Serving the families of Senior Leaders of large public & private companies with complex benefit plans and equity compensation wherever located in the United States.
We help our clients manage life's profound uncertainties with a core objective of enhancing human flourishing within the family.
Your life and finances as a Senior Leader are highly complex. We bring wisdom and knowledge about your complex compensation structure and build comprehensive financial models that empower great decision making for your family. Our boutique, cross-functional team focuses on more than just your investment capital. We dedicate time to understanding and growing the human aspect by serving the entire family on issues pertaining directly to money as well as quality of life issues that go beyond money.
Serving your entire family means that we are a constant resource for all family members to find solutions to both quantitative financial matters and qualitative non-financial matters. We are here to provide context and guidance through every phase of your family’s story across multiple generations.
Reaching the inflection point on the compensation hockey stick.
Cash and equity compensation.
Core Question: How do I orchestrate the mix of cash and equity compensation, along with a complex benefit plan to achieve the best outcome for my family?
Finishing strong: managing the glide path to retirement.
Contemplating retirement within 3-5 years.
Core Questions: Exactly where is my income coming from the moment my paycheck stops? How can I optimally reduce over concentration in my employer stock?
Optimizing at the pinnacle
So much equity, so little freedom! It’s not about the money anymore.
Core Question: How do I handle SEC regulations and unwritten corporate expectations around managing my company stock and options?
Second Opinion Introductory Engagement
The Story Capital name itself encompasses all we do - we aim to capture your family’s entire story. We serve families who choose to think and plan across multiple generations. We prepare our client's adult children for the prospect of inheriting. We believe that a harmonious transition of wealth comes by working with the entire family, not just the matriarch and patriarch in order to achieve the optimal inheritance outcome.
Together we can prepare and teach your children about the responsibilities associated with estate planning, tax planning, inheriting capital, and how to protect assets. Additionally, we implement a cash-flow financial model designed specifically for you and your family. Our process ensures that as much family harmony and sense of stewardship, instead of entitlement, may be achieved today and for generations to come.
Story Capital is a family services company that surrounds your family with a team capable of covering every aspect of your financial life. Members of our team have decades of experience working in executive environments and have assisted over 1,400 individual option exercise decisions. Our combined experience benefits you and your family across multiple generations.
If our team does not possess the specific expertise to address a specialized need within a client family, we will source the proper talent to chart the best path forward. Further, Stoddard does an exquisite job leading the consultative relationship with the adult children within our client families and virtually all parents are appreciative of the collaborative team of young professionals Stoddard sources for their children.
Phillip Barnhill, CLU | Advisor & Equity Compensation Strategist
952-657-7205 | phil.barnhill@storycapital.com | LinkedIn | Schedule A Meeting
Phil has provided sound, forward-thinking counsel to businesses and individuals for nearly 40 years. But more than just counseling clients, Phil genuinely knows where they’re coming from. As founding partner, CEO and Chief Investment Officer of The Advocate Group, LLC, from 1999-2013, Phil brings an enormously valuable, first-person understanding of the needs and concerns of Story Capital’s entrepreneurial clients. Virtually 100% of the clientele from Phil’s former firm were officers of local Fortune 500 companies. From guiding companies through employee benefit plan design to helping executives optimize their compensation, Phil offers Story Capital clients a wellspring of knowledge and practical insight.
Jurisdictions like South Dakota may be great for asset protection, but Montana’s Big Sky Country — with its fishing, hiking, skiing and horseback riding — is the jurisdiction that renews Phil’s spirit and feeds his soul.
Stoddard Barnhill, CFP® | Advisor & Director of Planning
952-657-7206 | stoddard.barnhill@storycapital.com | LinkedIn | Schedule a meeting
Stoddard lends bold ideas and forward-thinking strategies to the Story Capital team that benefit the firm’s entire client roster — particularly the adult children of the firm’s clients and those professionals who are in the early stages of establishing their careers and families. Stoddard finds great fulfillment in walking alongside his clients, providing them with the tools and information they need to make educated, meaningful decisions. Regardless of their season of life, Stoddard’s clients can rest assured that he is fully dedicated to helping them achieve their goals both now and in the future.
A huge basketball fan and former player, Stoddard still applies lessons from the court to his life, especially his profession. His motto? Show up early, stay late and work hard. It’s an easy motto to live by, since Stoddard loves and is genetically predisposed to his career as the fourth generation in his family to work in the financial services industry. Aside from work, Stoddard enjoys spending time with his wife and two children.
