Decision Vision

Decision Vision Episode 31: Should I Start a Family Office? – An Interview with Chris Demetree, Demetree Brothers

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Decision Vision Episode 31:  Should I Start a Family Office? – An Interview with Chris Demetree, Demetree Brothers

What issues should be considered in starting a family office? What makes a family office successful? The answers to these questions and more come out of “Decision Vision” host Michael Blake’s interview with Chris Demetree, Demetree Brothers. “Decision Vision” is presented by Brady Ware & Company.

Chris Demetree, Demetree Brothers

Chris Demetree is one of the co-founders of Demetree Brothers, Inc. and currently serves as Vice President. Chris has served as the Managing Partner for Alico Estates Development Associates and as Vice President of Demetree Pasco Properties, Inc. His past developments include over 2,000 single family lots, a golf course country club community, and numerous commercial office/retail centers. Chris has served on the Board of Directors of several private and public companies.

Chris possesses a strong record of entrepreneurial success, with over 25 years of experience building successful technology businesses. He is currently the CEO of Lazlo, a digital platform that enables new channels for monetizing digitally stored value. Lazlo evolves traditional gift cards, coupons, lottery tickets into dynamic digital assets that can be used as a vehicle for advertising, data collection, and branding, while adding security to digitally stored value.

Prior to Lazlo, Chris was a founder and partner in V-P Ventures (VPV), a private investment firm focused on early stage and private equity transactions. Before VPV, he held C-level roles with successful startups including Recordant, STC Corp., Intelligenxia and Urban Media. He has a B.S. in Industrial Management from Georgia Institute of Technology.

Michael Blake, Brady Ware & Company

Michael Blake is Host of the “Decision Vision” podcast series and a Director of Brady Ware & Company. Mike specializes in the valuation of intellectual property-driven firms, such as software firms, aerospace firms and professional services firms, most frequently in the capacity as a transaction advisor, helping clients obtain great outcomes from complex transaction opportunities. He is also a specialist in the appraisal of intellectual properties as stand-alone assets, such as software, trade secrets, and patents.

Mike has been a full-time business appraiser for 13 years with public accounting firms, boutique business appraisal firms, and an owner of his own firm. Prior to that, he spent 8 years in venture capital and investment banking, including transactions in the U.S., Israel, Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus.

Brady Ware & Company

Brady Ware & Company is a regional full-service accounting and advisory firm which helps businesses and entrepreneurs make visions a reality. Brady Ware services clients nationally from its offices in Alpharetta, GA; Columbus and Dayton, OH; and Richmond, IN. The firm is growth minded, committed to the regions in which they operate, and most importantly, they make significant investments in their people and service offerings to meet the changing financial needs of those they are privileged to serve. The firm is dedicated to providing results that make a difference for its clients.

Decision Vision Podcast Series

“Decision Vision” is a podcast covering topics and issues facing small business owners and connecting them with solutions from leading experts. This series is presented by Brady Ware & Company. If you are a decision maker for a small business, we’d love to hear from you. Contact us at decisionvision@bradyware.com and make sure to listen to every Thursday to the “Decision Vision” podcast. Past episodes of “Decision Vision” can be found here. “Decision Vision” is produced and broadcast by the North Fulton studio of Business RadioX®.

Visit Brady Ware & Company on social media:

LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/company/brady-ware/

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Show Transcript

Intro: [00:00:02] Welcome to Decision Vision, a podcast series focusing on critical business decisions, brought to you by Brady Ware & Company. Brady Ware is a regional, full-service, accounting and advisory firm that helps businesses and entrepreneurs make vision a reality.

Mike Blake: [00:00:20] And welcome to Decision Vision, a podcast giving you, the listener, clear vision to make great decisions. In each episode, we discuss the process of decision making on a different business topic. Rather than making recommendations because everyone’s circumstances are different, we talk to subject matter experts about how they would recommend thinking about that decision.

