Ep 460: Establishing The Operational Systems It Takes To Truly Serve Ultra-HNW Clients Effectively with Stephanie Hughes

Summary

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Financial Advisor Success Podcast – Ep 460

Title: Establishing The Operational Systems It Takes To Truly Serve Ultra-HNW Clients Effectively
Guest: Stephanie Hughes, CEO of Wiss Family Office
Host: Michael Kitces
Release Date: October 21, 2025

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Overview

In this episode, Michael Kitces sits down with Stephanie Hughes, CEO of Wiss Family Office, to unpack the operational complexities and best practices for serving ultra-high-net-worth (UHNW) clients. Stephanie’s firm, a multi-family office integrated with a large accounting firm, has experienced tremendous growth, surpassing $1 billion in assets under management in just seven years. The conversation highlights the unique systems, controls, and culture required to provide a seamless, secure, and truly integrated client experience, covering financial, tax, legal, and estate planning needs.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Firm Structure and Growth Story

[05:36–10:33]

• Wiss Family Office is the family office division of Wiss & Co., an accounting firm with roots going back to 1969.
• The firm serves 220 multigenerational UHNW households, most of whom are business owners with complex tax and estate needs.
• The explosive growth—$1 billion AUM in seven years—was fueled by integrating wealth management with accounting services, allowing access to longstanding business client relationships.

2. Defining the UHNW Client & Service Model

[22:03–25:32]

• Clients are typically founders or families behind mid-market businesses (revenue $20 million to $500 million).
• Relationships often begin through the business’s accounting, tax, or advisory relationship, then expand to include full family office services.
• Wealth, tax, legal, bill pay, entity management, and concierge services are bundled with dedicated specialists.

3. Operational Systems & Internal Controls

[27:29–33:37]

• Rigorous internal controls are mandatory given the high value and complexity of transactions.

• Dual approvals and detailed checks are enforced for all client money movements, trades, and paperwork.

• Stephanie emphasizes, “We have accountants in the RIA who are very good with the details. Sometimes there’s just no way to get away from the four-eye check.” (30:00)

• Technology stack includes Redtail CRM, ShareFile, Emoney, Orion, and custom-built workflow tools.

• The firm is building its own workflow automation to streamline and securely manage onboarding, approvals, and compliance (e.g., real-time monitoring for address/phone changes as a cybersecurity and anti-fraud measure).

4. Team Structure, Collaboration, and Hiring

[46:13–58:09]

• About 40 people staff the multi-family office, with only 30% focused on investment management; the majority focus on tax, estate planning, and operational support.

• Teams are assembled by both expertise and client fit. Each client typically has a “relationship leader,” dedicated advisors from different disciplines, and multiple support staff.

• Communication is intentionally group-based—a shared client email (e.g., [e-mail]) ensures all relevant disciplines see every inquiry, facilitating integrated, rapid, and accurate responses.

• On hiring: Recruiting for client service roles is challenging due to the need for extreme diligence with large, complex transactions. The firm shifted to developing talent internally, often hiring those with finance/accounting backgrounds and training them up.

  • “Just because you have experience as a client service associate doesn’t mean you’re going to be good at this.” (57:34)
  • A third-party assessment—Test of Attentional and Interpersonal Style (TAIS)—is used to screen for collaboration and attention to detail. (84:18)

5. Client Experience & Service Nuances

[25:32–45:46]

• Services are “ultra high net worth concierge”; support includes handling lost documents, paying taxes and bills, and managing complex family structures and entities.

• The operational burden is significant: “The basics at this size, and with the complexity, aren’t so basic.” (46:02)

• Every trade or money movement is double-checked, and wires are tested before sending large transfers to combat fraud.

  • “If somebody wants to send a wire… any wire we have a test wire that we send… No one wants to send $50 million to the wrong place.” (43:09)

• Clients experience deep relief at having these burdens lifted. “Our clients are very grateful and appreciative… life becomes a burden when they don’t have that person to coordinate everything.” (64:47)

6. Challenges in Scaling UHNW Service

[75:44–80:54]

• The biggest hurdles:
  • Finding and developing the right collaborative, detail-oriented talent.
  • Building integrated workflows and controls as the firm scaled at 50% per year.
• Stephanie: “Trying to find that person… at first we didn’t know what that looked like… people are trained differently. The low point was trying to figure out who to hire and where to hire from.” (76:00)
• Over time, the firm learned to focus on motivation, the ability to collaborate, and cultural fit more than just technical skills.

7. Advice for Firms Aspiring to Serve UHNW Clients

[86:27–87:34]

• Build deep tax and estate planning competence, ideally by partnering or integrating with an accounting firm.
• Culture and collaboration matter—clients need fully coordinated advice.
  • “For an RIA, you might want to partner with an accounting firm… the tax piece and estate planning are absolutely essential.” (86:40)
• Integrating these functions cannot be merely an afterthought for moving up-market.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Complexity:
  “The operational aspect of dealing with complex clients is extremely nuanced... building the operational structure around that is extremely complicated. It takes a Herculean effort to really scale for these clients.” – Stephanie Hughes [04:17]

• On Internal Controls:
  “We have accountants in the RIA who are very good with the details. Sometimes there’s just no way to get away from the four-eye check.” – Stephanie Hughes [30:00]

• On Delivering for UHNW Families:
  “We are truly providing ultra high net worth concierge services…we pay tax payments directly to the IRS for the entire family, for all the trust accounts, for the LLC accounts.” – Stephanie Hughes [25:32]

• On Client Gratitude:
  “Our clients are very grateful and appreciative…life becomes just a burden when they don’t have that person or family office, that CPA really to help them coordinate everything.” – Stephanie Hughes [64:47]

• On Hiring:
  “Just because you have experience as a client service associate doesn’t mean you're going to be good at this. This is not your typical client.” – Stephanie Hughes [57:34]

• On Team Collaboration:
  “If you can’t collaborate, it’s going to be very hard to do business here. That is the number one thing we look for.” – Stephanie Hughes [81:30]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [05:36] — Wiss Family Office history, client base, and rapid growth
• [22:03] — B2B2C model, how clients enter through business relationships
• [25:32] — Service model: concierge, tax, estate, bill pay, operational details
• [30:00] — Four-eye controls, dual sign-offs, why operations are so demanding
• [33:37] — Custom workflow development, tech stack, and AI use cases
• [46:02] — The “non-basic” basics and why people underestimate operational difficulty
• [53:01] — Dedicated group email and integrated communication for families
• [57:34] — Lessons learned on hiring and why wirehouse experience isn’t always transferrable
• [64:47] — The depth of client gratitude and relief with coordinated service
• [76:00] — Stephanie’s candid discussion of hiring low points and adaptation
• [86:40] — Advice for ambitious RIAs: build a tax and estate backbone
• [88:03] — Stephanie’s definition of personal and professional success

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Conclusion

This episode is a masterclass in operational excellence and cultural alignment for serving UHNW clients. Stephanie Hughes articulates why integrated control systems, a deep tax backbone, and relentless collaboration are vital in the multi-family office space. For firms aspiring to move upmarket, her advice is clear: invest in true team integration, prioritize operational detail, and never underestimate the challenge—or the personal fulfillment—of serving at the highest level.

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For more insights and resources, visit Nerd’s Eye View – www.kitces.com.

Transcript

[A]

Welcome to the Financial Advisor Success Podcast where you go behind the scenes with financial planner, speaker and consultant Michael Kitces to hear stories of how leading financial advisors navigated the inevitable challenges that arise on the path to success and get insight from leading industry consultants about how to break through to the next level in your advisory business. And now, here's your host, Michael Kitces.

