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Twenty-five years of watching cycles. A worldview that took most of them to earn.

A practice built deliberately, over a quarter century, around the way this work should actually be done.

John Koyle, AIF®, co-founder of Red Cedar Wealth Advisors
John Koyle, AIF® · Co-Founder, Red Cedar Wealth
25+
Years advising
2001
Licensed
AIF®
Fiduciary credential
Fiduciary
Advisory fee model
Clean
BrokerCheck record ↗
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The oldest recorded market panic happened in 33 AD, under Tiberius. Rome's credit markets seized. Interest rates spiked. Wealthy families lost estates almost overnight. The emperor eventually stepped in with an emergency lending program, and the crisis passed. The specifics don't matter. What matters is that almost two thousand years later, the patterns haven't really changed. The same fears, the same miscalculations, the same recoveries on the other side.

That's the work I've been doing for twenty-five years. Reading the patterns. Watching the cycles. Not predicting, which nobody can do, but positioning, which requires a kind of judgment that only comes from watching the same movie play out enough times to know how each act ends.

I finished school in 2001 with a degree in finance and got licensed the same year. A famously forgiving time to start a financial advisory career, as anyone who was around then can tell you. I spent my first decade at a regional broker-dealer, where I learned the business from the inside. How product shelves work. How commissions shape recommendations, whether the advisor realizes it or not. How firms train their people to sell things that aren't always in the client's best interest.

Then I watched 2008 happen in real time, with real clients, holding products that behaved differently in stress than they'd been sold to behave. That year taught me more than the previous seven combined. It's a big part of why I co-founded Red Cedar Wealth Advisors. I wanted a practice that did this work the way I thought it should be done. Fiduciary. Plain-spoken. No product shelf. No conflicts that bend advice away from what's right for the client.

Credentials & Background

  • AIF® Accredited Investment Fiduciary
  • BS Finance Class of 2001
  • Minor Economics
  • Licensed 2001
  • Co-Founder Red Cedar Wealth Advisors

Due diligence matters. Every financial advisor's full regulatory and complaint history is publicly available, free, on FINRA's BrokerCheck. I recommend you look me up before we talk, and any other advisor you're considering. Check my BrokerCheck record ↗

How I actually work

Every week, before any portfolio decision, I run through a structured four-layer process that scores economic conditions, market internals, valuations, and sentiment. Each layer gets a number. The composite tells me how aggressive or defensive client portfolios should be. The goal isn't to predict markets; it's to have a disciplined answer already written when other advisors are still reaching for one.

That's the investment side. The planning side is where most of the largest dollar-value decisions actually get made: tax strategy, Roth conversions, estate coordination, beneficiary reviews. I coordinate closely with your CPA and estate attorney. This work is better done as a team.

The role of a good advisor is to help you look forward. Not just at investment returns. At the full picture.

For the full methodology, including the weekly scoring framework and the six principles that shape every retirement plan I build, the Approach page lays it all out.

What I won't do

On fee-based advisory accounts: no commissions on investment products. No proprietary funds. No private placements, non-traded REITs, or illiquid deals loaded with fees. No investment I wouldn't put my own family into. No fee schedule hidden inside product structures. On the rare occasion a client needs term life insurance or similar, the recommendation comes first and the compensation method follows what's actually cheapest for the client, which is sometimes a commission-based policy. Any insurance commission is disclosed explicitly.

Where I work from, and who I work with

The practice is based in the triangle formed by Jackson Hole, Yellowstone, and Salt Lake City. It's a corner of the country that attracts people who prefer to think their own thoughts and live within reach of real wild country. Most clients are elsewhere. Meetings happen by phone, video, or occasionally in person when it matters. What hasn't changed with geography is the thing that actually matters: judgment, and the discipline to keep it calibrated when markets are telling you something the consensus doesn't want to hear.

The rest of the picture

Outside the office, my life looks ordinary. Family. Idaho. The outdoors. The usual things people with long careers in this business eventually figure out matter more than the career itself.

The next step

Now you know who I am. Let's find out if we're a fit.

A first call runs 30 minutes, costs nothing, and carries no pressure. We both figure out if it makes sense to keep talking. That's the whole agenda.

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