Mike Blake: [00:00:39] My name is Mike Blake, and I’m your host for today’s podcast. I’m a Director at Brady Ware & Company, a full-service accounting firm based in Dayton, Ohio, with offices in Dayton; Columbus, Ohio; Richmond, Indiana; and Alpharetta, Georgia, which is where we are recording today. Brady Ware is sponsoring this podcast. If you like this podcast, please subscribe on your favorite podcast aggregator. And please also consider leaving a review of the podcast as well.

Mike Blake: [00:01:03] Our topic today is family offices. And family offices are probably one of the better kept secrets in the American economy. For the most part, family offices do not seek rock star status. They’re very different from, kind of, your Silicon Valley, fast company, red herring, sort of, I don’t say want to say attention-seeking, that’s not fair, but very high profile organization. The fact of the matter is you may work next to a family office, you may live in the same neighborhood as somebody who’s in or works in a family office or has a family office, and you wouldn’t even know it. We don’t have Yellow Pages anymore, but if we did, there probably would not be an entry for family offices. And I think we can all kind of appreciate that as to why that is. But the fact of the matter is that they are increasingly popular as a tool and an infrastructure for managing wealth.

Mike Blake: [00:02:15] And a lot of us on the radio, myself included, would love to have the problem where we have so much wealth that it becomes a different kind of responsibility to manage it. But the fact of the matter is it is a responsibility to manage it, especially if you’re in a position where you are sharing it with family, and there are not just family relationships, but fiduciary relationships involved. And it’s important, also, because I think a lot of people who are creating wealth, particularly those who are creating it this generation, they’re building it, and then either exiting it, or transitioning their core enterprise, they’re starting to realize that something called a shirtsleeves-to-shirtsleeves phenomenon.

Mike Blake: [00:03:00] There are all kinds of studies out there – I don’t have to cite one in particular, you can Google it – that say that for the most part, if a family makes, or generates, or produces an amount of wealth, let’s call it $20 million just to pick a number out there, statistically speaking, in three generations or by generation three, only 10% of that wealth is going to remain. And by the fourth generation, 3% of that wealth remains. And a great case in point is the Vanderbilt family. They built their wealth in the early 19th Century, and basically doing ferries around Manhattan and Pennsylvania. But the name is much stronger than the wealth. In fact, Anderson Cooper of CNN, who is actually a 6th generation Vanderbilt, has gone on record saying there ain’t no trust fund waiting for him. And perhaps if they’d had a family office or a structure like that, maybe that scenario would be different.

Mike Blake: [00:04:06] So, the goal of this podcast is to shed a little bit of light. If you’re thinking of whether a family office or something like that structure is useful for you, or maybe you’re advising somebody who’s thinking about a family office, the goal of this podcast is to provide some insight into that. And to help us with that we’re talking with Chris Demetree. And Chris is a very successful entrepreneur in his own right. He has more than 25 years of experience building successful technology businesses. He has extensive experience with family offices and is also an active player in the Atlanta startup community. He is currently the CEO of Lazlo, a digital platform that enables new channels for monetizing digitally stored value. Lazlo—I’m sorry. Lazlo evolves traditional gift cards, coupons, lottery tickets into dynamic digital assets that can be used as a vehicle for advertising, data collection, and branding, while adding security to digitally stored value.

Mike Blake: [00:05:06] Prior to Lazlo, Chris was a founder and partner of VP Ventures, a private investment firm focused on early stage and private equity transactions. Before VPVChris held C-level roles with successful startups including Recordant, STC Corp, Intelligentsia, and Urban Media. He also has a Bachelor’s Degree in Industrial Management from the Georgia Institute of Technology. Chris Demetree, welcome and thank you so much for coming on the program.

Chris Demetree: [00:05:33] Michael, thanks for having me. I appreciate the opportunity. Looking forward to today’s conversation.

