Advisor Spotlight: Brennan McCutchen

Where are you from?

I grew up in Mountain Home, AR. I have an awesome mom, awesome dad, and an awesome brother. Did I say awesome? I spent much of my childhood chasing a basketball on a court and chasing trout on the White River.

Tell us about your family.

I met my wife, Shelly, in 1999 at college. She was a waitress at Dixie Cafe and I was unloading trucks and wrangling shopping carts at Walmart. We finally married in 2006 (we’re both rather stubborn, so it took a while). Max was born in ’09 and Ivy in ’13, and we’ve been enjoying watching our family learn and grow ever since.

What initially drew you to the financial world?

This is a pretty easy question for me. My grandparents would buy me one share of Walmart stock each year for my birthday. They’d hang on to the physical stock certificate, but I would look at it and feel it, etc. I knew it was something important, but it wasn’t until the age of about 15 that I began to show a real interest in investing. I specifically recall participating in a hypothetical investing challenge my sophomore year in high school. I lucked out picking stocks somehow and did pretty well, and my interest continued to grow from there.

If you weren’t working as an advisor, what would you be doing instead, or what would your life be like?

Probably still unloading trucks at WMT! Who knows? I enjoying trout fishing and playing golf. I’m nowhere near good enough at either to do them for a living, but I’d like to think I could be a trout bum and I doubt I’d starve to death, at least.

How do you balance your professional and personal life?

God has really been kind in this respect. My two business partners, Jason Gerber and Jonnathan Davis, both of whom are like brothers to me, do a great job of holding us as a group accountable when it comes to maintaining a wise balance of home and work life. We’ve got a great team of people here in Little Rock, and that enables us to make spending time with family – for our entire office – a pretty big priority. Realistically, I probably do too much computer and phone work at home, but some of that allows me to be present for more important things like elementary school field trips and school assemblies. COVID taught me that my balance wasn’t quite as good as I thought it was. We made some adjustments, and it’s been a big priority to eat breakfast before school with the kids.

Who is your mentor and what is the most important thing they have taught you?

I’ll have to have two spots here. The first is, Merlin Hagan. Merlin hired me, and trusted us back in 2006, to help him build a high quality investment advisory firm. All the while, he was helping to guide me by listening and speaking words of wisdom in many realms: business, family, and spiritual. Another mentor of mine is my father-in-law, Ed Sellers. Ed is the person in my life that has single-handedly and most closely shown me what it looks like for a man to live out his faith. He’s been crazy consistent, incredibly wise, unbelievably patient, and he’s done much of this without even using words. What I’ve witnessed from him has been a living lesson in selflessness.

What might (someone) be surprised to know about you?

I’m bothersomely spontaneous. It drives my wife NUTS!

If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go and why?

That’s easy, Europe! I’ve been trying to get Shelly to go to Europe with me for years, but she just hates to leave the kids for that long. I’ve always been fascinated with Europe. I love the concept of renting a fun car and just driving across the continent and seeing how many cultures can be experienced in a relatively small geographical area.

What 3 things would you take with you to a deserted island?

The Bible, my wife, and a huge box of toothpicks.

What is your favorite thing about working with your local team?

The camaraderie. We’ve got a fun team and every single person makes key contributions to the financial success and planning we provide our clients.