Rick Smith: maximum returns.

• Author: Beers, Heather
• Position: Biography

FROM San Francisco to L.A., on to San Antonio, Minneapolis, Princeton, Rochester and finally Salt Lake City, Rick L. Smith's career with Merrill Lynch spans more than 25 years and thousands of miles. Currently director for Merrill Lynch's Utah and southern Idaho region, Smith leads more than 100 financial advisors in helping individuals, corporations, municipalities and foundations maximize their financial futures.

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And while his professional journey has been a journey--moving with his wife and three children to different metropolitan areas every few years--he relishes the experience gained along the way. "Given the environment today, you need to have a broad realm of experience to respond to the different responsibilities, different opportunities, different challenges. And the broader that experience, the greater contribution you can make," says Smith.

From the moment Smith landed at Merrill Lynch, his contributions have not gone unnoticed. Upon graduating from Brigham Young University with a degree in finance, Smith started as a financial advisor in the firm's San Francisco office. Excelling in his work with high net-worth individuals there, Merrill Lynch promoted Smith to management and relocated him to the Beverly Hills/Santa Monica area.

Tough first management assignment, huh? "Yeah, our office overlooked the beach. It was rough," jokes Smith, who grew up in southern California.

His next move was to San Antonio, where his fluency in Spanish was key in building rapport with the firm's clients in Mexico. "More than 70 percent of our clients there were high net-worth individuals living in Mexico, and I absolutely loved working with them. In international business, we call our financial advisors 'relationship managers,' because loyalty and relationships are so important to clients."

Smith has emphasized that relationship dy[TEXT UNREADABLE IN ORIGINAL SOURCE.] throughout his career, including a benchmark project he led for the comingly while in Princeton, New Jersey. There, Smith studied the Six Sigma business management methodology...