Mike Blake: [00:05:41] So, Chris, before we begin, I want to give you a little bit of an opportunity for a soapbox here because I know this is a venture that’s very near and dear to your heart. Tell us a little bit more about Lazlo. What does a listener listening to this program need to know about Lazlo, if anything?

Chris Demetree: [00:05:56] Well, no, I appreciate the opportunity. I love talking about investments. As a—unfortunately or fortunately, I’m a serial entrepreneur at heart.

Mike Blake: [00:06:05] We haven’t been able to cure you yet.

Chris Demetree: [00:06:08] Say that again.

Mike Blake: [00:06:09] We have not been able to cure you yet.

Chris Demetree: [00:06:11] Yeah, no kidding. No kidding. I told somebody, it’s literally like a drug. When you get involved with early-stage companies, especially if the first one goes well, it’s hard to kick that habit, but no. So, well, with regards to Lazlo, our core technology and our core platform is focused around changing the way physical instruments today, physical value instruments today are converted into the digital world. And so, we’re creating a new digital platform to share, to purchase, and to disseminate stored value being gift cards, coupons, event tickets, that type of stored value. So, we’ve been working on it for a little while, and we’re very excited about our future. We think there’s a real big opportunity here. So, thank you.

Mike Blake: [00:07:09] We’ll be looking to hear more about it as time goes on. So, let’s dive into the-

Chris Demetree: [00:07:15] Well, Michael, Michael, I want to go back and point one thing out. As Anderson Cooper said, there’s no big trust fund there for him. That’s only because he didn’t want it.

Mike Blake: [00:07:25] And so, you can tell.

Chris Demetree: [00:07:26] When his mother passed away, there was almost a quarter of a billion-dollar fortune in place.

Mike Blake: [00:07:31] Oh, is that right? I didn’t know that.

Chris Demetree: [00:07:33] She died with estimated $200 million net worth.

Mike Blake: [00:07:42] Okay.

Chris Demetree: [00:07:42] But yeah, that’s—he was—that’s self-promotion on Anderson’s part, but, no, there was still a significant amount of wealth in her name. And she’s what? As you said, I can’t remember what generation, but she’s quite ways down the line.

Mike Blake: [00:08:00] Yes. She’s 5th. So, Anderson’s 6th. So, again, it’s the first learning point of the day. We know a little bit more about the Vanderbilts.

Chris Demetree: [00:08:10] Yeah, there we go.

Mike Blake: [00:08:10] So, we’ve talked a little bit about this offline. And I understand that you’re not necessarily involved in a family office, but I know you’re involved in some things that are family office-like or have some family office features. So, I think that there’s a lot that we can talk about and educate the listeners. But let’s start with the basic vocabulary starting point. To your mind, when somebody says family office to you, what does that mean?

Chris Demetree: [00:08:38] Well, a true family office, in my mind, is a—it is a family network that operates very similar to a venture capital fund or a family office that operates very similar to a private equity fund. The main difference is—and again, it goes back to what you were saying with regards to how high a profile these family offices typically try to keep, they don’t need to keep a high profile. The reason they don’t is because the LPs are the family; whereas, for private equity and venture, they do have to tout themselves and their successes to the marketplace because they’ve always got to go create that next fund to sustain their long-term viability. And that means attracting new LPs, in addition to the existing LP network that you had in your first or second fund for each one thereafter. So, that’s a big part of the difference. But when you think of family offices, again, I think of a family office working very much like venture or private equity. How it is structured is completely different, but the LP network is what I think separates it the most. Meaning, all family versus outside capital.

Mike Blake: [00:10:01] Okay. And so, to that end, yeah, let’s then kind of operate with that working definition that is a captive investment fund that just happens to belong to a group of people all with the same last name or, at least, DNA traits.

Chris Demetree: [00:10:17] Sure.

Mike Blake: [00:10:17] Does that mean then that the family office also then faces similar challenges in terms of deal flow and decision making, in terms of good deals versus bad deals, governance, things of that nature?

