Jeb Graham got his real estate license on a Saturday. Tuesday was September 11, 2001. That was supposed to be his first day selling houses at Keller Williams. Nobody sold anything. Everyone stood around the TV. The conversation with Sam Sapp walks through that start and all the others, from underwriting construction loans at Bank of America, to food sales at Cisco, to finally landing in 2004 in the career he studied for in college, and eventually building Metcalfe Partners Wealth Management into the firm it is today.
What You'll Hear
- Why Jeb walked away from K-State's Construction Science program after one finance class changed his direction
- Starting as an underwriter at Bank of America, a job that made it clear a cubicle was not the fit
- Passing the real estate exam on a Saturday and showing up at Keller Williams on the morning of 9/11
- Two years at Cisco Foods selling food to restaurants while the finance degree sat unused
- How a sales conversation at home with his wife Alyssa preceded the jump into financial services at 26
- Going independent in 2011 and what the split with an early partner actually looked like
- Buying Eric Ingstrom's book of business after a lung cancer diagnosis, and the introduction that led to Greg Bond's much larger book in 2019
- How Eric Wymore, Ethan Hutchison, and Andy Voss each ended up at Metcalfe Partners through chance and patience
- Why the firm runs as a centralized practice instead of an overhead-sharing arrangement
The finance class that ended a construction career
Jeb started at K-State in Construction Science. He had friends in high school whose parents owned construction companies, and from the outside the life looked good. He had no family background in the field, no prior exposure, just the sense that owning a construction company seemed like a path worth trying.
Two years in, he was drafting architectural drawings and sitting in classes with people who clearly had a real background in the work. Jeb looked around and realized this was not his room. The tipping point came in Finance 450, the intro finance class at K-State. His fraternity brothers had talked about it like a nightmare. Jeb got into the class and loved it. It came easy. The curriculum clicked. He walked out of that class with the clearest signal he had gotten in years about what he actually wanted to do.
He graduated with a business administration degree and an emphasis in financial services, which at the time was as close as K-State offered to financial planning. But graduating with the degree and using the degree were two different things. Four years would pass before he actually started building the career it pointed to.
Bank of America, 9/11, and a year on the wrong side of the desk
Jeb's first job out of college was at Bank of America, underwriting construction loans inside their home builder division. A college friend worked there and helped him get in. On paper it combined his degree and his early interest in construction. In practice it was seven months of sitting in a cubicle checking paperwork against lending criteria, which was not the fit. He and the bank figured that out at about the same time.
He had just bought a house with two college roommates as tenants. The mortgage was real. Income was not optional. That was when he did his first real soul searching about what he actually wanted to do. His realtor on the house purchase was a guy named Tom Scanlon, who Jeb had found in a wanted ad in the Kansas City Star. Tom was fun. The job looked fun. Jeb went and got his real estate license.
He passed the test on a Saturday in July 2001. Monday his license was processed. Tuesday was September 11. His first day allowed to sell houses, he walked into Keller Williams and found everyone standing around the TV. The recession that followed did not help. The work was unstable. After about a year, Jeb took a corporate job at Cisco Foods as a food sales rep, partly for the steady paycheck and partly because his family had ties at Cisco.
The sales job he had to do at home
Two years at Cisco Foods gave Jeb what the previous two jobs had not. A stable paycheck, a large organization, and a clear look at whether this was the life he wanted. The answer was no. Most of the other sales reps had restaurant or chef backgrounds. Jeb was using none of his finance degree. He was 26, newly married to Alyssa, and he had decided he wanted to finally go do the thing he had studied for.
He got his Series 7 and Series 66, linked up with a large insurance company that had an investment management arm, and in October of that year he quit Cisco. The conversation at home was not a fight, but it was real. He was taking a step back in income. The industry joke he shares is that financial advisors do twice the work for half the money in the first five years, then half the work for twice the money after that. The first five years are a grind of building a book from nothing.
Jeb started in 2004. He had a salary for the first three of those years that tapered off as his own production built. Then came 2008. Three and a half years of work got pulled apart by the financial crisis. He talks openly about the valleys in that stretch, the mornings of wondering whether to quit and go get a corporate job again, and the patience his wife showed through the stretches where he needed to blow off steam.
Going independent and the birth of Metcalfe Partners
In 2011, seven years in, Jeb left AXA Equitable and went independent. A fraternity brother two years ahead of him, Dan Chara, was going through his own transition and introduced Jeb to Tom Bloomer and Brett Lang, who owned the compliance office at V Wealth Management. Jeb landed there alongside Eric Wymore, who came out of Bank of America, and a third advisor who came out of Edward Jones. They teamed up.
The first firm was named after Jeb and that third partner's last names. In early 2013, a compliance dispute pushed the group to part ways. Jeb and Eric stayed at V Wealth. The office was at 95th and Metcalfe, so they picked the street. Metcalfe Partners Wealth Management was born from that rebrand. A client built the logo for about 400 dollars. It is still on Jeb's shirt in the interview. The firm has moved offices twice more along Metcalfe since, and now sits at 130th and Metcalfe.
The move to independent was, in Jeb's words, liberating. He talks about the inherent conflict in environments where benefits are tied to placing a certain volume of proprietary product. Going independent meant looking a client in the eye and knowing he was working only for them, in a fiduciary capacity, with nothing else pulling at the decision.
Buying books of business, and building a team that fell in his lap
In 2016, Jeb started writing quarterly letters to a list of older independent advisors in Kansas City, telling them he would be interested in buying practices. One of the calls came from a man named Eric Ingstrom. Over lunch, Eric told Jeb he had just been diagnosed with lung cancer, had six months to a year, and needed a fast transition for his 10 million dollar book. Jeb bought it. For the first seven months, the two of them met clients together. Eric lived about a year and a half. Before the end, he introduced Jeb to another advisor in his office, Greg Bond. In 2019, Jeb bought Greg's 65 million dollar book, growing the firm by over 50 percent almost overnight. Eric's widow Gay is still a client.
That growth is why Jeb hired Ethan Hutchison in 2020. Ethan, a fraternity brother ten years younger, had cold called Jeb in 2012 looking for a job right as Jeb was going independent. Nine years later, Jeb posted a position on LinkedIn and Ethan pinged him. Ethan started in February 2020, weeks before COVID. He bought in as a partner less than two years later.
The rest of the team arrived the same way. Andy Voss, now the firm's COO and head trader, asked Jeb about an opening after a casual game on the court one afternoon. Lynn Henderson, the latest hire, applied through LinkedIn the day after the firm posted the role. Jeb and his partners run the firm as a centralized practice. All advisors share the same models, the same strategy, the same investment committee. If Ethan meets with Jeb's client, the experience should feel the same. That is intentional. It protects the client if anything happens to any one advisor, and it is what Jeb means when he talks about building for the long term.
About Jeb Graham
Jeb Graham is managing partner at Metcalfe Partners Wealth Management, an independent financial advisory firm at 130th and Metcalfe in the Kansas City metro. He started his career at Bank of America, spent time in real estate and food service sales, then became a financial advisor in 2004 at a large insurance company before going independent in 2011. He and his partners Eric Wymore and Ethan Hutchison rebranded the firm as Metcalfe Partners in 2013 and have grown it through a mix of organic work and acquired books of business.