Louis Barajas launches RIA to guide young Latino planners into field

Planners Louis Barajas and Daniel Guillen launched a new registered investment advisory firm they intend to be a stepping stone for young Latino financial advisors entering the profession.

Irvine, California-based International Private Wealth Advisors officially opened April 1 after Guillen and Barajas, a member of the CFP Board whose client base includes many Latin artists he also works with as the CEO of Business Management LAB, left their previous firm, MGO Private Wealth. They announced the new firm in LinkedIn posts by Barajas earlier this month.

MGO Private Wealth

"Our vision started decades ago, providing Latino families financial planning and investments to hardworking people that deserve the same respect and dignity that our industry has only usually offered to the top 5% of income earners and the wealthy," he wrote. "All of our clients — the iconic celebrity, the owner of the panaderia, the doctors who sacrifice to help their Latino patients in our communities, the teacher who wants to make a difference in their classroom — they are all treated with the same respect and dignity at our firm."

In an interview, Barajas said his values were out of alignment with the team at MGO and described the new firm as a "second wind" in the profession for the 61-year-old veteran planner who started in the industry more than 30 years ago after growing up in East Los Angeles.

Representatives for MGO declined to comment on the departures of Guillen and Barajas. 

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Alongside co-stars Jean Chatzky and Patrice Washington, Barajas is currently appearing as a financial coach to families building wealth in the PBS series "Opportunity Knock$." The new firm, where planner Uziel Gomez has also joined the all-Latino team of seven employees, represents a vision for a different way of advancing in the profession, Barajas said. The firm has about 450 clients with $140 million in assets under management, while the business management firm works with 32 Latin American recording artists, actors, entertainment executives and entrepreneurs.

"The best wealth managers are not always the ones attracting the most AUM," Barajas said. "We're not going to sit down and ever have a conversation like, 'What did you sell this week?' It's, 'Who did you help this week?'"

Fellow planners who have come to know Barajas during his decades in the profession praised the vision for his new firm. The idea is "absolutely beautiful and amazing," said Marguerita Cheng of Gaithersburg, Maryland-based Blue Ocean Global Wealth.

"The profession is evolving, and I think about the next generation; Gen Z really cares about having an impact," Cheng said in an interview. "They want to be successful and make a difference in this world. It's not either-or."

She met Barajas in 2007 at a Financial Planning Association conference, where they each participated in a diversity and inclusion "task force" that eventually turned into a permanent committee. Hannah Moore of Dallas-area Guiding Wealth recalled his support for the organization's virtual "Externship" training program for aspiring planners when she started the course more than a dozen years later.

"Louis has been an example for the next generation of financial planners for years and continues to be with his new firm," Moore said in an email. "So many want to know how to build a firm that puts their values front and center, and Louis is showing how to do it. His vision resonates with why so many new financial planners want to come into financial planning today, and I have no doubt Louis' impact will continue to spread far beyond his clients and to the larger financial planning community."

Luis Rosa filed the registration papers for his own RIA, Pasadena, California-based Build a Better Financial Future, the month after he first spoke with Barajas nearly four years earlier.

"Using AUM or sales as a metric only measures the financial success of the advisor, not the impact that they're having on their clients," Rosa said in an email, noting he will be "cheering" Barajas and Guillen forward at their new firm.

"My first interaction with Louis was me reaching out to him for advice via LinkedIn," Rosa said. "He was kind enough to set up a call with me and give me some career advice based on where I was at the time. He encouraged me to start my own firm. I remember him telling me that I can always pivot if needed. I had expressed how hard it was for me at the time to find a firm where I could work with clients that were my peers, even if they did not have assets to invest."  

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Guillen had joined MGO in 2021 after an earlier tenure starting in 2013 with an RIA called Sentry Pacific Financial Group. Barajas spent roughly the past three and a half years at MGO. His wife Angie Barajas co-founded the business management firm and helps run it today. 

Barajas and Guillen intend to grow the firm in Florida and Texas from their existing base primarily out of Southern California by adding more planners in those states in coming months and years.

"We're loving life right now," Barajas said. "I dont have anyone telling me to focus on numbers. I'm focusing on the community. I'm focusing on people."