Bill Sowell

Bill Sowell loved the airline industry, but he picked the wrong decade. After moving 10 times and enduring three airline bankruptcies, the North Little Rock native started a boutique travel agency that designed sports-centered trips for corporate clients.

Sowell was 32 when he sold All-Sports Travel to Worldwide Travel in the late 1980s. That’s when he set out on a second career in financial services, drawing on the strong base of contacts he had made during his years in the travel industry.

Initially, Sowell followed the commission-based business plan that was typical for financial planners. But after many conversations with mentor Allan Mendel, the longtime bank trust executive who founded Mendel Capital Management in Little Rock in 1990, Sowell adopted Mendel’s fee-based approach in 1995.

“It was that relationship that really taught me about the fee-based model,” Sowell said, “It’s in the client’s best interest. That’s the simple answer. It removes what, to me, could be considered a conflict of interest.”

Sowell founded his own registered investment advisory firm, Sowell Management, in 2001. And eventually the financial planning business started to embrace the idea of fees rather than commissions. When financial advisers are ready to jump on board, Sowell can offer them a tested business plan, a technological platform for providing fee-based services and a support team steeped in his core values.

As of Dec. 31, Sowell Management had more than $3 billion in assets under management. Sowell said his goal for the end of 2020 is $5 billion.

With his team and his system in place, Sowell says he spends little time dealing with day-to-day operations.

“I would classify myself as the visionary,” he said. “While we have people in place to carry out that vision, my role is to plan and think from a visionary standpoint — not so much where we are today but what we need to do to hit our goals. How will we do that? What are the industry changes that are going on? Where are areas in which we can innovate and get ahead of the industry?”

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