The founder of FAN Advisors, started as a young, inexperienced and mostly idealistic financial services rep in 1977 selling life insurance and mutual funds. That young rep was always focused on helping clients achieve financial security through simple, straightforward strategies. These simple client-oriented strategies were promoted through a relationship with a company that strongly supported the sale of low-cost term life insurance, thus freeing up as much money as possible for long term investing.

The somewhat more experienced and field tested young financial services rep was offered an entry level opportunity to work at the rapidly expanding home office. This led to a 15-year financial services administrative career resulting in a number of senior executive positions. This included: President, Chief Executive Officer of the Broker/Dealer, Executive Vice President, Chief Operating Officer of the Life Insurance Company and Chairman of the Board of Directors of a proprietary group of mutual funds.

During this same time period a highly motivated single mother of two boys, Sherry Bohannon, embarked on a sales career with that same company. She ultimately reached the highest levels of sales management and was recognized numerous times primarily as a top recruiter.

Through relationships developed with past broker/dealer and mutual fund connections, an opportunity presented itself in an emerging mutual fund company out of Houston, TX. The meteoric growth of that company during the raging bull market of the late 1990s contributed to a most satisfying career and ultimately the position of Vice President, Institutional Sales Manager. This position afforded the opportunity to negotiate billion-dollar relationships with leading mutual fund distributors and insurance companies.

Our founder continued his incredible track record with a very large and succesful mutual fund company. Although business opportunities, products and solutions changed somewhat over the years, the underlying foundation of principles never changed. There was an enduring belief that the financial services business should be just that, a service to improve the financial lives of individuals. A business that serves the greater good by helping people and always doing what is in the best interest of the client.

During this time period, an unexpected and most interesting phone call was received from Sherry Bohannon. Turns out that Sherry had been on her own journey to develop the next big financial services solution. She was seeking executive experience in financial services and had remembered her association with the former A.L. Williams executive. While there was a kindred spirit with shared personal ideals, it turns out that the company developed a differing agenda that was wholly inconsistent with their shared views. After a few years of fruitless efforts to change the course of that company, the two reunited business partners resigned at the same Board of Directors meeting.

It was now unmistakably obvious. If you really want to build what you believe, you must go build it yourself. So, in the fall of 2012 the concept of what is now First Advisors National began to take form. With enough money in the bank to cover registration fees, the recruiting prowess of Sherry Bohannon and the emotional support and belief of two highly successful insurance industry veterans, Bruce Carlton and Danny Gordon, the official launch of what is now First Advisors National had begun.

The launch of the company by no means marked the end of the journey. It simply began an entirely new trek through a meandering trail of constant challenges, adjustments and gratifying successes. From humble beginnings with no representatives and no assets, we now support dozens of reps who continue to build their own asset-based business with dependable recurring revenue by servicing hundreds of millions of dollars of client assets. During this ongoing development phase of the journey we have had numerous significant milestones. Please keep reading to read about those milestones!

Following a successful career with a nationally recognized IT company, Trey Bohannon decided to make a career change and made a full-time commitment to help build the company. He had only one comment, I’m here for the long haul, pay me what you can when you can. Trey is the ultimate project professional, if something needs to get done, he will get it done.

After observing at a distance what his father-in-law had been doing, Paul Atkins felt it was time to join the journey. With extensive experience as a personal financial advisor, Paul brings an added level of expertise and experience. Later in the same year we reached our first targeted milestone of $100 Million of client assets.

After a protracted illness, unfortunately we lost our beloved business partner, friend and confidant, Sherry Bohannon. She was the ultimate cheerleader; we would never be where we are today without her unflinching dedication and efforts. She will be sorely missed but we all know she would be so very proud of what we have accomplished.