David Wischmeier, JD, CLU | Advisor & Advance Planning Specialist
612-351-8752 |
David brings the wisdom gleaned from more than 20 years in the industry to each and every client. Attentive, inquisitive and one of the nation’s leading authorities on insurance legislation and estate and tax planning, David is highly regarded by clients and colleagues alike for his mastery of estate planning and his thoughtful approach to client advocacy. His legal experience includes serving as an estate and benefits attorney with the law firm of Parsinen, Bowman, and Levy prior to joining NBW Insurance Group as Advanced Planning Counsel where he was named partner in 2007. As one of the founding team members of Story Capital, David has played a vital role in establishing the firm’s fresh, authentic, big-picture commitment to humbly and passionately serving clients.
Newly married, and before their five children came along, David and his wife, Traci, decided to start tithing 10 percent of their gross income to their church. Money was tight, and the financial commitment felt like a big leap, but the Wischmeiers wanted to begin the discipline of thinking — and giving — beyond themselves. That early decision took root and flourished, strengthening their spiritual journey as a couple and teaching them the very real benefit of prioritizing long-term, higher-cause ‘needs’ over short-term, material ‘wants.’ Today David and Traci have a dedicated fund that enables them to support charities and causes to a degree they never would have imagined possible when they were penny-pinching newlyweds. It’s this personal experience that makes David so committed to helping Story Capital clients achieve their own goals for philanthropy and outreach.
Sarah Leitzke | Analyst
952-657-7204 | sarah.leitzke@storycapital.com | LinkedIn |
Sarah has discovered a passion for helping people feel both knowledgeable and at ease with their financial decisions. She is naturally curious and driven to find solutions to complex problems and, as such, has begun studies to become a Certified Financial Planner. Before diving into the financial industry in mid-2017, Sarah was in church leadership for 6 years and received a Bachelor of Arts from both the University of Minnesota and North Central University in Political Science & Communication Studies and Music, respectively. She looks forward to the challenge and excitement of working with Story Capital’s clientele for many years to come.
Sarah does not give up. Five years after failing to finish the Twin Cities Marathon, she completed Grandma’s Marathon in 2019 and considers long-distance running to be one of the most formative psychological experiences of her life. She is not afraid to dive into a challenge and finish strong!
Jeffrey is not only an unwavering advocate for his clients, he’s also an educator, sought after by colleagues and regional industry peers alike for his expertise in the life insurance and estate planning fields. Jeffrey’s work ethic was ingrained in him at an early age while growing up on a farm in western Iowa. Since then, he has applied his intelligence and industriousness to being an accountant, a tax attorney, a life insurance and retirement expert, and General Counsel for The Brehm Group. The sheer breadth of Jeffrey’s life insurance and retirement planning knowledge and experience makes him an invaluable member of the Story Capital team and enables him to serve clients at the highest, most comprehensive level possible.
Bachelor of Science, Accounting, University of South Dakota
Master of Business Administration, University of South Dakota
Juris Doctorate, University of South Dakota
Jeffrey and his wife, Widdy, have worked hard to instill in their six children a passion for helping and serving others. The Birds find enormous fulfillment in their involvement with numerous non-profit organizations, including Hope Academy, a private, inner-city faith-based school for low income and minority children. Jeffrey helped found the school and currently serves as board president.
Michele Perry-Barnhill, JD | Director of Operations & Client Experience
952-657-7203 | michele.barnhill@storycapital.com | LinkedIn
Incredibly focused and a shining example of principled leadership, Michele has spent 30 years in the financial, insurance and estate planning industries. After a brief stint in the world of public accounting, Michele established a private estate-planning law practice, which she ran out of her home for 15 years while raising three children. Michele then joined The Advocate Group, a large regional Registered Investment Advisory firm, as a founding partner to head up the operations department. Today, Story Capital’s clients directly benefit from Michele’s artful mediation skills in addition to the broad array of abilities that make her an essential member of the team.
Managing and monitoring today’s complex insurance underwriting process while maintaining exquisite communication with clients who are actively engaged in underwriting.
Mediation: assisting families transitioning to “parenting their parents” and handling sibling and intergenerational issues.
Diving into and monitoring details to optimize Story Capital’s processes.
Bachelor of Science, Syracuse University Magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa
Juris Doctorate, William Mitchell College of Law
As a trained mediator and an active member of her church’s Elder Board, Michele is a firm believer that listening and hearing the concerns of others is essential to making a difference in people’s lives. She has extensive experience in the caring for aging parents and their estates, and considers the work she did for her parents and in-laws one of the greatest honors of her life.
Schedule An Introductory Consultation
Our team proudly serves executive families wherever located throughout the United States
Story Capital, LLC
706 2nd Ave. S. Suite 300
Minneapolis, MN 55402
952-657-7200
6385 Old Shady Oak Road
Suite 250
55344
2355 Highway 36 West
Suite 400
55113
7701 France Avenue South
55436
1650 West End Blvd.
Suite 100
55416