[B]

Welcome everyone. Welcome to the 460th episode of the Financial Advisor Advisor Success Podcast. My guest on today's podcast is Stephanie Hughes. Stephanie is the CEO of Wiss Family Office, a multifamily office based in Florham Park, New Jersey that oversees approximately $1 billion in assets under management for 220 client households. What's unique about Stephanie though is how she has established the operational systems required to serve ultra high net worth clients efficiently and securely as her practice has grown beyond $1 billion in AUM in just seven years. In this episode we talk in depth about how Stephanie and her firm are able to provide clients with a one stop shop for their financial, legal and tax needs, reducing the stress clients face when managing stakeholders across several different firms how Stephanie finds that integration across the firm's different services and active communication amongst team members across the business is a key driver to the firm's success and a differentiator from firms focused on one primary service area and how Stephanie prioritizes having strong internal controls in place given the volume of high dollar client transactions her team process processes that if mishandled could create significant tax burdens or expose them to fraud. We also talk about how Stephanie encountered challenges hiring for positions in her multi family office environment because of how her practices processes differ from what candidates might have experienced at other wealth management firms why Stephanie looks beyond a job candidate's skills to take a deep dive into their personality and motivations to ensure they'd be a good fit for her firm's culture and how Stephanie finds that gaining experience and client service is valuable for aspiring advisors at her firm because it exposes them to the complex nature of ultra high net worth client service needs and the importance of diligence when managing money movements and other transactions and be certain to listen to the end where Stephanie shares how her clients can use a dedicated email address that goes to several members on their planning team. Given that a question might require tax, wealth management and or legal expertise why Stephanie's firm is creating an internal workflows tool to manage its robust approvals process as well as another tool to monitor accounts and communications to detect signs of fraud such as changes to their phone Number and address. And how Stephanie finds that being linked to an accounting firm not only provides her practice with a steady flow of good fit clients, but also fosters an immediate sense of trust given new clients years of experience working with the firm on business and personal tax issues. And so with that introduction, I hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast with Stephanie Hughes. Welcome Stephanie Hughes, to the Financial Advisor Success podcast.

[C]

Thank you so much Michael for having me. I'm super excited to be here.

[B]

I really appreciate you joining us today and I'm excited to get to I think just really dig into what it as I think like what it truly takes operationally to serve ultra high net worth clients or because of our like family office, multifamily office world. Because I, you know, I mean we've seen for years just advisors have a tendency to sort of gravitate up market to higher dollar clients over time. Some of us sort of pursue that as a proactive strategy because just you find that it's more remunerative to work with higher dollar clients with higher stakes problems. And to some extent that just an expertise thing like learn your investment stuff and your tax stuff and your financial planning stuff or like bring together a team of experts and hire that within the business to be able to deliver on it. But I find it's, it's, it's more than that because even if you got a firm full of like really smart attorneys and accountants and investment folks and financial planners all working together in this wonderful team based approach for high dollar clients, like you still have to actually work together on a coordinated basis.

[C]

You hit the nail on the head.

[B]

Amongst all these clients. Right. And that's not, I mean you need the expertise, but that's not an expertise thing, that's like a systems and process and operations thing.

[C]

Absolutely. The operation, the operational aspect of dealing with complex clients is extremely nuanced and it's super interesting and you know, you've got to be ultra collaborative but also really step into the shoes of the other professionals, how they think, you know. Of course it's so fun to all be working for the same client. You know, all have the same vision and you know, everybody's on board. That's, that's the most important thing. But yes, building the operational piece and the structure around that is extremely complicated. And you know, it takes, it takes a herculean effort to really get it to the point where you know, it's, you're really scaling for these clients.

[B]

So I'm excited just to dive into like the, the the nerdy operational guts.

[C]

Of like, oh, I love it. I'm so excited.

[B]

Yeah, like how do you literally execute on that?

[C]

But I think this is, yeah.

[B]

As a starting point just to help everyone get oriented in the first place. Can you take a few minutes and just, just tell us about the advisory firm itself? So we kind of understand the context of the business that you do and who you serve and then we'll, then we'll roll up our sleeves and get in the systems and process.

[C]

Sure. So we are a multifamily office and the backbone of our company is an accounting firm that's, that's been in business since 1969. It's called Wiss & Co. And the accounting firm has been helping middle market businesses and their families since then. We do about 10,000 tax returns. We've got different niches, real estate, food and beverage and the investor backed niche, engineering and construction. And the clients are all from the accounting firm. And we end up, you know, helping them with all things financial. And when they have some complexity, whether that's a transition in their business, they sell a business. They just need help with kind of building their personal wealth on the side of a business to diversify their risk. As you know, these business owners have very complex tax situations and complex estate plans and, and we kind of built the advisory practice around that.

[B]

So, so then just help us think of just core metrics of the, of the firm of like clients. Aum, if you're AUM based revenue, just like help us understand the overall scope of, of how many are there and who you're serving.

[C]

Sure. So we have currently about 220 ultra high net worth households and the households are multigenerational. They have very complex tax situations as I mentioned and they have to navigate this complexity. So they need a place which is one stop which understands the nuances in their business, how their business was built, how their wealth was created and also the nuances of the family and the estate plan. In terms of AUM, we're just over a billion in AUM. We've got 1.4 roughly in AUA. We started seven years ago, so we're growing very rapidly, which has also been a pain point on the operations side. It's been an incredible journey, but we're working to keep up with that growth and we are very selective with our clients. We're not looking for all clients, if you will, if they're not the right fit for us and we know we can't be the right partner, meaning they don't have that complexity, then maybe they don't need us. And we're very, very honest about this. And we just, we want to work with the right people who, who really need a full, a family office like ours.

[B]

So that massive growth like a billion of Aum in seven years, that's just, that's starting from scratch. What happens when you turn on a wealth management business in a sizable accounting firm?

[C]

Right, Exactly. Well, also, you know, it's interesting because not all accounting firms have the kind of the, this vision and the collaboration on the leadership team where they trust the wealth management advisors. Also it's also a risk for them to go from a trusted advisor, an objective advisor, their fiduciaries as CPAs, they are the most trusted advisor, which is something that I think it's the world's best kept secret for a new financial advisor is the CPA really does hold the keys to the kingdom and all the data, all the information. They've been, you know, they've grown up with the clients and their business and they know all the secrets really. And when they get on board with the wealth advisor and really kind of, I'd say they took us in, in a way and they really, you know, they were very trusting with us. And of course we worked very hard to have that trust. But, but we collaborated and it was a real kind of joint collaboration to come up with the vision and the strategy and we are fully integrated and that's why it works. Like I said, it doesn't work in all accounting firms. Cause there isn't that integration and that collaboration and that joint vision and that joint trust. But here we have it and we have something very, very special. You know, it's, we are, you know, we are servicing these clients. And I would say if you're an individual advisor, you never meet these types of clients on your own. But here it's just part of the structure, part of, it's part of the platform that everybody is kind. We've worked very hard obviously to make sure everybody understands internally what we're doing and make sure everybody's aligned. And we spend a lot of time on that, make sure everybody understands what the vision is and why we're better for clients. And that's why it, that's why we've had such success.

[B]

So I want to say a little bit more about just firm background and then really, really start diving into like how do you make sure everyone is aligned? So what, what is the staffing side of the business? Like, how many of you are there serving these 220 ultra high net worth households.

[C]

So there's about 40 of us in the multifamily office. And that's a whole practice, one of the four practice areas. So that's including the actual people in the RIA, plus other professionals who do everything for the high net worth individual and family. So ultra high net worth and high net worth tax, you know, bill pay, trust estates professionals. And these professionals are, everybody is collaborating very closely, working together. We have client teams. No one person can serve any of these clients. They're, they're so complicated that we end up having many internal meetings prior to any kind of external client meeting just to be. Just to make sure everybody really understands the nuances on the tax side. What's going on behind the scenes in the business, what's going on with different people in the family. Budgeting, spending, all tax payments, all of that stuff goes into the planning for every single meeting I would say. So it's the staffing is, you know, it's a very collaborative, collaborative environment I would say for anybody working in our business.

[B]

So I think I heard you say you kind of segmented. There's the people in the RIA and then there's the people in the practice area. Can you I guess like explain or distinguish what those are, what the difference is?

[C]

Yeah. So the RIA is governed by the SEC and this is why it's kind of, there's, you know, there's a legal separation but we're fully integrated when it comes to the client and the actual service offering. So. But because the SEC monitors people who specifically give investment advice, those people are in a different legal structure than the rest of the folks in the practice area. But the whole thing, it's family office.

[B]

Interesting. So I guess so from the accounting firms and I guess from the external client and it's a 40 person multifamily office serving these 220 correct. Ultra high net worth households internally, entity wise. No one really likes to invite regulators into more of their business than they need to. So the people that do the investment things are under the RIA and the people that do the other things are under the accounting firm. From a, from a, I guess like.

[C]

A management and a regulatory standpoint. Exactly.

[B]

So, so who or which functions like actually live and have to stay in the raa?

[C]

So the functions that have to stay in the RIA are the investment advisory.

[B]

Okay.

[C]

Investment advisors.

[B]

And so that's basically it. Like the, I guess whoever actually has to mention investment things in their client conversations or give recommendations and I guess anyone towards license the Trading implementation.

[C]

Correct.

[B]

So how many of the 40 are actually on the RIA side?

[C]

12.

[B]

Okay. Which interesting framing unto itself. So 30% of the headcount is doing the investment things and 70% of the headcount is all the rest. That kind of says a lot unto itself.

