A year ago, WSB-TV anchor Justin Farmer decided it was time to change careers after more than 30 years in the news business and pursued an investment adviser license, which he received in March. His last day on Channel 2 Action News was Nov. 26.
“I need to take this leap for me,” said Farmer in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution a week after he stepped down from a nearly 17-year run with the ABC affiliate. “It was time for me to be my own boss.”
Farmer, 54, has launched a new private investment firm Exit Wealth Advisors targeting ultra wealthy clients, especially business owners who recently sold their companies and are trying to figure out what to do with their money. According to his LinkedIn page, he wants to provide “access and guidance to vetted alternative investments and proprietary asset selection processes in concert with sophisticated tax and insurance strategies.”
Credit: CONTRIBUTED
Credit: CONTRIBUTED
The Atlanta native, who grew up in Dunwoody and Alpharetta and graduated from the private Darlington School in Rome, said he has always been interested in financial issues and cofounded Savannah Distilling Co. in 2012. “In my private time. I have always been a very active personal investor,” Farmer said. “I’ve helped out friends over the years. On air, when I wasn’t anchoring, 70% of my work was something around business trends or economic development.”
Ted Jenkin, a former college acquaintance who launched Oxygen Financial in 2006 and sold it in 2019, got to know Farmer better while doing segments about finance for WSB-TV. Jenkin ultimately helped Farmer make the career transition, becoming chief marketing officer for Farmer’s new firm.
“To be a good CEO in general, you have to be a good people person and you have to be a thinker, which Justin is,” Jenkin said. “And I think he’s able to work with very high profile personalities. We’ll be able to use his skills to bring a handful of very elite people as clients into our company.”
His biggest adjustment, Jenkin said, “is people may not be stroking your ego every day. He’ll have to get used to that.”
Farmer is nonetheless psyched to jump into his new profession: “When you’re in the media, you need to be skeptical and peel back the onion. Those same attributes should be used when managing other people’s money. You need to pay attention to the markets and the CEOs of companies.”
Credit: CONTRIBUTED
Credit: CONTRIBUTED
Farmer said his interests in news and finance stem from his parents. His father Don Farmer, who died in 2021, was a well-known ABC News, CNN and WSB-TV journalist who married fellow WSB-TV broadcaster Chris Curle. His mom DeAnn Hardwick was a successful real estate agent in Atlanta. (They divorced when he was young.)
“My dad and I were always talking about current events,” Farmer said. “It had a profound effect on me being aware of my surroundings far beyond my life in Dunwoody.” His mom, who died in 2020, “definitely ingrained my entrepreneurial spirit,” he added.
Farmer ended up in boarding school, he said, in part because the public school system where he lived wasn’t stellar in the 1980s. “It definitely taught me to be fiercely independent,” he said. “If you don’t advocate for yourself, no one will. I use those life skills every day.”
He decided to leave Georgia for college, attending Boston College where he studied political science and international relations. After graduation, during a recession, he didn’t have a job and decided to try his hand at his dad’s profession. “My dad famously said when I graduated that the bank of dad is now closed,” he said. “It was smart.”
He landed a job in Albany as a weekend sportscaster and recalled advice from legendary Braves sportscaster Skip Caray (who was his father’s college roommate) and former WSB-TV sports anchor Chuck Dowdle: “Be authentic on air. If it doesn’t work, so be it. ”
But it worked for Farmer, who moved up the broadcasting ranks in the 1990s and 2000s including stops at stations in Denver and Dallas, switching to news from sports. In 2007, then WSB-TV news director Marian Pittman was seeking a potential replacement for John Pruitt, who was pondering retirement. She decided on Farmer.
“Justin had the experience and the Atlanta institutional knowledge to take the chair from John,” said Pittman, now president of Cox Media Group, Content and WSB. And he did not disappoint her, describing him as a “hardworking journalist who valued colleagues and the WSB audience. He knew how to cover stories that were important to our area and had the ability to get the right people to talk in front of the camera.”
Credit: CONTRIBUTED
Credit: CONTRIBUTED
Farmer said his career highlight was interviewing Barack Obama in 2011 at the White House to talk about Obamacare. Obama was late and seemed distracted but Farmer felt it went well. He found out the next day that Obama was distracted in part because he was tracking the SEAL team that ultimately captured Osama bin Laden.
“As a kid who studied political science and international affairs, this was the pinnacle of my broadcasting career,” he said. “I was geeking out as a politics kid.”
He also enjoyed moderating key gubernatorial and senatorial debates over the years. “Because of those relationships I had created moderating those debates, some of those politicians reached out to me after I announced my departure, both Republicans and Democrats. What I’m proudest about is that the left and right both know I’m fair. I’m a professional and I’m going to play it straight.”
In all, he said “I was at my best in Atlanta because this was my people, my city. Whether it was Snowmageddon, the interstate bridge fire or the death of someone we care about, I actually felt it,” he said.
Farmer said his success was helped immensely by the chemistry he had with his co-anchor Jovita Moore during the 2010s. “It was an arranged marriage but she grew to be one of my sweetest and closest friends,” he said. “You can’t really nail that job unless you have a co-anchor who you can have trust, faith and respect. That takes a lot of time. We earned that together. It was a very special relationship.”
Credit: CONTRIBUTED
Credit: CONTRIBUTED
He was devastated when she died in 2021 of an aggressive form of brain cancer. “It rocked me to my core,” he said.
Her death came on top of the deaths of his parents.
All that personal tragedy didn’t necessarily lead to Farmer’s career change, but he did say it “was definitely a moment of serious reflection for me. While I really enjoy broadcasting, I also just wanted to find out if I can do other things.”
The brass at WSB had known of his pending departure for awhile. “I’m thankful for the time he gave to WSB and for being our rock after Jovita Moore passed away,” Pittman said.
Farmer is not leaving TV entirely. He plans to come back to WSB-TV every so often to provide commentary on the economy and politics. And he also wants to help spread the word on financial literacy by speaking to local schools, senior homes and civic organizations.
When he returns to Channel 2 as a finance expert, “I’ll be able to explain what causes inflation or help make sense on tariffs or why the market is going up or due for a correction,” he said.
About the Author
