Married, with business

My spouse is my co-pilot: Billy Thompson and Helene Nuñez Thompson

For William “Billy” and Helene Nuñez Thompson, Legates of the Northern Virginia Chapter, a chance European encounter developed into an enduring partnership in both marriage and business.

“We came to work together as a couple rather serendipitously,” recalled Billy, founder and president of Neurostat Analytical Solutions (NSAS) in Vienna, VA. He first met Helene when he was teaching at a summer program on aviation psychology in Austria and saw her again the following year at a conference on the Italian island of Sardinia.

You might say their relationship “took off” from there. So did Billy’s gradual recovery of his long-abandoned faith. In Sardinia, he and Helene, a devout Catholic, had several conversations about faith and its challenges. The following year, at another summer session in Austria, she invited him to Mass.

“I hadn’t been to Mass in over 30 years,” Billy said. “She told me I was welcome to join her, but if I chose not to attend it would be okay. I went.” Something about the beauty of the Mass and the choir touched Billy on a profound level. “I felt God and the Holy Spirit move on me, and I began to cry,” he continued. “It was at that moment I knew what I needed to do regarding my faith regardless of any future with Helene.”

His Catholic faith renewed, he and Helene began “both our journey as a couple and our spiritual journey together,” he said.

The business journey followed.

“One day Helene told me she could help me with some management issues with my company — she had training in managing small and medium businesses — and the rest is history, as they say,” Billy explained. “She now is senior vice president and chief financial officer, and without her there probably wouldn’t be a company.”

Risk profiling

NSAS provides assessment, selection, and performance optimization of capabilities for military and civilian personnel in high-risk, high-demand positions such as pilots, aircrew, air traffic controllers, first responders, and special-ops personnel. The objective is to evaluate whether individuals in these fields “have the cognitive and emotional foundational skills to adapt to the rigors of these demanding occupations,” Helene said. NSAS experts also evaluate genetic profiles and develop psychogenetic profiles of risk for adaptation, then generate feedback to clients identifying each individual’s strengths and weaknesses.

Over the past three years, for example, NSAS has been tasked with evaluating every U.S. Air Force general of two-star rank and above. “Through these evaluations, we can understand how an individual might respond to stressful situations and help them understand how to successfully navigate and manage them toward a positive outcome,” explained Helene.

Billy noted that NSAS also evaluates an individual’s ability to multitask, a factor that distinguishes good personnel in high-risk occupations.

“One critical aspect is how fast and how accurately you can process information while in a stressful environment,” he said. “So, we evaluate how individuals manage their cognition and emotions to enhance critical decision-making in stressful and high-demand situations.”

Another consideration is whether an individual under stress — a pilot, for example — takes a rigid “follow the book” approach using a checklist to make decisions or is capable of “thinking outside the box.”

“Those who tend to be more adaptable and flexible are those who can solve an unexpected event successfully,” Helene said, “while the ones who limit to just following the checklist get lost in their ability to understand what is going on and struggle solving the problem, which can ultimately end up in an airline disaster.”

NSAS takes an extremely comprehensive and holistic approach to performance and mental health, Billy said.

“The ultimate goal is to have a population of professionals who are not ‘broken’ when it comes time to retire and who, during the professional career, are performing their highest level of achievement,” he added.

Managing partnerships

The Thompsons attribute their success as a working couple to how they approach situations and differences harmoniously: Helene tends to be more methodical and plan-oriented, while Billy favors more flexibility in allowing plans to evolve. Using their gifts accordingly, Helene runs NSAS on the structured corporate level while Billy manages it on the operational level.

That complementarity works in their marriage too.

“Our golden rule is ‘always think the best and not the worst of each other,’ and that allows us to openly discuss our intentions, aspirations, needs, and goals. Our faith is the compass and our love the map we follow to get where we want to be together as a couple and now as a new family,” said Helene, who is expecting the couple’s first child.

“We are bonded by God´s love, and that is the magical glue that keeps our hearts close to each other and happy,” she added. “Without our faith, we wouldn’t be able to communicate at the same level and with the same depth as we do.”