[C]

And then on top of that, we're collaborating on a day to day basis with the rest of the accounting firm. Meaning people who aren't specialized in ultra high net worth and high net worth things, but who are for example, on the real estate side or on the food and beverage side, or on the construction and engineering side. And they happen to refer a client to, you know, to the family office. So they're, they're still involved in the relationship because they're the main, you know, the main trusted advisor. So they're fully integrated into this and that's why this actually works and is very effective.

[B]

But I guess I can also infer from that, so the, I guess the 28 people in the practice area, but not part of the raa, they are fully like dedicated to and employed in the multifamily office offering. This isn't just like, well, we're an accounting firm. There's a bunch of CPAs centralized that also prepare some returns for clients. This is like dedicated staff.

[C]

Yes.

[B]

Specifically serving the.

[C]

They're serving ultra high net worth clients. Yeah, they're specifically serving ultra high net worth clients.

[B]

Interesting. So then I've got to ask because now my brain starts going to like the nerdy technical operation systems questions. So like do they have to sign multiple agreements? Do you have to build fees from multiple entities?

[C]

Like how does that work? They are signing different agreements for, you know, the wealth management side and the other side.

[B]

Okay. So clients will get to agreements. I just imagine in practice it's pretty straightforward. Explain. Like this is the investment things, this is the other stuff.

[C]

Yes. And most of the time, I mean not most of the time, a lot of the time the client is already involved on the other side of the business. And then, you know, unless it's a new client to both, they've already signed the agreements that they would have had to, to be clients of the accounting firm.

[B]

Okay. So and then fee wise, I mean, do you like, do you have an advisory fee and a family office services fee?

[C]

Yes. So the, the, there's an AUM fee for, for the assets. And you know, we always say we, we feel like we're very reasonable because for that fee you're getting the full integration, which is really the painful piece that clients miss when they're not with us. And they have, let's say an accountant and a consultant and someone helping them with their business growth. And then they have a, a lawyer and, you know, and they're complex and they're very, very wealthy, let's say over 20 or $50 million. That's painful, that integration. And they typically would have to do that themselves if they don't have a multifamily office like ourselves with the accounting firm as the actual backbone of the operation. That's, that's really, I think they're the, they feel the pain. And so the fee is kind of, you know, we, we say it's pretty reasonable on the AUM side.

[B]

So does AUM cover everything and you like, internally account some of the AUM fee back to the other services or is there a like, you know, multiple services, multiple fees kind of thing? Advisory. This is for your tax.

[C]

It's really kind of, you know, dependent on. It depends. I mean, typically we're, you know, it is different, different fees, but, you know, there might be exceptions to this.

[B]

So can you give me some sense at least of what's. And what, what's typical and then what, what kind of exceptions crop up that break.

[C]

Yeah. So, you know, if something is kind of in scope of like, you can get very complicated on, on the tax side. And typically like a large. With, with a business and with entities and with a complex estate plan will have, you know, a pretty complicated tax situation where the tax work can be, you know, a majority of the time spent in the relationship. And in that case, we wouldn't say let's, you know, let's do internal journaling and internal kind of accounting to make this happen under kind of one fee. So on that front, I mean, you can have, let's say a death in the family and that tax return could be several hundreds of thousands of dollars in just to prepare it, you know, because of the hours spent, because of the complexity. So we don't typically, you know, typically it's separate. But if it's something that's very simple on the accounting side of the practice, we might, you know, if it's a client that's less complicated, then that could be a conversation. But that's not our, our typical client is pretty complicated on, on the tax side.

[B]

And so then what's the advisory fee you have to charge to, to make this math work?

[C]

Yeah, so it's a standard fee schedule. So at a million dollars, which is. We typically don't have standalone clients of a million dollars. They would be under, you know, a family where they would, we'd aggregate fees and we'd aggregate assets in the back office and you know, we would, they would all count towards, towards the AUM fee. So. But at 1, $1 million, it starts at 1.1%, 4 to 10 million, it goes to 0.90% per annum. 10 million to 20 million is 0.85% and 20 million and above is 0.65%. So I'd say we're kind of middle of the fairway there.

[B]

Okay. And, and those are graduated fees. So like even if I'm, if I'm at 11 million, only the last millions at the 85 basis points, the, the first 10 is still at the, the higher tier.

[C]

The whole thing is at the lowest tier.

[B]

Okay. The whole thing. So like once I hit that threshold, my, my whole fee, my whole fee notches down.

[C]

Correct.

[B]

So do you, I just gotta ask, I mean, do you, do you get concerns around situations like. I'm pretty sure if I math that out, you know, you're like a, a 21 million dollar client actually pays you less than a 19 million dollar client because they, they just notched across the threshold?

[C]

Not really. I mean, you know, we're concerned with, you know, just having the right clients. Okay. Overall. So.

[B]

Okay, and, and so I, I guess I'm in. I would interpret in internally then. That advisory fee doesn't just cover the, the investment management services provided by the 12 and the RIA. This fee needs to cover the total services from the 40 people in the practice area.

[C]

Typically, typically it doesn't, it's, it's separate because of the separate fees.

[B]

Okay. Because the depth of the tax returns that you get into actually really won't cover it at, even with these advisory fees.

[C]

Exactly. That's why it's separate. That's why the fees are separate. Or there's something in the business, there's evaluation, there's needed that, you know, these clients have so many things going on in their, in their businesses, typically, that it's, it has to be separate.

[B]

Okay, so then can you help us understand a little bit more of who the typical client is? Like what the profile is of a, of a typical client that is hitting your, your version of complexity sweet spots that you serve them.

[C]

Sure. Yeah. So typically again, the, we're kind of getting these clients internally. We, we don't go out and externally look for people. So we call it a B2B 2C model. Like the client comes into the accounting firm, they become an accounting firm client or are an accounting firm client and then they come over to the family office and it's the business that is the first client. And within, you know, while building that business relationship, the, the business owner becomes, you know, becomes close to the CPA and that's how the relationship is initially built now.

[B]

So I just want to make sure I understand that. So it's not even just you're a, you're a tax firm. The business owner like gets their tax return prepared first and then, and then gets referred over the family office. If I'm hearing this right, the, the business is usually the client.

[C]

Correct? Exactly.

[B]

You're doing business, you're doing accounting, you're doing outsourcing them. Like it's that kind of helping them.

[C]

Exactly, exactly.

[B]

Interesting. So what's the typical, I guess like size of a business Business that employs the accounting firm?

[C]

Yeah, I mean it's, it's big, it's you know, middle market. So typically revenues of anywhere from 20, 50 billion to half a billion.

[B]

Okay. Which is that, that constitutes the middle market segment in the accounting world.

[C]

Yes. And then they're, you know, the, the owners of those businesses and their families.

[B]

Right, right.

[C]

Those are, those are the clients that would come over to the family office.

[B]

Right. But they're, but they're hiring the business first for CFO audit, something like, something like that just tax, very non advisor.

[C]

Things like businessy things, business advisory, you know, advisory, business advisory, tax, for example. And you know, if they, if they are just being right now, if they do come into the firm and do not are not related to a business, like it becomes a wealth management client. We're not looking to have, you know, to onboard individual tax clients necessarily unless they're a single family officer, you know, extremely complicated.

[B]

So, so I guess just given businesses at that size, I mean you're, you're talking about firms that may be valued at tens of millions, up to hundreds of millions and maybe even a billion or, or few. Obviously not every firm has one single founder owner who still owns the whole thing. But I, I, a lot of, a.

[C]

Lot of them do. You know, we have a lot of family business, family businesses where you know, it's a couple people in the family or you know, that's a big, a big part of the organization.

[B]

So then like the, the broader net worths of households that you're working with, like these are, these are DECA millionaires and hundred millionaire kinds of folks.

[C]

Correct.

[B]

Okay.

[C]

Typically.

[B]

So now share with us a little bit more around what the service offering itself is. I mean, what do you actually, I mean you've highlighted like all the different experts and we're, and we're, and we're, we're integrated in what we do. But can you now go into more detail is what, what really you actually do for, for these, for these clients and the fees that they pay.