Chris Demetree: [00:10:32] Number of questions there. So, deal flow, I will tell you that the investment community around a family office. So, let’s take for instance here in Atlanta, if there are family offices here in Atlanta, typically, the investment community, whether that’d be private equity, venture capital, the accounting world, from a deal flow standpoint, will have a good sense of what that family office likes to look at. As far as types of deals, what their appetite may be for size of deals, whether they want to own a majority stake in the company, or they want to follow behind an investment group. So, deal flow, to me, is not quite the same as a private equity group, who’s out there looking at everything. They can be—the family offices have the tendency to see less deals but more targeted deals, if that makes sense.

Mike Blake: [00:11:36] It does. That gets back to the thing you mentioned, your definition then, the network is really a key defining trait of the family office, isn’t it?

Chris Demetree: [00:11:46] It is. It is as far as pre-screening deals. Unlike, I will call it a true venture group or venture capital group who wants to look at most every deal, because, again, that’s kind of their charter is to find, to look at everything, and know the marketplace, know everything going on in the marketplace, especially within its sectors. The family offices don’t have to do that because they’re typically invited in or invited to participate in deals, or they’re looking at something that may be a core expertise that they want to own the whole deal or a majority of the deal.

Mike Blake: [00:12:32] Okay, So, I sidetracked. So, so I won’t get back because I think-

Chris Demetree: [00:12:35] Oh, that’s right.

Mike Blake: [00:12:36] …you had mentioned another part, which is about governance. Do family offices and private equity funds face similar governance issues, or they wind up being very different?

Chris Demetree: [00:12:46] Again, it—and this is one man’s opinion, but I believe it’s just how they are structured. You can have some family offices that are operated literally by a majority of outside advisors and investment advisors, or you can have family offices that are run more by family members that are making investment decisions. I think a lot of that comes down to the capabilities of the individuals. And as I’ve said to you before, I think a lot of that comes down to what the generation that’s setting up the family office believes they have done to prepare the next generation to be able to do that themselves. They very much face similar types of issues when it comes up with regards to—I’m sorry, the success and failures of deals.

Mike Blake: [00:13:48] Okay.

Chris Demetree: [00:13:48] Depending on the profile or the mix of the investment strategy of a family office, whether it’d be outside investors or the family-managed investments. If they are looking at higher risk investments, then, again, at the end of the day, they’re going to have a very similar track record to that of a venture capital firm looking at early to growth capital type of investments. If the family office takes a more conservative role, and they’re only looking at what I call it [indiscernible] businesses, then I would expect to see a higher success rate. I can’t tell you whether or not it’s going to be higher rates of returns or not. That’s just—only time tells you that with your investments. But they’re subject to the same exact issues that a venture capital firm is doing.

Mike Blake: [00:14:47] Okay. So, I think you’re starting to answer this question already, but I want to hit it directly because, again, I think it’s an important question. So, I think when outsiders look at family offices, I think we tend to have an image of our mind of the playboy, the constant gallivanting around the world, the golfing, et cetera, et cetera. But you’re kind of painting a picture that’s much more of a business entity where you’re out there, and you’re actively doing—you’re working, you’re doing deals. The job is different, but it’s certainly a job, and one that has to be taken seriously. Is that a fair characterization?

Chris Demetree: [00:15:29] It’s absolutely. I mean, it is—yes. And that it is a job that has to be taken seriously. You are managing LPs money. It doesn’t matter if you’re managing your own money or if you’ve got advisors that are managing that capital for you. So, I mean, for true family offices, it is a business. And they hold themselves—and again, as I said to you, I mean, every one of them can be set up differently, but I know of a few family offices, and they hold themselves to very strict standards with regards to looking at all of their investments, looking at what their IRR is. Does it make sense to stay in this vertical? I mean, again, no different than how a business would be run. That is slightly different than how you preface the conversation by saying or the question by saying, “Some people think of a family office as a trust fund baby.”

Mike Blake: [00:16:35] Right.

