Newport Beach’s Joseph Di Giulio now serves up financial advice

Joseph Di Giulio is a former highly ranked junior tennis player and is now a financial advisor.

He’s also an older brother. On some days, he can sit in his office at True Path Financial close to Fashion Island and watch his younger brother Perry, now a sophomore in high school, train just a stone’s throw away at The Tennis Club at Newport Beach.

“I literally have sat in meetings in this firm and seen him playing matches across the street,” Joseph Di Giulio said.

Di Giulio can admire the fight that both of his younger brothers show on the court; Austin is an incoming senior at Loyola Marymount University.

Joseph has been there. At one point, the Newport Beach native was the No. 1-ranked junior tennis player in the country in the 12s, 14s and 16s. He followed that up with four stellar years at UCLA.

After he graduated in 2017 with a political science degree, he got into the financial field.

Trading a T-shirt and shorts for a three-piece suit seemed like a big change for Di Giulio, now 26. Yet, he remains entrenched in the sport he loves.

“I provide financial literacy on some areas that are most relevant to the everyday coach, maybe the players that are trying to make it on tour,” he said. “It can be academy owners, club directors. The tennis space is very unique, in the fact that it extends a lot of different ways but we’re all close-knit.”

Di Giulio works with dozens of players and coaches on building a portfolio that’s right for them. He’s also hosted financial webinars for the Intercollegiate Tennis Assn., and he’s slated to be a guest at a United States Professional Tennis Assn. convention in October to speak on financial literacy.

He’s also working on curriculum in the economics department at his alma mater of UCLA, Di Giulio said, as well as investing in a tennis start-up called Tennis App Suite (TAPPS).

Financial advisor Joseph Di Giulio, 25, is shown in his Newport Beach office.

(Kevin Chang / Staff Photographer)

“I’ll wake up some days and have a 9 a.m. Zoom call with a private tennis investor in Switzerland,” Di Giulio said. “At 10 o’clock, maybe it’s an influential tennis member in Spain. It could be a bunch of college coaches after that. So much of my practice has still been connecting around tennis.

“There hasn’t been someone that has taken on tennis, to the extent of helping the everyday coach. The everyday coach is spending six to eight hours coaching, and doesn’t have the time to know what to do with their money. There are so many things that are missing, especially in the tennis world. I saw that as a huge area that I could impact.”

Spencer Papa, who played college tennis at the University of Oklahoma and currently lives in Dallas, is one of Di Giulio’s clients. Papa said he been working with Di Giulio for about six months now, reconnecting with his former childhood friend.

The two used to train together in Florida as early teenagers.

“I think Joe has used his competitive nature he had in tennis,” Papa said. “He was always one of the best competitors in the country, and he’s kind of taken that into finance and found that for his passion. He’s killing it. He always has some good ideas.”

Another one of Di Giulio’s clients is Howard Joffe, the University of Texas women’s tennis coach who this year guided the Longhorns to their third NCAA team title.

“With his background in tennis, he’s been a pleasure to work with because he’s in tune with the lifestyle of a tennis person and a tennis coach,” Joffe said.

“It’s made working with him super-duper easy … Our worlds are so provincial with respect to practice and playing and traveling and competing. He has the ability to help do things efficiently and quickly.”

Di Giulio also has future goals. He said he’d like to possibly establish a nonprofit involving mental health awareness in honor of his late mother, April, who was just 48 when she died in 2018. He said she battled addiction and mental health issues.

Mental health discussion also has surfaced in tennis recently, with Naomi Osaka’s decision to pull out of the French Open and skip Wimbledon. At the French Open, she withdrew after saying she had experienced anxiety while participating in media conferences.

“I honestly saw it as something that was really tough at the time,” Di Giulio said of his mother’s death. “I had to take a step back and gain a lot of perspective. I think the biggest thing in life that teaches you how to have the right outlook is by experiencing death sometimes.

“What do I really want to get out of my life? Is it achieving success for the wrong reasons, or is it being able to have an impact on people like my mom?”

Di Giulio continues making an impact in the tennis world, even if he’s already played his last competitive match.

“I really admire his drive,” The Tennis Club owner Sean Abdali said.

“When Joseph talked about what he does as a financial advisor now, I was so impressed that he was not afraid to talk to anybody and give a pitch of what he can do for them. He’s obviously really blossomed the last couple of years.”

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