Daren Blonski

Daren Blonski is the co-founder and Managing Principal of Fermata Advisors and its family of brands, including Sonoma Wealth Advisors, Homer Stenger & Co. Tax, and Fermata 401k. A nationally recognized wealth strategist and speaker, Daren is known for his candid, values-based approach to financial planning and legacy leadership. 

Daren leads Sonoma Wealth Advisors' work in agentic Al, one of the most closely watched initiatives of its kind among independent RIAs. Over the past year, the firm built and put to work its own Al agent, a system that logs CRM notes, produces client deliverables, runs daily market reports, and answers compliance questions against the firm's own manual, not a demo, but a working system inside a real practice. Daren set the behavioral standards, business rules, and governance philosophy behind the system, drawing on a broader team effort to build out the technical architecture. His focus is the question every advisory firm now faces: how to capture the leverage of Al automation without compromising fiduciary duty, compliance posture, or client trust. 

On the retirement plan side, Daren is spearheading the launch of 401k Scaler, a proprietary system built to automate the full 401k plan lifecycle, from recordkeeper and fee benchmarking to plan onboarding and ongoing administration. The tool is designed to give plan sponsors faster answers and give the firm's advisors more time for the strategic work that actually moves a plan forward. 

With over two decades of experience, Daren brings a rare combination of academic grounding and real-world practicality to the financial industry. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Sociology from the University of California, Davis, and a Master's degree in Psychology from Sonoma State University. His work blends behavioral finance, family dynamics, and disciplined investment strategy to help business owners, inheritors, and rising-generation leaders build both financial wealth and the mindset required to sustain it. 

Outside of wealth management, Daren hosts the It's All Money podcast, which has generated more than 19,000 YouTube views and continues to grow across major audio platforms. He is a frequent speaker at financial industry conferences and leadership events nationwide and has been featured in national publications including CNBC, Time, and USA Today. 

As an author, Daren has written both fiction and nonfiction. His leadership parable Clarity: A Leadership Succession Tale has been praised for making complex strategic concepts accessible and memorable. His book Broken Dealer, co-authored with Carmine Corino, became an Amazon bestseller in Financial Services and established him as a candid voice advocating for fiduciary financial advice. Currently, he is working on The Inheritor's Dilemma, which examines how to navigate wealth you didn't create and transform it into a legacy that reflects your purpose, not just your portfolio. 

Across all of his work, Daren bridges technical expertise with a deep understanding of human behavior, making him uniquely equipped to guide audiences through the emotional and financial complexities of inheritance, leadership, legacy, and the responsible use of Al in an advisory practice.