Chris Demetree: [00:16:37] They’re out there. Absolutely, they are. It’s getting harder and harder to generate that type of wealth, although the dot com industry would tell you maybe not, or the Silicon Valley, but it’s getting tougher and tougher. But it’s the same—how do I say this? There may not be as many of those type of flamboyant playboys out there anymore. They don’t need to be. It seems to me that the entertainment industry is more than sufficient at providing us enough icons to follow that are gallivanting around and throwing money away.

Chris Demetree: [00:17:21] I think the family offices now—and again, this is just an opinion, but I think the participants try to keep a lower profile because you were exposed to so much more today with cell phone cameras and everything else going on in social media that the lower profile you can keep, the less you are going to be subjected to risks. And those risks comes in the form of lawsuits and that type of stuff. It’s just different. But it all goes back to what the founder or the creator of that family office thinks of the next generation or the next generation after that.

Mike Blake: [00:18:12] Now, most family offices, I think, are ultimately founded by the success of one core business. And even today, the Rockefeller zone, a stake in Exxon Mobile, and the Fords on a stake, and Ford Motor Company, although there’s a weird story behind that, they should own more, but they don’t.

Chris Demetree: [00:18:32] Right.

Mike Blake: [00:18:32] Mark Zuckerberg has his own family office now, and that still owns a big chunk of Facebook, even though it’s public. Is it your impression that most family offices, once the wealth gets organized in that way, do they tend to then start to branch out into other businesses?

Chris Demetree: [00:18:53] The diversification, absolutely. I mean, take, for instance, Mark Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg has no idea what the next generation is going to look like. And with—though, just an his age, I mean, he’s, what, 20 years younger than I am probably, and I’m not old yet, but he has no idea what it’s looking like. So, I think part of it is going to be transferring wealth generationally. That’s part of why you set up the family offices. Diversification is not only for his future generations, but for him. The old adage, “You never want all of your eggs in one basket,” even though you control that basket.” So, you may even drop it, but yeah. So, if you can diversify—and that is a way to do it and keep it in a structure that is not subject to the transfer taxes later. And again, as you said, he got a—he set up the foundation or the family office most with stock. Well, that affords him the ability to grow the value of that family office as he grows his core business. And that just allows him the chance to move more money into that tax-free.

Mike Blake: [00:20:28] Now, there are kind of different flavors of family offices out there. There’s the classic, sort of, single family office where everything is, sort of, captive. There’s the multi-family office where it’s kind of like a co-op or a fractional ownership of a jet. And then, they’re kind of even virtual family offices where there’s some certain family office characteristics, but it’s not necessarily formally organized that way. Are you aware of those distinctions? And are you in a position to maybe talk about maybe some of the pros and cons of those kind of flavors?

Chris Demetree: [00:21:10] Well, I mean, again, I can give you my opinion for whatever it worth. Every man has one, or every person has one nowadays. I apologize. I didn’t mean to sound that way. So, I am—when I think of a multi-family office, I think of a similar DNA that travels throughout that family office. The names of the players may be changed with regards to marriage and that type of stuff, but there is an inherent DNA that runs through all of them that traces back to the origin of the family office, I could be wrong. Again, I don’t call them family offices per se to know that many of them.

Chris Demetree: [00:22:04] I think of a true functioning family office as being one family. And then, I think there’s two flavors. And again, it goes back to something you taught me, which is that shirtsleeves-to-shirtsleeves. That’s not something I heard before. I do understand it. I didn’t know they put that name to that phenomenon of losing your wealth after two or three generations. I believe—and I hope I’m not rambling too much for you, but I believe that it goes back to what I said before, when you set up that family office or the originator, the titular head of the family sets it up, he or she has kind of made a decision in their own mind, I believe, of what they have done to prepare the next generation. And you have some that look at it and don’t believe they prepared them very well. And they structure that family office where it’s got to be managed by an outsider. The next generation needs adult supervision because they’re not capable of doing it themselves. Well, I will tell you that, for a different myriad of reasons, that goes back to—more times than not, it falls back to the person that’s setting that fund up.

