How We Got Started
The Eclectic Associates Story
By Carl Lachman, MBA, CFP®
Eclectic Associates started in Fullerton, California in 1984, which makes 2024 our 40-year anniversary. In the world of financial advisors, that type of longevity is about as rare as a black bear swimming in a Fullerton pool - it can happen, but not very often!
For the next twelve months, we plan to celebrate this occasion with a variety of articles that tell our past, explain the present, and look forward to our company’s future.
A Family of Farmers
Our founder was Bill Camp, who was originally a farmer in the Central Valley of California. Bill came from a family of farmers and had parents and siblings with farms in the area around Shafter, California near Bakersfield. Bill’s father, Wofford Benjamin Camp (known as W.B.), came to California in 1917 and started farming. W. B. Camp is rather famous as the “Cotton Man”, since he brought a scientific approach to finding the best cotton strain to grow in California. His research eventually resulted in the cotton strain of Acala #8 which is still dominant in the California cotton industry. Today several Camp relatives continue to have large farms in the same area.
A Different Career
Bill Camp eventually decided that he would rather pursue a career in real estate, so he moved his family to Fullerton in the 1970s. He was active in Rotary and had a good business as a real estate agent. The part of his job that he enjoyed the best was helping couples and families figure out their finances, get a mortgage, and buy a house. He didn’t charge his real estate clients to help them figure out what they could afford, but he found it very satisfying when they followed his suggestions and bought a house that fit their budget. That fulfillment led to Bill thinking that he would like to somehow have a business that gave financial advice.
The Fee Only Solution
Bill Camp started investigating financial advisors in the early 1980s. At that time, most professionals who called themselves financial advisors were really stockbrokers, paid with sales commissions and transaction fees. They were always on the lookout for the next sale, regardless of whether an investment or product was the best thing for their client. Bill wanted to give financial advice in such a way that removed the conflict of interest inherent with sales commissions and transaction fees, and he ultimately discovered there were some financial advisors that used the term “fee-only” to describe how they were paid.
A fee-only advisor charges their clients a fee and sends them an invoice. The client can pay with a check or have the fee deducted from an investment account. A fee-only advisor does not get paid any commissions or transaction fees, and does not receive any payments from investment companies, insurance companies, or other professionals. The only way a fee-only financial advisor gets paid is when their clients pay their invoices.
When Bill Camp decided to be a fee-only financial advisor in 1984, there were maybe only 20 such advisors on the West Coast. Even today, the number of fee-only advisors is small compared to the financial advisor industry as a whole. According to the Wall Street Journal, "Of the roughly 285,000 professionals in the U.S. who offer clients financial advice, fewer than 2% are fee-only advisors who follow a true fiduciary standard that prohibits commissions on products recommended to clients, and legally requires the advisers to always put their clients’ interests first."
Why Bill Made The Decision
Bill Camp had a family to support and was a successful real estate agent. Why did he choose to start a new career again, after the already big change from farming to real estate? Bill discovered that he could not always overcome the skepticism of his real estate clients, who often were concerned that his recommendations were motivated by the commission he would get when the real estate transaction was completed. He didn’t like that his word wasn’t trusted, and that the conflict of interest limited the trust he was given.
So, because Bill liked helping people make good financial decisions and because he found a way to give fee-only financial advice without the conflict of sales commissions, he took the risk and started Eclectic Associates.
From that start in 1984, the 40-year journey to where Eclectic is today was not always straight or secure. Our founder and his son, Carl Camp, had to overcome plenty of obstacles, and we will dive into some of that history in future articles.
Eclectic Continues with Bill Camp’s Vision
Today, we still hold close to the values and methods that Bill Camp instilled into our company’s fabric from the start. We are still a fee-only financial advisory firm. We are not stockbrokers, we don’t sell insurance, and we don’t receive any compensation from investments we recommend or professionals we suggest to our clients. We are still held to the fiduciary standard, giving advice that puts our client’s interests before our own.
If you know someone who should consider using our services, please send them our way. We are happy to meet with anyone for a free, no-obligation meeting. Have them call us at 714-738-0220 to schedule a meeting, or they can click here to schedule an introductory call with one of our advisors.