Ashton Lawrence

Saving tens of thousands of dollars in taxes — that will get anybody’s attention.

And that’s how Ashton Lawrence draws older clients’ adult children into discussions that often convince them to become clients on their own.

“If you can quantify your expertise with the estate issues, that’s where advisory really shows its value,” said Lawrence, 36, of tax strategies like donor-advised funds. Potential gains that might result from standard investment approaches rarely capture the imagination of second generations the way that specific tax savings do, he said.

Lawrence parlayed his early career experience as an insurance agent to financial advisory by building out concentric layers of expertise. His holistic approach in some ways carries on the family culture established by his father, who for much of his working life was one of the few Black financial advisors in the Greenville, South Carolina, area.

“Our parents would invest part of our allowance and we had to have a sound reason for what we were investing in,” Lawrence said of the financial tutoring he and his brother received from his parents. That perspective shapes his approach to building his practice. “This industry is forever changing,” he said. “I don’t ever want to be complacent.”

—Joanne Cleaver