Chris Demetree: [00:23:34] But as I’ve said to you before, we do not operate a formal family office, but I was also forced to work. We didn’t come from that kind of wealth. And my father’s attitude was even if he does create it, we were going to know—his kids were going to know how to work, all of us. The boys were stuck on construction sites, and the girls were typically stuck in the office. That was 30, 40, and in some cases, 50 years ago with my older siblings. So, that was just how they did it. That was his way of doing it, but he did prepare us. He taught us to work. And we were very fortunate as a family that we worked together. I worked with my brothers, and my sisters, and my dad on a daily basis, whether it was running our family development business or whether we were analyzing things to invest in.

Mike Blake: [00:24:41] Now, you said something I want to zero in on because I hadn’t thought of that, and I think that’s so insightful, which is the DNA. And as I interpret it, I know that there’s a biological DNA, but I think there’s also a philosophical DNA.

Chris Demetree: [00:24:55] Correct.

Mike Blake: [00:24:56] And getting into multi-family offices, and I hadn’t—frankly, I had not thought of this issue before. There are plenty of folks out there that offer multi-family office services, all the big wealth management firms, whether it’s Merrill Lynch, or UBS, or whoever, they offer that. And it’s like you want a family office, but maybe your wealth isn’t at that point where you can justify taking on all the overhead yourself, so you get that fractional approach. But then, it occurred to me that, what if the other people kind of in your—that they’re going to be invited into your condo, or in your campsite, don’t share the same values, don’t have the same needs, and short and long-term goals, that can probably very quickly become an awkward fit and hurt the success, really, of everybody involved.

Chris Demetree: [00:25:56] So, Michael, what I hear you describe in the way you’re asking that question or the way you’re kind of describing that scenario, what I hear or think of in my head is an LP network. So, when you talk about a Merrill Lynch that’s managing multiple family offices, I would look at those multiple family offices as limited partners that Merrill Lynch is providing the partner—the management piece of. But, again, each one of those family offices is going to have a—in this term a DNA, it’s going to be an investment strategy, and a theory, and a philosophy of what do they want from that investment. Is this high growth? Is it—do they want something that’s income producing? As I call it, mailbox money, where it’s slightly lower growth, but it’s 8% or 6%, whatever, they can count every year coming in that mail. You’re not going to cross-pollinate if you are the manager. And then, again, we’ll stick with your reference to Merrill Lynch. If Merrill Lynch is the one managing those multiple portfolios of family offices, Merrill Lynch is not going to cross-pollinate a growth family office with an income-oriented family office.

Mike Blake: [00:27:29] Right, or, at least, they shouldn’t.

Chris Demetree: [00:27:31] Or they won’t be managing the money long if they do.

Mike Blake: [00:27:34] Yeah, I would imagine that’s true. So, you touched on something I want to touch on. And I needed to ask this question delicately, and you’ll probably want to answer it very delicately, but it’s important. In terms of the management, the operative word in family office is family. And you mentioned that, sometimes, there are circumstances where it’s not appropriate for a family member to manage the family office. Maybe the people are just too young. Maybe they’re not cut out for it. Not everybody—even if you’re in a wealthy family, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re good at business, you have any kind of aptitude for it. So, in your experience and what you’ve observed, how does that get kind of worked out? Do families kind of default to the eldest working-age person, or do you find that they go out and hire kind of professional management, or is it some mix of the two? Is it all over the board?

Chris Demetree: [00:28:42] I would—again, not speaking specifically for anything that I know. Again, just an opinion, but I believe it’s all over the board. There are a couple of key things that I have often thought I think are important in a family office. And when I talk about a family office, I think of it as a family that’s investing together, whether that’s formally or informally. When you speak of a true family office, that setup, that dynamic is a formal instrument that drives an organization, whether it’s an LLC, or LLP, or MLP, whatever it may be.

