
Independent planning · Chart Your Course
The first question
won’t be about
your money.
Most first meetings with an advisor open with performance charts. Ours opens with your story: how you got here, what keeps you up, and what you want this money to make possible. Strategy comes after that, and it comes coordinated with your CPA and your attorney.
Who this is for
Executives, physicians, owners
Where we focus
Equity comp, tax timing, transitions
How we work
Story first, then strategy
Sound familiar
You did not get here by being careless with money
The vest date you would rather not think about
Your employer withholds 22% on vesting RSUs. If your household lands in the 32% or 37% bracket, the difference arrives as a bill at filing.
Too much of your net worth in one ticker
The stock built your wealth, so selling feels wrong. It also means your salary, your bonus, your equity, and your benefits all depend on one company.
A window that opens once
An IPO, a tender offer, an acquisition, a business you might sell. Decisions inside that window are hard to reverse and they arrive with a deadline.
Income with nowhere left to hide
Large W-2, a real bonus, few deductions remaining, and a CPA you speak with in March about a year that already closed.
Two generations needing you at once
Children at home and parents starting to need help. Without a plan for long-term care, that cost usually lands on the children.
The question you have not asked out loud
Could you step back in five years if you wanted to? It has a specific answer, and most people wait years before going to look for it.
If three or more of those sound familiar, the gap probably is not investment returns. It is that nobody is holding the whole picture for you.

Who you would be working with
You should know who is on the other side of the table
GGM Wealth Advisors is led by Matt Hightower out of Mandeville, Louisiana. We work with people whose money got complicated faster than their planning did.
What we do differently is unglamorous. We ask more questions than you expect, and we do not propose anything in the first meeting. We want to know how you got here, what you are carrying, and what success sounds like in your own words before we have an opinion about your portfolio.
Then we take the coordinating seat. Your CPA, your attorney, your insurance, your investments: most people have all four and nobody connecting them. That gap is where the expensive things happen, and closing it is the job we take on.
How this works
Three steps, and the first one costs you an hour
Step 01
Tell us your story
About an hour, no cost, no obligation to do anything afterward.
- How you got to this point, in your own words. Career, family, the decisions that shaped the last ten years.
- What keeps your attention at odd hours. Usually it is more specific than money in general.
- What success looks like to you. Not a number we hand you, the version you would describe to a friend.
- Who is already in your corner: your CPA, your attorney, anyone else we should be working alongside.
Who we help
Find your role
- Where we start→
Medtech executives
Base, bonus, RSUs, options, maybe a deferred comp election you make every fall. Four moving parts, four different tax treatments, and no one looking at them together.
- Where we start→
Physicians & specialists
High income, a shorter runway, real exposure if you cannot practice, and less time than almost anyone to think about any of it.
- Where we start→
Business owners
Your balance sheet, your income, and your identity all point at the same asset. Planning has to start with that concentration rather than ignore it.
- Where we start→
Corporate executives & CFOs
Most of the CFOs we work with say the same thing with a smile: rigorous about the company's balance sheet, and running personal decisions on autopilot for years.
What brings people in
Planning for life's biggest decisions
- Where we start →
Receiving stock compensation
RSUs, options, or an ESPP that arrived with a vest schedule and no instructions.
- Where we start →
Changing jobs
What you leave behind, what accelerates, and what expires once you resign.
- Where we start →
Becoming a partner
A buy-in, a K-1, and a tax picture that stops looking like a salary.
- Where we start →
Planning around a liquidity event
An IPO, a tender offer, or an acquisition with a date attached to it.
- Where we start →
Selling a business
The work that changes the number, most of which has a long lead time.
- Where we start →
Passing the business on
Handing it to family or management rather than selling to a stranger.
- Where we start →
Protecting your family
What happens to the people who depend on you if your income stops.
- Where we start →
Preparing for retirement
Turning what you have saved into a paycheck that lasts.
What to expect
You can let your guard down
- No portfolio pitch in the first meeting. We would not know enough yet to have an opinion worth hearing.
- No product recommendation until we understand your tax picture.
- No annual review that turns out to be a sales call in disguise.
- No performance charts standing in for a plan.
- And if what you need turns out to be simpler than what we do, we will say so and point you toward someone who fits. That happens, and it is a perfectly good outcome.
