlight,” he said. “The last thing they want to do is to say ‘no’ to people who have helped them along the way.”
That interaction opened up a new path for his business. He now helps professional athletes by serving as their “financial quarterback” reviewing possible business opportunities and money requests. He designs a strategy to help them be financially successful when their playing days are over. Rhodes has a book coming out soon that’s geared towards professional athletes called, Winning the Wealth Game: How to do what most athletes won’t so you can live like most athletes can’t.
About 78 percent of NFL players are broke 24 months after retiring, he said. And 60 percent of NBA players are in the same boat after five years of retiring.
“It overwhelms me that in a sport all about winning, financial winning is not the norm,” he said. “This is a book that unpacks how they go broke and why they go broke and what they can do to make sure they are not part of that statistic.”
Overall, his passion is teaching. Whether it is a professional athlete, an employee or retiree, he enjoys teaching people about how to plan for their future. It stems from his childhood, he said.
Rhodes was born and raised in Webster Groves with his four siblings. His parents divorced, and his mother worked a number of different jobs, he said.
“I wanted to be able to provide a service that I wish someone could have provided to my mom when she needed it most,” he said.
This goal was the driving force pushing him to transition into his own business after working for another firm, Ameritime, for four years.
“I wanted to live out our mission, which is helping our clients to simplify financial matters so they can focus on what really matters,” he said.
Speaking from experience, Rhodes said one of the toughest things to learn among those coming into first-generation wealth is how to ask for help.
He said, “Whether you are a professional athlete that comes into millions or retiree who is walking away with a lump sum and trying to figure out what to do or a business person who is now making more than anyone you grew up with, the biggest thing is realizing that you need help.”