A Taylor-made (ad)venture: Gerry and Karen Frigon

Business and family intertwined from the beginning for Gerry and Karen Frigon, Legates of the Phoenix Chapter.

Gerry launched Taylor Frigon Capital Management in 2006 following a 20- year career as an asset manager for Merrill Lynch. The “Taylor” name honors Richard C. Taylor, Karen’s father, who had a successful investment management firm of his own and had previously worked alongside Thomas Rowe Price Jr., famously known as “the father of growth investing.” Taylor mentored Gerry throughout his career until his death in 2004.

But more than just honoring his father-in-law, the firm’s name also represents a legacy now continued by both Gerry and Karen. Gerry is Taylor Frigon’s chief investment officer, while Karen serves as principal and chief operating officer of the firm, which is headquartered in Scottsdale, AZ.

Steady as she goes

Part of that legacy is the firm’s commitment to managing investments according to the Classic Growth Stock Theory originally developed by Price, a proponent of “buy and hold investing.” Fundamentally, this approach involves investing in successful companies with solid track records and remaining with them long term, rather than constantly seeking out potential spikes and trends in a speculative effort to make a quick profit on the “next big thing.” The theory favors stable investment portfolios that ride out the typical ups and downs of economic cycles.

“While we invest in both public and private companies, the public portion is the largest contributor to our revenue at this time. Yet, we approach making investments in public companies similarly to the way we make investments in private companies,” Gerry explained. “It’s about buying the business, not trading ‘stocks.’”

Taylor Frigon Capital maintains these principles while adapting them as necessary to our modern day.

“Clearly, we live in very different times than when Dick Taylor and Thomas Price were working together,” Gerry said. Asset managers today, for example, need to understand technology as an investment theme, and the life cycles of companies tend to be shorter. “This makes the concept of owning companies through ‘multiple market and economic cycles’ more challenging, but the overall theory on what makes a ‘well-managed company in front of fertile fields of future growth’ — a Price mainstay — remains pretty consistent.”

A MarketWatch article published in July 2020 reveals how Taylor Frigon not only anticipates the paradigm shift occurring with technological advances such as 5G and hands-free devices but also commits to them for the long haul. That even means keeping faith with one company whose Chinese suppliers were hit hard by the effects of Covid-19 and friction in trade relations between the U.S. and China. Despite its down cycle at the time, Frigon said the company was “right in the sweet spot” of where technology was heading.

“We are very patient with our companies, as long as we think they are on the right side of the paradigm shift,” Frigon told MarketWatch. “For us to wait years for things to happen is not necessarily a problem. It is one of the reasons we have been able to do what we do.”

Having a solid foundation in one’s investments can foster confidence in the “bad down days,” as Richard Taylor used to say. That philosophy has served Taylor Frigon investors well during the economic travails of the Covid pandemic even as the industry in general has moved more toward short-term thinking during a volatile market.

“We believe that ‘short-termism’ is one of the major problems we have in the economy and the financial services industry today,” Gerry said. “There is far too much emphasis on making ‘the quick buck.’”

The home team

Shortly after Gerry started Taylor Frigon Capital Investments in 2006, he realized he needed assistance in developing a “more robust” portfolio management accounting software system. Karen, who had her own information technology consulting business and had helped build some of the software for Merrill Lynch, soon came on board with Taylor Frigon full time.

Togetherness as a team both at work and home has its upsides and stresses, and the boundary between the two venues is not always defined. Some of that has to do with their sector of industry.

“When you are in the asset management business, you never really take a break,” said Gerry. “That is obviously a challenge, but it comes with the territory. The bottom line is that the economy and markets don’t take vacations.”

The Frigons do make time for occasional solo breathers.

“It’s good for our relationship that Gerry plays a lot of golf,” Karen quipped.

On both the marriage and business front, however, their partnership is as solid as a Taylor Frigon-managed investment.

“It is always challenging to separate work from personal life. In many ways, we don’t necessarily try,” Gerry said. “Regardless, neither of us really enjoy being apart from one another, so it fits our relationship well.”

GERALD KORSON, editorial consultant for Legatus magazine, is based in Indiana.