Capabilities
Throughout the life stages of your business, wealth and family, most affluent families will require up to twenty unique specialists to support ideal outcomes. No single institution or independent firm can capture the best of the best, across this breadth, under a single roof.
Our collaborative model celebrates your existing, longstanding advisors first and foremost. This is your core team. Then we supplement your core team with topic driven specialists.
When a specialist is required, we believe in the value of Best-in-Class over Best-in-House. A Best-in-Class approach allows us to invite any professional to the table, as long as the invitation aligns with your unique goals and circumstances.
Dedicated Wealth Planning
We designed a planning methodology called The Simple System℠. It works at the intersection of the planning you’ve already done – and the broader vision of what you aspire to achieve with your wealth. Our methodology meets you where you are, and plants you firmly on the journey to clarity, cohesion and control.
The Simple System synchronizes all of your goals and objectives toward a committed course of action. The result is a Dedicated Wealth Plan – a single body of work that is elegantly integrated and optimized for efficiency.
Often this is the first time families are aware of their choices around Social Capital. Social Capital refers to the wealth you earn that you don’t get to keep. This capital can go to the government in the form of involuntary philanthropy: income, capital gains or estate tax. Or, in a little known area of choice, we can divert those same dollars to voluntary philanthropy – the charities or communities you cherish. By creating your own family foundation, or donor-advised fund, we repurpose tax dollars to a philanthropic budget that you control and allocate during your lifetimes.
Importantly, all of your trusted advisors are integral to developing the plan, so there’s a high degree of buy-in and alignment regarding your vision. Future recommendations and strategies are filtered through your vision, before making their debut to your planning table.
Ongoing Management
For everything we clean-up, create and launch, we likewise manage it – with you or for you – over the long term life cycle of our relationship. This continuity protects you from reverting to the Conundrum you may have been experiencing when we began the journey.
Together, we continue to build on everything we’ve learned about your history, your wealth and your goals, and maintain mutual top of mind awareness for your stated priorities. Successful families are always creating new opportunities. As life, business and wealth evolve, we’re your partner at the intersection of thought and action. We’re here to catch your excitement and run with it, managing the technical aspects of post-decision execution.
Dedicated Business Continuity Planning
When we’re first referred to an entrepreneur, their thinking about the business often falls in one of two camps.
You’re not ready to exit the business, yet don’t want to eliminate future options.
For many self-made entrepreneurs, the topic of business continuity is far from a high priority. If you’re not ready to exit, and you don’t have a clear picture of what you want or when, why apply already limited bandwidth to such a hefty topic?
It’s a logical mindset, yet it’s a tipping point for limited outcomes.
Many aren’t aware of the direct correlation between how early you contemplate your transition and how much you control the transition. Business continuity planning is simply an extension of the business planning you may have done in the past. The shorter the runway, the fewer the options. Also, shorter time frames can dramatically reduce your net financial take-away at the end of the journey.
Our process facilitates contemplation without expecting to trigger a transaction. We simply expand your options before you’re expected to make a choice.
In doing so, we maximize your control in five key areas:
- Business value
- Business transition
- Inner circle relationships
- Entrepreneurial clout
- After-the-business footprint
The Peak of Control
Clarity in these five areas help you arrive at the The Peak of Control.
- You’ll understand the upside and downside of action or inaction.
- If desired, you’ll learn what it would take to increase enterprise value prior to a trigger event.
- If you receive an unexpected offer, you’ll have clarity about whether it’s right, viable and the best you can do.
- If or when you decide to take action, you’ll begin at The Peak of Control.
Click here to complete The Control Curve Questionnaire
A ten-minute sprint to increase clarity about your priorities in the five areas noted above.
You’re ready to start contemplating a future transition, and want to nail the outcome financially and relationally.
In accordance with the We-Driven Mindset mentored at the Southern California Institute, for which we are members and instructors, we often work collaboratively with other advisors. Through SCI’s Certified Founders Group Associate program, we completed a course designed to help our teams co-advise seamlessly together and work through all facets of planning for succession or exit. Visit my bio page here.
For Business Succession or Transition Planning, we often co-advise with the team at The Founders Group. TFG leads business owners through all phases of transition where increased clarity, net cash flow, and market value expands and solidifies choices for business transition: if, when, how, how much, and to whom.
Driving for increase in value works for all for all succession/transition options and expands choices:
Keep and grow the business:
- Improves workplace dynamics and drives cashflow, and
- Stabilizes the company to thrive financially regardless of choice.
Transition to:
- My Family,
- My internal team who are like my family, or
- 3rd party
In whole or in part, now or in the future.
Portfolio Design & Management
High net worth families have a unique orientation to investing. Protecting what you have is more important than risking it all in search of an outsized return. We offer institutional quality solutions to families, foundations, trusts & entities, leveraging preferred pricing platforms and robust tax management.
We provide custom, consolidated reporting for the totality of your assets – those managed by us and elsewhere, including illiquid assets, such as hedge funds, private partnerships or real estate. For holdings that only report asset values, not market returns, we compare each to its own appropriate benchmark. Finally, you will see the totality of your asset base – against benchmarks – in a single integrated snapshot.
For concentrated stock positions, instead of pushing for diversification through sale, we can manage downside risk with sophisticated options strategies. For money that requires flexible access, we offer an all-liquid approach absent lock-ups or cumbersome exit requirements.
Life Insurance Design & Management
We’re often invited in by a family’s longstanding trusted advisors to maximize the opportunities inherent to a well-designed life insurance portfolio. Because we are a planning firm, we approach the insurance acquisition process with the same level of strategy and intentionality that your advisors have embedded in the planning and documents surrounding it.
Contrary to popular belief, prudent insurance planning begins with exploring ways to reduce your need for insurance. Next, we integrate technical design, product structure and funding to optimize for efficiency – and align your portfolio with your goals.
We can often reduce your insurance needs over time and redirect the differential to philanthropy. In some scenarios, we reach beyond traditional life insurance, using Private Placement Life Insurance for advanced tax reduction opportunities.
Transactional Tax Reduction Studies
In the sale of a highly appreciated asset, such as real estate or a business, tax implications are one of the largest variables impacting your net proceeds. With a transaction well underway, we can defer, reduce or eliminate the 30 to 50% tax bite.
We conduct a thorough transaction study, evaluating up to ten or more strategies. Often the best course of action leverages a hybrid of several approaches. You’ll walk away from your transaction having maximized what you keep – absent the surprise of net proceeds that are significantly lower than expected.
We also explore your choices around Social Capital – the wealth you earn that you don’t get to keep. This capital can go to the government in the form of involuntary philanthropy: income, capital gains or estate tax. Or, we can redirect those same dollars to voluntary philanthropy – the charities or communities you cherish.