[C]

We are truly, you know, providing these very, very like these ultra high net worth concierge services. So we do everything for them. I mean, they lose their paperwork and we're redoing, you know, they lose a passport, we're redoing all of that. Like we are trying, truly trying to help them in any way that we can. And you know, we take risk on doing that. We pay tax payments for them directly to the irs, for, for the entire family, for all the trust accounts, for the LLC accounts. Like we have, you know, what we call standing instructions to do that. And this is a service that, you know, it's, it's not something that the banks want to take on because of that direct line, you know, and that risk. Obviously now the IRS is going to move to not having paper checks. So it's going to be direct debits. But like, you know, we have internal controls to make sure that things get done smoothly. So anything from really making sure that we're doing their entire tax plan and their entire estate plan and you know, doing all of that also around transactions and modeling out different scenarios, if so that they could save on the tax side, whether that's through charitable planning or other vehicles. We are also kind of mapping out a financial plan that's tax efficient as well. And the big word here is tax. Always we are investing according to the tax plan. And that takes very close collaboration with all the professionals in the family office and their relationship manager, whether they're outside the family office or not. And really, really close kind of integration, I would say. And that's a difficult thing to pull off operationally. You know, it's really, it also makes it very difficult for us to hire because advisors aren't used to that. They're not used to paying attention to tax and collaborating with 10 people every time they have to have a meeting or they're not used to kind of digging through a tax return or having other advisors in the meeting or you know, being, being so worried about the estate plan. And it makes it really interesting. But also it's very difficult to just eat, breathe and sleep all of these dimensions every day as an advisor. So I think, you know, when it comes to, to hiring, you know, our, the, the talent pool that we, where we hire is it. It's smaller than I would say, you know, if you're hiring in a wirehouse.

[B]

So can you, I guess, just describe for us further how you actually make sure, like, all these little things in their details get done? You mentioned, like, there's all sorts of controls in place around paying clients as tax bills to the IRS for them and the family and the trust accounts and the llc.

[C]

Like the right.

[B]

The right account has to raise the right bill at the right time. Right. There's just. There's a lot there. So for those of us who, like, don't come from a background of accounting firms with internal controls, like Wayne More, I mean, like, what do you do? How does this work?

[C]

How do you.

[B]

How do you make sure it doesn't get screwed up?

[C]

Yeah, I mean, we literally, when we were built, every time we built something and again, we started with this big vision and we kind of went backwards from there and built. We said, where's the client pain? Okay, let's build that. Let's build around that. Let's do this would be great if we could do this. It'd be great if we could do that. And, you know, we kind of worked backwards and we set up our own internal controls. There's. I'm not going to lie, there's a lot of effort and very, very detailed people who help us. We have ri. We have accountants in the RIA as well, who, who are very good with, you know, details. Sometimes there's nothing. There's no way to get away from the 4i check. But everything has these approvals that, again, it's something that's like not, not usual in the. On the RIA side or even on the wirehouse side is, you know, you on the. I came from Merrill lynch. And you would just send payments out. And there's nobody kind of double checking the details here. It's like every time you enter a money movement or a client service associate enters a money movement, somebody else approves that money movement and has to go through the entire thing to verify not only the value, but every other detail and cross check that with kind of a backup of. Of what is supposed to happen. So this is for trading, because God forbid we put a trade in, we sell something, and we create or we realize like a 200,000 or a million dollars of capital gains just from entering a trade that's on us. We're an accounting firm. We can't do that. And that would be mortifying. So we have controls on the trading side as well, which is also something that I haven't seen in other RIAs or on the wirehouse side like we do here. So every operational kind of function has a control or has a control function as well.

[B]

So control in this context means someone else that has to review and approve the thing.

[C]

Yes, correct. So any money movement, tax payment, adding standing instructions, even client paperwork, because you have things like, you know, Trusts that own LLCs, layered entities, disregarded entities. You've got all sorts of complex things going on. That paperwork has to be correct and. And the account has to be opened correctly. And that's something, again, like the stuff that people struggle with in other RIAs or at the banks we built here. And we have these controls in place so that they could. These functions could be carried out very seamlessly for the client, and the client doesn't feel that pain, which they do, you know, when they're. When they're not in this structure.

[B]

Interesting. So. So I'm just envisioning, like, I know CRM systems or some. Some effect where just every control. Every control, every workflow is a, like, you know, client service administrator does this. Then client service manager reviews it and clicks. Yes. To actually. To actually clear it. Every time there's a money movement, every time there's a trade, every time we're doing paperwork on behalf of the client, just so there's such a. There's always a second set of eyes, always make sure the thing was right.

[C]

Correct.

[B]

So, all right, so now my next natural question is like, how do you track it and how do you staff for that? Because that sounds like a ridiculous amount of busy work oversight. I understand why it's there. I'm not negative. Like, that's. That's a lot.

[C]

It is a lot of oversight.

[B]

Everything, every time.

[C]

It absolutely is. Well, you have. So how does that work? Yeah, I mean, you know, we're. We are in the process right now of looking at every area in the firm and, you know, doing some transformation and creating, you know, our own workflow tools. So that's. That's work right now. That, that. That's stuff we're working on right now and kind of trying to automate these. Automating these processes more.

[B]

Right. So you're building. You're building.

[C]

We're building a tool because it doesn't really, you know, it's not out there. You meet one family office. You meet one family office, as they say, and we have.

[B]

What do you use now or what have you used historically to do this?

[C]

Yeah, I mean, CRM, we use red Tail. So we do have a lot of the information in Red Tail combined with Excel. And you know, there's other, other, you know, we already have our own, it's share file that we're using, but you know, we have our own internal kind of things at the moment. But we're, we're getting them more to work across these functions now, if you will.

[B]

So you're looking to build some kind of workflow tool outside the CRM system?

[C]

Yes, yes.

[B]

So can you share more about them? Are you, are you building from scratch or you like.

[C]

Yeah, we're building from scratch. So we have, we've already, we already have these processes built and look, it works how it is, you know, and the level of approval, approvals that we have is again, because some of these money movements and trades are so big that we can't really, you know, we can't really take any risk with that side of things. And you know, to build it out, it starts from really kind of when we have a prospect and we know certain things about outside accounts. And then they, let's say that prospect, which is a client of the accounting firm, but not yet a client of family office comes over to the family office, becomes a client. You know, it all starts with do they need standing instructions to the irs? Do they need kind of a cash account standing instructions to their, wherever they're doing their checking and where are they transferring their assets from? And you know, we're going to have, we're building out this template for the advisors to really fill out so that the onboarding gets automated, you know, and then you've got the financial planning software. We use E Money, we use Orion, which, you know, on the, on the back end is very strong technology wise. We did explore other tools as well. This tech stack does work very well for us at the moment. But it's the integration of all these different processes which are particular to the multifamily office and are particular to these larger clients that create the complexity. So we haven't found a tool and we're building that from the onboarding template where it's going to help us really fill out paperwork with the custodian. Instead of having different areas where we're recopying information for the approvals, the tool is going to feed different kind of templates and the approvals will be done on that. There still has to be a manual check until we feel comfortable that there's AI that can help with these things. But we have used AI for other things. We use Holistaplan, that Software to look at tax returns, but it's limited as well. We have Virgil, where we're scanning investment statements and that's cutting out some. That's cutting down on some of the man or the labor hours that we had before. But we still have a ways to go with AI to fully use it to help us. We're not fully there yet in terms of what we have there to help us with all of our processes, but.

[B]

Sounds like AI for you is very heavily around document extraction things. Scan the client's existing tax returns. Scan the client with holistic plan. Scan the client's state with Virgil.

[C]

Right now. Yes, that's how we've been using it. And obviously we use it. We've got Copilot, which we use for other things. But yes, currently those are the tools that we have. We're exploring other tools for onboarding as well. But there's so much out there that we have fathom as well. Notetaker. But in terms of. We are looking at everything coming out. We just haven't found anything that yet that operationally we can fully adopt.

[B]

So help me understand further just where the gaps are from using Redtail for CRM and some of the workflow capabilities they have there. And what you're still trying to do that so can't do it, that you just need to build your own tech to do it.

[C]

Yeah, that's a great question.

[B]

More where the gaps or the pain points are.

[C]

Yeah, so I would say the, you know, when you have collaboration between different departments, for example, the tax team is using their own software to populate tax returns and to, you know, to determine any estimated quarterly payments, for example. And then that's not something that we're, we're on. We don't necessarily think that advisors should be in tax software entering different things and, you know, we could kind of make a mistake in there and that, that, that's not the right thing to do. So when it comes to kind of integrating two different areas, then we kind of have to have to build our own tool when it comes to like these approvals as well. We're. We're doing that. We're not necessarily, we're using red tail to assign the task, but we're not, we're not necessarily documenting a full approval in there. It just hasn't worked for that. It's not built for that necessarily. So that's where we're building around it or the, the steps in the, the onboarding process that, that we're using with, you know, the standing instructions. You Know, we are using Red Tail in a way, but then it's kind of beyond that when we're doing an account transition and we have other templates that are going to feed through to the trading system and, and to the approval system, which is why we want to kind of build our own. The other thing we're building is that we have already to an extent is it's our own internal kind of compliance checks on the accounts. For example, let's say there's a change in phone number, a change in an email address on a client account. And the tool that we have, that we built, it scans differences and it pulls all the emails for, across all of our accounts and it scans it against yesterday's emails because that's, that's kind of a check for fraud. So we're, we're going to be building that out for standing instructions added by clients and thing other things that happen at the custodian level that we wouldn't necessarily know about. So we're, you know, for us it's super important to build out this like, kind of cyber security, if you would call it. But on the, at the custodian level too. Like we want to bring that in house. So we're working on that as well.

