Client Profile: Matt Syverson and Sound Stewardship
All of us at Fervor have the privilege of serving impactful clients each day — and we love introducing them. Meet Matt Syverson, Founder and Senior Financial Advisor at Sound Stewardship.
At Sound Stewardship, Matt is: Founder and Senior Financial Advisor. February 2017 marks 13 years since he launched the firm. “I continue to serve deeply with lots of different clients and enjoy raising up multiple advisors to help clients and their families,” Matt says.
About the organization: “We help families all over the country and other parts of the world do the best they can with what God is providing to them,” Matt says. “We love serving families who have a lot of momentum in their lives, from ministry and work to family and community activities, and have a high net worth with the resources they are stewarding. We help them get where they want to go over time, and we do it on a flat fee basis, so they know our advice isn’t motivated by commission but it’s motivated by happy clients accomplishing their goals.”
Career before Sound Stewardship: After graduating from the University of Iowa with a degree in psychology, Matt spent several years as a paramedic in Tucson and Denver. Inspired in part by his father’s career in financial planning, Matt felt called to shift into the financial services industry. He went on to work with a larger financial services firm in Denver, and then alongside his dad in Iowa. “It was there that I learned the fee-only concept and how to serve high net-worth clients.”
Groundhog Day: Just weeks after completing his CFP exam, Matt and his family — which included twin baby girls! — relocated to Kansas City, where he opened Sound Stewardship (then called Syverson & Company). He launched the company that February, on Groundhog Day, and Sound Stewardship celebrates 13 years next month.
From Syverson & Company to Sound Stewardship: “We intentionally changed names from Syverson & Company to Sound Stewardship in 2012,” Matt says. “The reason is to make sure this place transcends past me. I feel led to continue building a business that gives other like-minded professionals the opportunity to thrive and live out their calling alongside me.”
Family: Matt is married to Tammy, and they have four children. The oldest are twin girls, Grace and Sophie. “We were expecting one and were blessed with two!” Matt smiles. Next is Lily, who was unexpectedly born with Down Syndrome. Within an hour of her delivery, she was rushed to Kansas City’s Children’s Mercy Hospital for stabilization. “It was at Children’s Mercy that we knew we had a great resource in our community,” Matt says, and Lily later had successful heart surgery at Children’s Mercy.
Called to adopt: With Down Syndrome comes a wide variety of issues. “We’ve explored just about every department Children’s Mercy has, and we call ourselves ‘frequent flyers’ at Children’s Mercy,” Matt says. “We felt called to adopt a child for our fourth, and it was okay if he or she had medical issues. We’d been down that path before.” Tammy and Matt adopted a son from China and named him Levi. Shortly after arriving in the United States, he had successful surgery for a major heart defect at the exact same spot as his big sister — Children’s Mercy. Today, Levi is a healthy and thriving kindergartener.
Outside work, you’ll find Matt: Spending time with his family. He’s often at sporting or musical events supporting his twins, at the ranch doing horseback riding therapy with his daughter Lily or building Legos with Levi. As a family, they love traveling — particularly to Florida and Colorado, as well as their annual trip to Kanakuk Family Kamp in Branson.
A community he loves: Professionally, Matt enjoys his community of colleagues through Kingdom Advisors. Personally, Matt enjoys watching his children do therapeutic horseback riding at New Horizon Ranch, and he also loves his church community at Olathe Bible Church.
Favorite restaurant: Lately, it’s Fortune Wok. Matt recommends the Crispy Peking Beef — crispy shredded KC strip sauteed with bell peppers, carrots and sesame seeds.
Favorites to watch, listen and read: Matt enjoys watching Flip or Flop with Tammy — “our guilty pleasure,” Matt smiles. He was once a Jazz major while in college, so Matt loves both jazz and big band music. Since he spends his days reading technical and nonfiction material, he likes to relax while listening to audiobooks through Audible.com.
What his Sound Stewardship work has taught him: “One of the key things I’ve learned is that people don’t care how much you know before they know how much you care. Empathy really matters,” he says. “Financial planning is what I feel led to do, built to do and called to do. Having the privilege and honor of being a financial advisor is a calling.”