Catone explains why Fort Bragg is just the right fit for a $1.5 billion firm
By CHRIS CALDER | October 3, 2019 at 8:56 am, FORT BRAGG ADVOCATE NEWS
Daniel Catone has made Redwood Investment Group into a small town operation. Its offices on Main Street in Fort Bragg are located in a historic bank building (the safe is still in the basement), with the high ceilings, soaring windows and old growth redwood beams to go along with it.
His staff is all Fort Bragg, too: Office Manager Karen Coverston, partner Kyle Fairall (his grandfather, John Cimolino, was a longtime Union Lumber Company, then Georgia-Pacific executive who served as both Fourth District county supervisor and city councilman and mayor of Fort Bragg), and Francoise Goble, (whose family is well-known locally when it comes to public service, both on the job and off).
For a small-town operation, then, it might come as a surprise that the Redwood Investment Group and its associated company, Golden State Wealth Management, oversees $1.5 billion for people and families looking to nurse their nest eggs.
Those accomplishments got Catone named one of Investment News Magazine’s “40 Under 40” in the financial advice field. Investment News hailed his business skills as well as Catone’s pro bono work for Catholic charities and the Master’s Degree in theology he is earning this year.
Catone covers a lot of territory between his family’s home on Airport Road north of Fort Bragg and a ranch in Wyoming. Born in Orange County (his grandfather was one of the owners of the Los Angeles Times, his father an executive with the company, and Catone knows the smell of printer’s ink), he and his wife discovered Fort Bragg the way many do, on a wandering journey up the coast.
“The rural lifestyle,” Catone said, and Fort Bragg’s in particular, is what caused him to decide to locate his company here, though Redwood Investments does business in Washington, Texas and New York as well as California.
He also said the local staff became an important part of his settling in.
Coverston, he said, was one of his first hires and he credits her with helping assemble the team.
“She really does pride herself on the quality of our work,” Catone said. “That’s why she sticks around.” He added that Coverston has tapped Goble to keep an eye on things when she’s ready for new endeavors.
After working for the United Nations High Commissioner For Refugees in Switzerland and at a law firm by age 21, Catone said his next formative experience was getting into the financial advising field, with Edward D. Jones Co., a month after 9/11.
He took what could be considered two strikes against him — the peach fuzz on his chin and investors’ (and everyone else’s) terror of the future at the time — and started going door to door in Newport Beach, showing up at local events, introducing himself.
“I sort of pretended I was running for mayor,” he remembered.
Four years later, Catone founded Redwood Investment Group and has since started two more Registered Investment Advisor firms that now oversee $1.5 billion in assets.
The most recent notice from Investment News is another boost for Catone and his team, but with newly remodeled offices (done under Goble’s eye), Catone said Fort Bragg is just the right fit.