[B]

Interesting. So, so you're, you're essentially building like a monitoring tool to monitor for any notable changes in address, phone number, standing instructions, etc. Because at your client level, like the, one of the precipitators to fraud is, you know, you, you change the client's phone number on record and then you, you know, heist their account with Exactly. Factor authentication to the new phone number that's not actually theirs. It's the hacker.

[C]

Exactly. So all of these things, it's some, it's something that definitely occupies my mind, you know, especially in this new environment that we're in. But, you know, we're always thinking about it and you know, we gotta do everything that we can to just make sure that our clients are safe. And it's, it's on us to just add these extra controls really.

[B]

So new environment we're in. Meaning like more AI driven.

[C]

Yes. Environment, yes.

[B]

So has that, has that cropped up for you in practice with clients? Like are you seeing a shift in, I don't know, for wire fraud or other attempts or thankfully not thankful?

[C]

Thankfully, no. We've been very lucky that, you know, we've had a client, just one client who has had their email hacked and notified us immediately. But other than that we hadn't, you know, we haven't had any situations where this has become a reality. But we've heard from, you know, clients that have been at other places, we've heard of things happening. So it does, you know, it is a reality. So as you know, with client, when we have. We have clients of this kind of size and complexity city, we just want to make sure that we're taking extra precaution, precautionary steps to keep them safe. And also, we're small enough to, you know, again, we're kind of fanatical about all this stuff and the money movements and, you know, wires and, you know, we're fanatical about making people, you know, calling people, making sure it's them, we know their voices, that kind of thing. We've got different controls on that side as well. So again, we're just taking the necessary steps to make sure that we're doing right by these clients and that if there's anything that we could do, then it's on us to do. It's our fiduciary duty.

[B]

So can you share now? I'm just genuinely intrigued. What else do you have on the controls end of just making sure the client's the client. You just said something there about chat voice checks or like.

[C]

Yes. Yeah. So if there is, if somebody does want to send a wire, you know, we are typically only sending a wire for a, you know, a house closing. We try to do a lot of kind of paper checks because it's not a wire you're sending it, and the there the account number is floating around, and God forbid the client sends the wrong instructions, that wire is instantaneously gone. So any wire, we have a test wire that we send that's just, you know, that's necessary. So we have to send a test wire.

[B]

Oh, so even if you're wiring somewhere, like, you'll send. You'll send a dollar, make this should make the other side confirm the dollar showed up and then send the $7.2 million or whatever.

[C]

Exactly. Absolutely.

[B]

Transfer.

[C]

Yep. And then, you know, we also, the instructions have to be written and, you know, they have to be in a certain way. They can't just say, you know, send to this account. And, you know, it's almost like we try to find another way to send money because it can, you know, and typically, obviously, we know we do this every day, but, like, on the client side, it's different. Or when there is a large transaction, you know, it's on the kind of the other side to send us the wire. But we encourage them to send us A test wire. Like, you know, no one wants to send $50 million to the wrong place.

[B]

So it's really awkward. Just eggs.

[C]

Yeah. So you know, send $5 the day before and like we're very, very kind of into that stuff. And that's what people who have $50 million plus they, they really want. Because you know, it's that stuff that really can really is risky and really does matter. And you have to master the basics before you go on to, you know, the financial planning, the trust and estates planning and the tax planning. Like you have to get this operational piece right. And this is the piece that nobody really wants to do. And so it can make or break the entire relationship, quite honestly. I mean the banks, you know, and other houses, they don't, they don't have this level of scrutiny when it comes to the, the operational piece. Which is why we said, you know what, this is a pain point. The clients always get asked their account number when they're going to the banks and they always, you know, they have to go through this and that here. It's like every, any paperwork we send them to, to sign gets pre filled by us. They don't have to do anything. You know, we're making sure it's correct. That's been reviewed. We have accountants in house. The accounts are set up properly. Like these are very basic things that, on the, the operations it sounds very basic, but that, that's what goes a long way with them because that all that risk is on them when they go outside of here.

[B]

Right. And that's the pain.

[C]

That's where the pain is.

[B]

The pain like for the client of.

[C]

Exactly.

[B]

Otherwise I have to double check and triple check all the time. Which just at some point takes up my mental bandwidth and mind share that if I'm running whatever, if I'm running a billion dollar business, I'd like to focus on other business things.

[C]

Exactly, exactly.

[B]

Not have to triple check my person's transfer instruction.

[C]

Right, right.

[B]

They can't. They triple check themselves.

[C]

Exactly.

[B]

Interesting. So I mean, I'm struck as you frame it, as you said, it's like it's getting the, I mean it's getting the basics right, but they're not that basic because they're actually kind of hard to do in volume.

[C]

Yes, absolutely. The basics at this size is when you have this size and the complexity, the basics aren't so basic. That's true.

[B]

So then how does the, I guess it's like the advisor structure or team structure work. I'm not even sure how you frame Them, but just you've got all these different experts across all these functional areas, serving these clients with all the support that goes with it. How do these teams get structured? Is there a, is there a lead person who wrangles everyone else? Is it more based?

[C]

Like, that's a great question. So they're structured, structured by two different things. One is kind of like skill and expertise, meaning, like, you know, you need training in, let's say you're a tax preparer or you're in charge of tax planning for a client. Like, you need that skill and that expertise, and that is under the tax department. But then, you know, in terms of the client experience and the practice area, that's, that's different, that you're under the family office practice area. You're kind of under, you're under this umbrella. So it's, you know, you have kind of one line is the, the training, the skill, the expertise. You're preparing returns. You have these deadlines, you have that process. So you're learning that from that department. But you are, you know, when you are providing white glove service to a client, you are, and the tax department is as well. But here you're really working for the benefit of that one client on this client team. So you're also, you are also, you know, following the client experience of the clients in the family office.

[B]

Okay.

[C]

So it's kind of a dual, I would say, you know, dual kind of mandate if you're, you know, on the, let's say on the tax side.

[B]

So how does this team structure work for the, the client just to the end client.

[C]

Yeah, good question. So typically there's, there are like, there's a court, there's a client relationship leader at the firm who is really like the lead kind of liaison to, to the firm. And that's for your business. That's, that's typically the person that you have, you know, the strongest relationship with, who you've known the longest. Right. And then you, you know, these other services, like once family office gets in, then you know, you're, you're, you're managing their wealth, you're managing your wealth here. And that typically the family office really kind of becomes the, the person on the personal side that's quarterbacking like your family and your family situation now, you know, if it's personal stuff, it's, it's family office, typically. And then, you know, the wealth management would rope in, let's say somebody on the tax side. Now if they have personal, very complex tax needs, then they're also talking to a professional on the tax side in the family office. So it just depends on, you know, the type of client and, but typically there's at least two. Two people at least that are. Or two disciplines that are very, you know, that are kind of quarterbacking, one for the business, one for the personal. But then in the meetings, it's like you've got a plethora of people from all these disciplines because we're going over tax, we're going over investments, we're going over, you know, other things typically.

[B]

So then on the personal side, within the family office, how does the, how does the team structure work?

[C]

That's a good question. So there's typically one person on the tax side who's in charge of like any tax engagement. And then on the wealth management side, for clients that are above 10 million, typically you've got at least two advisor to two main advisors working on, on the client. And it's really a team effort. And they're talking, we're talking all the time. I mean, we all sit in the same area in the family office and we are, we're coordinating on, you know, any conversation that needs, that has a tax component and an investment or a financial planning component. I mean, it's a, it's all day we're talking. So it's, that's, you know, the integration is very important.

[B]

So if I'm the client, I'm calling one of my two advisors assigned to me on the wealth management side for just for my family office stuff.

[C]

Yes.

[B]

And how many.

[C]

Or you might have a group email like a lot of our families have, you know, let's say it's [e-mail] and that, you know, you ask a question and that goes to the tax person, that goes to the wealth management people, that go, that goes to the client relationship leader. And that's really like, for the larger accounts, that's really the best approach because honestly, these are loaded questions that you.