Chris Demetree: [00:29:33] But there are some things that, with an informal arrangement, there are some key things that have to be in place. Otherwise, an informal process doesn’t work. And then, one of the key ingredients is there’s got to be an inherent respect between the players that are sitting at the table, whether those players are all related through their biological DNA, or whether or not they are related both to DNA in operating agreement that says they need to be there. So, if there’s an advisor at the table, the family members need to respect that advisor.

Chris Demetree: [00:30:21] Secondarily, I think, for an informal office to work well, you have to understand that among the family members, there is a hierarchy. You do have older and younger siblings, And there’s a respect that should run regardless of—and, again, it’s just how I was raised. There’s a respect that runs through the family for your older and younger siblings. You look to the older one in a quick diversion, but I can—in my particular instance, I’m the youngest of five kids, and I remember it wasn’t long ago that I lost my dad. And, I was talking with my father before he passed away, and I looked at him, and I’ll never forget it.

Chris Demetree: [00:31:14] We were sitting outside talking. This was probably within a month of when he passed. We knew it was coming. And I said to him, “I’m not ready for you to go yet.” And he goes, “No, you’re going to be fine.” And he goes, “You’ve got your mom here. You’ve got your brothers.” I said, “No, but I’m not ready to be that next generation.” I said, “I’m used to having you.” And my point is we have that older generation to look for. When my father passed, yes, my mother is still part of that generation that is still there, who I still respect and looked to, but a lot of it reverts to my older brothers, my older sisters. I look to them. That is kind of our hierarchy. I’m comfortable of that. Some people might think I was crazy.

Chris Demetree: [00:32:08] And then the last piece, Michael, that I will touch on is in order for an informal office or family to work as a family office, you got to like being around each other, you got to like working together. It’s not just about making money, it’s about being together, and doing things together. When one succeeds, you all succeed, regardless of the degree of success. Everybody kind of does it together. So, that’s more of an informal process. A formal process, it’s all scripted out on paper. Here’s who’s going to make the decisions, here’s how they make the decisions, and that’s got to be decided by the creator of that family office.

Mike Blake: [00:32:59] I think that’s a great way to—I think it’s a great way to kind of finish it. I really appreciate you sharing that story. You can, sort of, hear a pin drop in the studio as we were listening to that. That’s powerful stuff. And I want to go back to something you and I had in a private conversation that I don’t think you’ll mind that I express is that you told me that if the first motivation is about the money, it’s never going to work.

Chris Demetree: [00:33:27] It will never work.

Mike Blake: [00:33:28] It’s got to be the relationships first.

Chris Demetree: [00:33:30] It will never-

Mike Blake: [00:33:30] The money is there but-

Chris Demetree: [00:33:31] Now, Michael, that’s not a family office. That’s life. That’s life. If your only motivation in life is money, you’ve got a long, long road ahead of you and a very sad life ahead of you. It’s not about that. It’s about your family and it’s about your faith. And you follow those two things—that was the core value my parents taught me. You follow those two things down life, and you will have not only a good life but a very successful life. The rest of it will fall into place, but you follow your family and your faith.

Mike Blake: [00:34:09] I can’t think of a better ending. So, I’m going to quit while we’re ahead.

Chris Demetree: [00:34:14] Yeah, because you never know what I could say after that.

Mike Blake: [00:34:16] Or me. I’m not going to add anything to that. So, that’s going to wrap it up for today’s program. I’d like to thank Chris Demetree so much for joining us and sharing his expertise with us. And do check out Lazlo as well. It’s a cool company, I think, we’ll be hearing more of in the future. We’ll be exploring a new topic each week. So, please tune in, so that when you’re faced with your next business decision, you have clear vision when making it. If you enjoy this podcast, please consider leaving a review with your favorite podcast aggregator. That helps people find us, so that we can help them. Once again, this is Mike Blake. Our sponsor’s Brady Ware & Company. And this has been the Decision Vision Podcast.