Meet the Millstone Evans Group Team: Jarrett Sharp

Almost in passing, in a quick scene in Star Wars: A Phantom Menace, Qui-Gon tells young Anakin, “Always remember. Your focus determines your reality.”

It’s a line that Jarrett Sharp, the Millstone Evans Group team’s Chief Financial Officer and Financial Planning Associate, can relate to for a couple of reasons.

First, it’s a movie quote and he’s a kid from Los Angeles who grew up around – and still loves – movies. More on that later.

Second, it’s a career motto, since he’s one of those fortunate souls who knew what he wanted his career path to be from a relatively young age, and made it happen.

Jarrett currently oversees all accounting matters, including day-to-day management as well as corporate tax concerns and procedures, for the firm. In addition to his focus on finance and accounting, he is a financial planning associate who helps build and review financial plans for clients and manages a variety of client requests. You can read more about his current role here.

He says he may have gotten his love of financial planning from his dad, who switched his USC major from cinema studies to finance. His dad works in the film industry as a business executive.

“When there’s a personal connection to a topic and if I can understand why it’s important, I can get behind it,” Jarrett says.

At 16, one such “personal connection” showed up in the shape of his first Gibson guitar, which he bought for $1,200 from $5,000 he’d saved.

“As soon as I’d bought the guitar, I wondered how I could replenish my funds now without feeling like I have just spent it all,” he says. “So that’s when I started investing. I opened two accounts – one taxable account and one Roth IRA.”

His dad suggested he just buy a basic collection of strong U.S. stocks, within diversified funds, which he did along with a few personal favorites like Apple. Jarrett also focused on working, with high school internships, restaurants and his first W-2 job at McDonald’s. He put most of what he made during high school and college into his investments.

He attended The University of Colorado Boulder, where he was a finance major until he discovered the personal financial planning track. It came fairly easy to him since he’d started down the path of self-taught financial planning at 16. Choosing where to attend college was also a fairly easy decision for him.

“I was drawn to the mountains,” he says. “I used to visit Colorado all the time as a kid and my grandparents and extended family still live out here. I knew Denver. The cost of living and traffic are better than L.A. and there’s a great quality of life. I liked the idea of building my career in a state I knew I wanted to make home.”

While he’s very busy with his current role, he wants to grow into more financial planning and portfolio building. He’s had experience at both multibillion-dollar companies and smaller companies and thinks The Millstone Evans Group is the right size for him.

And when he’s not working? Being from a family involved in the entertainment industry, he’s also passionate about movies – typically sci-fi, adventure, comedies and drama but no horror (“usually such dumb stories”) and black and white films.

He hosts weekly movie nights in his home theater, which took a lot of work to create – what with special furniture and equipment, wiring, and leveling a projector. But now it’s one of his favorite rooms. He’s watched Top Gun: Maverick six times because “seeing it on a larger 142-inch screen is exciting and you see and hear things you don’t get to experience with a smaller screen.”

Jarrett also enjoys hikes and riding bikes in summer as well as skiing in winter, especially since he can get to great slopes within an hour. And remember that first purchase – his Gibson guitar? He still loves playing it and now has two – along with a special fondness for 80s rock and blues, adding to his older-than-his-years-persona.

You can reach Jarrett at (720) 728-2806 or email Jarrett@MillstoneEvansGroup.com.