[B]

Get asked that involve questions and don't even realize how many departments it could.

[C]

Actually exactly like where, you know, my daughter is bidding on this house, where should I take it? And all of a sudden there's a meeting with five people internally. You know, because it's, they have so many entities, you know, this is stuff that, you know, if you talk to a single family office, like somebody in the family office has to, has to handle and sometimes they have to call like an attorney, an accountant and the wealth manager and it's then they have like their own internal spreadsheets. And it's really painful and that's what we try to alleviate. So having that one email, they can ask the questions and then if it has to do. And we streamline it, of course, depending on the client. But typically when it has to do with like a transfer of money, it's the person answering is typically, you know, on the wealth management side in family office. But wealth management, because we're doing, you know, we're pulling it out of the account now again, if we didn't check with everybody, we want to make sure we're doing the right thing and that's why we have these, these client teams. It's not that simple. Every question is very, you know, takes, takes a lot of people.

[B]

I'm just fascinated by the idea that there's so many folks who might want to chime into a client question that clients literally just have a group email, I mean, members assigned to them. That's really cool.

[C]

Yeah, it's necessary because it's, you know, and it also teaches you about, you know, like you just never know if there's something. There's so much complexity in each one of these disciplines that some little thing can throw it off and you realize you're better off checking with everybody.

[B]

So, so who. I'm just trying to still envision who are the stakeholders on, on a group email.

[C]

Yeah. So, you know, you've got typically one client, you know, one kind of client, sir, one or two client service people. One person who really is, you know, on the investment side, maybe a CFA or somebody who really is responsible for like rebalancing and trading and, and you know, withdrawing money. Then you've got one anywhere from two to three kind of more senior advisors, you know, financial advisors. You've got whoever is handling them on the tax side, on the individual tax side in the family office, you've got, let's say they're a real estate client. You've got the client relationship leader on the, you know, let's say that person is in the real estate niche. You have that person on there as well. So that's kind of the crew, I would say for let's say a real estate, an ultra high net worth family, real estate, family office client. And that person may also, you know, obviously has other people on the business side who help them in their business. And that's another crew of people. It's funny, we sent a client a gift the other day and we all signed and there were 30 people that signed and that was across the firm just to say congratulation on your son's wedding. And I was like, wow, this is incredible. And you, you know, that's not uncommon for us. But, you know, these, these professionals are needed. And you know, it takes a village really, to service any one of these clients. And, you know, their families are typically larger. Many people there, siblings, kids, grandkids, great grandkids, maybe aging parents as well. And, you know, it's kind of any question, like I said, is a loaded question.

[B]

So from the, from the team's end, our team assigned to specific clients that sort of become their dedicated assignees. You know, if I'm, if I'm a client service person, like, these are the 10 clients or 30 clients or how many it is or like, are. Are the clients I'm responsible for doing the service things for?

[C]

Yes, exactly, they are. We, you know, that's based on fit. It's based on, you know, different things. But we try and match the, the, the best people to that client.

[B]

So what, what goes into the, the thought process?

[C]

Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, so many different variables. Whether, you know, how large the size of the client complex, I'd say complexity of the client, you know, whether, you know, different types of, of details involved in the client. The, the account setup, number of money movements, what kind of money movements, who's calling for money movements. All of that stuff goes into it.

[B]

You know, how do you end out with different people based on like, volume of money movements just because some have capacity than others, or are there like, other nuances to how you drive this decision?

[C]

I think it's capacity, but also some people are, you know, it's capacity, definitely, but it's also like, you know, you've got different people are good at different things. You know, that's how you kind of build a team. And, you know, you've got your financial planners, you've got your, you've got your investment advisors and people who love investment analysis. You've got people who love service, who are excellent at service. Now we all have to be excellent at service, but there's a spectrum where you can lean more. Different people are. They lean more towards one thing and they have more expertise in one thing, and then that's how we kind of match them up. But we also, you know, on, on the money movement side, it's really like you have a lot of money movements and they're big, then you need to match them with somebody who has that high attention to detail. And honestly, most people in the family office have that. That's. I would Say the hardest thing when we are hiring client service associates. So we do a lot of training on our own because it's, this is a hard thing to hire for. Oh, hi. You know, you're doing, you know, 50 money movements a year for this one client and you know, everyone is over a million dollars. How do you feel about that? It's not something that, you know, you typically get service associates that are, you know, like skilled in that because it doesn't really exist, I would say. So we kind of had to, I'd say, experiment with this and like, you know, just because you have experience as a client service associate doesn't mean that you're going to be good at this because this is not your typical client. And so that was like a real tough thing to kind of realize, was like, just, you know, we're looking for experienced people because we think that's the way to go. But that wasn't always the right thing to do and we learned some tough lessons with that.

[B]

So what was the version that didn't work then?

[C]

Yeah, I mean it was, and I'm having flashbacks right now, but hiring people from wirehouses on the service side, we said we need people who are really great at service. We're talking to these ultra high net worth clients and we want to provide this exceptional service. But what we found was they, the ones that we had hired, they didn't have that level of, they didn't necessarily have that, the same experience. Right. And because, you know, they weren't opening 200 accounts for one family, that's just not a normal thing in the industry. Like, and they weren't going through these transactions and they weren't necessarily having to open, you know, these different types of entity accounts. That just doesn't, it's not something you necessarily, you know, go through at a wirehouse, nor is it at an RIA like this. You know, we're growing at 50% a year. Are you, are you okay with opening all these accounts in one day? You know, it's, it's, that's just a different level of, you know, work, I would say. And detail too. Like the money move between the different types of accounts, the number of money movements, the size of the money movements, the size of the family, the pace at which we're growing. We realize like we're a different animal and you know, we're kind of a unicorn and we have the platform and we have this incredible pipeline of amazing clients that need help and they're incredibly appreciative, they're lovely people. We want to service them. Right. So that's when we realize, like, this is not, you know, all those things I just named is not something we're going to find. We're not going to find people who have this experience because it's very rare. So, you know, on the client service side. So, you know, we decided to train our own people, and that's been like, you know, a great decision. We want to have people grow in house and have people who have the same vision and the same passion for clients and who are kind of love this idea, love what we're building. And, you know, that's kind of the path that we decided to take after having really, you know, tried the other way.

[B]

So then where do you hire them or where they come from internally to figure out who's, who's ultimately going to sell excel in this unique role, clientele.

[C]

So, you know, the, the, the, the advice, the people with a little bit of experience, you know, in, in the financial services industry or people coming out of finance. Finance. Masters in finance or master's in accounting. And, you know, CFP programs are all kind of great candidates for us. They're, they're kind of. They love the business, they want to be in the business, and they're not coming with habits that are from somewhere else. And then we have senior advisors that have work that we've hired externally, and that's different. But there is kind of a learning, I would say, learning period and a kind of a phase where you're trying to learn more about the other services and the firm. So we do have senior people that we've hired from the external market. It's the service people that we've gotten a lot internally or hired them from these different programs.

[B]

And this is, I mean, we're talking about service people doing. I was going to normally say paperwork that maybe understates it because, like, paperwork's different when you're opening 200 accounts for one family with 17 entities and 11 trusts and such. But I just want to make sure. I'm saying, I mean, you're ultimately talking about, you're looking for people with master's degrees to do just this level of work, because it's actually pretty complex.

[C]

Yeah. I mean, and they're growing into CFPs and advisors. Like, everybody is on track to become an advisor. And most of our staff, they are advisors.

[B]

This is like the entry to the career path. You want to really learn how to serve these people in the long term.

[C]

Correct.

[B]

Spend two years doing. Doing exactly. Doing the service paperwork. That's required. And now you'll really learn exactly what it takes.

[C]

Yeah, because when you know that side of things, like, you know, it's a lot easier to, to become an advisor. But we push people to do more to become advisors, to, you know, everyone's license. We want people. The firm is growing so quickly that, you know, it's like we can't afford to have people who don't want to grow. So this is a stepping stone to learn the business, to learn the, the rope, learn the trading side of things, learn the money movements like you. It's, you can't become an advisor in our family office if you don't know this stuff. It's not going to work. Because a lot of times the questions, the day to day is about this stuff. And you, you can't just say, I don't know as an advisor. So like, you come from the outside, you kind of have to know, know about this stuff and just, you know, it's exciting. You get to work directly with the client. You get to be in these meetings with like these incredibly inspiring business owners and they all have amazing stories and you know, they're so grateful that we're helping them as well. That's another thing that is very different than, you know, being at a wirehouse here. It's like you're appreciated because you're taking this pain away that these clients have experienced because of their wealth. And so we empathize with that. And you know, we, we take that very seriously. And, and they, they love what, what we're building for them and how we're really, you know, taking that, that quarterback role away from them because it, that's what, where the pain was.

