Georgia has earned the nickname “the Hollywood of the South” from the plethora of projects filmed there, including The Walking Dead and Stranger Things television series, The Hunger Games movie franchise and this year’s multi-Oscar nominee Black Panther. The state, which a decade ago started offering film production companies generous tax credits, saw a record-breaking 455 television and film productions during fiscal-year 2018.
An Atlanta-based RIA firm is getting in on the action. About a year ago, Patricia Sklar, a wealth advisor at Brightworth, was noticing more and more film and TV activity in Atlanta. In addition, news stories about the pace of the industry’s growth in Georgia piqued her interest.
“We film more major motion pictures here in Georgia than L.A. does at this point,” she said. “There’s tremendous opportunity for us to help people.”
Sklar attended an introductory class on the film business taught by producer Linda Burns, did her own research and started attending film industry events “to try to up my game and understand it better,” she said.
It’s not just actors who are generating wealth but also producers and others who work behind the scenes. “It’s shocking, if you’ve ever been on a movie set, how many people there are,” she said. The percentage of her client base that hails from the film industry is growing, she said. It includes a mix of Georgia natives and transplants who’ve settled there for work.
(You can meet Sklar and hear more about her advisory business during the "Building A Niche Market" session at FA's Invest In Women conference.)
Corporate executives and business owners Brightworth works with from The Coca-Cola Co. and other companies have pretty steady and predictable incomes, said Sklar. But people in the film industry work on a project basis: Each project pays differently and has a different time frame, and they may not know where their next paycheck is coming from. “It really is feast or famine,” she said.
It’s important to help them learn how to budget and save for retirement, and often “learning the concept of an emergency fund is huge, too,” she said. Some film people have retirement plans through unions, which she’s had to learn about.
Disability insurance is critical but often overlooked, she said. Many people in the film industry use their bodies for their job, she said, “so if they go and break their leg, they’re out of work.” Brightworth doesn’t sell insurance, but she makes sure clients have the right coverage in place for their families. Tax planning is also important, especially when people freelance or have businesses on the side, said Sklar, who has a CPA background.
Sklar said she was the only financial advisor who attended the “film business 101” class. She and a colleague spoke to a group of about 50 actors attending an acting class on a Sunday night. “They were shooting off financial questions at us left and right,” she said, so the session went on until 11 p.m.