How we help
The work itself
Build it
- What this involves→
Equity compensation
Vest dates arrive whether or not anyone has thought about them. The work is deciding, ahead of time, what you sell, what you hold, and what the tax bill will be.
- What this involves→
Tax strategy
Most tax advice assumes you own a business. When your income is a paycheck, the levers are fewer, and using them depends entirely on timing.
- What this involves→
Executive compensation
Deferral elections, bonus timing, benefit choices, severance terms. Each one is a decision, and most of them default if you leave them alone.
- What this involves→
Investment management
Allocation is a consequence of what your money has to do and when. Reversing that order is how people end up with a portfolio that has nothing to do with their life.
Move through a transition
- What this involves→
IPO & acquisition planning
Most of the decisions worth making about an IPO or acquisition have deadlines that pass before the money arrives.
- What this involves→
Business exit planning
Two owners can sign the same purchase price and keep different amounts, sometimes by a wide margin. The difference is structure, timing, and planning that happened years earlier.
Protect it
- What this involves→
Disability planning
For a surgeon or interventional specialist, the ability to do one specific job funds everything else. Group coverage rarely protects it as well as people assume.
- What this involves→
Life insurance & cash value
The useful order is obligation first, product second. Most people meet it the other way around, which is why the subject carries so much suspicion.
- What this involves→
Premium financing
This page is educational. It exists because the strategy gets presented enthusiastically and explained poorly, and because the risks deserve equal billing.
- What this involves→
Estate & legacy
Most estate problems we find are not missing documents. They are documents that no longer match the accounts, the titling, or the family.
Free tool
At what age does work become optional?
The question most people ask late and quietly. It has a specific answer, and five inputs will get you close enough to know whether the date is where you assumed. If a business is the asset that funds it, there is a field for what a sale would net.
Vesting equity this year? Try the RSU tax gap calculator.
- Age today
- 45
- Invested
- $1,200,000
- Added each year
- $90,000
- Spending target
- $180,000
- Work becomes optional
- 61
Straight answers
Questions people ask before the first call
We talk. We ask how you got to this point, what you are worried about, and what you want your money to make possible. We do not present a portfolio and we do not ask you to bring statements. It runs about an hour, there is no cost, and there is no obligation to do anything afterward.
Two things. We want your story before your statements, because advice built without context is guesswork with charts attached. And we work as the coordinator across your CPA, your attorney, your insurance, and your investments. Most people we meet have all four and nobody connecting them, which is where the expensive gaps live.
Medtech and corporate executives, physicians and specialists, and business owners. The common thread is compensation with several moving parts, an income high enough that timing decisions matter, and almost no time to manage any of it. If your situation turns out to be simpler than that, we would rather tell you honestly than sign you up.
The office is in Mandeville, Louisiana. We are currently registered in Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas, and most clients today are in Louisiana, Florida, and Colorado. Adding a state where you need us is usually straightforward, so it is worth asking if you are somewhere else.
Not necessarily. Planning and where your assets are held are separate questions. Some people engage us for planning while accounts stay where they are, which is often the case with a workplace plan that has limited options. Where consolidating genuinely helps, we will explain why rather than assume it.
The first meeting is free, and it always will be. It is a discovery conversation, and it is how we both work out whether this is a fit. If we go ahead together, planning carries a fee, and you will know the number before you commit to anything. Engagements come in three levels, starting at a one-time strategy engagement of $3,500 plus $250 a month from the second month, and the level depends on the complexity of your situation. For households above $1 million in assets we manage, the planning fee is typically waived. If we also manage investments, that is a separate and optional asset-based fee, quoted on our fee sheet and charged on top of the underlying fund, manager, and platform expenses. Cambridge's Form CRS also describes the services offered, fees and costs, conflicts of interest, and the standard of conduct that applies.
Both. Clients on the Northshore and around New Orleans often prefer to sit down in Mandeville. Clients in Florida, Colorado, and elsewhere run the relationship over video and email, which tends to suit people who travel constantly. Neither version gets a lesser standard of attention.
Let's start with a conversation
Bring whatever is on your mind: a vest date you are unsure about, an offer you are weighing, a business you might sell in three years. Nothing to prepare, no cost, and you will leave with something useful whether or not we end up working together.