[B]

I'm struck in how you're framing that because for, for better or worse, there's certain stereotypes out there about ultra high net worth clients. So just jumps out to me that when you frame it of these tend to be very positive relationships. Like they've had pain of difficulty coordinating and managing the wealth and they really are grateful and appreciative of the fact that you're solving their problems.

[C]

Yes, absolutely. Our, our clients are very, very appreciative, very nice. And you know, it all stems from the relationship that they've had with the accountants. You know, the accountants have helped them through, through their struggles and they've really helped their families and helped them oftentimes grow their business into something spectacular that they, that they've sold, for example. And now they're passing their wealth on and it's becoming like we're Kind of advising them on their legacy. And you know, it's just a cool full circle story. And so that makes the relationship great is that, you know, some people tell the accountants, I'm more worried about you dying than me dying because they know where everything is. And you know, it's, it's. For these complex families, life becomes just a burden, I guess if you could call it that when it's, when they don't have that person or that they don't have that family office and that, that CPA really to help them coordinate everything.

[B]

So how does this work from a client capacity end? I don't know, like how, how many clients does a senior advisor have when you're in this level of high touch and involvement and second set of eyes on everything?

[C]

Yeah, I mean, as you can imagine, we're hiring. You know, we're, we're always going to be kind of in the, in the cert. We're always like looking for good talent. And you know, we're constantly interviewing because it might take a while to find the right fit. But that, I mean, it depends on really. I would say the onboarding and the, the initial phases. We're meeting all the time with the client and you know, after a while they might get sick of meeting us monthly and we're meeting them less. But you know, so you cannot handle too many of these relationships, as you can imagine. Also their families grow. So it's, you know, you, you're constantly kind of doing things for new people in the family or there are changes in the family or somebody gets married and somebody gets divorced and you know, there's, there's just a lot of moving pieces with these families. So, you know, depending on the, the relationship and the complexity, it gets easier as time goes on. I would say the initial, the first couple of years is pretty hefty. And we never, like I said, we don't have one advisor on these relationships. There's always at least two advisors. So that, that kind of the work is, is definitely shared. And then we've got that service team who's really key in these relationships and they handle, you know, the creation of the presentations and everything is obviously reviewed by the senior advisors, but they do a lot of things behind the scenes that we're very grateful for as well. So.

[B]

So ultimately, like, what's a typical client load for a two advisor team? I mean, I just have no context in, in your world. Right. An industry site would say the average two advisor team has 150 clients.

[C]

Right.

[B]

Clearly that's not Your numbers?

[C]

No, it's going to be less than that. I'd say probably around. That's a good question. Probably around, you know, depending on the client. 100 clients.

[B]

Okay.

[C]

But not, not of that. Not all of them can be it also, it's not. I would say it's not. We don't really base it on asset level. It's on complexity. But if it's ultra complex, it could be like the, the, the partner on the tax side is handling a lot of the, the issues that. Or the, the issues that can arise. So I would say it depends on the client. But, you know, the more complex it's going to be, you're going to have. If you have every client is as different as every person's fingerprint. I would say that's something I've learned is it's, there's not, there are not two complex clients that are the same. But I would say the more complex you've got, you know, less, less of a chance of having more. More clients, per advisor. But I would say 100 is, you know, 100 is a high number, but it's, it's doable for two.

[B]

For two people who are sharing it.

[C]

Correct.

[B]

Okay. And then how you mentioned earlier, like meetings. Meetings may be monthly at the beginning for a while because they're just so much onboard or get through what. I guess this. I'm wondering what, what typical, what is typical? Like meeting cadence or frequency of interactions for ongoing clients? Like once you're out of just the intense onboarding. I'm just trying to visualize like what, what are, what are the service expectations?

[C]

I would say it's, I mean, some of them, it's still monthly, depending on if, if they want that then, then we offer that some of them want them to move to quarterly after a couple of years. So it's anywhere from monthly to, to quarterly really is the typical cadence if they're comp. Ultra complex?

[B]

And what's, and what's. Getting covered at that frequency? I mean, that's a lot more than just. What did the markets do this month?

[C]

Yeah, I mean, what did the markets do this month? You know, everything from like, you know, unrealized gains, realized gains and losses. That's a big one. You know, we've, we have this much in tax savings. Like that's, you know, let's say they're in the year of a transaction and we're able to harvest losses on to offset some of those gains. So that's something that we cover at those meetings. It's also Sometimes when they go from, you know, having a business to not having that business anymore and they have to have that like steady, they want to know where's my steady kind of street cash flow coming from. So we're covering like not only unrealized gains and losses, real unrealized gains, realized gains or losses. And then you know, that's something the tax professional bit maybe in the meeting with us as well to talk about, let's say the tax payments coming up and you know, this is the money we put aside for the tax reserve for anything from now until, let's say April 2026 when you have to pay the tax for your transaction from these entities from you know, the personal side as well. And then let's say there's you know, income that people love talking about income as well. So you know, we always cover like God forbid this is what happens in your portfolio. You always have this steady stream of income. So all of that gets covered any, any type of other things on the personal side, whether that's somebody's building a home or anything financial planning wise for their kids or gifting, charitable planning, you know, we'd like to, this stock has appreciated, let's put it in your donor advised fund, that kind of thing. You know, any questions they have on anything that's happening outside whether they're, you know, they might have real estate assets that they're going to have cash flow from Cash management services. That's another, you know, moving money around and you know, investing in whether it's treasuries or VRDNs or ultra short term munis and you know, changes in the yield curve. That's, that's a big one. We always have, we've got a lot of cash on our books, which is why, you know, that's kind of always going to be one of our businesses is because of the tax payments. So we talk a lot about cash. Anything happening that they need to know on the tax side is going to be covered in that meeting as well. You know, changes in their family, anything that they're concerned about and you know, that's kind of it. And it's nice to have that kind of these structured meetings set up just so that you know, they know it's coming up and you know, they might have questions that they can bring up then. And it also, you know, helps them kind of build trust in us to kind of keep getting in front of them and this way we get to know each other.

[B]

So, so as you reflect on all of this, just what, what surprised you the most about building out and executing in this multi family office environment.

[C]

I would say what surprised me the most is kind of the level of trust that we have. Just being with an accounting firm, you're part of the trusted advisor clan and it's really a special thing and you said it's great that you guys have such nice clients, but I think it's because the accountant is the ultimate fiduciary and the ultimate trusted advisor in their life. And I think, you know, being part of that and really being kind of knowledgeable about their business and their pain and that's their baby, right? That, that business that they, that they grew and just being able to talk about that gives you that, you know, that, that data, that knowledge where you're really kind of understanding what they've been through. If you're in a wirehouse, for example, you don't necessarily have that information and you haven't been through that. You're coming at it from a completely different angle. And I think that, you know, that's something that I really appreciate coming from that wirehouse environment where I didn't have that, that trust immediately here it's again, it's, you're just really in with like what they've been through and that's, that's the best part about being here.

[B]

So relative to being in the wirehouse world, how different the implicit trust is on day one. Because you're with wist, the accounting firm that does all of our business accounting and audit already.

[C]

Yes, exactly. I mean we have clients that the first time they meet us, a lot of them are like, oh this is such a relief, thank God. Like I'm, you know, send me the paperwork. You know, it's like day one, you're, you're, you know, and it's, that's not the case at a wirehouse. And the types of clients that you're attracting are very different.

[B]

And, and that's all because WIS was this large, long standing accounting firm that decided to start the family office side and had I think like pent up demand as it were, so they could drive a lot of activity quickly.

[C]

That's part of it. Yeah, that's definitely part of it. I mean, and they, you know, people who've been with WISS for so long and WISS has done such a good job for them as their accountant.

[B]

So what was the low point on this journey of building out the multifamily office?

