St. Louis advisory wants to help busy people be prepared for the unforeseen. Veteran business consultant Fess Crockett has founded 4-C Personal Wealth Management Consultants to help private clients preserve and growth their wealth in the face of market volatility and blind happenstance, using some the techniques used to help large companies improve profitability.

"I was compelled to start this company after some premature deaths of friends and family," says Crockett, who has run St. Louis-based strategic consultancy Crockett and Company, an advisor to several Fortune 500 companies, since the mid 1990s. "I saw how some very smart people, who knew what to do financially, didn't have the time to prepare for the unexpected."

Tactics

4-C seeks to remedy this by working with clients to develop written financial plans and ensure that their financial, investment and legacy-planning records are in good order.

Among the technologies techniques 4-C uses are cash-flow analysis, scenario analysis, and a new goal-setting process. The firm also has methods in place for ensuring that the proper action is taken to plans that have been formulated. Wealth-management services include portfolio management, estate planning, budgeting and expense control and centralized recordkeeping.