Meet Dr. King McCray | Wealth Manager & Serial Entrepreneur

We had the good fortune of connecting with Dr. King McCray and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Dr. King, what was your thought process behind starting your own business?
Wow, that’s an excellent question. For me, I believe it was the value behind the information, not only for myself, but my community. I wanted to start a business that I knew would impact the community and give us a deeper awareness of financial literacy. Furthermore, I knew that I simply didn’t want to work for anyone else. My mindset was, why work so hard for someone else when you can work just as hard for yourself and create that same income or more. Not everyone has that entrepreneur mindset or that itch to become a business owner, but it was embedded in my DNA. My father owned a framing business while working for another company and once he retired he opened up a restaurant. So, I’ve been around business owners my entire life, but I didn’t see the true value in being one until I started my own firm. Let’s be honest, there are a lot of late nights and early mornings, but the sheer pleasure of seeing people happy, educated, and on to a better financial path is what pushes me every day to continue. I love the freedom having my own company brings me, but my true happiness lies in my spirit of helping others.

What should our readers know about your business?
My firm is McCray Wealth Management, a full service financial advisory and wealth management firm. We provide investment advisory services, retirement planning, income planning, college planning, and wealth management services for individuals, families, and small businesses. In addition, we manage assets for Fortune 500 companies and their executives. We like to give “Prescriptions for Financial Confidence” because everyone should be educated on their financial situation.

I’m most proud of the way we built our firm and our foundation. We’re not the typical financial advisory firm — we’re black owned, young individuals, and have a true passion for education. Everyone on our staff has a financial background and/or educational experience that yields the results a client would be looking for. We didn’t get here on the backs of others, but off of pure hard work and relationships. We’ve been awarded some pretty top awards, including a government contract to assist and educate their employees on their retirement.

Nothing worth having is easy, right? Having to overcome obstacles is a normal thing for me. I often tell people how hard it was for me to even first start getting in doors because their were people who didn’t want to let “that black guy” in their home or talk with me about their finances. Not realizing my background, my education, or my expertise — I was simply shut out. But it took a while to realize all business isn’t good business and everyone isn’t for me. That’s part of the growing pains though. The best way for me to overcome that was to simply be me and realize that those who will work with me are doing so because they see the value in me. They see the value in what I bring and they trust my judgement. At the same time, numbers don’t lie and my past results with clients speaks for itself.

Every day is a lesson and every day is a new experience. I feel as if life teaches you so much about yourself even when you’re not realizing it. I’m always learning something new and that’s one of the beauties in working in the financial services industry. Things are always changing and evolving. There is always something new coming out or a new strategy to utilize with clients and their finances. Every situation is different and I love being challenged. It allows me to say, “Okay, I’m really supposed to be here. This is where my path is leading me.”

If I had to leave the world with anything, it’s simply every single one of us can be wealthy — and you already are if you really think about it. Define wealth to yourself. It doesn’t always have to be just the monetary side of it so what does wealth look like to you? It could be comfort and happiness, ensuring that you’re debt free, having passive income, etc. That’s why The Financial Doctor brings out to you — that’s what you get when you work with me. A freedom of understanding your finances and really realizing what wealth means to you — and we’ll also make a lot of money together! That’s part of the reason we’re creating our clothing line, Wealthonaire, and our educational classes, Wealthonaire University. We want people to not only believe in their wealth and financial success, but to rock it and wear it with pride. To produce quality education and give insight on the financial topics that mean the most to them.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
What’s being in Florida without the beach? That’s certainly the main things all of my friends and family want to do when they visit. So, we’re partying at the beach on a consistent basis. But if we’re running this thing down on a timeline it would absolutely look like this.

Monday — Beach Vibes! Chillin’ the entire day and evening in the sun. South Beach is a vibe, but also traveling up the cost to West Palm, Ft. Lauderdale, and even hitting Cocoa or Daytona.

Tuesday — Casablanca Cigar Lounge is a whole vibe. We are huge cigar aficionados and want to just enjoy that time. We’d spend the evening sipping wine at Flight Wine Lounge and enjoying a good dinner.

Wednesday — Back to the beaches for midday enjoyment while an evening night cap is enjoyed at Shooters Waterfront.

Thursday — B Bistro + Bakery for morning Mimosas and lunch get outs at Masa & more. Then we’d walk the evening strips in downtown Fort Lauderdale.

Friday — We’d end the week with the beach again and hitting local favorites like Wet Willie’s and SkyBar at Shore.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
My Pops, hands down! I’m giving a shoutout to my Father for being outside the norm of what people perceive black fathers to be. When you talk about a man who was there and guided his kids, that was him. He kept me grounded, but also held my feet to the fire every time I felt as if I wasn’t going to reach a goal or hit a milestone. I always told him how much I wanted to be like him and it never failed — his response always was, “You’re already there. Continue to push higher.”

Secondly, I would love to give a shoutout to my wife! That’s my rock and support system. She is the biggest cheerleader I have and pushes me on a consistent basis to be everything that I should be. Good days, bad days, indifferent days — whatever. They say behind every great man is a great woman, but this one stands side by side with me because this journey was walked together.

Website: www.creatingyourwealth.org

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