[C]

I would say having to figure out how to hire and you know, given like we're, I would call us kind of. Kind of a unicorn in terms of what we've built. You have to hire people that are highly collaborative and that can not. Not be afraid to learn and to feel, to be vulnerable and say, I don't know, let me go talk to the tax person on the account and be able to kind of know enough to be dangerous on the tax side and make sure that you're understanding the estate planning side and make sure you're understanding the details. And I think trying to find that person, at first we didn't know what that really looked like, and I got here and kind of learned it from scratch and just assumed people would learn it, too. But it's not always like that because advisors are trained differently. So I think the low point was really just trying to figure out who to hire and where to hire from. And I love people. I love meeting people, and I'm extremely optimistic, and I can always find something good in people. And, you know, our leaders are like that at WIS as well. And, you know, again, like I said, we're always interviewing, but, like, just trying to really make sure that we have someone who's dedicated to the vision, dedicated to what we're building, who loves clients, who. Who loves collaborating. Because if they can't collaborate, it's going to be very hard to do business here, you know, who's honest as well. Like, we've got a lot of integrity and, you know, we trust our people as well. So, you know, find somebody. Finding people who are from the. Who are financial advisors who are, you know, all of those things, or even on the service side, like, just trying to find the right crew of people to hire, I would say, was a challenge. And, you know, also really finding people that appreciate kind of what we built and the model and the. I mean, the actual platform we have is incredible. Like, we have these incredible clients. You're. You're part of the crew. You're trusted as an advisor. The CPAs are incredible people as well. Like, our culture is very collaborative. These clients are, you know, they're. They're very complicated. So you have to work with other advisors and other people in the CPA firm. So that's a very different, you know, and you're given these clients, kind of the platform is here. So it's a really good situation, I would say, for an advisor. So it's like, we have a lot to offer. So finding the right people, I would say, is very hard. And it's something that I think, yeah, we did hit a low point there. You Know, when we were just kind of looking and saying, where are they? Are they out here? How do we find them? Where do we go? And. And also building the operation, that's also. That was also, as you mentioned, very a difficult thing. And, you know, trying to get that right was. Was hard. So we're kind of. We're a lot smarter now. And I think that, you know, we've got. We're just. We know that we have something really special and, you know, we kind of know we know what we want now. But there was a point at which it was like, you know, we. We had a lot of hope for the future.

[B]

So can you explain further just what. What changed that it got better for you, right? I mean, in principle, like, we want people who are on board with the mission and vision of what we're building and like, clients and collaborating, like, cool. But, like, what. What wasn't working about was finding those people before. That's suddenly working so much better now. Like, what. What did you actually change or do? Different things.

[C]

We figured out, I think, what. What worked and the characteristics that we were looking for in people and. And things that we were not looking for in people as well. And that's kind of how we started hiring is by. Through, you know, making sure that we had certain things in people and just being very kind of honest with ourselves that, like, hey, this person, you know, may. May sound great in the interview, but they don't have this, this and this, or, you know, we feel like they're from the wrong environment and, you know, it's. They have kind of the wrong idea about the business or their. Their motives are different. Their motivations for being in the. In the business are different. You know, although somebody may be very skilled, if they don't have the right motivations, then it's going to be very difficult for us to work together. So it's that, like, we figured out it was we need skilled people, but it's that the motivations and their story was like, became very important when we were hiring. And then, you know, having many people in the organization meet them, that was also helpful because different people pick up on different things and then just kind of taking a breath and making sure that we're taking our time when we're making these critical hires as well.

[B]

So were there, like, particular screening factors or questions you started asking to like, to filter these out or figure out who really are the right fits or not right fits?

[C]

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we have a whole process with, you know, we have an internal recruiter as well. We, you know, first they meet myself, they meet, you know, the other advisors in the, the family office, and then they meet more people if those interactions are positive. But the questions we ask are obviously what kinds of clients they serve, the growth of their firms. And we very rarely find that other firms are growing like us. So we know that that's going to be a challenge off the bat and that we're going to need to give people time to acclimate and to kind of drink from the fire hose and figure out kind of how, you know, how we can help. So, you know, everybody has some time to, to adapt. But you know, aside from those questions just about their day to day and about the actual outfit that they're at, we ask about, you know, any leadership experience that you've had. Have you ever been on a team? Like the team thing is such a big thing for us because like, honestly it's, if you can't be on a team and collaborate like that is I would say the number one thing that, you know, we might pick up on that, you know, some advisors kind of like to work on their own and here it's going to be very hard because of the size of the clients and the way we're organized to do that. So I would say asking questions around, have they ever been on a team? Are they on a team now? How is that structured, you know, and trying to pick up on that vibe. The story have they been through, you know, their, their own story, like have they been through any adversity and difficult like low points in their life and how have they kind of gotten past that? What have they learned? And you know, we want to see kind of growth and evolution of the individual because they're going to come here and it's going to be not like their other place. And that's a good thing. So yeah, I think, you know, these specific things and really trying to get to who the person is rather than like just the skill is, is we get very personal and in, you know, when we're trying to get to know somebody, we want to, we want to know who, who, who is this person because we're going to commit to you and you know, we're going to commit to helping you and to, to be, we're going to commit to being in it with you and you know, making sure that you're successful ultimately as leaders. That's what, that's what we do here. And so we're going to go through a lot together and you know, do we want you on the team. Do we believe in you enough to kind of commit to you and make sure that we can get you through those tough times as well? And do you trust us ultimately? Like, do you have what it takes to trust somebody else as well? Because again, we're very different. We also have an assessment. It's a test of attentional and interpersonal style that we give to people. And it's a lot of random questions that help us. It's just a procedural thing at the firm that we use as well.

[B]

Is that like a third party tool or. This is a series of internal questions you created.

[C]

This is a third party tool.

[B]

So what's your tool of choice then?

[C]

It's called the tase, the Test of Attentional and interpersonal Style. And it's something that our recruiter delivers to them and they do this at home. And this is really just kind of another step in the process. And this is, you know, we do this, we do the interviews and we've got several rounds of interviews. And quite honestly, like, I think we do a pretty good job now hiring. And you can never get it 100%, but you can get it pretty close if you take your time and you're collaborative and, you know, do all these different things.

[B]

So what else do you know? Now you wish you could, like go back and tell you five plus years ago as you were earlier in launching this with wist.

[C]

Oh, yeah. I mean, it's, you know, I would say like just, just knowing that there's going to be bumps when you're building something out and, and being patient, I would say, because what we built has been, you know, it's been an incredible success. It's been, it's been, you know, I think we had the vision right from day one and we stuck to that. And I guess I wish I knew more about the operational side, but I wouldn't, we wouldn't have done it any other way. Like, we, we built it around the client. And I think that, yeah, the operational side of it was, was something that, you know, day one we kind of just said, let's go backwards from the vision. But that's an area that I would say, look, talking to different operators and peers, it's, I feel like an area and it's interesting that we're honing in on it. And I think that's great because it's an area that's. Nobody feels like that it's easy like building the operations of an ria. More specifically in an accounting firm, it's very challenging and I think that's an area that having more expertise and knowledge on different things could have helped us.

[B]

So what advice would you give other advisory firms that want to come in the direction of moving up market, as it were, into ultra high net worth families?

[C]

I would say make sure that you have accountants, you know, make sure that you're really focused on tax and estate planning and integrating those areas. And that's really hard to do because, you know, we've got the backbone as an accounting firm with all these different areas of expertise. I would say like for an ria, you might want to partner with an accounting firm, you know, because hiring like one accountant might not, might not do the trick. But I would say like that the tax piece and the estate planning piece are just when you're moving up market, those are areas that you absolutely have to focus on. It doesn't work to not to just ignore those areas. The client is not going to be fulfilled really by like what you're kind of helping them with if you don't also integrate those, those dimensions.

[B]

So as we wrap up, this is a podcast about success and just one of the things we've long observed that that word success means very different things to different people. And so you're on this wonderful track in growing the advisory firm itself as you're, I think it's crossing a billion of AUM in seven years and this like monstrous growth rate. So the, the, the business seems to be in a wonderful place now. How do you define success personally for yourself now?

[C]

That's a great question. And I think it's different for everybody. But I think as we're growing and as we're past this kind of startup phase, success personally would be really making an impact in people's lives. And that could be clients, that could be my team, that could be my family, my kids, making sure I'm present and making sure that I'm building my own kind of personal impact and that what I'm doing every day is impactful, I would say is what I'm very focused on right now. Making sure that I'm helping clients, let's say, carry out their legacy and making sure that I'm creating these stronger connections, whether it's with clients, with my team, with my family. Just making sure that I have that impact is really what is most fulfilling to me at this point.

[B]

I love it. Well, thank you so much, Stephanie for joining us.

[C]

Thank you for having me. This was great.

[B]

Absolutely. Thank you.

[A]

One even more ideas, tools and resources on how to break through to the next level of success as a financial advisor. Check out the leading financial planning industry blog, Nerd's eye view at www.kitsis.com, where Michael covers the latest practice management trends and financial planning strategies. And by joining the Members section, you can earn IMCA and CFP continuing education credits along with exclusive member content. Get it all now at www.kitsis.com.