What Golf Great Jim Flick Taught Billion-Dollar Advisor Michael Bapis About Winning in Business

You’re not going to reach the top of this profession without having a competitive streak in you. And when you channel that competitiveness into “winning” for your clients and “winning” in the growth of your business, that’s a dynamite combo.

Today’s guest, Michael Bapis, is a competitor who played golf for the University of Utah, then collegiate-level basketball while studying abroad in Greece for two years. After finishing school, he moved to Phoenix and ran Jim Flick's Golf School at Desert Mountain. Once he decided to follow his father into finance, Michael kept learning and achieving at a very high level, first at Morgan Stanley, then at HighTower. In 2018, he opened Vios Advisors under the umbrella of Rockefeller Capital Management, working with high-net worth individuals, pro athletes, and entertainers.

We connected in person at the 2019 SALT Conference and discussed a wide range of topics including two key lessons he learned from his early mentor Jim Flick. These lessons became foundational cornerstones for how he built his advisory firm to more than $1 billion in AUM.